[Music] Hey fellow G&T, those of us who like our spirituality with a twist. So our project of 2025 has been to try to make some sense of this uh effed up world that uh is like uh happening around us, society, tottering, creaking. And so we've done a lot of different episodes kind of related to that. That's been our a lot of 2025 for us. We looked at especially like a lot of stuff on like cults and cult psychology and social psychology around that. And this is sort of like a follow-up of that in a way really just trying to help help ourselves and hopefully help each other kind of come to some understanding in different ways of what's going on in the world. So the project for today is going to be kind of an interesting one of maybe two taking two sets of ideas and trying to put them together to help us like make sense of what's happening. So the two big things we're going to try to do is a little bit of traditional Chinese medicine which is funny because that's our those are our professions but we don't always talk about that. Daniel's kind of shaking his head so this will be a little bit different for us. We really haven't done a lot of traditional Chinese medicine stuff. So we'll do a little bit of it, right? But especially in the context of trying to use it to help understand aspects of this thing called the emotional plague, which is a phrase used by uh one of the really fascinating psychologists. We have talked about him a little bit here and there, Wilhelm Reich.

So we'll introduce the idea and it might be the kind of thing that we'll have to spell it out a little bit and it'll it'll click as we go. And we're going to try to talk about psychology and how the mind and the body interconnect and how it undermines people's emotions and then even undermines sort of the better parts of human nature, you might say, the more virtuous parts of human nature using a little bit of Wilhelm Reich and using a little bit of uh some traditional Chinese medicine to help us out with that. But before we go into the deep parts of it, it's going to be a deep episode or episodes. We might just make us a few to get through it. Right, Daniel? If you're thinking that.

Definitely. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about here, but um before we do any of this stuff, if you can just do the thing that everyone always asks you to do, which is to like and subscribe or send an episode to a friend and uh leave a review or leave a comment and do all those nice things, it definitely helps out people with the dreaded the emotional plague of the algorithm, which is definitely a source of emotional plague. That's true.

Definitely a problematic thing. All right. So, the first idea I I figure maybe with this since we haven't talked about Wilhelm Reich in a while, we'll just give like a little brief thing of who this dude is,

right?

So, he was a protege of Sigman Freud

kind of in this uh group of like kind of great psychologists that all seem to explode out of like this one spot. It's kind of amazing how that happens, you know?

I sometimes think about that. It's almost like some interesting karma or something. A bunch of people who all have an interest in something all explode out of a place, right? happens in music or happens in art happens in something like this. You know, all of a sudden all these people come popping out. So, he was an emphas he was a protege of Freud's and uh there's a number of like interesting things that he did that we can kind of like factor into what we're looking at from like a Chinese medical point of view too. He definitely put the emphasis on understanding people's personality or what he used to he called like character analysis. So, it was a little bit different. And I think a lot of times there's conversations about like trauma and childhood trauma as a thing. Obviously people are really fascinated by that clinically now. I think do you think that's true Daniel? I think that's true.

Yeah. I would say I mean it's it's increasingly pop I don't want to call it popular because it's probably not like a it's not popular like everyone's like woo oh yeah cool childhood trauma. No, but I I think in terms of awareness and therapy is more popular now than it's ever been before. I remember growing up and even even now really you know therapy it's like therapy

the [...] you know I mean they're not me

I don't need to go to therapy that that's just for the birds you know but I think as as society has sort of opened up a little bit in terms of talking about mental health and just wellness in general being at the forefront really I mean you know um that therapy is now not frowned upon really.

You might have some resistance to people wanting to go, but individually, but I think on the on the overall therapy is is okay. And so because of that, once you get in there,

then they're going to go back to your childhood, you know. So

start poking around for the traumas.

Yeah. Exactly. Start poking around. So there. So because of that and because people know that now the childhood trauma is given much more credence than it ever used to be. Much more credence than it ever used to be.

And I don't want to like undermine that in any way. I think those things are important. The thing that Reich did that's interesting is he said, "Well, we can go back and we look at people's childhood traumas and try to tease those apart. But another thing you can really do is look at how the person's personality or gonna use that word character

is functioning in the now. We sort of know that's coming out of these previous experiences building up.

But let's focus on

the personality of the person like in the immediate. So that's one of his big switches, right? As opposed to digging down in the past, you know? Now the thing that like makes that interesting I think for what we're talking about here is he also saw that as being once he started talking about character and character analysis or like taking apart sometimes you would use this phrase like character armor

people have all this armoring build up around them from like the different experiences that have kind of makes made who they are in a weird way

because a lot of that stuff is sort of defensive. You end up with this armoring around you. So he said well let's try to take that apart. We can do that by again considering people's past but let's focus on like taking apart the personality and the armoring in the present.

And then the thing that he did in addition to that was he said well that we can also see that not only in the psychology of the person but we can also see it in their body.

Yeah. And

so he said there was like two sides to this then you know uh I guess the popular book now is like the body keeps the score. Yeah. This is probably like the original body keeps the score in the sense of like those events are like built up not only as psychological things but because the mind and the body are like two sides of a coin you might say right you can see it on either side of that in the body and also in the mind of the person and that's really innovative like one of the cool things that he did to make that at the forefront right yeah which I think you and I agree with that's an interesting approach to take for sure right

yeah I mean that you know we've we've done episodes on this previously, but you know, in the in the short run, that's semantization, right? The

the

I don't know if I don't know if I could say I don't want to be totally mind driven, but we could say it's the body's ability to store uh stressors such that it can protect the mind.

Yeah. And it's an interesting idea to say that's a mirror or something, right? like the all those little blocks inside of the person psychologically are going to be mirrored inside as like blocks within the body itself or things like that. It's it's a good position to take. It makes a lot of sense on some level.

Additionally, you could also say, you know, we could call it a positive too and say that this is adaptation,

meaning you are prioritizing survival in the long run and you make short-term exchanges. So instead of me having anxiety in my mind causing me to take make erratic decisions and that might jeopardize my standing in the community or my ability to make money and support myself, my family, whatever I can maybe have some pain somewhere else to compensate for that kind of a thing. And that is a far more manageable thing to to deal with than something that I can't escape if it's if I, you know, believe it to be quoteunquote just in my head, you know?

Yeah. There's one of the people in our like Chinese medical field, the Dr. Leon Hammer, who I'm kind of deep into in different ways, and he said like, well, it's kind of adaptive in the moment, but it's not adaptive in the long run or something.

So, however way you frame that, right?

So, okay, I might need to do these sort of shortterm compensatory things, right?

Yep. Yep.

So, I think Reich's idea is that when this really gets all funky, then you end up with a person that's sort of a a hodgepodge of all these things and then they just they don't function as well. Right.

Right. Right.

Yeah. They carry all that weight with them. It's like you're kind of armored down by all like

you're like all of a sudden you got this whole sheath of armor around you and you're trying to trot around with it and it's just like cumbersome, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Weighs you down.

Okay. So the thing that we're trying to get to in this to understand what's happening maybe in the bigger world around us and this is an interesting project. I kind of had the inspiration for it over my retreat and I bounced off of Daniel and he was like I figured Daniel would be into this so you know uh we're going to try to keep going with this to kind of tease this apart. So part of what he says going back to Reich with this idea is that these can be kind of personal things that can build up in people but some of this stuff is beyond the personal. Some of this stuff is what you might call more like social toxicity, which gets us to try to understand the moment now. Because a lot of what is going to be kind of infused within people within their character armor, within these kinds of complexities within their bodies and their minds are not like just individual stuff. It's because something as funky is going on in the society overall

and that contributes. So, it's sort of like a social toxicity problem,

right? that then infuses itself out into, you know, like the populace at large. And all of a sudden, you get a lot of these character armor like uh uh ticks in people, these character armor problems that are also like entwined with like physical issues, too. And they're like they're not just an individual thing anymore. They're like kind of again cultural.

What would you say is some an example of this?

Well, we're going to be doing tons of them.

Okay. So, you know, like uh but you know, the way like uh you go through a bunch of people and they all have like uh repressed anger and they all have tension through their necks and their shoulders could be

right. That's right. Those band those he he had he had his system of like bands and zones of tension in the body. Yeah.

Yeah. So, where there's all these repressed emotions, you know, you build up these tensions.

Yeah.

It's a good as a concrete example. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I just because you know just for context is I mean we're familiar from doing from talking about it and and studying it beforehand and having conversations.

But the audience might have not heard some of these episodes previously. But basically Willheim Reich's idea was that like the body has these like tension zones.

So stuff throughout the neck, stuff throughout the chest, stuff throughout the abdomen, stuff throughout the hips. And and they represent different sort of I don't know psycho emotional afflictions. Is that the right?

Yeah. Like probably like like different kinds of ways of like how repressed emotion and complex unresolved emotion gets like triangled into physical stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How does that manifest in your body? And so he had

his own idea on how that manifested in the patients that he saw from his eyes and his experience. And I think we're going to move away from that specific uh ideology into traditional Chinese medicine. using the same underlying theory, I think. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

So, yeah, it's a good thing that you're bringing that up though to give examples, too. So, it might be like the neck and the shoulder tension because you you're holding the anger and all of a sudden everyone's walking around with this tension. If you talk with people and you start digging around psychologically, you realize, oh my god, there's a lot of rage and anger in these people, but on the other and they might not even be fully aware of that, right? And by the other hand, you end up with this sort of physical manifestation of that.

Yeah. or um people who might have issues with like sexuality and anxiety around sexuality or guilt around sexuality might have a lot of tension like through like the pelvis right like around where the those sexual organs are and they carry a lot there and I think his innovation is like to recognize like well this isn't just I could talk with the person and try to understand where this comes from but this is a physical thing too

correct yeah

and they kind of feed back off of each other right yeah they go back and forth the body influences the mind and the mind influences the body. And

Eric, I don't know how it is for you. You know, we don't talk about this a ton on here, but in my practice, I would say I get I treat neck pain far more than anything else.

Yeah. ever in the when I first started it was you know and I've graduated you know almost 10 year 10 years ago then obviously continue a little bit further but

um it was back pain for sure for the longest time.

Yeah. The longest time it was back pain. And then I would say probably in 201 19 just before COVID

then it was neck pain and now it's neck pain for sure. Of course there's other things you there's some back stuff shoulder knees my feet you know whatever. Um but it's not even close if I treat 10 patients you know five of them six of them is neck pain and when you consider all

even if it's not a cheap complaint it's hanging around there you know I mean even is that the main reason

no this is a cheap complaint number one they're coming in for this so for for our audience who is not who are not like healthcare practitioners or some practitioners of some type with the possibility of what you know an acupuncturist can treat is uh anything that you would go to your general practitioner for uh you know your your GP. Anything and then anything you would go to your psychologist for.

Yeah, that's true too.

Okay. You add those in and then anybody you might go to a shaman for, you know, like we can get any of these things. So you're talking, you know, probably a couple hundred possibilities or at least a hundred.

Okay, we we'll be making it a hundred. you know, any body system from headaches to digestive issues, menstrual issues, pregnancy, all kinds of pain, wherever you want, inside, outside, allergies, immunity, whatever, headache. Okay, whatever. Sleeping. But if so, if I'm getting 50% with one issue, that means it's so skewed into one thing and I'll just and I just it just related and I'm just bringing this up. I treat neck pain more than I treat anything else by a long shot. That raises the question of well I mean I'll bring up this next phrase which we haven't done yet which is this idea of emotional plague.

Right. Which is like once you start seeing the same thing popping up on a whole bunch of people as a clinician you start going what's going on here?

You know like it's not like I'm dealing with everybody who's just on like the tennis watching team and they're just sp like their head back like there's no reason.

We call it you know this is probably a deep cover. People don't know, but Pong was like the first video game, right? With this this little ball goes back and forth on a screen. So, no, this is not Pong neck going back and forth.

I think I bought a Pong like thing when I was like a kid just cuz it was sitting at an old garage sale. I actually bought it back home and put it on the TV. I mean, that was like Pong was dated even for me, you know, like and uh it was the most boring [...] thing ever. Well, that we we put it on the thing and we were like playing playing. It's just like a little two little rackets and the ball goes back and forth. It's

basically it was the original version of like a tennis but AI, you know.

Yes. AI like Yeah. AI tennis.

AI tennis. Yeah. Yeah. But I I just I bring that up.

Screen saver or something. Yeah.

Just to give the um I mean there we'll move on from it, but like I say just to finish the thread here. uh screen time, having your people, you know, being looking at their phones and whatnot. Of course, driving, but not everybody drives as much as, you know, whatever. Uh I really I attribute it to shallow breathing and and everything's going to go back to this but stress and when I say stress I mean the physical manifestation of mental pressure and it brings up a sense of protectionism in my body. And when I say that I don't mean to be vague. What I mean to say is when we take um if someone was to hit you with a stick, Eric, if you had the opportunity to block it, you might try with your hand. But worst case scenario, you would give somebody your back, particularly your upper back, because this area is got our rib cage back there. There's muscle back there. The spine is protecting our internal organs. We could take a hit to the back and it's not going to really the stick will break. my back probably not going to break, right? And I think that between the kind of shallow breathing, using these muscles in and around our neck to kind of lift the rib cage up as opposed to allowing it to sink down and this

being on edge and always kind of having our shoulders kind of rounded forward from it could be from posture sitting at a desk being in front of a computer for long periods too definitely. But this constant kind of like internally manifested tension in our body from what we're dealing with emotionally and stress-wise from from the culture from our lives keeps our shoulders rounded a little bit forward to kind of pro so we can use our back to protect ourselves a little bit.

Yeah. Reich actually tied that into fear too. So sometimes we think anger, you know, but he also talked about fear because you cringe, right? It's like the way you're talking about there's like an instinctive thing like a turtle shell. Yeah. And if you feel all on some level, if you feel that those weird emotions, anger and fear are like really deadly emotions. That goes all the way back to some of our Zen conversations, you know, because in Zen Buddhism, they say those are the ones that will really [...] you up.

Fear and anger.

Anger, you lash out in ways that you're going to regret, you know, or eats away at you, makes you bitter.

And then fear because it holds you back, right? Like those are nasty ones.

Yeah. you know, and we're going to talk through sort of dowist ideas, zen ideas about the emotions that we're going to be going through, but those two are have a certain toxicity to them because of how they really can impact your life in so many bad ways. But yeah, it's interesting you came up because it's that cringing thing, right? That instinctive guarding.

Yeah. And then of course then you sleep weird or something else happens and now you're like you're in you're crippled,

Yeah. Multiple things start piling on, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and uh you know, kudos to us. I was uh talking with a client today and she was telling me about some some book she read that was breaking down um how religion was the world's first corporation and I know that's podcast we're doing today you preached that you used that phrase

and I was like oh we already did that she's like oh he researched this topic for years and wrote a book I was like nah he could have just listened to a podcast probably about a year and a half ago we would have been covered it so we're good you know anyway so I'm

fascinating but we've already talked about fascinating kidding. But also, welcome to 2025, [...]

Yeah, G& 2025 cuz we did that back in 2023. You were on that subject.

Me. Yeah, that's right. We we done eat it up. So, I'm just saying we're giving people, you know, some ideas that are going to be more popping up in the future. So, you know, get with it. We're we're uh we're we're not riding the wave, we're creating it.

GT wave. Yeah. Um, yeah, just a j Jennandra flowing ahead of everything.

Uh, okay. So, on the emotional plague thing there, the one of the ideas that I always feel like I have to throw in here because he's one of the first people that I looked at who was like, can't you call like almost everything potentially like emotional plague like a lot of socioultural stuff is going to be toxic and it's going to hold you back and maybe that's like a universal statement. So he's one of the psychologists along with like a Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, a lot of the ones that I like who kind of went listen you know you have to separate yourself from the social factors that are emotional play because they're universal and I like that idea and he says that until for the time that you're under the thr of the emotional plague of whatever are those social factors for you it'll hold you back in primary ways and this is like stuff that we talked about before but especially emphasizes when you're stuck, it's harder to be creative. When you're stuck, it's harder to like fully be open and loving with other people because you're stuck. You can't fully express those things.

And then the way it's harder to fully enjoy life. It cuts your ability to participate in pleasure. Some of that's like sexuality, intimacy, but probably pleasure overall. It's just you can't do it. You know,

it holds you back. So I think it's this real powerful thing he's saying that's almost part of our dowist and our Zen stuff and our tandric stuff. That's kind of a continuing theme for us. And he was powerful for me because he's one of the first people who said that. But then he also can say like sometimes this emotional plague thing goes like really toxic and all of a sudden you get a society that goes flipping out and it goes crazy and

Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry.

I just No, you're good. You're good. Well, I was just going to say like you, you know, like I think for the people of his time, like him as a clinician, because he's a 20th century person, it was like why all of a sudden does like uh a place like Germany go fascist?

Or, you know, why all of a sudden do you have something go so toxic within a place where all of a sudden you get this explosion of all this social toxicity?

And where does that come from? with the idea that it's once that starts happening it's in people's psyches but it's also in their bodies and that's what we wanted to explore a little bit too from the TCM point of view

you know and then because there's kind of a feedback once the system starts to go haywire like that not only in our thoughts and our emotions but also really deeply in even how our bodies are operating on a physical level well that ends up being a naughty situation not a naughty situation which could be more fun. A naughty situation, a knot, it's [...] up, you know, and you have to tease the not apart.

So, it's like an interesting thing to think about. And I think the inspiration for me in part came and I was on retreat and I was just thinking about this and I was like, okay, yeah, you know, that's that's his point. And then my mind started going, well, what would the Chinese medicine be like of this in a way? So, that was one of my inspirations for thinking about this.

Mhm.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, especially this idea of like how the body and mind are entwined with one another and all of a sudden you have both of them kind of creating this feeding back back and forth to one another, which I guess gets us the idea of like the Chinese medicine of this. So we're doing a little shout out to our traditional Chinese medicine roots and we might have different takes on this. I'm really curious if you have different things that you emphasize with this Daniel, but I thought, you know, we can talk about um the different systems in the body and then they're all like one of the interesting things about Chinese medicine, they all get tied into different emotions.

So, if you have problems, well, we'll talk our way through it, but you have problems with the liver that is rel related to either feeling emotions of anger affecting the liver or if you flip that, you can say, "Well, there's something wrong with my liver. I'm more likely to get into these emotional states of anger."

Correct? So it can go like either way. That's one of the powerful ideas in this, right?

You can get it from the mind to the body or from the body to the mind. Yeah.

Western herbology says the same thing about the liver in particular actually.

Oh, that's interesting. Okay. I don't know as much of the Western herbalism.

I don't know a ton of it, but I have a friend of mine who definitely western herbology very deep very deep into it. does a lot of work with, you know, raw foods, vegetables, fruits, juices, juicing, fasting, um, cleanses, things like this. And they talk a lot about like metal, heavy metals in the body and particularly being weighing on the liver.

Yeah. Yeah. and that causing issues with, you know, outbursts of anger and irritability, frustration, things like this, stuff that we would consider in TCM to be very classic sort of liver pathologies, which gets into like the like it's a it's a side point. I don't want to go too tangent and off on it, but like there's all this accumulated wisdom that human beings have had and like it's good to like hold on to that, you know, whether it's a western herbalism thing or like the thousands of years of like Chinese medical culture that we explore. There's so much value there, right? And it so that's what we're trying to share in some ways too, right? You start tapping into this stuff, it really it's powerful medically, but it also can start changing the way you think about the world.

Yeah. So this can go then so you can talk about this in terms of emotions and then I guess what I'm particularly interested in I guess what you think about these things too would be what sometimes they call the virtues. So because there's this mind body connection when the body and the mind are working better they're not toxified. They're not in these pathological states. It's easier for more spontaneous positive human things to just kind of naturally express themselves. M

so we'll kind of maybe try to talk through that too.

That was another one of my inspirations behind this cuz I was going okay well

Americans health tends to be pretty shitty.

You know there's all kinds of like chronic health complaints. How is that impacting not only the emotions but the ability to have these more positive virtuous states

you know that are there the more positive parts of the psychology express themselves. So I kind of had the insight or the the inspiration during my retreat to go, "Oh, there's really something there that's worth thinking about."

Yeah. Well, I mean, just we can think about it from like a super practical kind of way. If people aren't feeling good just in general, you're the amount of energy you're going to have to be giving probably not going to be as high, right? the amount of time that you're going to have or the amount of energy you're going to have to uh express joy or express, you know, commu, you know, to to put yourself in a community community setting is not going to be as high either because you're just not feeling great. You're not feeling good. And and I know maybe in the moment it sounds like I'm talking about if you're sick like you have an illness, you're, you know, the flu or cold or COVID or something like this, you know, but I I think that people generally walk around not feeling great. Full stop. Like cold, no cold doesn't matter. Just in general, not feeling great. And I know for myself, and I can only speak for myself as you can only speak for yourself, you know, that's not me.

You know what I'm saying? But I have to balance out my own, you know, kind of internal exuberance sometimes with the understanding that like a lot of people have it really bad. And there's a lot of places that are nearby where we live where those people are right [...] now. And the variety of experience that people have is so vast. And even though I've traveled a bunch, you know, been in different countries, I've been many places around the world, lived in different places in within this country. I've been overseas as a traveler. I've been overseas as a military personnel. You know, I've given my time to other people. We treat all sorts of illnesses and diseases, you know, in our in our clinics and things like this. It does, you know, I have to keep all of that in mind or else I would just, you know, I'd be happy golucky all the time. But I it's a hard thing to kind of balance within my own self. But I see people as you do. I don't think that I don't think I think I'm unique in that way. Not because I'm special. I'm not special. I'm a regular [...] dummy, you know? But in terms of my own internal feeling, no, I think I am in some ways cuz I can tell at least in my perception and I could be wrong. I feel like I could see it, you know, like people I walk by people just on the street as you do all the time as as our audience does or people who listen to this, you know, and I could just feel like I could have a sense that like, oh, that person's depressed.

No eye contact, no nothing. We're just like two people that would never we could be in in an empty alley or we could be in a crowded room and they have make zero eye contact and I always try and greet people even with just a little nod to acknowledge life like I acknowledge your uh sentient being you know what I'm saying just a basic kind of a thing and there's I could there's just no desire for that on on the other end and I'm looking for it you know so that's why I get to this point that I think that people have some kind of illnesses physical mental on some spectrum. It doesn't always mean like they need to be medicated or they have to be in a hospital, you know, but that there's not a lot of energy. There's not a lot of room for um sharing sharing emotion, sharing of anything. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. I feel like one of the things you realize doing in the work that we do is that like even the like the whole idea that you're getting to a lot of people just don't feel good. They don't feel good in their body and their mind.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's almost like uh the fish in the bowl, the water effect or something, you know, like you're so you're so seeped in it all the time, the fish doesn't recognize it's in the water. You know, you walk around feeling shitty all the time, that just seems normal to you,

but when you get into these kind of healing arts that we're involved with, meditative arts and so on,

you know, all of a sudden you realize, okay, I don't have to feel shitty all the time.

No.

No. And then of course what you were saying, your personality then will reflect it and you'll want to engage with the world and other aspects of who you are will start to express themselves, right?

Yeah. As opposed to this sort of walking around in these sort of semi not good to varying degrees psychological and physical states, right?

Yeah. I mean I think that that's really true. I've started when people ask me who I am, how I'm doing, like if if I know them, I I give a long description. You know what I'm saying? I give a long because why do we need to play patty cake? Hey, how's it going? Good. Oh, what's going on with you? Oh, not much. How's life? Oh, you know, thank God. Or oh, you know, what can I say? Can't complain. Living the dream. Blah, blah, blah. You know, all right. Well, weather's been great. Yeah, I know. Okay, take care. Bye. I mean, how many times I need to have that conversation? Well, maybe the part that happens is when like uh the body and mind are in a better state, you feel more open.

Sure.

You don't have to be as protected. I can be more open.

Yeah,

I do that with people. Sometimes it's like, was I too open?

They're like, "Wait, you didn't want to hear about my bowel movements from the last week?" What?

Well, that I wouldn't do. But, you know, like I was texting with somebody. I was like, "Well, I hope I wasn't too open. Just talking about life too much or whatever." I don't know.

Yeah. Uh anyways, uh well that's part of the inspiration for this. The other thing that came up with this again looking at the world like in the immediate for me was I've been listening a lot to try to understand the world and I've been listening to a lot for people within like we've been doing cult stuff. So I've been listening to people coming out of like different parts of like the social world you might say. And I got really interested in people talking about like

Christian nationalism as being a big factor in the world now. So the kind of like there's all kinds of Christianities, you know, with like good ones and ones that might be problematical and this is sort of probably you'd say the more problematical aspects of Christianity.

Naughty ones.

Yeah. Like actual naughty and naughty. But was one one of the things that came up and I'm I'm like kind of deep into doing G&T research. I'm listening to this woman named April Ajoy and she's talking about what it meant to kind of get out of the more rigidly nationalistic Christian circles. And one of the things that she kind of observed when she got out of it was that there was just kind of like a lack of empathy and compassion. And if you haven't heard this before, she's saying like within that subculture, they'll sometimes use this this phrase of like toxic empathy and toxic compassion. And she was saying that, you know, at some point in her life that would have I guess those phrases would have made sense to her. But now that she's out of that mindset, she was basically saying, yeah, for some reason there's just this empathy and compassion gap going on where people are having a real hard time empathizing and feeling compassion for others. And there might be like ideological reasons for that she said within her circles, you know, that being soft on people who might be considered sinners within that worldview isn't a good thing to do. So you you'd be better off, you know, uh being harder on them or something. But when she got out, she was like, "No, I I think there was just something wrong with all of that." And there was a sort of a a judgmental quality and also just sort of a basic inability within that to feel empathy and compassion for other people that was sort of toxic and I was like okay that's interesting too. I'm not in those circles but you know she's talking about her experience. So I was like okay you know that's interesting. And she definitely would say like what was culty for her. So I was like okay that fits into what we've been trying to do. And I thought okay and I heard that from multiple people. It's not just the one person, you know, a number of these people I've been trying to listen to and go like, well, what's in the minds of people within this group so I can understand them better, you know,

and then they're like a lot of them are saying, yeah, there was this whole thing of like a real hardness and like a real lack of compassion and empathy. I had told this story maybe a couple podcast episodes ago and maybe I've referenced it referenced at least once before, but there's like David French. She's a kind of a conservative Christian guy but more open-minded and like he's having pro he was talking about the problems he had in that with that kind of lack of empathy thing too and he said he was at the funeral of his father and then someone passed him a note and he thought it was going to be a note of compassion or empathy for the passing of his father and instead it was a note that said we're all really mad at you because you're not supporting Donald Trump enough. and he showed it to his wife and his wife went what she just like blurted out in the service like what the hell is wrong with you people his his his father just died like what the what the [...] you know what's wrong with you and so I was just listening to these stories and I thought okay well you know if you if you're trying to think about you know from our framework of Dowoism and traditional Chinese medicine like what's going on with that kind of stuff you know what's the almost sort of like the emotional plague aspect behind that. And then, you know, uh what is it that might be even like the physical side of that too that's undermining that sort of more natural empathy and compassion that might happen for people? And then my my own little flash of inspiration of this, at least for me, was, you know, a lot of Americans have really bad GI tracts. Like a lot of their digestive systems are really bad. And one of the virtues that's supposed to come out than the Chinese medical world or the Dowist world, when that system is working better, you'll just more naturally feel compassion towards other people.

It'll just happen naturally and spontaneously.

Now, I just had the thought, oh god, isn't that going to be, you know, from what we know, Dowoism, Chinese medicine, isn't that going to be a real problem if you have a whole group of people whose GI tracks are trashed for the all kinds of reasons? And we'll explore reason maybe reasons around that why that would happen to people too.

But if like that's the problem then eventually you start going okay it's like it's going to be harder for the whole system of that person the physical sides and the psychological sides to more naturally have that compassionate response. It's going to undermine that.

So that was sort of my inspiration coming out of a little bit my retreat experience with this and really thinking about this. I thought, yeah, from a Chinese medical point of view, if these systems aren't working as well as they should, Dow and Chinese medical thought, then those emotional states will just be harder to get into and they won't naturally occur even in those situations when you think that that might be the natural thing to happen.

And you're thinking, well, maybe that's part of what's undermining what's happening with people, too. you know, a kind of a version of Wilhelm Reich's emotional plague, but like where the physical is even having its impact too

and undermining people's ability to like more naturally get into what might be those more

again they use the word virtues for this but you know those more mental emotional states that are just more positive right you know so that was my inspiration for it you know and so I I you had the idea of like okay let's try to talk that through and see what we think as we go through it.

Yeah. No, it makes sense,

you know, and then you really can get to not only it's interesting to think about then because then you can get to not only like the psychological side, which of course is important to talk about what are people's ideas and what's going on in people's emotions and thoughts,

but you can also go like, okay, if you're like, man, if you really get like a whole group of people who are again physically unhealthy,

you're going to get a lot of toxic emotions out of that Chinese medical dowist thought, and you're also going to have a much harder time getting into those more positive psychological states. So

yeah more yeah more g you know more positive psychological states more giving that

you know the issue really is in giving and if you don't feel like you have enough then what are you going to give which I mean listen you I don't we don't ask poor people for money

you know you shouldn't they don't have it they don't have it to give so you know if you have a a friend who's depressed you're probably not going to ask them to help you move. They don't have the the energy to to give you to lend you to do that with. But to your point, like when you are feeling better, when you do have more resources, I hate to use the word, but when you are feeling more abundant, you know that there is enough, then it's easier to give. But I think giving in itself is a challenge. It's hard because humans by nature are selfish. We want to hold on.

We have we have that vulnerability in us to go that way. Right.

For sure. For sure. As you know, and in today's world, you know, I mean, capitalism itself is a virus, you know. It it it has to consume in order to be continuing itself, in order to be propagating itself, you know. And while yeah, many things have come good have come of it, it's also this like unending eating amoeba. There's just no there's no end to it. So people feel that pressure I think as as we you know society sort of evolves and and whatnot to like constantly be producing in order to be constantly receiving money specifically at this I'm referencing you know and that it's hard to imagine for many people to have extra extra time extra energy extra finances to give and so and I and I understand it but that's that's always a challenge you How can we how can I give more? Where can I be challenged in my giving? If I don't feel it, does it count? And you know, our friend Pete talked about this when he was on the podcast, you know, a couple a couple years ago. He's like, you know, these rich people, CEOs, corporations or whatever, they may make a donation. You say, "Wow, they gave $100,000 to this thing. My god, how generous." It's like, dude, that dude's worth a billion dollars. That is

that's nothing for him. That's a rounding error. That is he's going to write that off on his taxes. It's not it doesn't it almost doesn't count. Yeah. I mean, the benefits will be felt for sure, but he didn't feel it. What what would be beneficial for that person actually if they really want to feel it was to be give their time because their time is way more valuable than that money, you know? I mean for for themselves that money might be valuable for other people but for themselves where they would feel it was in instead of giving a h 100,000 maybe give like 10 million you know

well in like the the capitalistic world you're supposed to give 10% of what you have right

tithing in the Christian tradition 10 or 15% you know

tithing idea yeah

same thing in the Islamic tradition 10% you know giving alms so that's where you feel it so for people who make 60,000 technically by the rules you're supposed to give six pre-tax, by the way, not post tax. You know what I'm saying? So, it's uh yeah, you have to you have to feel it. So, it it's just it's always a challenge. I I don't know how it is for you, Eric, but anytime that I feel like

I am hesitant to give somebody something, I definitely give it to them.

Oh, yeah. For sure.

So, the thing that I hear in what you're saying though, I think the capitalism thing is there. I think from a like a Reichian perspective or whatever, you would say, okay, there's definitely like an emotional plague quality within that because it can create all kinds of toxic mind states, you know.

Um, and then I think you talked about a part where if you just don't feel good and there's maybe multiple ways of not feeling good.

Yes. If you get to the like maybe the Chinese medicine dowist aspect of this, you could frame it as if I don't feel like I have enough energy, if I don't feel like I have enough chi, if I don't feel like I have enough blood, then there's almost some like instinctive thing of like I can't give.

Correct.

Right. I don't have the resources to give.

I don't have the resources. Exactly.

I feel the Chinese medical world usually uses deficient. I don't have it.

To give away because I'm lacking in myself. Correct. Right.

So like I buy all of that kind of stuff. I think what intrigued me about this was certainly psychologically and like if we go back to our tandric Buddhist part of what we're channeling through here, there's a whole thing of like one of the perfections, one of the virtues that you have that you have to cultivate is like generosity.

Yes.

Right. Based on the idea that there is a flinchy part a lot of times you're like uh

I don't want to give to people. I don't want to do this. Right. I don't want to share, you know, and it's it's a it's a it's something to be overcome, right, as a psychological thing, right? And then I guess the last part for me though was we we'll be able to do it in like future episodes, but there's a way in which we can go through every system in the body and say, okay, well, psychologically, if this system is working well, you'll have less of these negative emotions. Okay. And then on the positive side, it'll be much easier for you to express these positive emotions and these positive psychological states. So that gets us into like what I found kind of fascinating, which was okay, we can in part say emotional plague like capitalism makes you feel like afraid or makes you feel uh uh fearful afraid fearful and then clinging to stuff because you're nervous, right? Yeah,

you feel insecure, you feel anxious, you're not sure if you're going to be able to always provide like, so we can talk about those aspects of emotional plague. The other part that was interesting to me though was like, well, okay, what happens if like we just have like what you were talking about, tons of toxicity in the environment.

And all of a sudden my liver's [...] up and I'm always angry all the time.

So I started going, "Wow, man. If I really look at American culture from that vantage point, putting on my Dowist Chinese medical caps, you know."

Oh, there it is.

Yeah. You got you got the uh the Maang cap, the great like horse, the horse dowist cap. Um uh ma is a horse in Chinese, right? Um so this whole idea of wow I mean if everyone's not only is psychologically are we under drain and attack but also the bodies are being dilapidated.

It's like almost like a two-sided problem. It really is to my mind it hit me like, "Oh, this is Reich's emotional plague. It's not only a psychological thing, it's a physical thing."

And the more the physical system can't do what it's supposed to do from a Dowist point of view, well, then the harder it is, it's going to affect the mind even more negatively,

right? And it's going to be harder to get into those those virtues like the compassion one. It really hit me like,

okay, maybe there really is a problem. It's not just a psychological problem, though it is,

right? But maybe it's also like, man, a lot of people just, you know, we have a lot of things that undermine our digestive systems. And then all of a sudden, I'm going to be in these negative emotional states associated with that. Preview of next week, that'll be worry and mental anxiety. I mean, people are like debilitated by worry and mental anxiety, right?

In the context of people having these kind of trashed out digestive systems. And on the flip side, you know, it's going to just harder to be compassionate.

Yeah. And the whole culture feels like it's hardening on some level, right?

Definitely.

Where you go across the the the spectrum. I mean, I went to this Christian national thing. I'm like upset about what's happening in the culture. So, I've been paying attention to that more. But I can be honest. If you go across multiple parts of the culture, there's a hardening going on, you know, and I've started going, okay, like from a Dowist point of view, man, like these systems aren't working right. It's really hard to get into these more positive mind states. So, that was sort of the the inspiration for it.

Yeah. No, no,

to be continued.

Yeah, to be it's a good it's a good place to end it. Um, yeah, I got nothing else to add on it. I think I I feel good right here.

Yeah, it's deep. You know, it's worthwhile thinking about and like give credit to Wright for coming up with the emotional plague idea, seeing how that gets embedded in the body. And then give credit to Dowoism and Chinese medicine for saying, hey, you know,

if this stuff isn't working, you can get problems from like

multiple sides of this. I think that's kind of genius. So,

yeah,

agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Eric, as always, gracias, amigo.

Thank you, Daniel.

Gracias to our audience for uh tuning in and, you know, checking us out, whatever. If you, this is your first time here, hello. If this is your uh, you know, hundth times here, hello again. Uh, we appreciate everybody listening. Uh, you know, like, comment, share, subscribe, hate, whatever. It's all good. Uh, everything helps. So, we appreciate everybody tuning in. You know, if you are interested in previous episodes, then you can go ahead and check some of those out, too. especially the ones on Wilhelm Reich, maybe I'll leave a couple links in the description of this, uh, podcast. So, you guys could check that out. Uh, but yeah, if you have any, you know, questions or you, you know, something that comes to your mind that you want to hit us up with, uh, hit us up at jin andtragmail.com. We're also on Instagram at the Jin and Tantra podcast for Eric. This is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.