The Beginning of Wisdom...
How my study of neuroscience led me to the gates of heaven.
The pilgrim emerged from the underworld and began his ascent up the mountain. His guide, Virgil, had just taken him through the nine levels of hell, explaining to the pilgrim how man can end up in such dire circumstances.
In a book that reads as fiction (although there is a compelling case to be made for the contrary), Virgil, the pilgrim’s guide, was a real person.
Virgil was a renowned poet who lived from 70-10 BC and in this great book, he represents the voice of reason.
The mountain they were beginning to climb was Mount Purgatory. This is where man goes to purify his spirit before being permitted to cross the threshold into paradiso…heaven.
As they climbed Mount Purgatory, they paused at each level so Virgil, the voice of reason, could explain to the pilgrim what was happening here. He would explain what the souls at each level were doing to cleanse their soul.
Up and up they went. Higher and higher. Until finally, they reached the gates of paradise.
But before them was their final obstacle. A great wall of fire.
“What are we going to do?” the pilgrim asked, turning to his mentor Virgil.
“You must walk through the fire,” Virgil replies.
The pilgrim shudders in fear.
He turns back to Virgil and says, “Ok, let’s go.”
But Virgil doesn’t move.
The pilgrim is confused.
Virgil looks up to him and says, “I can take you no further.”
Virgil continues, “It will not be easy. It’s going to hurt. Paradise is waiting on the other side. But you must go alone.”
The pilgrim, also known as Dante, is petrified by his guide’s instruction, but he works up his courage, bids farewell to his voice of reason, and walks into the fire.
Paradise was waiting for him.
I began studying the brain in 2013. It was my first year working professional sports and my curiosity began because I was confused by what I was witnessing.
I grew up, like everyone else, being told that hard work and dedication was the secret formula to success.
In professional sports, it quickly became apparent to me that this might not be the case.
During my interview with the New York Mets, I was asked, “How would you respond if a player decided to confront you during a workout and tell you he’s not going to do it?”
I said, “I would pull him off to the side and try to explain to him what a great opportunity he had to be playing Major League Baseball and that this was going to help him get there.”
The interviewer laughed, “Definitely do not do that.”
He continued, “Just let him walk away and try again tomorrow.”
The training strategies of professional athletes are nothing like you think. Many of my chronic pain patients are doing workouts that are far more difficult than what I witnessed in MLB or NBA weight rooms.
I expected professional athletes to be dedicated weight room warriors. Many of them, though, had zero interest in training.
In one instance, I had a player that was so opposed to lifting that I jokingly used masking tape to draw arrows on the locker room floor from his locker to the weight room since he apparently couldn’t find it.
During my time in the NBA, another player who hadn’t lifted in months, walked into the weight room. When I was surprised to see him there, I asked, “Hey, are you working out?”
He stopped, looked around and said, “Oh, I must have gotten lost.”
And left.
If you talk to anyone who has been behind the closed doors of professional sports, they will echo the same sentiment.
My point is not that working out is overrated. Rather to ask, what really creates high performance?
Is it fair to say that professional athletes have the best functioning bodies on the planet?
Is it fair to say their systems are working the best?
Is it fair to say that they get the most out of their physical bodies?
I think all of the above are true statements.
Then, if that’s the case, how come the overwhelming majority of them behave this way?
When I asked myself this question, the answer was obvious…
…the wires in their brain were not connected in the same way that mine were.
And I think we can all agree on that.
I remember playing a college basketball game at Cornell University in front of 100 fans and being terrified to shoot free throws.
“Just hit the rim,” I was telling myself.
I was scared, nervous and was completely locked up in the moment.
But professional athletes on the other hand can stand in front of tens of thousands of people and execute flawlessly without an ounce of nerve in their body.
That’s weird.
That’s not weightlifting or running extra sprints. That’s the brain.
I developed this theory called the “Neurological Emergency Brake.”
I learned that the brain was constantly evaluating the world around you to determine if you were safe or dangerous.
If the brain perceived danger, it would activate the fight or flight system and tighten the entire body. It creates rigidity throughout your body and prepares you to fight.
If it perceives safety, it exhales. It relaxes. It allows you to move freely and effortlessly.
What professional athletes were able to do that I wasn’t was perceive safety on the big stage.
In front of all those people, with all that pressure, somehow their brain didn’t see any danger in that and thus, they were able to access all of their God given talent.
It’s kind of like the emergency brake in your car. Have you ever had the experience of driving your car and you notice that it’s not behaving the same way. It feels a little slower. It doesn’t accelerate the same way. Then you look down and realize the emergency brake is on. You pop it off and all of a sudden, it’s driving normally again.
This is exactly how the brain is operating. If danger is perceived, the emergency brake is turned on. It holds back your body’s ability to perform and move fluidly.
To restore optimal biomechanics, the neurological emergency brake must be released.
For me to get an NBA player to reach his peak performance, I needed to ensure that his neurological emergency brake was released, otherwise, I would always be limited. His ceiling was lowered.
For those of you in chronic pain, or dealing with chronic illness, the same rules apply. If your neurological emergency brake is on, your brain is quite literally experiencing an emergency as you read this post.
Your pupils are dilated, less important functions like digestion are muted and your body is becoming rigid.
In my chronic pain clinic, many people come in with idiopathic pain (pain of unknown origin). They have tried everything, no one can figure out what’s wrong, but they are still in pain.
They see muscular imbalance or nerve impingements. But I see a brain in a panic.
No exercise, massage technique or surgery can override a fearful brain. This must be addressed first.
The brain is the gatekeeper.
When I started studying this behavior back in 2013, I started with the obvious. I began reading neuroscience, enrolling in neuroanatomy courses and trying to understand the brain.
I learned a lot about how the brain works but in practice, most of the techniques fell flat. They made scientific sense but didn’t translate to the real world.
My voice of reason took me to the next level. Psychology.
If the mechanics of the brain (neuroscience) weren’t delivering results, maybe I would find the answer in “how humans think.”
But again, most of the strategies were whitewashed, idealistic techniques that made sense in a clinic but not when push came to shove.
My voice of reason whispered to me that there must be something deeper. Personal development books seemed to be the next step.
Legends in the space like Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar create what appeared to be real world applications of human psychology. In a seminar of 20,000 people, these words can light you on fire, but when you’re sitting at your desk on Monday morning, it’s still the same old, same old.
Nothing seemed to work.
Is it even possible to turn off someone’s neurological emergency brake? Or are we all doomed to a lifetime of fear, doubt and anxiety.
As I wracked my brain looking for something beyond self-help books, I began to notice a subtle trend.
There was one book that all of these gurus were referencing.
At first, I was turned off by it. I didn’t want to read it. How do you even read that thing?
But I saw it referenced enough times that I began to wonder, “maybe there is something to it.”
That’s when I picked up the Bible. Not for any religious reason, but out of curiosity. Might there be some secrets in here that I was missing.
In Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, there is a story that we all know.
Adam and Eve.
God creates Adam and soon realizes that man should not be alone. So he takes a rib from Adam and uses it to create woman, Eve.
He places them in the Garden of Eden and says “You may do whatever you want, EXCEPT eat from the tree of knowledge.”
We all know the story. Persuaded by the serpent, Eve eats the forbidden fruit and convinces Adam to do the same.
Soon, God returns to the garden to check on his creation but he can’t find them. He calls out for them and asks why they are hiding.
“We are ashamed that we are naked.” They respond after making small clothing garments out of fig leaves to cover themselves up.
“How did you know you were naked?” God asked.
It was at this point God knew they had eaten from the tree of knowledge.
When I look at professional athletes, I see people who do not know they are naked. They have lived a life where they have found incredible success around every corner. They have always been praised for their athletic gifts. They face minimal adversity (at least athletically) throughout their upbringing and are handed millions of dollars at such a young age.
They have not lived life like we have. They do not share the same fears that we do. And thus, their brains were not wired in the same way.
They live in a state of blissful ignorance.
That is until they eat from the tree of knowledge.
We see this in sports. A baseball pitcher suddenly cannot throw a strike anymore. It’s called “the yips.” Something that they have been able to do effortlessly and without thought for their whole life is suddenly remarkably difficult.
Now they know they’re naked. They know there are consequences to their actions. No longer can they live in a state of childlike naivety.
Like everyone else, they turn to Virgil, the voice of reason. They begin looking at their pitching mechanics. Where do they stand on the mound?
“Maybe I should turn my foot slightly out to help me get more rotation,” they think.
But once they are in their head, they’re dead.
My study of the brain has taken me to places I never thought I’d go. What started with simple neuroscience, ended up with me studying the great religions of the world.
As you now know, it led me to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Dante was led by Virgil through the nine layers of hell, up the cleansing levels of Mount Purgatory and finally to the precipice of paradise, only to be met with the great wall of fire.
Dante pleads with Virgil to go with him, but he is denied.
“It will not be easy. It’s going to hurt. Paradise is waiting on the other side. But you must go alone,” Virgil says.
Reason can only take you so far.
There is a level of health and a level of performance in which you cannot reach by gritting your teeth and efforting your way up to.
This level of health and performance. The HIGHEST level of health and performance can only be achieved by letting go.
Letting go of reason.
Letting go of “how to” strategies.
Letting go of new techniques.
Letting go of all the Type-A, overachiever, analytical, impose your will upon the world ways that you have come to rely upon.
It’s going to hurt.
It’s going to be scary.
But paradise is waiting on the other side.
Further Reading:
If you want to see how this framework is actually applied, I’ve documented it in my book. I’ll send you a complimentary copy here.