Redefining Wellness Through Connection: Steve McGough on Wellness Reimagined

0:00What is the wellness we have been chasing is something we find the most, but something we create together. Today we are exploring how our relationships, our partnerships and the ways we show up for one another, shape the foundation of what it means to be well. This conversation invites us to consider wellness not as an individual pursue, but as something deeply relational, something that lives in the space between us. Am Niharika and Yon listening to wellness he commands in, the place where we explore the heart of science and living well by questioning what we think we know and opening our results.

1:00Can you ways of seeing? Joining me today is Steve. Welcome Steve. It's a great hallu-sa. Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So Steve's to start with, when people think about wellness, they often picture green movies, die charts, meditation maps and individual practices. But you work at the intersection of wellness and relationships. So what most people misunderstand about the role connection is in our well-being. Well, we are at least as far as I can tell. We don't have an owner's manual, but I'm aware of. But we are social beings. We live in a community's, a few people like to be isolated, but usually the people that are isolated have a connection to nature. And that's another aspect of connection and community that is important to be aware of that most

2:03people forgotten about. But we are by our, our just nature that makes us who we are social. And not having that social contact deprives us of an aspect of ourselves that it's very important for health. A lot of studies, I don't have the links on the top of my head, but recently I found that social isolation is as harmful for long term health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, you know, for your alcoholism or quality. So, so there is clear evidence that social connectedness is very important for health. It depends, it varies for each person. We're all unique, although there are general trends. Yeah. So I can go into detail about that. I think that's the general idea. It is, it has been shown in studying that it's critical to our health.

3:04So when someone feels stuck in their wellness journey, could it be, could it actually be pointing to something happening or not happening in their closest relationships? Oh, absolutely. The first thing I would say is how do they define themselves? Are they comfortable with themselves? Are they comfortable with the idea of themselves being alone? Because what in huge distinction in relationships that unfortunately most people fall into the first category is they are brought up to believe they need someone else to complete them or they need someone else to make them happy. And while we are social beings and we do need other people, it's important to know we're going through this journey of life ourselves. And if we rely on someone else, it puts a lot of risk in our well-being.

4:08It's important to, I'm not saying that clearly, it's important to rely on other people. But the idea that you're going to find some maddukely person in the complete shoot is a risky thing to have. The better approach in my opinion is to try to find ways to find meeting and be happy yourself first and then find somewhat that you enjoy life better with. But your life won't be totally over if you don't have that person. When you have two people that come together that feel that way, they usually can grow in a relationship that is much more healthy than people that are dependent on the other person and jealous and fearful. The other person might leave. So again, I think I've had an answer to your question exactly the way you asked it. But that's... We got it. I was that. We had to find a bit of it. But I think we have been part of things ourselves in isolation.

5:13But maybe as we said, I'll give you a like that. Maybe the very act of isolating ourselves is a part of what needs more attention. Like wellness isn't just about what we do, but it's about who we do it with and how we feel, see, in our process. Very human. Yes. Yes. Now everybody's different. Some people need more interaction with people than others, but having a sense of community and especially having a feeling of purpose where you need to care for people that's bigger than you is very important because one life will always have challenges. That's just the nature of being at least that's been my observation so far. And if you have something to give you meaning or purpose, that helps you manage that a lot better.

6:14Victor Frankl studied that extensively in the 1900 or early 20th century. So yes, having being part of a community or being in a relationship to get you meaning is absolutely essential. Although I would say first try to find out who you are and what you want in life first because otherwise many kinds unfortunately sometimes women are talked to mold to what their partner wants. And they end up going through life, putting themselves second and then they hit their 40s and 50s and suddenly think what have I done with that. So if they can, it's better to think who am I as a person, what do I really want in life and who would be an ideal partner to match that and try to set that as a target to go towards. But social interaction with other people is absolutely essential for health. Yeah, that is so.

7:15Let us go deeper into that. So when you work with people, especially in intimate partnerships, what patterns do you notice that key people from experience and wellness together? What gets in the way? Well, the internet has radically, it's caused us as a culture to be more connected in one way but more isolated in another because we are. We can, you know, we're talking across the world right now. But at the same time, I try to keep my daughter from doing it, but I see her walking around, you know, with her phone, you know, looking down at it. The degree of person to person interaction that was around 20 years ago has radically decreased particularly in the younger generation. And the physical. It's wonderful with the internet that you can.

8:15And you can set your goal of this is the kind of person I would like to meet and these are their qualities and you can sort free millions of people and find them. But if you're only interacting via a computer screen, you're not getting the engagement that. That you have with physical presence. And now there are a lot of things with. Being able to see the person see their eyes dilate. What's huge amount of communication comes from our eyes and our face. We are. Being mammals, we have this wonderful network of cranial nerves that reptiles and birds don't have. A dog or a kitten or a human can change their facial expressions and you'll feel the emotion. They have a snake or lizard won't. They don't have that ability and we communicate tremendous data through our faces through the 12 training nerves. Everybody talks about the biggest nerve, but they're, you know, trigeminal nerve controls an enormous part here.

9:17All of those are parasympathetic nerves, but they also were used to communicate fear, happy, let's approval, disapproval. In a very subtle way. So if you are talking with somebody on the internet, you're seeing their face. You just kind of get a feeling some people would better about it than others at picking that up. That is a good thing, but it does not give the person the person physical interaction that is important because with our health. It's kind of a generalization, but the current model is there are, you know, there, there's the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight that that's mainly your spine. From your neck down to upper or lower back. That prepares you to run and fight and it produces on multiple levels. Emotionally you feel anxiety, you feel heightened awareness.

10:17It shifts the blood flow into your brain to visual processing so you can respond to stuff quicker. It causes hormones such as cortisol to be released, which cortisol causes your liver to dump sugar into your blood. Again, I need to find a study. I was just talking with Dr. Porter a while ago and he was, he mentioned that a recent study found that an extremely stressful event causes the equivalent of a candy bar of sugar to be dumped into your bloodstream literally from your liver. So you get the surge of sugar. Well, the reason for that is your body is preparing to run or fight. And it needs that energy to run the challenge today is we're not running from bears or tigers or fighting other people most of the time. We're dealing with abstract concepts that work and social pressures. So our bodies are sitting there with all this extra energy just kind of shaking and that's not a good thing because when you get down to the cellular level, when you stay in that stress state, the cells literally shift from maintenance to being able to produce energy.

11:31And because it's getting prepared need to fight because if you don't survive whatever that thing was, our ancestors needed that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation. There would be something else that was more effective at survival than us. Now the flip side, the parasympathetic system and that's what's so important with relationships. That aspect, which is controlled, it's believed to be controlled. The upper brain stem, your cranial nerves, everybody talks about the vagus nerve. They're also parasympathetic nerves coming from your lower spine in the sacral area. All of the nerves from your belly button down to your feet are actually spinal parasympathetic nerves. That system tells you it's kind of relaxed. It causes the blood into your brain to shift to areas that allow more creativity, more access to information in a slower way. You're better at actually creating problem solving in that state.

12:33The critical thing is it also helps with the release of oxytocin, which is sort of the opposite of cortisol, oxytocin and melatonin are the opposite of them. Well, not opposite, but they have different effects that are contrary to those. That causes your body to shift into healing mode. And the cells, when you get down to the cellular level, the cells shift to clean up and fix it mode. And the challenge we have in modern society is our media, everything is designed to keep us focused on it and kind of scared and anxious because they know if we're looking at it, they can push us and add and make more money. All the news is sensation based these days, at least my observation has been that when you go through an entire day in that hyperstress state and then don't relax, especially if you stay hyperstress right at tonight, your body doesn't have time to heal and recover.

13:33And the way humans and mammals used to do that is they would have their stressful time during the day where they fought or they hunted or they had scary stuff. But then assuming they made it home, they were with their partner and they took care of each other and they relaxed. And my point of that is the distinction between internet connections and in person connections is when the partners were physically together, they could pull these pheromones that they could smell. There's a lot going on with the bioelectric field in our body that is not understood at all. Well, it's starting to be understood at MIT and a couple other universities, they have some labs that are deep in the basement, some buildings that are heavily shielded with wire and magnetic, something to prevent magnetic fields from earth getting there. They put somebody in the middle of the room and they have very sensitive detectors and they can actually measure how far the electromagnetic fields radiate from the body.

14:36And it's been found that the heart system is far more powerful than the brain for radiating six to eight feet. They can strongly detect it six to eight feet from the body when you're in the more relaxed states, particularly data and going into delta, the field gets even stronger. And that may, it's not known yet, that may give some clues on what so-called faith healers or chigong or energy healers are actually doing. I've worked with many people in that area for a long time and like a wonderful person not you know, he then says he just gets in a relaxed state and then tells the person, I would like you to heal and sends them a loving feel. And I can tell he's getting into that delta state, which is delta normally only happens when you're unconscious. So how they can be in that state and remain conscious and this is very interesting. I digress though, for the internet, maintaining visual contact with somebody is the best thing I would say to do texting and all gets even worse because our language now English is very important.

15:51English, the word love has multiple meanings defined on context Greek has five to seven words. Sanskrit, at least as I understand, has 96 words for the different emotions of love. So if you're texting someone in Sanskrit, you probably are going to have a better outcome and relationship than in English because I have seen I've worked over 16 years with couples and individuals and in almost every single situation. One partner has a totally different idea of what love what sex what commitment means to what their partner thinks they just assume the other person has the same idea. And that that's very challenging when you're texting somebody. So having relationships online is very, very important, but I would strongly recommend people try to find at least one physical human, not physical like in a met the physical like somebody you're in close proximity to,

17:30and it's something that it's very powerful and healing. So again, I have an answer to your question exactly, but hopefully that got some information in there. Yes, it makes so much sense because it sounds like the work isn't about becoming the worst version of yourself alone, but it's about becoming someone who can surely meet another person in the digital environment, especially our generation. So every all connections are based on Instagram stories, stats, feeds and what is it? I'm sure that I send stories to my spend in Smafswin, but is it we don't have that personal level attached from our mentioned too many as the previous generation had. That's concerning. That is also it's concerning with AI being able to understand language better than we can and communicate with us and understand very quickly what causes us to feel certain emotions.

18:36And you know, I think people are going to start having relationships with online AI and not realize it's not a human and that's not going to be good for the long term survival of our species. I don't know where that's going. It's going to be interesting. But one thing that I did want to mention that I forgot that we have found my wife and I have been together 27 years and married 25. I've been through many, many challenging situations, losing children, extreme illnesses, etc. But when you do get in a relationship where you are, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend relationship, physically together. One thing that is very, very important for long term health and long term relationship quality is if you can make a commitment that when they a week, you will spend at least 50 minutes focusing just on your partner.

19:41That's their day. That's their the center of the universe. And they are taking care of their pampered because when we become adults, we don't get taken care of that often. We take care of other people. Otherwise, we're on our own. And oftentimes in relationships, it's two separate people taking care of each other or it's the woman taking care of the man more. But one day a week, the lady focuses just on the man for at least 50 minutes. If you have more time an hour, then on another day of the week, the man focuses just on the late. And whatever she wants goes for her and it's completely her choice. And we have programs that actually teach structured ways to communicate so you can get on the same page and to read about, you know, what you can do. But what gets interesting with that is initially, and we say commit to doing that for one month, four times, you know, four weeks for each partner. And it's on a separate day.

20:41Initially, each partner looks forward to their day because we teach a method, whether it's all the three step method with just three or you massage certain areas that activate the parasympathetic nervous response and helps you really it's great to do it at night because any sleep really deeply. Each person really looks forward to their day. But when they learn new techniques, they start getting curious, how is their partner going to respond to that? And they start looking forward to actually caring for their partner. And when they can start caring for their partner, they get a little spark that I think in Sanskrit and I apologize if I'm not pronouncing it correctly. It's Moodita, MUD, ITA. If that emotion of having joy or pleasure seeing your partner happy, when they start fostering that feeling, it gets stronger in each person. If both people do it. And that, I believe, is one of the most powerful ways to build a relationship that grows as you grow together. If you see a very elderly couple holding hands and you can tell they truly love each other, they have developed that one way or another.

21:50So when you are, I don't know how you can do that online. There may be a way to do that. I'm not sure. I would, I would, if you can do that, you will give a gift to the world. If you can share how people can can experience Nidh Mundea. But how do you pronounce that? Is that, is it Moodita? It's Moodita, yeah. Moodita, okay, gotcha. But that's, that's one thing that's been very beneficial from our life and myself. Once a week, we set aside Khan separately to take care of each other. But I'm talking, go ahead, please tell me, ask me whatever else. I, I've lost a little reason because these are essential in today's world. We'll just stuck on the vicious loop of life, just going through the like, going through the life. And that's how it's, it has been putting efforts, especially to the partner and to yourself. And then to them, it's, it's essential to keep up the relationships. Let it through.

22:51Thank you, Haji Arilas. Yes, and, and also relationships, if you can with family, sometimes that's hard. Parents, other friends in, in Okinawa in Japan, it traditional Okinawa, that's changed now radically. But the parents would try to find groups of eight children. Their child will be one of the group that weren't related to their main circles of friends, but will get along and they will become lifetime friends. So they always had a social group and, and they seemed to understand that. So there, there was a lot of wisdom from that culture that I wish the rest of the world could apply. Because that way, when you have something hard in your life, you know there's somebody you can call that, that's there for you. And so that's, that's nice. But, but it is, online relationships is the whole new thing, which I'm just figuring out the human aspect of it. I have an active, the online aspect, but it's, it's the world has changed you.

23:55You will see changes. I mean, I'm, I wasn't the tech industry and I still communicate with a lot of people in that area and they think the next decade is going to have over 100 years of change. So that's a lot. You know, so we will see. But I thank you for trying to help people understand and ride this change because relationships will help people get through it. Very true. It lies, human with human is a vicious reality. But it is now that emotional connection and emotional support, everything. It, it, it is either became something a checklist or it is replaced by AI even. It depends on AI even for the emotional talks because the other person is not that maybe responsive or not doing what we expect.

24:56So, AI becomes a replacement. I've seen it myself. It's, that is a concerning aspect. Now, the, as far as the emotional aspect though, a lot of people were concerned about job loss. But I suspect the human connection here, people that are very expressive, such as yourself, that are great communicators in person. The value of that is going to go up tremendously because all the oring technical stuff that's going to get automated. So, so fostering, you know, communication, empathy, those types of personal interaction things. I suspect there's a gentleman named Mogadot. It's been a while since I, he was the head of Google's R&D group and really, really fascinating guy. He talks a great deal about that and how he thinks AI is going to change things and how to adapt to it. But I'd encourage he wrote a book called Soul for Happy because his son died and his dying wish was for mode to figure out how to be happy because Mo was very sad about that.

26:03And he, he disappeared for three years and came back with that book. So he actually has an engineer's mathematical way to figure out how to be happy. But, which is a very interesting guy. But it's Mo G A W A T. Yes, if I spelled it right. But, but I'd encourage people to read that. That's why I'm so deeply because the idea of connection and self-worth aren't opposites, but actually sustain the sadhana. Like, feels like something we need to hear over and over until it rewinds us. And that is most necessary as we have discussed. Yes, it's well, the again, to me, the core is your own self-worth. However, having a partner, the best scenario is to know who you are and what, their few things.

27:04Know who you are and what you want to do in life. Most people don't. But, but that's the first thing. If you can achieve that and then have a partner that is on the same, it's like two people walking a path together wanting to go the same direction. And you just share your journey together. And when you trip, your partner helps you up. And when they trip, you help them up. So, so it is very, very important. Now, how you develop that through internet connections, I would hope that people would filter that through and then kind of way to be physically together. Or if not have real world friends locally, because I have seen so many. If you go to a restaurant around here, all the kids are sitting there looking at their working on that. They're not talking. They're looking down at the same. And the phones are very, very good at that to keep your attention.

28:10I mean, they're optimizing more and more. So, that is the, it's better, in my opinion, to interact with humans directly than that. But each and see, thank you so much for this conversation and sharing your excuse. No, no problem. Thank you so much for this conversation and especially for sharing your insights for us. These are much needed words in this generation of us especially. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's been a delight. And if people want to continue exploring this work with you or learn more about what you offer, make a defined you. The easiest way is to go to our main company, psych. It's, it's an unusual name. It's high H.I. and then massager H.I.M.A.S.S.A.G.E.R. dot com.

29:11If you go there, that's the product I invented to help my wife from a challenge years ago. The most of our research is based around how that can help people relax and therapeutic things for that. But so if you go there and you click contact and say you want to get in touch with the Delphuridit to me and that's the easiest way to find me. Also, you can look up Dr. Steven, you all linked in there too. But I appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, absolutely. I hope you have a spot. Thank you as well. Bye. And, Liz Nas, as we close today, I want you to leave with us. And the next time you think about your work, Alunos, ask Yasseri, who am I becoming well with? Who am I inviting into the process? And what my shift applies to seeing my growth and my relationships as separate journeys?

30:15Well, we imagined isn't just about doing things differently. It's about remembering that we are never meant to do it alone. Thank you for being here until next time. Take a good care. Thank you.