What if the most powerful tool for healing, happiness, and success isn’t a pill but your mind?

In this eye-opening episode of Beyond The Pills, we’re joined by Ravinder Taylor, author, hypnotherapist, and president of Progressive Awareness Research. With over 30 years of experience studying the science behind self-help, Ravinder dismantles common myths in the personal development space and introduces a grounded, research-backed approach to lasting transformation.

We explore the untapped potential of the placebo effect, the surprising truth about self-sabotage, and how optimism can literally extend your life. Ravinder also shares the science behind her latest book, Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment, which is built on over 200 independent studies—and explains how just a few intentional practices can rewire your mind for confidence, clarity, and connection.

Whether you're skeptical of self-help or spiritually curious, this conversation bridges science and soul in a powerful way.

Highlights include:

• Why most self-help advice misses the mark
• The placebo effect as proof of your untapped inner power
• How to uncover (and undo) self-destructive patterns
• Techniques to boost joy, relationship success, and even life expectancy
• The truth about subliminal messaging—and how it really works

You are more powerful than you think. And this episode will show you how to reclaim that power.

🔗 Learn more and connect with Ravinder:

🌐 Website: ravindertaylor.com

Book: Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment

Instagram: @ravindertaylor

Facebook: facebook.com/RavinderKTaylor

hello hello welcome to this

episode of beyond the pills

where we explore the

intersections of ancient

wisdom and modern day

science to unlock true

healing body mind and

spirit I'm josh rimini

pharmacist turned healer

and today we have a special

guest uh in someone who has

spent over three decades

mastering the science and

soul of self-empowerment ravinda taylor

is the president of

Progressive Awareness

Research and the co-author

of over two hundred

personal motivation audio programs.

She's a trained hypnotherapist,

an ordained

interdenominational minister

and holds a degree in

microbiology from the

University College of Wales.

She's also the author of the

powerful new book, Mind Training,

The Science of Self-Empowerment,

which we'll get into.

which draws on more than two

hundred peer reviewed

studies to provide a

practical and evidence

based self-help curriculum.

Her work cuts through common

self-help myths to reveal

what really works and why

we're more powerful than we think.

Ravinda has appeared on

national platforms like Coast to Coast,

AM, and Today,

and she joins us to share

how we can break free from

mental programming,

harness the power of optimism,

and truly reclaim control

over our minds and our lives.

Welcome to the show, Ravinda.

Thanks so much for having me on, Josh.

I'm looking forward to a

great conversation.

I'm, I loved our pre connection call,

like the things you've been

doing and what you do,

because I I've been a

student of mind over, you know,

health and in controlling, like,

reclaiming,

like all those things that

have gone in that emotional

healing that I've done.

And so

Mind training, right?

Mind training.

This is a topic that I think

is going to be a foundation

for us to talk about today.

But what is mind training

and what does it mean to

you to truly empower this

and empower yourself?

in a nutshell josh my

training is about tweaking

formerly subconscious

processes to eliminate

self-destructive behaviors

enhance health and vitality

and supercharge success

potential the fact is most

of us think we are just the

way that we are we're the

way that god made us or our

genes made us we're a

product of our

circumstances and there

isn't anything you can do

about it we are just who we are and

That is not the case.

We have a whole lot more

power than we think we have.

When we learn how our minds work,

then we have the ability to

reverse engineer, I suppose,

and to actually start

creating our own lives as

opposed to just being in

the passenger seat of the car.

Well,

I've been a student of that myself

and teach people in

different ways because this

podcast and what I do is

all about transformation and healing.

And how did you get into this work?

You studied microbiology,

but you're into the

neuroscience of change and

you're talking about...

reprogramming that

subconscious space which is

ninety five percent of our

program right we're always

programmed into what we can

do and so how did you get

into all this work I'm

curious what's your story

the back story we always

love talking about people's

backstories I do often

think that you know kids get

shoehorned into different

fields of education and

then into careers I think

sometimes we make those

choices too early looking

back on it I much I would

have much rather have gone

into psychology because I'm

fascinated by that but now

um my family were typical

asian parents they doctor

lawyer um I wasn't smart

enough to go into medicine so

I ended up doing my degree

in microbiology.

I was working in a path lab.

My approach was very science-based.

I mean, I thought that was all there was.

I wasn't interested in woo-woo stuff.

The first time I encountered Reiki therapy,

I cracked up laughing.

I thought it was the funniest thing.

It was that there was a

mind-body expo kind of thing.

There was this person that basically said,

well, for fifty pounds,

we can give you this energy.

And for seventy five pounds,

we can tell you how to use this energy.

And I thought it was funny.

I thought it was hysterical.

So that was kind of the

background that I came from.

But then I was working in the lab.

And one day there was a

special presentation being

hosted by the hospital that

I was working at.

And because it was being

sponsored by the hospital,

that gave it a kind of endorsement.

And this presentation was on hypnotherapy.

Now,

I'd always thought hypnosis was

something people did on stage.

It was for entertainment.

You tried to make people look stupid,

have everyone have a laugh.

But I learned a whole lot

more in this presentation,

a whole lot more.

It was definitely valid

because the subjects that

he brought up to

demonstrate the techniques

on all happened to be from my lab.

Now, this was a huge auditorium.

People from my lab were

spread out across the whole place.

So it was just coincidental.

But I knew for a fact that

they weren't shills.

But then he shared a story.

And it was this one story

that changed the trajectory

of my entire life.

And it was a story about a

woman who had a pain in her arm.

She'd had a pain in her arm a long while,

a decade or more.

I don't remember exactly exactly.

She had seen all the doctors,

seen all the specialists,

hadn't been able to find a

solution to it.

Under hypnosis,

they went back to what the

triggering event was.

And she remembered a traumatic event.

It was an emotional event of some kind.

She had dismissed it.

It was in the past.

We all have traumas in that past.

We all have things that have upset us.

But she went back to this specific event.

After the hypnosis session,

the following day,

she called the

hypnotherapist up and said

the pain had gone.

The pain had actually gone immediately,

but she hadn't believed it.

So she had waited for the

following day to call him.

And I was really intrigued

by how something in the

past could have such

obvious effects on our

present day experience.

I was fascinated by the process.

I underwent hypnotherapy myself,

learned some really cool

techniques like hypnotic drawing,

hypnotic writing.

Because I found that fascinating,

I went on and did a

three-year course in

hypnosis and psychotherapy.

And that was where I met my

husband because he was

doing a special

presentation at the

hypnotherapy school I was going to.

So then I learned about

subliminal communication,

pre-conscious processing.

And from there, you know,

obviously I got married,

but I then spent the last

thirty five plus years

researching how the mind works,

how we learn,

why we do the things that we do.

my approach is very science-based,

but my real interest lies

in the practical applications.

How can we use this to

become better people?

How can we use this to

improve the quality of our lives,

have better relationships?

It's very much the practical

usage of the science that

gets my attention.

Yeah.

Well, it,

It resonates because a lot

of what I've done in my journey of,

my professional and personal journey,

I've always been drawn to

the science and

understanding the mechanisms.

I'm a pharmacist by trade, right?

But then I learned the

wellness mechanisms and

then I started learning

about the neuroscience and

then the energy medicine

side that I'm just starting

to be certified and learn

is kind of my newer space

where it is more of the woo side,

but then there's this

intersection with the science, right?

Like you talked about, I loved how...

you know, I but I love this story,

because every time I pull

this out with people is like,

how did you get to do the thing you do?

And it becomes the story for them of like,

I went to this thing.

And out of like, there was no,

I don't think there's a

coincidence that all the

people in your lab were the

participants because then you

that's what you needed to

validate that process,

which intrigued you, which leaned you in,

which got you to be

certified in that modality,

which then leads you into the next thing,

which then leads you into

meeting your husband.

You know,

it was like the breadcrumbs just

fell because it became in an alignment.

So I love how...

There is that universe of

aligns that in the way that

you least expected it,

because that's how I feel.

Some of this always works.

So I just love the stories

that people create of like

their backstory.

So thank you for that.

And thank you for the

constant reminder that

things are working in our favor,

even though we don't know it, you know,

and then, um,

the story of your client or this client,

right.

Where.

she didn't remember it or

she had passed it through.

Like it wasn't emotionally affecting her,

but there was this pain

that had been trapped there

for so long from an, the emotion,

the emotional tension and

trauma from that had

created a physical component.

So we were talking mind body here.

Right.

And then,

through hypnosis,

through this going past out

into the subconscious, right?

And then talking through it

and then releasing that out

automatically helped the

physical ailment.

And I think that's where I

think a lot of what we've

talked about on these

podcasts and where people

are sensing and feeling is like,

there's the energetics, right?

The energetics of it is the

body's trapped there.

But as soon as we,

We reprogram, right?

This was a therapy tool that

was being used to do

something that physical

medicine probably would

have never picked up, right?

It was just like, oh,

we're going to go to the shoulder.

We're going to go to the orthopedic.

We're going to get an MRI.

And this is where I think a

lot of us get these patients from.

I've gone to the doctor.

They've done all the tests.

Nobody knows what's wrong with me,

but something's wrong with me, right?

And so I love that.

And there's not one size fits all.

This was just one way that

what happened to it.

So,

How do you work with someone

in the hypnotherapy space?

Because this is just more

curiosity for me.

Is there some people that

are easier to be hypnotized

and move through this process?

Or is there some people that, you know,

because I've always talked to people like,

oh, I can't get hypnotized.

It's not me.

Like they kind of talk like that.

So I'm curious from your

clinical perspective in the

science behind hypnotherapy

and moving into the subconscious,

this is just one way, right?

What's your experience with that?

Because I'm kind of curious

more for me than anything.

Everyone can be hypnotized.

The fact is hypnosis is just

that more pronounced

slowing down of brainwave activity,

more open to suggestibility.

And they've actually done

research looking at people

watching television and how

quickly they can get into a

hypnotic state.

That's one of the reasons

why advertisements on TV

can be so dangerous, so impactful.

So you have a commercial

that is talking about XY drug,

and it's going to take all

your problems away.

And when you're in that

zoned out state on the sofa watching TV,

well, then you just take it in.

A big one for me,

and this is one that I

actually experienced myself,

is to do with allergy season.

You know,

today with streaming the way it is,

it's a lot easier to avoid commercials.

But back then it was impossible.

So, yeah,

I'm watching TV and every spring

they would talk about

allergy season coming and

you need this drug and that drug.

And I remember there was one period.

I don't tend to have allergies.

I don't tend to have hay fever.

But there was this one year

where all of a sudden I did.

I was sneezing and snuffling.

This story is actually more

interesting because there's

different aspects to it.

So I see this commercial

that talks about the hay fever.

I start experiencing it,

and I experience it to quite an extreme.

You know,

it was interfering with intimacy.

It's really impossible to be

intimate with your partner

when you have to stop and

blow your nose every thirty seconds.

It doesn't quite work.

So I think for me that the

symptom was triggered by

seeing the commercial.

But it took me a while to

get through this particular one.

I started looking at what

the possible causes could be.

I take self-responsibility

to quite an extreme.

Now, I'm going to

There's a caution here.

I'm not saying that everyone

who is sick is doing it to themselves.

That's not it at all.

When I look at self-responsibility,

I do it very, very personally.

I'm doing it to myself.

And when you ask yourself the question,

why am I doing this to myself?

It opens up avenues.

It doesn't matter what area

that you're looking at.

If you say that I am part of it,

so why am I creating it?

As opposed to this is

somebody else's fault.

You know,

so is it my genes fault that I

have hay fever this year?

I've never had it before.

But when you put the blame somewhere else,

there isn't anything you

can really do except treat symptoms.

But when you say, why am I creating it?

Then it does open up avenues.

And for me, in this instance,

it took me a while.

I actually ended up

So we've got a program

called End Self-Destructive Patterns.

We've got lots of programs.

My husband is the creator.

He's Eldon Taylor.

He's the creator of the

Inner Talk Subliminal Self-Help Programs.

They're the only ones on the

market that have been

researched by independent

universities and

institutions and been

demonstrated effective at

priming how you speak to yourself.

Just coincidentally through this,

I had put on the end

self-destructive patterns

for myself and I had a dream.

I had the dream.

Now I've been having this

problem for about nine months,

but I had this dream where

I was poisoning myself.

And when I woke up the following day,

I knew exactly what it was.

You know,

sometimes the answers just pop

out to you.

And I knew it was because I

was in a bit of a

catch-twenty-two situation.

There were some circumstances going on.

So this was the strategy my

subconscious mind was using

to try to extricate myself.

in the situation I was in it

was a damned if you do and

damned if you don't kind of

situation as soon as I saw

it as soon as I realized it

it went away so I had been

dealing with this non-stop

sneezing snuffly stuff for

nine months and as soon as

the correct answer appeared

it disappeared

And we often find this with

self-destructive behaviors.

The subconscious mind isn't

trying to punish you.

It's not trying to create

obstacles in your life so

that you always have bad

relationships or you always

catch colds when nobody else does.

It's not trying to do that to hurt you.

It's doing that to try and

protect you from a repeat hurt.

So, you know,

maybe the woman who had a pain in her arm,

she just wanted...

Her subconscious mind

thought she needed the

reminder not to get into

that traumatic event again.

Unfortunately,

the subconscious mind almost

always uses old information.

It's out of date information.

It's not relevant to today,

but it is still just trying

to protect you and creating

self-sabotaging behaviors in the process.

I think that's a great place to,

there's so many questions I

have in that because one, it's like,

it's not,

there is those protective mechanisms,

right?

And they are outdated because,

and sometimes they're maladaptive, right?

Because they,

it was from your childhood or

some other place.

And then all of a sudden it

keeps showing up.

And I love how you're connecting

that subconscious the

programs to protect us um

some call it ego too right

and it's like but then how

they manifest but then also

how they become so quick to

resolve once we bring

awareness to them from a

conscious level and a

subconscious level so

that's is that kind of how

you work with somebody it's

like to uncover these

things or do you work with them to

get them to realize what's

going on underneath there

you know there's two kind

of approaches that I use

josh um you can look

backwards and try to find

the cause of an issue one

of the things that I have

found is typically you can

have one initial event that

plants the seed for a

problem but then there can

be lots of events that

reinforce that as you go

along so when I do

hypnotherapy you know I can

do the the regression so

you say you take a

particular problem you put

someone under hypnosis and

you say okay I'm gonna

count you back in time

you know, one year at a time.

And then you have an

ideomotor response where

you lift a finger,

you ask the patient to lift a finger.

Was there something in that

year that triggered this

particular issue that you're having?

And what you find is that

there can be lots of these triggers.

So you can go back one by

one to uncover them all.

And at each uncovering,

the problem can diminish.

So that's one way to do it.

And again,

you don't have to use hypnosis

for that kind of process.

In my book, Mind Training,

one of the things that I

cover in there are the

eight stages of development

that Erickson put forward.

And what he says is that at

different phases of your life,

you're supposed to learn

different strategies,

different ways to approach life.

So for one example,

they did some research

looking at infants from zero,

from birth to one and a

half years of age.

And they assessed their

degree of bonding with

their primary caregivers,

their parents or whoever.

And they were able to

predict based on the degree

of bonding that the infant

had as to how many friends

they would have in high

school or what kind of

personal relationships they would have.

So you don't have to use

hypnosis to go back and

look at these things.

One of the things I found is

the more you question your

subconscious mind,

the more you truly believe

that the answers lay there,

the more the subconscious

mind will give you the

answers that you need.

So having the framework of

the eight stages of

development gave me the

ability to look back and say, oh,

that's where my fear of

public speaking came from.

So you can look at all that.

So you can look backwards in that way.

You can use hypnosis.

You can just question your

subconscious mind.

For me,

having these eight stages of

development gave a good framework,

a good place to look at

what I'm supposed to learn

at these ages and where I have issues.

But frequently,

the problems that we can have,

they're based on old information.

They're not relevant now.

So you can just look forward.

One of the things that we

have learned is that lots

of our choices today,

they're not conscious choices.

The choices come from our

subconscious mind.

So you look at the work of Benjamin Libber,

John Dylan Hayes.

What they did was using

electrodes or fMRI,

they would look at the brain

when someone's making a choice.

And these choices were really simple.

It may be something as simple as,

am I going to press the

button with my right hand

or my left hand?

Really simple.

But what they found was

there's activity in the

subconscious mind up to

seven seconds before the

person says that they have

made the choice.

So,

these choices are not being

made consciously they're

being made in the

subconscious mind and we've

in taken the subconscious

mind is a repository of all

of our experiences all of

that stuff gets stored in

the subconscious mind it

has a bias towards

negativity anything that

hurt us and anything that

upset us get stored there

and then when you're making

choices today you're

reaching you know it's the

subconscious mind that is

giving you the answers so

what you can do is try to

change the programming in

the subconscious mind and

that is what the inner talk

subliminal programs do so

well because it's presented

subliminally you're

Defense mechanisms aren't in place.

So you take something like

an affirmation that says, I am good.

People often talk about affirmations.

Affirmations can be great.

But you tell yourself something good.

I am good.

And to me, immediately,

I get back the self-talk that says,

what does good mean?

Good at what?

Hang on.

I'm not really good.

I mean,

how do you grade being a good person?

I was kind of short with my partner today.

I didn't stop and give that

homeless person some money today.

What does good mean?

So you argue back with it.

With the Inner Talk subliminal programs,

it bypasses that process totally.

So these affirmations go

directly into your

subconscious mind and

change the programming there.

So when I'm looking at looking forwards,

I'm saying, okay,

you take a particular situation.

Maybe you're trying to lose weight.

Maybe you believe that you

always get into bad relationships.

Maybe you think you just

have a self-destructive personality.

So what is the kind of self-talk?

Your self-talk is a mirror.

on all the beliefs that are

stored in the subconscious mind.

How can you change it?

automatically.

And that is what the inner

talk subliminal programs do.

So I will look both ways,

you can look backwards at a problem,

or you can say, Okay,

how can I fix it right now,

you can use affirmations,

you can use a correctly

created subliminal self help program,

just to inundate the

subconscious mind with

beliefs that are positive,

that actually support your goals.

I like that.

That's

it's a fascinating space of like,

how do you

You know,

when I hear you talking about

these inner talk subliminal things,

it's like, how do you get in there,

right?

How do you get in that protective field?

Like,

that's going to already talk you out

before you even thought

about it or in that space.

When you work in that realm with people,

obviously we've got to find out, like,

I would like to know where

people can go learn for that.

We'll teach people where

those tools are and where

they can go find them later on.

But, like...

Talk me through that process

of working with someone on that capacity.

Is it something that they

can learn and then they use

to do on their own?

Or is it in a clinic setting

where you're kind of

talking back and forth?

I'm sure people are trying to think about,

for me,

the logical guy in me just wants

to think about,

what's the mechanism of that process?

If you're working with someone like that,

is it a period of months?

Is it a period of years?

How does it look?

I am not practicing hypnotherapy today.

I do talk to clients all the time.

Frequently people will come

to us and they can say something like,

I want to be successful.

So where I will guide them is like, okay,

well, what does success mean to you?

Is that success in business?

Is that success in relationships?

Is that success in your fitness goals?

What does success mean to you?

And I will hone them into that.

People generally,

the problem that I see most

commonly is they've got these big goals.

They want everything all at once.

They want to be successful

in all of these different areas.

And I tell them to focus.

Focus on what will help you

be happier today.

Because isn't that what all

self-help and personal development is?

It's about creating more happiness.

You know,

earning more money isn't just

about having a bigger bank account.

It's about what you can do without money.

Because you can buy things

that can make you happier,

or you can help out your

children when they need money,

or you can take care of your parents.

But the root of all of this,

the root of all personal

development is about being happier.

So I will ask people,

what is it that will make

you feel happier today?

Forget about these big goals.

You can't achieve everything

all in one go.

But what happens is when you hone it in,

Become very specific.

Think about just today.

Take steps to make yourself happier today.

And you'll find it has a

rippling effect across all

of these other areas.

Lots of these other problems

will simply disappear by themselves.

And so that reduces the

amount of work that you need to do.

So the most important part, I think,

when I'm talking to people

is trying to hone in to

what it is that they want.

Then I question them about

where they think the problem started.

I had one woman come to me.

She had used our InnerTalk

program for weight loss and

was not getting the results

that she wanted.

So I was talking to her and

I was asking her, well,

where do you think it started?

What happened in your past?

Where did this,

at what point did weight

begin to become an issue?

What else was going on in your life?

In that conversation, she said, actually,

I was abused as a child.

So perhaps that's what I need to look at.

And she did.

She ended up getting our

survivors of abuse program.

People who have experienced abuse,

they often internalize all

of this information.

They say,

I must have done something wrong.

That's why I'm being abused.

Or I'm not really a good person.

That's why I was being abused.

They take it all personally.

You need to change that kind of thinking.

So

This particular client did

use our survivors of abuse program.

She called me back a week or so afterwards,

said that she had some kind

of breakthrough.

She felt some kind of release.

She went and started using

the weight loss program and

now everything was working fine.

She was really happy.

So her initial goal was just

to lose weight.

The technique didn't work for her.

So she had to dig a little deeper.

And then she found that it was, you know,

the self-talk that she had

that was related to the

abuse that she experienced.

The Inner Talk program

changed that kind of self-talk.

And then she could go on to

the positive things about

weight loss and the

affirmations that say things like,

I enjoy, I like eating fruit.

So we often can hear from

people using the program

that say they'll go to the

fridge to get a piece of chocolate cake.

They'll either close the

fridge realizing they're

not hungry anyway.

It's just a habit.

Or they decide that the

apple looks tastier.

So they will get that instead.

It's changing that self-talk

going forward.

That's amazing.

It's good stuff.

Oh, I'm losing my internet here.

So in your work, that's a big process,

right?

Is there more to that?

Actually, inner talk is just one thing.

of the tools that I outline

in mind training.

It is only one.

It's, you know,

it's a significant part of

the work my husband and I do.

It can be the quickest way

to deal with all of this,

but the whole process can

be a whole lot bigger.

It depends how much you want to do.

If you want to fix one problem right now,

yeah, go for it.

Find the correct inner talk program.

That will be fine.

But mind training goes

through the entire process.

It goes through how we learn behaviors,

how things can push us

around so that we're like

puppets with somebody else

pulling the strings.

there are there's lots of

ways you know there's lots

of work done in marketing

in particular where they

look at compliance

principles and reciprocity

and how they can get people

to buy a particular product

or how they can get them to

behave in in a certain way

so I mean I discovered that there's

There's loads of research in this area,

Josh.

There's just lots and lots of it.

You don't have to learn all of that.

But understanding that these

things do go on.

So I discovered that if you

go to a restaurant and the

waitress is wearing red,

she will receive more tips.

And it doesn't matter if

it's from a male customer

or a female customer.

A waitress in red will just

receive more tips.

There's research like this

going on everywhere.

And who do you think is

using this research the most?

It's going to be the advertisers,

the marketers, the politicians.

Why not take this

information and use it ourselves?

So I have a whole chapter

that talks about these principles.

And the idea isn't that you

have to know them all and

understand them all,

but it's having the general

awareness that this stuff exists.

So then when you're watching

a politician or you're

seeing an advertisement on TV,

you can have that skeptical hat on,

so to speak.

You know,

you take a step back and to use

Kahneman's word,

you can employ more system two thinking.

That's a concept,

but it's more of the

careful thinking as opposed

to the automatic reactions

that come from your subconscious mind.

You can pay attention to all of that.

There is also the amount of

research that has been done

on optimism and positivity and how

the kinds of benefits that

you get from that.

It's incredible, Josh.

Looking at the longitudinal

nurses study that was done,

They had the nurses keep journals.

And what they found was the

most optimistic women would

have like a sixteen percent

reduced risk of dying from cancer,

a thirty eight percent

reduced risk of dying from heart disease,

a fifty two percent reduced

risk of dying from an

infection from being optimistic.

The work that interested me

in particular was research

out of Johns Hopkins,

where they looked at the

effect of positivity in heart disease.

And they found even in

families with a history of heart disease,

and my family does have a

history of heart disease.

You can see that time and time again.

What they found was that

with a positive outlook,

you are a third less likely

of experiencing heart disease,

even with a family history of it.

So then you start looking at, well,

how do we cultivate positivity?

I'm not talking about toxic positivity.

I'm not talking about the

person that pretends to be

positive all the time.

In fact,

they did discover that those

people who were hyper positive,

could actually end up creating cancer.

And what they thought it was due to was,

you know,

they were pretending so much

that it was really an act of denial.

They were just covering it.

It wasn't real.

It wasn't inside.

It was just very surface level.

The other problem with

toxic positivity is that it

can reduce your empathy to

to other people you know

when somebody else is in

pain you want to you want

to be there and support

them having the connection

with other people if you're

overly positive it can turn

that empathy off which

isn't good for you and it's

not good for the people

around you so my training

looks at all of these

different areas and it looks at

techniques for creating habits,

normal habits.

The process is not a case of, well,

every day I've got to spend

half an hour meditating and

I've got to do X amount of

exercise and I have to do, you know,

it's not like it's time intensive.

What I do in mind training

is look up all of these

different areas and then

provide ways that you can implement them

Really easily.

The longest exercise I have

in mind training is just a

twelve minute meditation.

That's the longest one.

The rest of them,

it's all a case of habituating.

what you do.

So you wake up in the morning,

you feel cranky, it happens.

Biology does that to you.

You know,

perhaps it's because you ate too

much sugar the prior day.

So you have the sugar high,

sugar low in your sleep, your body,

you wake up in the morning,

your body's not feeling optimal.

And you interpret that as being depressed.

But there are things that you can do.

So for me, if I wake up cranky,

I'm going to do some

diaphragmatic breathing.

I'm going to incorporate the

Duchenne smile.

These things don't take any time.

I can do it as I'm walking

down the stairs in the morning.

So you incorporate those things.

If I'm feeling really blue,

I will try to step outdoors

and get some sunshine

because that will turn on

serotonin in the brain

that's going to make me happier.

If

If it's a cloudy day, a rainy day,

you know,

maybe I've got my light therapy

lamps and I will turn those on.

But there are lots of little

things that you can do to turn it around.

And yeah, so it's a whole process.

Sorry, that was a very long answer,

but it goes well beyond that.

just the InnerTalk subliminal programs.

They are one tool.

I look at the entire

spectrum and try to give

the reader all the tools

they need to personalize the information,

to take on board the

aspects that work better for them.

We're all different.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I think that's what's

important for people to know.

It's what resonates with you.

It's like,

How do you move to here to here?

Here is like, well, if that's about it,

I've talked to them recently.

It's like,

but there's a balance between

consistency and consistency.

trying new things, right?

It's like, well,

you can't try it once

either and expect it to work.

So there's this balancing where like, Hey,

try it for a little while.

If it doesn't work, go to the next thing.

And they stack on each other too.

So these things can be done.

And I'm glad,

I love that you have these

tools for people that are

Either no cost or low cost,

like the things you just talked about.

You buy a bulb, right?

You buy a lamp.

It's not that big of a deal.

Or you smile.

Or you have a certain way of thinking.

And these are things we...

can do this is part of the

lifestyle medicine

education we can give

ourselves is you know

instead of going to the the

advertised drug that costs

fifteen hundred dollars a

month to barely do

something and it's like no

you can actually do things

to empower yourself so now

that we've talked a lot

about the book mind

training like where can

people go find that resource

The book,

you can purchase anywhere books are sold,

Amazon, Barnes & Noble,

your local bookstore,

if they don't have it,

they can order it in.

So the book title is Mind Training,

The Science of Self-Empowerment.

It's very much about personal empowerment.

You can learn more about me

going to my website.

That's ravindataylor.com.

But what I would like even

more is if you can friend

me on Instagram or Facebook

because I love interactions.

I love hearing about

people's experiences when

they try out these tools and techniques.

It's getting feedback from

people that use these tools

and techniques that gives

me the ability to refine

them and try to make them

even more satisfying.

significant that's great and

it's also a reminder that

we we learn from our peers

right when somebody posts

something that says hey

this was really impactful

or this really worked it's

not a testimonial per se

it's really about this is

from my experience is like

people learn through

experiences through other

people's experiences,

and it gives them hope and

it gives them encouragement.

So I'm glad that you're,

you're on the side of

encouraging people to give you feedback,

because that's do does how

we learn and refine our stuff.

But it's also how how people

can be motivated to do it.

Right.

And so I think that's amazing.

So

ravindotaylor.com.

You've got your book.

You can go anywhere to get that.

Those are such cool things.

I'm really going to start

diving into the subliminal

programs and offering them.

And I know there's some

controversy around those

kind of programs.

Like,

why is the science so misunderstood here?

Oh, yeah.

There's money interest.

I actually,

in the appendix of mind training,

I go through the story of

subliminal communication and why it is,

is so misunderstood.

I will tell you one thing.

If you go out to Snopes, you know,

In this day of misinformation,

I will frequently go to

Snopes to find out the

truth behind a story.

And if you go and look up

subliminal and popcorn advertising,

I think you'll go to the

page and it will tell you

categorically that

subliminals don't work.

But one of the examples they

used to say that was

because this all came from

some research that was done

in a New Jersey theater.

It was the eat popcorn,

drink Coca-Cola subliminal

ad that came out.

And there was lots of controversy.

I said, I go through the full story.

But one of the examples

Snopes gives is that after

the initial research was

done in the New Jersey theater,

the head of the

Psychological Institute did

a replication and it failed.

This particular head died

five years before.

So it was absolutely impossible.

for him to have done that replication.

But on the internet,

information gets spread and repeated.

So I have come across that

same information written by profs

highly respectable universities.

They're just repeating the

same information that is incorrect.

And we have learned that a

lie repeated often enough

becomes a truth.

But then you also think

about the amount of money behind it.

The whole thing became super

controversial after the

Judas Priest trial.

This was in the nineties and Judas Priest,

there was a court case.

They said that

It was subliminal messages

in their music that had

caused two young men to try

to commit suicide.

One was successful.

The other was not,

but he ended up dying three

years later from his injuries.

I'm not passing judgment on

the court case at all,

but you get to see the

amount of misinformation.

But one of the things they did,

you would have seen in all

the papers at the time,

they hyped up a research

paper that demonstrated

that subliminal self-help

programs don't work.

It was everywhere, Josh.

But your background is in science.

You understand the basics of science.

The fact is you don't need

to have a scientific degree in school.

We are taught for any scientific study,

you control the variables.

You have to have the exact

same conditions in order to

say that something is a replication.

You can't change stuff.

In this particular scientific paper,

it was really flawed.

And I take that apart.

But one of the things they

did was they took self-help

programs off the shelf from a store.

They used three different

programs and they researched that.

Now, Josh,

there isn't a strict definition

to what subliminal is.

So you've got three

different companies producing programs.

You don't know what the

technology is behind them.

If one of them had worked,

it would be brilliant.

buried by the other two not

working there were just

just factors like that that

just kept on coming through

um in this paper there's

even some definitions out

there where they say that

see to me it's subliminal

if you don't report hearing

it it's not to say that

that you don't hear it occasionally.

It's about it being in the

background so far that you're not aware.

It's not saying that you can

hear a violinist playing

the other end of town.

That is not what subliminal is.

It has to be in the correct range.

But some of these profs who

were going on about

subliminal doesn't work.

They were using definitions that said, no,

if you're guessing

correctly what the answer is,

then you have perceived it.

So therefore, it's not subliminal,

which is ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

They played games, but they haven't.

There has been meta studies done,

meta analysis done,

where they look at a hundred,

two hundred different research studies.

And today it is hard and fast.

Subliminal communication does work.

It does have an influence.

It has an influence on your emotions.

One of the research studies

I came across after this

was where the subjects

listened to ten seconds.

of the subliminal information.

Now, to me,

that's akin to saying caffeine

is a stimulant.

Therefore,

I'm going to give you one drop

of coffee on your tongue

and then I'm going to

measure your blood pressure

to see if there was a difference.

That's dumb.

That is dumb.

So that is why it was so

misunderstood because there

was a concerted effort

to make it so,

so that advertisers could

carry on using it basically.

Well, it's just the whole adage, which,

which is the truth of the matter is, is,

you know,

especially when you're in the

field of science is you can

always tailor your,

your studies around your, your,

your outcome that you want, right?

This is what pharma's done and, and,

you know, why we,

why they wash out the placebo effect.

Cause they don't want people

to know that they,

Thirty percent of people can

get better off nothing.

Right.

It's just so we you and I

both agree and nurture the

placebo effect in people.

So it's just another it's

just another reminder, though, that like.

I love what you said, though.

You said it the way I heard it was,

if you speak something

that's not truth so much,

it becomes a truth.

It becomes normalized,

and then it becomes where

if you say it long enough,

people start to believe it,

and then it becomes true.

I'm glad that you brought that up.

I think there's always going to be

controversy,

especially around things that

are cures or healing where

someone doesn't have

control of the outcome, right?

Like some other being,

some other organization,

whether it's big pharma, big food,

they're the ones that tend to

drum up some of the

controversy when you good

people like you or I are

trying to teach people how

to empower themselves and

to be in the driver's seat

of their own health and

healing and transformation.

And so thank you for

bringing that to light and

to debunking the things because of

For me,

it's mixing the science with the

theory with also what

you've seen in your own

practice or you've seen in

your own experience because

those are valid parts, right?

This is why you want people

to share on social and not

just go straight to the study.

It's like, well,

if that's working for you,

That's great.

Let's just nurture the fact

that it's working for you.

We don't need to really know why.

We know why,

but we don't really need to

validate the why.

We just know it works.

If it works, it works.

Sometimes that's good enough for me.

If somebody takes a

supplement and they get

good results from it

allergies is a great one

right I just gave someone

my uh the supplement that I

helped formulate years ago

and it's really good and it

works naturally and he's

like I didn't believe you

but can this thing work

this fast like it's really

helping me and I was

suffering and I said yeah

it can and it's like look

at that like you you just

tried it it worked

And I think if people read

your book and they just try

a couple of these things

and it helps them, well,

that gets the ball rolling.

Right.

That's that's the next step.

So that's amazing.

Thank you so much for that.

Thank you for reminding me of that.

Let me let me.

As we're winding down here,

this has been really helpful.

I love,

I can't wait to grab a copy of your

book and start reading in it.

I love this kind of stuff.

I have one more question for

you before we kind of wrap up here,

but like you're also an

ordained minister.

And I just did a recording

with someone the other day

and the same thing.

And they're all science oriented,

but you're an ordained minister.

And so how does,

how do you see spirituality

fitting into a

science-based self-help model?

To me, it,

Spirituality is a huge part of my life,

Josh.

I can read science papers

and I can find spirituality within them.

Sapolsky has got in his book, Determined.

I don't know if you've read that.

It's a great book.

He goes through all the