Into the Magic Shop

She changed how I perceived myself and how I perceived the world. And that changed absolutely everything.

If the brain perceives a threat, or is in fear for its survival, that part of the autonomic nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and releases epinephrine. The adrenal gland also gets triggered by hormones released by the hypothalamus, and cortisol is produced.

I let each of them tell his or her story, and then I acknowledged my patients’ struggles, their accomplishments, and their suffering. And in many cases, this relieved their pain more than any medication I could offer and at times even more than my surgery.

Interestingly, one of the greatest causes of sudden cardiac death is lack of heart rate variability—a result of chronic arousal to threat and decreased vagal nerve tone.

in 1816 a French physician was too embarrassed to put his ear up to a female patient’s chest to listen to her heart and lungs (as was the norm at the time) and instead rolled twenty-four sheets of paper into a cone to create some distance between them. I think this distance between physician and patient has only grown larger over time.

All of this is important if you are in fact fighting for your life, but this acute stress response is meant to be temporary.

you will become what you imagine. If you use your mind and your heart, it will happen. You have my word.”

We train the mind, and the mind trains the body. There’s an amazing rhythm and flow when you have a good team—everyone is in sync. Our minds and bodies work together as one coordinated intelligence.

We are searching for acknowledgment of worth outside of ourselves.