Matthew Lederman, M.D. - The Nine Pillars for Making Life Wonderful

Dr. Matthew Lederman, best known for his role in the seminal documentary, Forks Over Knives, is an internal medicine physician, co-founder of WeHeal - a transformational program of nutrition, lifestyle, and connection medicine, and co-author of the book Wellness to Wonderful. He explains polyvagal theory and how it relates to our body's response to threat and safety, and how one can practice feeling safe. It is a muscle that needs to be exercised. He also shares tips for parenting teens so that the parents and teens feel heard, understood, and get their needs met. This technique can also be used with partners, friends, parents, and co-workers. Dr. Lederman discusses the nine pillars of making life wonderful and the importance of tending to these pillars for healthy aging. 

 https://weheal.health/

 https://weheal.health/wellness-to-wonderful/

 https://webekalm.com/?dt_id=981528

https://wellelephant.com/ ACE40 discount code for ACE Plant-based Eating Class

Transcript

Lisa (01:20.51)
Welcome guests. Today we have Dr. Matthew Letterman, who is an internal medicine physician who shook up the world and the status quo with his wife, Dr. Alona Polde, when they were featured in the groundbreaking documentary, Forks Over Knives, a film that launched a lifestyle medicine revolution.

Dr. Letterman and Dr. Polde spent 10 years as VPs of Whole Foods Markets Medical Affairs and launched the company's comprehensive medical and wellness centers and integrated hospital and insurance network. Always the pioneer in wellness, Letterman saw another gaping hole in medicine and dove deeper. He completed his CNVC trainer certification in nonviolent communication, which he believes is the foundation on which mind, body and interpersonal healing lies.

Together in 2023, Letterman and Polde launched WeHeal, a nutrition lifestyle and connection medicine virtual model. Simultaneously, the doctors developed WeBeCom, an innovative, fun and practical tool for helping children and adults regulate and calm their nervous systems. Doctor, husband, father, inventor, innovator, and always ahead of the curve, it is no wonder Dr. Dean Ornish calls Matthew Letterman a doctor of the future.

Matt, I can't wait to talk about all these things. We can't wait to talk about all these things. I probably left things out.

Lauren Bernick (02:46.315)
Welcome!

Matthew Lederman (02:48.325)
Thank you. So good to be here. That was a great, that was a fantastic intro. Can we do it again? I just enjoyed hearing that. No, I'm just kidding. That's...

Lisa (02:56.719)
I'll make a recording and send it to you. Yeah, this is so exciting. I mean, I know you, you're a friend, Lauren knows you, but when I pull myself back and look at all these achievements, I just, my mind is blown. And you know, like I said, you're, or like we said, you and Alona together are always ahead of the curve. And

Lauren Bernick (03:01.436)
Oh my gosh.

Lisa (03:24.926)
All these things are just proof positive of that. All of a sudden, you guys launched WeHeal and I was working with you on developing WeHeal, nutrition, lifestyle, connection, polyvagal theory, all the things that we are now, a year later, hearing about everywhere. So I just have to acknowledge that. And it was the same with plant medicine and

and all the other things that you've done in the last decade or so.

Matthew Lederman (04:01.139)
Yeah. Ha ha ha. Well, essentially, you ask how we do it, and one of the things that we're always focused on is how to make life more wonderful. I mean, it sounds a little cheesy, but at the same time, that's what drives us. So if we see a need, we try to learn about it, figure out how to address it, and then fill it, right? So that, to me, is where things like focusing on plant-based nutrition, focusing on lifestyle.

Lisa (04:01.294)
How do you do it? Ha ha ha.

Lisa (04:12.398)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (04:29.25)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (04:30.311)
non-violent communication, you know, calm and regulation. All of that stuff is really coming from that desire to help people just make life more wonderful.

Lauren Bernick (04:41.307)
Yeah, so we interviewed Alona, your talented, wonderful wife, and partner in all crimes already. And we talked about the nine pillars of making life wonderful, the pillars of WeHeal. But maybe for people who haven't heard that, can you just quickly go through the nine pillars to give people a background of what

And why? Why does this make your life wonderful?

Matthew Lederman (05:14.479)
So there's connecting to yourself. That's the first pillar, connecting inside, what's going on, what you're feeling, what's alive inside of you. Right, so what are your feelings, what are your needs, which a lot of people have a hard time identifying. And then from there, you wanna resource your internal world through sleep, nutrition, activity, and play. Those are four more pillars, sleep, nutrition, activity, and play.

And then once your internal world's resourced and you know what's alive inside of you, what you're feeling and needing, you can then go out into the external world and connect, which really brings home the joy. So the external world are the other four pillars, which is family and friends, connecting to your work, which includes meaning and purpose, spirituality, which includes something greater than, connecting to something greater than yourself. And then there's the natural world, which is all of the life on this planet. So those are the nine pillars, yourself.

sleep, nutrition, activity, play, and then family frames, work, spirituality, and the natural world. And when you have all of those pillars being tended to, and they're going to be out of balance in different ways at different times, but when you have an awareness of all of those, and you're heading in the direction of tending to all of those, that's when life really becomes wonderful.

Lauren Bernick (06:31.343)
you come to figure that out? Like these are the nine things you need. How did you figure that out?

Matthew Lederman (06:39.359)
Well, you know, one of the things I say to everybody is that I reserve the right to change my mind. This is based on what I know right now. So you know, a year from now, we might say, oh, we got we learn something else and we got to do things a little differently. But at this point, the culmination of all of our learnings and experience, this is what we found were the areas to focus on with patients within ourselves, within everybody around us. If this really captured.

and put that into some framework, because it's really just a framework. You don't have to rigidly follow these things. It's a map that will get you closer to Life is Wonderful when you tend to those nine pillars. And yeah.

Lisa (07:22.582)
Well, I mean, it's so powerful when you frame it that way, because this podcast is about aging well. How do we age well? And you've just touched on so many areas that help propel us as we age in a very positive way. And that when those things aren't tended to, in my opinion, so many of these things you mentioned,

or where there are weaknesses for a lot of people who are not aging well. They're not tending to many of these things, wouldn't you say?

Matthew Lederman (08:02.687)
Yeah, and to me, aging is living, right? We all are getting older every minute, every day. So it's, you're not living well if these pillars are out of balance in some way. And it's not that they have to be in balance all the time. It's that you have to be aware of them and tend to them. Like you don't even have to, in NBC and non-violent communication, we talk about how you don't have to have the needs even met to start feeling inner peace. You just have to be aware of them and connect to them.

Lisa (08:10.04)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (08:21.791)
Okay.

Lisa (08:30.192)
Mmm.

Matthew Lederman (08:30.999)
So to me, it's not that life has to have this all figured out and it's some destination that you get to. It's having an awareness and an intention to tend to them that makes a difference. So aging, yeah, to me it's living. Whether you have another year left or 50 years left, it's how do you wanna live that time that you do have left? And to me, when you tend to these pillars in this way, it makes that time more wonderful.

Lisa (08:41.336)
Mm.

Lauren Bernick (08:59.446)
Mm.

Lisa (09:00.01)
Yeah, self-awareness. I mean, Lauren and I talk about that a lot, like the difference between people who are really struggling and those who are able to be more vital in their later years. And I think that happens, unfortunately, for a lot of people when they get a really serious diagnosis. And wouldn't it be great if we could all have that self-awareness before we get to that point?

Matthew Lederman (09:29.899)
Yeah, I mean, whatever it takes for everybody, it's different wake up calls, right? But there's usually something that causes them to say, hey, the way I've been doing things, and that is not really working for me. Let's see if there's a more effective, less costly way of meeting my needs. And if we can find that we'll do it.

Lisa (09:30.571)
You know.

Lisa (09:34.654)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (09:39.8)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (09:46.126)
We are.

Lauren Bernick (09:51.123)
Yeah, like, no, go ahead.

Lisa (09:51.362)
Well, I have a question about that. Oh, go ahead, Lauren. Oh, well, my question is, because I know that another thing that you've got a lot of knowledge and energy around is polyvagal theory. And again, another thing that I learned from you that I notice in the media all the time is neuroplasticity and changing our neural pathways. And what I've been curious about recently is, say you're

60 or 70 or 80 and you decide you've had enough, you want to change, you want to dive into these nine pillars.

Is there a difference between in that ability to rewire those pathways at when you're 70 or 80 or 60 than when if you started sooner, would you say?

Matthew Lederman (10:48.507)
I think there's a difference in your confidence and your ability to do that, right? And some people, when they're younger, are very stuck and don't think that they can grow and change, right? There's fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets, right? So, but anybody can change, right? I mean, you can go and think about something, for example, going to another country where they drive on the opposite side of the road. You can choose to stay in your house and not drive.

Lisa (10:53.653)
Mmm.

Lisa (11:01.972)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (11:14.271)
or you can go out there and learn how to drive and it's gonna feel funny at first and you're gonna have to keep doing it and then eventually your brain is just gonna say, oh, this is how we drive now. So it's possible, you just have to believe you can do it, be motivated to do it, then go out and do it.

Lisa (11:22.338)
Uhhhhhh

Lisa (11:29.538)
Hmm.

Lauren Bernick (11:29.639)
Is that what polyvagal theory is? Can you give us a little background for those who don't know what it is?

Matthew Lederman (11:34.039)
Yeah, so polyvagal theory is a way of explaining how our bodies interact with our environment, right? So there's an autonomic nervous system. When people have usually heard of fight or flight response, the sympathetic drive, right? And there's parasympathetics, which is the other side of that, keeping – and it's this balance that's happening where you need to say, how dangerous is my environment? How much threat my in?

And based on that, I'm going to increase sympathetics, or if I'm pretty safe, I can increase parasympathetic tone. Right? And it's that balance that's always happening. And you're experiencing your environment, and at every minute, there's tons of bits of information coming in through all of your senses, through your thoughts, through your feelings, through your eyes, through your nose, through your mouth, right, through your ears. And your body is trying to take all that information in, and then quickly assess

Lisa (12:11.335)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (12:33.535)
how much sympathetic tone or can we turn on our safety system, which is the parasympathetics, based on that, it'll affect our health, right? So this is why it affects our health though. If I put a tiger in the room and your sympathetic's, your body says, oh my God, there's a tiger, we got to turn on sympathetics, fight or flee, right? Or if we really think we're in trouble, we might freeze and pass out and faint, right? But all of those are responses to danger or threat.

Part of that is an increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines at the cellular level, shifts in how the mitochondria interacts, shifts in how ATP in your body reacts, right? There's shifts in blood flow, there's shifts in hormones that are released. All of that is to prepare to fight the threat and to, you know, deal with tissue damage as a result of that threat to deal with certain types of infection, you know, bacteria infection from getting bit by the tiger. All of that is your body trying to prepare for that.

Lisa (13:19.618)
Thank you.

Matthew Lederman (13:34.183)
Now, once the tiger is gone, it says, hey, we can turn off all of our energy that's going in towards preparing for damage from the tiger. We can turn on anti-inflammatory cytokines. We can get rid of the adrenaline and cortisol. We can now shift to fight instead of fighting bacteria, our immune system is going to fight other things. For example, might be looking for cancer cells now more effectively, right? All of that shifts. We can now reproduce and we get this message to our gut.

that's coming and saying, hey, you can now digest your food again. The tiger's gone. Right? So that's what's happening. But what's going on, what people don't realize is that a physical threat, like a tiger and an emotional threat or a spiritual threat or a mental threat have the same impact on that physiology in your body. So if we are walking around every minute of every day,

Lisa (14:09.73)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (14:28.747)
thinking that there's a threat, experiencing threat in our emotions, right, through suppressed emotion or through spiritual, right, we lose all meaning and purpose, we don't know why we're getting up and running. All of that affects negative thought process. All of that affects your physiology as if there was a tiger in the room. So that's the challenge is when your tiger's gone, you turn off all that, you shift all that physiology towards safety physiology, and we're doing great.

Lisa (14:40.918)
Negative thought patterns. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (14:57.919)
But people right now are chronically in this fight physiology, this threat physiology, and with that comes these diseases as a result of that physiology being turned on when it shouldn't be. And what's more than that is that it's a muscle. So if we are constantly, it's almost like driving on the left side of the road all day, and I throw you in to driving on the right side of the road.

Your body's gonna say, whoa, this is weird. It's not gonna know how to do it. You're gonna bump into things. But after time of practice, you're gonna be able to do it. Similarly, turning on your safety physiology is a learned sort of muscle that we can grow. And if you're so busy living in sympathetic drive, fight or flight drive, you don't really get a chance to grow that other muscle. So it's like a guitar that's tuned too tight, right? It's this high frequency of threat.

We got to retune our guitar. And that's the other thing that's exciting is that you can retune your bodies to be much better at turning on the safety physiology and not activating the threat physiology unnecessarily.

Lauren Bernick (16:10.219)
How do you do that? How do you?

Matthew Lederman (16:12.343)
So for example, one of the most powerful ways, one of the most powerful ways to turn off threat physiology is through breath. So if you do a prolonged exhalation, that's why we created the Weebie Kong, because kids, when they're mobilized and jumping around or fighting or screaming, that's threat physiology, right? It's mixed in with play a lot of the time, but it's still that same mobilization that happens, even though it's mobilization in play.

Lisa (16:13.686)
The nine pillars. Seriously.

Matthew Lederman (16:40.531)
What happens is we got to get them to calm down, just so we got to get an adult to calm their bodies down and get, there's no tiger, right? Telling them there's no tiger. Okay, so I, yeah, so, yeah, I will, I will, I'll, so I will, I will, I will, let me, one second, so I will, this is the Weebycom device right now, but.

Lisa (16:48.002)
Describe the WeebieCom. Describe it to the audience. You have one? I want one so bad. I signed up.

Lauren Bernick (16:57.083)
I know where you can get one.

Matthew Lederman (17:07.411)
Real quick, the reason we wanna do the breath work to calm our bodies down is we wanna send signals back to the brain and the nervous system that we're safe. Telling yourself you're safe intellectually does not turn on or turn off physiology. So if I said to you, you know, least and learn there's a tiger in the room right now, your body's not gonna react like there's a tiger. But if I actually put a tiger in the room, you all know that feeling of like your stomach drops and you tense up.

Lisa (17:35.55)
Now Lauren and I would be like, oh, he's so cute. No, I'm like kidding. No, no, no. It's gotta be something scary. Like, like, oh, nevermind. A person, a mean person.

Matthew Lederman (17:38.463)
to seek a cutie. Ha ha ha. All right, we have to find maybe a mouse. Maybe I take a mouse or a snake or something.

Lauren Bernick (17:40.959)
I'm sorry.

No.

Lauren Bernick (17:47.622)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (17:47.999)
Nothing.

person, right. Right. So a person with a mask on and a gun in their hand, right, really big. There we go. That would do it. So we turn, that would turn on your, but if I told you to just think about it, that might not do it as much. Now I could probably do through mindful exercise, help actually make that mind, that threat start to come up, but it's actually, it's, it's work, right? It had, your body has to believe it's under threat. So similarly, telling yourself to calm down doesn't work. That's why we said with the kids, just telling kids to calm down doesn't do it.

Lisa (17:54.958)
There you go, that's fun.

Lauren Bernick (17:55.291)
Yes, that would do it.

Lisa (18:14.364)
Mm.

Matthew Lederman (18:21.483)
And we all know that as parents who have said, calm down, and then they don't listen, and then we yell or scream or threaten, right? So the Weebie Calm was to help people give them, take advantage of three calming pathways. One is the slow exhale. So this device will, is, create, right, right. It's a breathing tube that slows exhalation so that for you to blow out comfortably, you have to blow out slowly.

Lisa (18:36.542)
Which looks like a pipe a little bit, by the way, for our listeners. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (18:48.563)
And then at the same time, while you're blowing out, there's a ball in this indicator device that's held up. So when you blow out, you're holding the ball up and you're focusing your attention on keeping the ball up. So we'll tell kids based on your age to hold the ball that number of seconds until you're 10 years old. And then we have everybody hold for 10 seconds if you're above 10. And the third is there's white noise that helps with auditory regulation. Because we wanna try and come at all the senses. So prolonged exhalation, focused attention with your eyes, auditory regulation with the white noise.

And through those pathways, you can't, your body starts to get messages of, hey, we're okay, we're safe. And that regulates and calms the nervous system. So those are the three pathways. And you can see if I, if you hear, you can, I guess people can't see, but you can, you, right, you too can see the ball go up. And there's on our website, weveecom.com, you can see examples of it. There's actually a fourth pathway too. So I could tell you about that in a second.

Lauren Bernick (19:34.055)
Yeah, it's a podcast.

Lisa (19:44.718)
Thank you so much.

No, no, tell us about the fourth pathway.

Matthew Lederman (19:51.035)
So the fourth pathway, we have a, it's called co-regulation. And we have a bracelet that comes with the device, a larger one for the adult and a smaller one for the kids. And on there it says, we've been in this together. And the idea is that you have this on and that you agree to come together and help each other find more calm. So it's not a pacifier that you shove in your kid's mouth. It's not a punishment, right? It's a tool that helps you feel better.

Lisa (20:14.872)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (20:19.995)
Why wouldn't you want that? So let's work together as a team to help each other calm. So my kids and I had an agreement with them and I recommend all parents introduce it this way. Saying, hey, we both could use calm and sometimes you can tell when I'm tense before I can tell. So I'll say, hey, kids, if you notice I'm starting to get tense, can you please hold up the bracelet and say, hey, dad, would you enjoy, remember our agreement way back when, would you enjoy some breaths on the WeBe Calm? And that's how we introduce it to each other.

support each other. So that's co-regulation is coming and helping the child regulate through your voice and through your tone and through how you show up and that's we use other people to help us regulate. That's why it was so terrible during the pandemic. How did I freeze?

Lisa (20:50.662)
Yeah.

Lisa (20:54.114)
Mmm.

Lauren Bernick (20:58.9)
Yeah.

Lisa (21:00.156)
Uh-oh. Did Matt freeze? Matt froze.

Lauren Bernick (21:02.259)
frozen. But I like that. I like that, you know.

David (21:04.788)
Yeah, it looks like that.

Lisa (21:05.878)
Well, yeah, I think, but I was, I told Alona that this is gonna be a very powerful tool for people who want to quit smoking. I think, because I know a couple of people, I know one person who said they quit smoking by using a straw and someone else who was using breadsticks.

Lauren Bernick (21:18.625)
Mm.

Lisa (21:27.466)
And it made me think of WeebieCom because WeebieCom, because it helps calm the nervous system and you're taking those breaths. So it's satisfying that sort of thing you get maybe from smoking a cigarette. And I wanna step further to say, I think it's something that you could actually sell in dispensaries because a lot of people these days are eating gummies and drinking liquids instead of smoking because the smoking is hard on their lungs. So like you could have the WeebieCom, or just have it.

Lauren Bernick (21:55.879)
And smoke out of that? I'm joking. Right.

Lisa (21:57.534)
Yeah, well, no, you're just doing that instead of the smoking part of it. You know, like to me, it could be a really powerful tool for that.

Matthew Lederman (22:02.807)
taxi.

Matthew Lederman (22:06.571)
Well, actually, that's what originally got me thinking about the Weebie Calm was when we would tell patients to stop smoking. We would take away the tobacco smoke, but we would not replace and when you give them Nicorette gum or something, that gives them the nicotine back. But it doesn't do anything to have where they every hour they come and stand outside and take 20 slow exhalations as they blow the smoke out of their lungs. And they do it in community with other people on a smoke break.

Lisa (22:12.949)
Oh yeah.

Lisa (22:20.994)
I'm gonna go.

Lisa (22:32.243)
Right.

Lauren Bernick (22:33.245)
Interesting.

Matthew Lederman (22:33.595)
So you're taking away all of these things from somebody when you take away the cigarettes. And there were some really good things that came from the cigarette minus the smoke, right? The community, the breaks every hour, the slow, the 10 to 20 slow exhalations. So that's why we came up with the idea of, hey, can you imagine if, and I challenge people, I say, hey, it's great to use the WeBeCom when you're upset or dysregulated.

Lisa (22:37.92)
Okay.

Lisa (22:43.052)
Right.

Lisa (22:50.846)
Wow.

Matthew Lederman (23:00.011)
But it's even more powerful when I think of calming, remember I was talking about you have to give your body the messages of safety, right? To turn on that safety physiology. Think of those as nutrients, like you do food nutrients, but think of them as like emotional nutrients or safety nutrients. And right now we're bombarded with threat nutrients, right? It's almost like junk food, right? We wanna be bombarded with safety nutrients. So every hour I have one of these by my desk, I have one by my bed, I have one in my car.

Lisa (23:06.729)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (23:15.047)
Hmm.

Lisa (23:18.414)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (23:30.043)
in between every meeting, I'll do five exhalations. And by seeing this, it's a symbol of my intention. It reminds me to do it. And I start to feel calm just when I look at it after a while now, because when I get up before meetings, before meals, people say that when they use before meals, they align their behaviors with their intentions more. They become more intentional. And it's very quick, but by doing it every hour, you're training your body to feel safe and you're giving your body those safety nutrients.

Lisa (23:58.03)
Well, so much of what you're talking about, I mean, Lauren and I practice meditation and so much of what you're talking about is just becoming present enough to be able to recognize these things. And so, and I know and Lauren knows and you know intellectually that when we're in fight or flight or we're stressing out or something's going on that we know intellectually that if we take some deep breaths, we can calm ourselves. But most of the time, I'm so in flight that I don't even remind myself to do that.

Or if I do it, I do notice a huge difference. Don't you, Lauren? Like when in a situation, so having a physical reminder like that, I love that idea, like, oh, I can, you know, cause you know, someone else might grab for a cigarette or someone else might grab for a donut, right? But if you've got the WeebieCom, then that's a healthier option.

Lauren Bernick (24:28.543)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (24:45.979)
And I love that, you know, oh sorry, that it just, I want people to like really get that connection that you're inflaming your body when you're in that constant flight or fight mode or fight or flight. And that inflammation, you know, is the root of disease. And I love, yeah, and aging poorly, exactly.

Matthew Lederman (24:46.059)
Right, and, okay.

Lisa (24:56.653)
Right.

Lisa (25:01.166)
That's right.

Lisa (25:08.07)
and aging poorly. Well, cause yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, and why I asked Matt the question about, can we, you know, can we change this at any age? Is because so many of us live with that tiger in the room in our head all the time. And whether it's based on past trauma or poor relationships or whatever it is, and it's a really tough...

tough to get the tiger out of the room. So all these tools are really just powerful tools to help change that.

Matthew Lederman (25:48.019)
It's really a practice. And to me, it's a little bit different than meditation because meditation is so valuable. But a lot of people will say, I can't even sit still. I go nuts, I can't do it, right? And to me, it's like, if someone's really responding, like there's a tiger in the room, imagine there's a tiger in the room, and I said, why don't you sit and meditate? It's gonna be really hard, right? So to me, meditation's a practice, but there's also regulation.

Lisa (25:50.819)
Okay.

Matthew Lederman (26:15.511)
which is getting that body and now once you're practiced at meditation, sometimes that can actually help you regularly. But people who have not been practicing meditation will sometimes have a hard time starting the meditation practice because they're in that fight-flight physiology all the time. So if you can practice this, you can get, and I challenge people, I say, just like with the diet, I'll say, hey, do it for, you don't know how bad you feel until you go off of the American diet for a week or two.

Lisa (26:30.368)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (26:43.743)
And then you're saying, whoa, because you've been living that way. It's like the fish, you tell the fish, how does it feel to be in water? And they're like, I didn't know I was in water, right? So it's like, that's just how they are. So it's the same thing with this, where you don't realize how bad you feel when your nervous system is dysregulated chronically until you spend a week or two calming it down. And that's where I would, we ask people to try it for a week or two where you do it every hour, you have it between meetings when you wake up, when you go to bed.

Lisa (27:01.76)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (27:13.283)
use it before meals, just do it for a week. And then right in, we have a email address, com at webecom.com. And yeah, and I love to hear from people, like just try it for a week and notice the difference. Don't judge it without trying it. Try it and then evaluate and see how you feel. It's the same thing with the diet. Try it, jump in and then see how you feel.

Lisa (27:21.582)
We'll put a link.

Lisa (27:36.566)
Well, you know, with coaching clients, and I know Lauren does this with the people she helps as well. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, meditation is great and everything, but if you're not taking it into your day to day, like if you're not integrating it, then it's, you know, not really doing anything for you because you're just spending that 10 minutes or an hour and then you're not bringing the tools in. So the whole the whole practice is building the muscle. So you bring it into your day to day life. Right. So, but that's a really hard.

really hard to do with everything you've just said, it makes sense. And so I love the idea of a reminder too, like just having a physical reminder.

Matthew Lederman (28:16.519)
It's a reminder to have it there. Plus, when you just do the breaths, you don't have the other pathways of the focused attention, the auditory regulation. There's something about it, about the ritual I found for me, even though I could take breaths without this device, and sometimes I do, but there's something about having it there, seeing it, and then using it with all three pathways, saying I did five exhalations, and I'm good until my next meeting.

There's just something that it adds like a container a little bit that makes it more likely to do it. Because in the end, that's what it takes. You just have to do it. And imagine for people that are, as you get older, you asked if it's harder. To me, it's like, the longer you're doing something, it's like you turn it into this 405 highway. The neural pathway is like this 10 lanes of cars flying back and forth. It goes really fast. And what we're trying to do is create this new road.

Lisa (28:47.152)
Whoa.

Matthew Lederman (29:14.439)
and turn that into the 405. But the way to do that is you start with this dirt road and then by repetition of driving on that road over and over again, you start to build it out. And what you wanna do is you wanna decrease traffic on the old road and increase traffic on this new road. And that's what doing this exercise over and over again is going to do. So it's gonna feel harder at first and then it gets easier over time. And that to me is always a sign that it's a good habit to.

to do, right, it's a good strategy if it gets easier over time.

Lisa (29:44.074)
Yeah, it's like when you start eating more plant foods, over time you just learn to love the taste of them and you don't even like the flavor of the crap you ate before, right?

Matthew Lederman (29:54.035)
Right, and the shopping is easier.

Lauren Bernick (29:54.171)
And I love the way that... Oh, God.

Matthew Lederman (29:57.727)
Go ahead, Laurence. Sorry.

Lauren Bernick (29:59.163)
I was just going to say that I love the way when you're referring to the bracelet, like, I think this ties into the nonviolent communication, like instead of being like holding up your bracelet and shaking it and like calm down, remember, you know, like, which would defeat the purpose, which remember the agreement we made and do you think that you might want to take a few breaths? Would that feel good? And I love, I love that. And I've met your kids and I know that they've been spoken to kindly their whole lives. You can just tell.

Lisa (30:21.315)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (30:28.127)
They are lovely humans and not afraid to communicate with adults, which is one thing. You know, a lot of kids are really shy and your kids are, they have agency. They feel like, you know, they deserve to be heard and I love that. And so can you talk a little bit about the non-violent communication? I feel like I wish I would have done better with this as a parent. Like, you know, I definitely said.

terrible things like, shut the fuck up, are you kidding? But like with a little humor behind it, like they weren't scared of me or anything, but I wish I would have maybe not said stuff like that. Definitely not a tiger, but they're, you know, like shut up or, you know, that's ridiculous. Or, you know, I wish I wouldn't have said things like that, even though it was said with mild humor. So can you talk about that?

Lisa (31:00.346)
You weren't the tiger in the room. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (31:02.938)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (31:06.795)
What?

Lisa (31:14.414)
Well, we didn't have the tools.

Matthew Lederman (31:15.103)
Yeah, well, yeah, and I appreciate that because we teach and that's the other part of WeebieCom is a parenting, we coach parents and families, and we have a special type of, we call it Dear Weebie, like a blog that helps parents with a tough question you can write in, and here's the issue and how we would approach it with our parenting philosophy that we call collaborative non-permissive parenting.

Lauren Bernick (31:16.591)
No, right, we have the tools.

Matthew Lederman (31:41.695)
Right, so it's collaborative, we're working as a team together, everybody's needs matter, but it's non-permissive. Everybody's needs matter, meaning I'm not gonna proceed with a strategy that only meets your needs, it's gotta meet my needs too. Right, and that's the essence of everything that we do is around that collaboration and that non-permissive approach. So when we, and we, go ahead.

Lisa (31:43.969)
Mmm.

Lisa (31:51.785)
Mm.

Lauren Bernick (32:01.575)
And I think that would work with a partner too, right? Sorry to interrupt, but like that would work with like your spouse as well, right? Not just kids.

Matthew Lederman (32:11.499)
Exactly, it works very well with both kids and with adults. I mean, it's the same intention. Right, the idea is that we don't think of kids as less than adults, right? To me, they're all humans, they all have hearts, they all have the same universal needs, and what we treat kids a little bit differently than adults.

Lauren Bernick (32:19.423)
co-workers.

Matthew Lederman (32:38.887)
And that is the beginning of the ability to speak to them with less connection intention and to actually begin the path of violence, right? If we start to objectify people, we disconnect from their hearts and we dehumanize them in any way, that's when violence is not far behind, whether it's physical violence or verbal, emotional, spiritual violence.

Lisa (33:06.57)
You know, what I think is key though about your description is the non-permissive, because the misconception when people first hear about using NVC with your kids is that it's a permissive. So I love that because I think for me, I see a lot of my generation raising our kids in that way because we're trying to do better than our parents did. So we're sort of flipping to the opposite and that's not working either. So this collaborative.

approach is hugely empowering for the kids and supportive. And I do want to say that Judah, our son, who just turned 20, by the way, but at 19, and I did a session with Matt, and he still tells all his friends how helpful that was. And when they're having problems with their parents, he's like,

Can Matt talk to so-and-so and their mom? Because he just, just that one session, you know, he got so much out of it. And also when we did the workshop in Austin, we had a mom and her son actually, Matt worked with them one-on-one in the room. And it was incredible to watch this teenager who, you know, was there with his arms crossed and like, this is dumb to actually having this beautiful communication with his mother and the mother crying with,

Lauren Bernick (34:00.554)
Yeah.

Lisa (34:27.094)
from the connection that the two of them had together. So I've seen it in action and it's very, very powerful.

Lauren Bernick (34:33.675)
Can you give us like some examples or a couple of little tools that we could practice with our like I said, doesn't have to even be kids, spouse, coworkers, just can you give us some examples?

Matthew Lederman (34:45.939)
Yeah, so, and I'm glad you brought that up, Lisa, because it's the intention to connect with that other person, right? A lot of parents think, oh, my kid's not interested in our relationship. My teenager is so rebellious. But everybody, from an NBC perspective, everybody's just trying to meet needs and everybody values connection. And to be honest, with their parents,

They want to be, there's almost like this genetic drive to be seen by your parents. So they will give more chances to their parents than anybody else. So the parents think that they might be thinking you're feeling hopeless. Actually, if you show up differently and start to rebuild trust, you can almost always salvage the connection. And the kids, I've talked to many, many children, teenagers, and they all said, if my parents could talk to me this way, I would love to talk with them. So it's not a lack of desire.

In fact, they're longing for connection with their parents, but they will not sacrifice their needs that are so important, for example, that come up, autonomy, to be heard, to trust that their needs matter. All of those, if those aren't met in the relationship, they're going to avoid the relationship to preserve those needs being met. If they can't see a way to get those needs met in the relationship, they will choose, even though it's a cost and it's sad.

to not be in a relationship, right? So those are examples of how we approach NBC with NBC is say, what needs is my child trying to meet right now? What needs are coming up in me? And do I wanna connect about that versus do I just want them to do what I want? Because if I just focus on them doing what I want.

Lisa (36:12.514)
Hello.

Lisa (36:28.654)
So when your teenager is acting like a jerk, it's needs that aren't being met. But we get mad and we're like, why are you acting like a jerk? Instead of asking the question, what is my teenager? What need isn't being met? Instead of connecting with them and asking them. How would you do that?

Matthew Lederman (36:45.707)
Right, so there's a couple of steps. There's a couple of steps there. The first thing is, when I think my teenager is a jerk, I have work to do internally before I even open my mouth with my teenager. And this happens to this day. I had somebody that I had to talk to that would always tell a story when I ask a question. Not always, you know, I'd say eight times out of 10 would tell a story. It'd be 10 minutes before I got the answer to a question that I thought could be answered with a yes or no.

Lisa (36:57.303)
Mmm.

Oh, good.

Matthew Lederman (37:15.711)
And I said, uh-oh, I have an image in my head, we call them enemy images, where I think that he talks too much. As soon as I have that image, I have to pause. I say, we need to connect. But first, I can't connect with him if I have a thought that he talks too much. Even just thinking it affects my connection with the person. So what I do is I had to spend some time saying, why is he telling a story like that? Oh, he's really trying to help.

make sure he's understood and heard and be impactful and maybe be inspiring. Oh, okay, so he really wants to inspire us and he's just so excited to work with us and talk to us. I got it, that's what is good intention. So I gotta see their heart and their good intention. Once I see their good intention, then I can make sure they know I see their good intention so then they can hear my need that's not being met. But most people don't express their needs that aren't being met. So when a parent goes to a child and goes right to their need not being met,

Lisa (37:50.18)
Mmm.

Lisa (37:59.839)
Mmm.

Matthew Lederman (38:14.271)
The child is usually going to hear, you're to blame, and I want you to feel bad about yourself for not meeting my need. Do you see why that's not going to be connecting? So there's a couple of steps here that it might sound complicated, but in practice, it actually isn't. It's to say, okay, what's their good intention? Right? See that. It's not to try and suppress the fact that I thought my child is a jerk or being a jerk. It's to say, okay, what's the need behind that thought?

Lisa (38:21.1)
Mmm.

Matthew Lederman (38:42.747)
I really, my child is a jerk, my need might be, oh, they're feeling, I have a need for more respect and consideration. Okay, so when I need more respect and consideration, my body communicates that to me by saying my child's a jerk. Okay, I get it now. Now, when I tell somebody else about my child being a jerk, what's my need there? Oh, I need empathy. I need someone else to also feel the, help be with me around this pain, around my needs for respect and consideration not being met. Does that make sense?

Lisa (38:57.354)
Mm.

Matthew Lederman (39:12.479)
that I'm connecting to the needs behind the judgment. So I don't wanna suppress judgments. Those are not gonna go away from most people. But if I can take a minute to pause, connect to the needs underneath, that's when life, the connection starts to happen.

Lisa (39:13.224)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Bernick (39:14.184)
Yes.

Lisa (39:19.01)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (39:27.638)
So that's a muscle that you've developed through the practice of NBC.

Matthew Lederman (39:33.259)
That's the muscle I continue to train every day. In fact, just today I was listening to some recordings that are helping me continue. Because it's so ingrained around, right? It's like in the movies, right? How do all movies climax? The good guy beats or kills the bad guy, right? There's such a thing as a good guy, there's such a thing as a bad guy. There's no way we're gonna get to connection, right? In the news, right? There's either you like this candidate, you like that candidate.

Lisa (39:52.003)
Right.

Matthew Lederman (40:01.279)
these people are good, these people are bad, right? You cannot connect with that good or bad, right or wrong thinking. So to me, it's all about the connection, that's what NBC is about, and that I care more about creating a connection with you and trying to see what's in your heart and trying to express what's in my heart in a way that brings us closer together. And you can do that with children too.

Lisa (40:08.581)
And... Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (40:24.401)
So what's the next step? Like your kid's being a jerk, but you identify, you know, okay, that's the next step. I need some respect. My kid needs something. Then you try to identify what your kid needs and then what do you do?

Lisa (40:28.306)
Yes.

Matthew Lederman (40:40.447)
Right, so you try and identify what your kid needs. So for example, if you were, let's say you play the kid and I'm Lauren, right? And I'm now saying, oh, I have this thought that my kid is a jerk. I'm really needing, I think I'm needing more respect and consideration, or I need to trust that my needs matter to my kid. But I'm not sure what my kid is doing that's causing me to think that. So Lauren, can you tell me as your kid,

Lisa (40:40.991)
Oh

Matthew Lederman (41:09.715)
What did you do that made me think, that stimulated that thought in my head?

Lauren Bernick (41:14.615)
Oh, I rolled my eyes at you and slammed my door and said, you're ruining my life. Is that?

Matthew Lederman (41:19.903)
Perfect, there we go. So when a kid just stop at the rolling of the eyes, I tell my kids, when my kids roll my eyes, I say, oh, I saw that you rolled your eyes. So I'm assuming there's something, you're trying to tell me that there's something not working for you, but you're worried that if you speak up, it's gonna cause a fight or disconnection so that you're sort of sneaking it in with an eye roll. So maybe you don't have trust that we can talk about it.

Lauren Bernick (41:23.839)
That's never happened to me, by the way.

Lauren Bernick (41:43.263)
Hmm, love that.

Matthew Lederman (41:46.559)
But my belief is that there's something not working for you and I want you to hear that I care about that. So can you tell me back what you're hearing? Can you tell me about what you're hearing because I wanna make sure I'm being clear. And they're gonna say, what would you say as a kid? What did you hear me just say?

Lauren Bernick (41:52.299)
That's great.

Lauren Bernick (42:01.255)
Yeah, you're right. I rolled my eyes because I know you're going to, I don't know, go into some speech about, yeah, you're going to.

Matthew Lederman (42:10.635)
Tell me to do something I don't wanna do. Tell me to do something, or right, talk about something that I don't wanna talk about. Give me a speech. Right, so here's the other thing. In fact, I just brought this up with my daughter this morning on the way to school, right, to talk about something that she didn't want. And I said, you know, the other day, I was telling you about a situation with your friend and I was trying to work it out with you, but I got, there was a part of me that was worried that you were just listening to be polite because you didn't wanna hurt my feelings or tell me that you didn't really feel like talking about it anymore. Was there any part of you that felt pressure to talk even though you didn't want to?

Lauren Bernick (42:15.744)
I don't want to hear about or, right.

Matthew Lederman (42:40.863)
And she said, you know, dad, actually there was a little part. And I said, well, I'm so glad you told me now. And I would love it even more if you told me in the moment. And she said, dad, well, I'm worried about hurting your feelings. I said, well, that's great. I really appreciate that care. And I'd love to figure out a way that you can communicate when something's not working for you in a way that also meets your need for caring for me. Let's put our heads together around that. How does that feel? And she said, that feels really good, dad. So you see how in that little exchange, all the things that I was doing to build connection and trust with her.

Lisa (42:49.755)
Thank you.

Lauren Bernick (43:11.079)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Matthew Lederman (43:12.072)
And that's what can happen with your kids. You can say that to your kids. You can say, hey kid, I, oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Lisa (43:16.138)
Yeah, I mean, just, I was just gonna say with Judah, I think it was something as simple as, he doesn't respect me because he leaves the iced tea out on the counter and he doesn't put it back in the refrigerator. And I've asked him again and again and again, and it was so easy for Matt to be like, what need of mine wasn't being met, a need for cleanliness in the kitchen or whatever. And I don't remember what Judah's need was, but it was...

But his intention wasn't, what we got down to is his intention wasn't to be like, screw you, I'm going to leave the T out. That wasn't where his head was at all. And I think that's, I probably shouldn't have interrupted because you were probably getting there, but that, the example, yeah.

Matthew Lederman (44:00.887)
But that's what you were, that example, every judgment gives us clues into the needs. So they're just tragic expressions of unmet needs. So for example, you said my need was, you know, cleanliness in the kitchen. But really, when you heard your words that you're using, I asked him again and again, it was more for what I was hearing a need around what you were saying to really matter to him. Right? And when you were asking him to clean something up.

Lisa (44:07.056)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Lisa (44:13.719)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (44:24.09)
Mm, mm, right.

Matthew Lederman (44:26.115)
again and again and again and you don't see him doing it and you start to think it doesn't matter to him and then what gets you angry is the story in your head that he doesn't care about what I say it's not that what he's doing it's your story in your head and he wanted you to know that he does care right and that when you but there are other needs of his that were preventing him from putting it away in the time or in the way that you wanted so but what you needed before about addressing it wasn't about the iced tea

Lisa (44:36.502)
Yes, exactly, exactly.

Matthew Lederman (44:54.463)
It was about him hearing your need for mattering, but to hear it without hearing criticism or blame, for you to see his good intentions, that he wasn't this bad kid that doesn't care about your needs, which is your story. And he knows that, so that's why he gets defensive if he thinks that is your story. So to me, his need was...

Lisa (44:58.328)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (45:16.783)
was different, right? It was, it could have been a little bit more ease and flow. It could have been, you know, I just don't remember these things. And when, you know, when I put things away, mom, is when I see them. And then I put it away when I see it, or sometimes I see it and I don't even put it away. I'm okay with iced tea being on the counter, right? So now what do we do, mom, when I'm okay with iced tea being on the counter, and you don't like iced tea on the counter, can you first, before, instead of telling me that the right way to do it is to have iced tea back in the fridge,

Lisa (45:25.135)
That's what it was.

Lisa (45:33.734)
All right.

Matthew Lederman (45:46.731)
can you acknowledge that there's some people that iced tea on the counter is okay? So if he trusts that you care about his needs and you're trying to connect to him about his needs, and he's like, okay, so mom, thank you so much for seeing that iced tea on the counter is okay. I'm willing now that you don't think on this bad person and that you see my good intentions. I'm willing to consider ways of contributing to you to put the iced tea away, right? Because I know it makes your life more wonderful.

Lisa (46:12.404)
Oh

Matthew Lederman (46:14.815)
But I only want to do that if I'm doing that because I am giving it to you as a gift, not because I want you to not hate me, not punish me, or to love me more if I put it away. Right, not yell at you, right? Who wants to do something out of that energy? So the connection energy is to say, hey mom, what are ways that you can help me meet my need to contribute to you and put this iced tea away? And we came up with some strategies around that. But the joy, the love was in the connection around seeing his good intentions.

Lisa (46:14.955)
Mm.

Lisa (46:24.15)
Not yell at you, yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (46:44.779)
seeing his goodness and you trusting that he heard about your need to matter coming up.

Lisa (46:50.726)
Yeah, and my patterns of the way I was raised, like it's like, do as I say, not as I do. Children should be seen and not heard. It's like, you know, breaking those patterns and really, and realizing how much I do want to have connection with my son and I don't want that dynamic was really an incredible experience when we were with you, which leads me to say that you need to be at my house all the time.

Matthew Lederman (46:58.563)
I'm out.

Lauren Bernick (47:19.068)
Yeah, just move in.

Matthew Lederman (47:20.335)
Exactly. You know, it's funny, because here's what parents fight about the iced tea. He puts away the iced tea with anger and resentment. The iced tea is back in the fridge and you don't feel any better because your need wasn't getting the iced tea back in the fridge. That was a strategy. And your real need was to have a connection with him where you trusted that he cared about your needs. And when you see him not doing something that you've asked multiple times, you start to wonder if he cares.

Lisa (47:33.916)
right.

Lauren Bernick (47:34.474)
Yes.

Lisa (47:37.208)
Right.

Lisa (47:43.979)
Yeah.

Lisa (47:49.302)
Ho ho!

Matthew Lederman (47:49.427)
And that's where the foundation of a lot of the pain is in families is we start to lose trust that the other person cares and can see our goodness. Those are two big ones.

Lisa (47:57.054)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (47:59.143)
Yeah, and I think we've just talked so much about connection today. And I think that is like what all the pillars are important, obviously, from wellness to wonderful and WeHeal. Wellness to Wonderful is the book and WeHeal is the program. But that connection is so important in that, you know, if you don't have that connection,

with other people, you do age really poorly. That's probably one of the, I think, most of, you know, a key, and they say that, like, if you have a partner that you love, or if you have a tribe, you're a couple good friends that you live longer, you live healthier, you have less inflammation, you have less disease, I mean, it's so important. So, it is something that needs to be exercised, and I am gonna.

Lisa (48:30.99)
Hmm.

Lisa (48:47.664)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (48:52.979)
put this to work, like, because I have a need for my husband not to wipe his mouth on the dish towel, and he has a need to do that. And we're really going to have to, oh my god, we're really going to have to, I'm really going to have to, I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess I'm just going to have to be.

Lisa (48:54.402)
Yeah.

Lisa (49:00.812)
Wait, that happens at your house too?

Lisa (49:05.983)
I'm sorry.

Matthew Lederman (49:09.125)
That's going to have to be a whole other podcast, I think.

Lisa (49:14.062)
Well, I do want to say that when it comes to connection, I think one of the things that, you know, it's a little, it's easier for me and probably for a lot of people to recognize the need for connection among their tribe and with other people, it's a little harder to recognize that connection with the self. And where Matt, you said where it begins with the connection of the self. And I think that for me anyway, that's where the work really.

Matthew Lederman (49:33.483)
Yeah.

Lisa (49:42.326)
really is, where it really lives for me personally.

Matthew Lederman (49:45.843)
Right, to be able to know what's alive inside of you is so hard for people. And when I say alive, it's what are you feeling? What are you needing? So when you have it, we're taught to think in judgments, who's to blame, right? Who's the perpetrator? What do I need to do? What do I need to stop the other person from doing? That's how we're taught to think about. And we don't connect to our hearts. And it's very vulnerable, but it's very powerful.

And that ability to connect to your heart, there's data on this around the impact of connecting and not suppressing what you're feeling and what you're needing and how that affects your health but how it affects your joy in life, how that affects your relationships. And the good news is this can be taught, right? This is all, these are all skills that can be learned and practiced. But it really does start with, there's a lot of people start with NBC, non-violent communication about what do I say to the other person?

And I really want you to start shifting your intention. Why are you even talking? What's your need there?

Lisa (50:41.879)
Yeah.

Lisa (50:49.552)
Can you make this really clear that this is not selfish, that it's not reserved for certain people with certain lifestyles? This is something that I wish were taught in...

public school, these are tools that I wish, and then it could trickle up, right? And then leaders of nations would be able to connect instead of, you know, you're bad and I'm good, you know? But so how would you, I mean, frame that for us and for the inner city mom with five kids and three jobs and, you know, frame it so that it's not selfish.

Matthew Lederman (51:35.303)
Yeah, so taking care of yourself is essential. There's nothing, I mean, what does selfish mean? Selfish, I like to translate that into NBC language, would be I wanna make sure we care about your needs and my needs. We don't just care about your needs. But how can you care about someone else's needs and connect to somebody else if you're not clear what your needs are? If all you're thinking about is judgments and complaints.

Lisa (51:53.443)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Lederman (52:04.979)
you can't connect to somebody else in a way that's meaningful to them. Everybody that we teach non-bonding communication to, the intention, the energy around it, they feel wonderful. They love it. They may not know how to do it in their house. They may not know how to do it in their jobs. So to me, doing this work is the first step of doing something that everybody thinks is wonderful. Everybody says feels wonderful.

Lisa (52:28.89)
So the first step then for this any person is to just be able to take that moment to connect with what you're needing.

Matthew Lederman (52:39.531)
Right, to recognize that you have needs. So when, for example, we think of strategies as needs a lot of the time, right? So we'll say, I have a need for, you know, Judah to clean up the iced tea from the counter. Right, but you don't really have a need for that. That's a strategy to meet needs, right? You wanna have organization and cleanliness in the kitchen, and you want what you say to matter, and you want your agreement, you want integrity around agreements and things, reliability around things that you've said. Those are...

Right? He could, whether he cleans it up or he pays for someone else to clean it up or he says, Hey mom, every time I leave the ice tea out there and you clean up for me, I'd like to give you a 10 minute massage and talk to you about my day. You might say, you know what, that's pretty good deal. I like that. So it's not that you need the ice tea.

Lisa (53:27.662)
I think that's what I think that was the strategy we came up with.

Matthew Lederman (53:31.063)
I think that was actually. But just what I'm saying, like I like to come up with strategies that show, okay, I don't need him to put that away. That would be nice because it would meet this need, but there's other ways to meet my needs. And if I can find a way that meets my needs and cares about his needs, we're gonna be better off.

Lisa (53:42.676)
Yeah.

Lisa (53:47.927)
Mmm.

Matthew Lederman (53:49.267)
And if he thinks that all you care about is getting him to put that iced tea back in the fridge, you're further away than ever from that place where everybody's needs are cared about and met.

Lisa (54:00.03)
Yeah, well, and also doesn't meet his need for autonomy, but I'm telling him what to do, which is a big one with teenagers, right? Ha ha ha.

Lauren Bernick (54:00.136)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (54:04.751)
Exactly, exactly. That's a huge, huge one.

Lauren Bernick (54:06.216)
Yeah.

Lisa (54:09.29)
Yeah. Wow.

Lauren Bernick (54:10.259)
Well, let's switch gears a little bit, because we're just to be cognizant of time. So you came to the public by being in the documentary Forks Over Knives, which I think most people, a lot of people see that movie, and then they try to go plant-based. What do you think?

eating plant-based does for aging well.

Matthew Lederman (54:43.795)
think it's fantastic. I mean, your body, this is what I think people think there's something wrong with their body and they need to do things to fix it. I think of it as your body naturally wants to age well and we've been doing things to get in the way of it. So we ate food that we're not supposed to be eating. We weren't designed to eat and as a result it has an impact that makes us do things that for example we call not aging well.

Lisa (54:58.846)
Mm.

Matthew Lederman (55:10.539)
So I think if you're eating the way your body was designed to eat, you're moving the way your body was designed to move, you're playing the way your body was designed to play, you're thinking and talking and interacting with people in the way we were designed, our natural way, before we were educated to be more disconnecting ways of thinking. I think your body thrives in that environment. That's how our bodies were designed to thrive. Everything works.

when we stop doing things, they get in the way of our body's natural ability to work. So that's the way I like to think about it. Does that make sense?

Lauren Bernick (55:47.759)
Yeah. And what, for people who don't know, what are our bodies designed to eat?

Lisa (55:48.704)
Absolutely.

Matthew Lederman (55:54.863)
whole plant foods. So I think our body, we tell people fruits, vegetables, whole grains and starchy vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, and eat those. Make as much of your food come from those food groups or make dishes that use those food groups as ingredients and avoid things like processed foods, extracted

where you take like protein powders or oils or, you know, our added sweeteners and animal products, we were not designed, even though we have the ability to do things, doesn't mean we should do them, or that's what's in our best interest.

Lisa (56:35.046)
We're gonna have to have a part two, because I know that you need to go. But I do wanna say that go to weheal.com and also get the book, Wellness to Wonderful, because there's chapters on all of these pillars. And Dr. Letterman and Dr. Polde have really simplified it so that it's very easy to understand and very practical and very wonderful tool.

Lauren Bernick (57:06.636)
Yes, thank you so much.

David (57:07.432)
Do you have a hard stop here?

Matthew Lederman (57:11.739)
I have a client at 10 15. So 15 minutes, yeah.

David (57:14.484)
10, 15. Okay, great. Well, sorry to interrupt, but if you can stay on another few minutes, I'd like for you guys to discuss a couple of things. First of all, I love all the talk about connection that you've done. And I think it would be great if you could give listeners a sense of the stakes here. You spoke in Austin at the workshop.

about several, there's been many, many studies on rhesus monkeys, but in particular there's one with the cytokines that you kind of referenced earlier. Could you talk about that study and the impacts of isolation on monkeys and by extrapolation on humans, just so folks understand the physiological stakes? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to say that and then one of you can ask that. We'll figure out, we'll record one of you asking.

Lisa (58:07.006)
in 90 seconds.

David (58:13.416)
some setup for that after we lose Matt.

Matthew Lederman (58:16.983)
Okay, so it was an interesting study that looked at monkeys and when they isolated the monkey and they measured this activity of this type of white blood cell, they were sort of two different types, right? There's this warrior monocyte and then there's this sort of repair monocyte, right? And there are different balances based on

If they have to fight threat, fight infection, fight damage, you're gonna have more of these warrior monocytes. But they're sort of like the bull in the china shop and they wreak all sorts of havoc, but they're great at fighting threat. So you wanna have those, but only as much as you need to fight the threat. And then you go back into the repair monocytes, which are keeping our body sort of clean and tidy and fixing any problems. What they found was when you isolated the monkey,

You shifted and you created more of these warrior monocytes just from being isolated. And their ability to go back into the repair monocytes was limited, right? It was, was decreased. And that was just from isolation that you had to shift, right? So isolation being disconnected had this impact that made you pro-inflammatory increase these warrior fighting monocytes that are really not good for you to have, unless you're fighting a threat and then you turn them back off.

What was even more interesting was when you took another monkey, put it next to that monkey, and then you measured that connection just from having another monkey next to this one and the cage next to it. The monocytes went back towards having a balance of less warrior monocytes, more repair monocytes, and you could take better care of the body and not have to be in that threat physiology. Really powerful and amazing just from isolation. There's other studies that show that...

Lisa (01:00:03.214)
That's incredible.

Matthew Lederman (01:00:05.459)
Just your connection, for example, empathy, right? A doctor that's higher, got higher scores on being empathic with their patients, affected the health of the patients. So connection between the doctor and the patient affects the health of the patient. So for example, a doctor who had a high empathy score was, had patients that had 25% better.

LDL, which is the bad cholesterol, 29% better, hemoglobin A1Cs, right, diabetic markers, and compared to the similar patients that had doctors with low empathy scores. Another one that was interesting was that doctors, 20,000 diabetics, high empathy doctors, the patients that had high empathy doctors had 41% lower odds of what they call acute metabolic complications, which are basically bad things that happen as a result of diabetes, right?

It's really powerful that the doctor and their ability to be empathic and connected to the patient affected physical changes in the patient, even trust, having a high trust doctor. If that high trust doctor gave you a stimulus, a painful stimulus, and you compared it to a low trust doctor, your trust, which is your sense of safety with that doctor, but you use the same stimulus. The high trust doctor's stimulus was registered as less painful.

to the patient than a low trust doctor giving that same stimulus. And the high trust doctor, when they gave you that stimulus, the fMRI scans of the brain showed lit up less in the pain centers compared to the low trust doctors. Same stimulus, right? So your body's, that's the whole point that's really amazing is that your body's physiology shifts and your DNA and what's expressed from your genes, right?

All of that shifts based on how you perceive your environment. Right? So now our genes are not this fixed outcome. Genes are a menu from which life gets to choose from. Right. And how you show up in life affects what genes get turned on and off.

Lauren Bernick (01:02:17.971)
That's fascinating.

Lisa (01:02:18.206)
Wow. Yeah. The power of connection.

David (01:02:20.344)
Excellent. And just, yeah, well, so yes, Matt, the other thing that would be, I think, really helpful for the edit is just, you know, obviously you talked, you went through the nine pillars, but you know, Alona spoke a lot about that as well. I think the...

The stuff that gets me the most excited when hearing, like you speak is about connection and non-violent communication. So I wonder if you could just kind of set up the notion that all of this stuff is kind of, I don't wanna say useless, but at the core of it is connection, connection with the self and others, because that's the only way you're gonna be able to achieve any of these other, yeah.

Lisa (01:03:12.742)
even die it if you're not connected to the self. Yeah.

David (01:03:15.968)
So, so I, cause I've heard you say that kind of thing before, but just to set up a stake coming out of the pandemic, blah, blah. It couldn't be more important. That sort of thing.

Matthew Lederman (01:03:26.131)
So connection is the key connection to yourself connection to other people is what's going to allow you to achieve the behaviors that you want. Right. So coming out of the pandemic where we've been super isolated, super disconnected, we see other people as dangerous, right. They're going to infect us. We have to shift that there is such a harm to our physiology and to our ability to have our, our health, our healthy behaviors the desired healthy behaviors actually

become a reality, right? We can't do that if we're in threat physiology. We just can't successfully do that. So connection is the key, is one of the most powerful ways to get out of threat physiology and turn on the safety physiology. So whatever we can do to get you feeling connected, we should start with that. And everything else starts to fall in place. In fact, it's interesting, I'll say this, that this is, I find this really interesting. A lot of parents with kids,

focus on trying to change the child's behavior. We don't like that behavior, we gotta change it. What I found is that when a child is regulated, when their nervous system is in that safety physiology and not in threat, and when they're in a sense of connection, they naturally want to perform pro-social behaviors. So the behaviors you want automatically start to manifest when your body feels safe.

when your body is calm and regulated and when you're in a state of experience connection. So instead of trying to force the behaviors, focus on the regulation and the connection and the desired behaviors will come and follow.

Lisa (01:05:06.858)
Wonderful. We need to have another conversation with you soon.

Lauren Bernick (01:05:12.715)
Thanks for watching!

David (01:05:13.976)
That last thought about being regulated and safe leads to the performance of their behaviors is amazing. It's fascinating and I can think of real specific examples from the last even week that explain certain things.

Lisa (01:05:24.938)
Yeah.

Lisa (01:05:35.498)
We need you.

Matthew Lederman (01:05:35.791)
Yeah, I love it. And I get out of, just so you know, I get out of balance all the time. Like, it's not like I got this figured out. The difference is that I know how good it can feel and I know what it's like to get up when I'm off the path and I know how to get back on the path. Right, a lot of people that aware, it's not that I'm living in this Zen, life all by me and Alona's struggle, right? But to me, that's the other thing that's really comforting is to know that it's not about.

David (01:05:36.202)
Uh...

Lisa (01:05:54.027)
Hehehe

Matthew Lederman (01:06:03.915)
being on the path all the time and getting it right all the time. It's about being able to identify when you're off the path and knowing how to get back on it. And to me that it just makes it so much less heavy, right? And, and the focus, right? I know how to repair with my kids, for example, when I, when we get disconnected, I get upset, I'll lose my temper, but I know how to quickly repair and we have a lot of trust so that our repairs happen and are very effective. So it's just, it's just about building up this sort of savings account of

Lisa (01:06:14.379)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (01:06:34.383)
trust and connection and knowledge and muscle memory. And then life just becomes a lot easier. But I don't want people to think that you're ever gonna get to this place where it's just perfect and you don't have any problems and everybody's connected all the time. That's just not realistic.

Lisa (01:06:51.37)
That sounds like it's about intention and trust.

David (01:06:57.596)
That's great. This is my last thing and we'll let you go. But maybe to help kind of bring this back to the overarching theme of the series here is maybe you could say, and I think this is true, that one of the beautiful things about moving forward, aging, however you want to think about it, spending more time on the planet, is that your savings account that you just talked about, it grows.

you are more and more able to, you become a master or achieve some mastery of these tools that you're talking about. And so that alone kind of drives your, I don't know, your feelings about aging. Does that make sense? Can you help me out there? Well, in other words, like, sure. Okay.

Matthew Lederman (01:07:47.539)
No, can you say that again in a sentence or two?

Lisa (01:07:51.85)
We gotta let Matt go. He's got a client.

Matthew Lederman (01:07:54.807)
I'm okay. I'm okay. We can we can we try it. Just try it one more time

David (01:07:56.436)
Get, so something like, you know, as we talk about, you know, aging like a bad ass, one of the beautiful things about living longer is that that's more time that we can grow in all of these techniques and get closer to each other and ourselves and the people we love. Some, do you see what I'm?

Lisa (01:07:56.558)
Okay.

Lisa (01:08:07.086)
They're living longer.

Matthew Lederman (01:08:24.851)
So are you saying that the benefit of focusing on connection and health is that it makes aging more enjoyable and graceful?

David (01:08:33.695)
No, no, I'm not saying, I'm just, we can back up. Yes, thank you.

Lisa (01:08:39.122)
Let me reframe it. Matt, how old were you when you got into NBC?

Matthew Lederman (01:08:45.392)
I don't know, 2007.

Lisa (01:08:49.002)
Okay, so from 2007 to now, I mean, you've brought this whole new paradigm into your life as an older, as an adult. So I think what David's trying to get at is how to connect bringing these new paradigms or these new practices and these new things into your life and how that helps you to live a longer, happier, more fulfilled life or something like that. Is that right, David?

Matthew Lederman (01:09:15.751)
Right, right. So bringing these things, so bringing these things, so maybe like, is it sort of like, it's never too late type of thing? Like, like bringing these things into your life at any point, right, makes

Lisa (01:09:28.482)
listeners are coming to us to learn how to live the longest, most fulfilled and vital way they can. So offer it up like that. How this, everything you're talking about enables them to do that.

Matthew Lederman (01:09:44.575)
Right, because it's like, do you want to live longer or you just want it to feel like it? Right, like, it's like, you don't want it to feel like you're living longer because it's so miserable, right? It's just taking forever. So, right, you want to, to me it's about.

Lisa (01:09:50.175)
I'm sorry.

Matthew Lederman (01:10:02.751)
Yeah, I guess what's coming up for me is that.

this is the best way to age like a badass, right? This is, like, I can't think of another way I wanna go through the remaining years of my life other than optimizing connection, eating this way, interacting with people where I care about their needs and meeting their needs and my needs is the goal, right? Like that's what I want and that's what's gonna make life wonderful, whether I have a year left or 50 years left.

Lisa (01:10:31.194)
Hmm.

Matthew Lederman (01:10:37.239)
That's the goal.

Lisa (01:10:41.362)
And with that, Dr. Matthew Letterman, thank you.

David (01:10:43.072)
Yeah, that's, that's brilliant. Okay. Now that thank you for sticking on. We, that, um, those little really are going to do a lot, a lot for us. Um,

Lauren Bernick (01:10:47.499)
Thank you.

Lauren Bernick (01:10:53.331)
Oh, we need to remind him not to hang up, right?

Lisa (01:10:54.526)
But you've left me wanting more. What's that? Oh yeah. Okay.

David (01:10:58.084)
Lauren, you'll stay on and Matt can go.

Matthew Lederman (01:11:01.675)
Yeah, I love, I really like working with you guys and David and Lisa, I miss working with you. I forgot how much I enjoyed. I know, I know. You know, go ahead.

Lisa (01:11:09.058)
Oh my gosh, I miss you so much, Matt.

David (01:11:10.524)
know. Well,

Lauren Bernick (01:11:12.531)
I miss you too.

David (01:11:16.208)
Well, anytime, like if you ever want to just, I don't know, just get on and workshop something you're thinking about or just catch up socially or anything, yeah, we miss you too.

Lauren Bernick (01:11:16.571)
I just said I love you too.

Lisa (01:11:18.062)
You

Lisa (01:11:26.456)
I'm gonna go.

Matthew Lederman (01:11:29.295)
Oh, that'd be cool. You know, I really want to do a collaborative non-permissive parenting podcast. I think that would be very helpful for parents. I've been thinking about that.

Lisa (01:11:37.504)
Uh oh.

David (01:11:42.147)
Interesting.

Lauren Bernick (01:11:45.257)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (01:11:45.815)
I don't know if that's, but the whole idea to me, again, it's that whole thing. It's like the whole producing thing, right? Is so seeing.

Lisa (01:11:52.47)
So do you think you could have like, for instance, a mother and son can come on as your guests, or would it be like, and then you like have like.

Matthew Lederman (01:11:59.151)
Yeah, I would do both. I would do everything. I would wanna do some where it's sessions, I'd wanna do some where I'm talking to experts. There's some, you know, you could talk with teachers, right? But to me, it's all about spreading collaborative non-permissive intention. Because even as a couple, right? But I talk about as parenting, but even as a couple, right? You want...

David (01:12:00.964)
Hmm. Oh, you would do sessions.

Lisa (01:12:18.562)
Mmmm

David (01:12:20.808)
And by non-permissive... Go ahead.

Matthew Lederman (01:12:27.571)
You want to make, non-permissive to me is a way of saying my needs are going to be met too. Right. And I talked to so many couples who want come to me for parenting stuff, but actually the couple needs the work first. Right. And it's like, Hey, how are we going to make it so that both of your needs matter? You don't win if you get your needs met at the expense of your partners. You still don't win even though you're getting what you think you want. Right. Like how do we make sure, and then how do people, especially women, right? Like they have a hard time. They think.

Lisa (01:12:33.182)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (01:12:48.052)
Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (01:12:55.411)
A lot of women were educated to think that not meeting love means that you do whatever it takes even if it means sacrificing your needs. That's not love. That doesn't meet my need for love. How do we shift that? To me, that's the non-permissive. You can love and not permit your needs to go unmet at the same time. That to me is magic when couples figure that out, but it takes a little bit of shifting the paradigm. Anyway, that would be exciting for me. Maybe we...

Lisa (01:13:18.915)
Mmm.

Matthew Lederman (01:13:24.823)
talk about something like that or.

David (01:13:27.065)
Let's get an email going or a text and schedule a time to chat. That's a really very, very cool idea. Yeah.

Matthew Lederman (01:13:38.347)
Have you ever thought, David, because I really like talking to you and the way you think, not just producing, but actually being on it, like someone as, like let's say we did a podcast together, right, and you were actually the co-host. Like I think just the way you're so smart and eloquent, the way you think about things, right, like you could actually help also keep it grounded for the person in the audience, as well as connect to what I'm saying and sort of bridge all of that.

Lisa (01:13:38.763)
That's a great idea.

Matthew Lederman (01:14:07.287)
Would that be something you'd be interested in?

David (01:14:09.517)
Yeah, I would absolutely consider that. And so, yeah, let's talk later this week. Thank you.

Matthew Lederman (01:14:15.275)
Let's talk about that. That'd be cool. That'd be fun. Okay, thanks David. Lisa, Lauren. All right, love you all. Bye. We'll do, bye everybody.

Lisa (01:14:19.05)
you steal our producer. I'm only kidding. I love you, Matt. Big hug to you.

Lauren Bernick (01:14:21.267)
Yeah, don't steal our producer. Tell everybody hi.

David (01:14:27.684)
Bye, Matt. All right. Hey there.

Lauren Bernick (01:14:29.064)
Bye.

Lisa (01:14:33.106)
So good. David, I'm glad you chimed in because it's so easy to get lost, like it's so easy to sort of get lost and stuff and it was very helpful.

Lauren Bernick (01:14:35.387)
Yeah, that was good, David.

David (01:14:40.804)
Yeah, well, this is great. I mean, this is kind of what I was hoping would be the case. By doing it in Riverside and just being a, just listening from the beginning, I've made five or six pages of notes that will make the edit much easier. Like, I've got timestamps of when certain things are happening, so it's great. I forgot to ask Matt not to close his computer, but I doubt.

Lauren Bernick (01:15:09.543)
Yeah, that's what I was saying, that we need to add.

David (01:15:09.784)
I doubt he did. And it's not, yeah, it's going to be okay.

Lisa (01:15:14.446)
It's gonna be tough for people. Is there any way around that? Cause that's the instinct.

David (01:15:17.7)
It's, I know, it's, if they do, it'll finish uploading next time they open it. It's not, it doesn't delete it or anything.

Lisa (01:15:25.218)
I mean, the good news is though that we kept him on extra. So, right? Like in other words, we.

David (01:15:29.952)
Oh, um, yeah. Yes, I understand what you're saying. Um.

Lauren Bernick (01:15:36.127)
but we're still recording, isn't that like, don't you, what, explain it to us, what do we have to do? Just stay on after you stop recording?

David (01:15:46.152)
But, well, just, okay, like, why don't we do this just so we can know for sure. Why don't we, we're gonna leave, we're gonna all leave this meeting and read and join up. Actually, no, we're not gonna leave this meeting. Because I need a couple of things for you to, I need for you to say a couple of things. Maybe just one thing, let me see here.

Lisa (01:15:53.41)
Sing a song together at the end.

David (01:16:16.88)
Okay, Lauren, can you just, it seems a little weird, but I just want you to ask the question, how do you do that? And then silence, just.

Lauren Bernick (01:16:31.787)
How do you do that?

David (01:16:34.864)
Excellent. Okay. I think that might be it.

David (01:16:42.548)
Uh...

David (01:16:49.508)
Yeah, okay, that's good. So now what we're gonna do is leave this meeting and meet back up in Zoom. Just write, and I'll see you there.

Lauren Bernick (01:17:00.107)
The same link that we used before? What is it?

Lisa (01:17:02.763)
Can you see this?

David (01:17:06.974)
Ha ha!

Lauren Bernick (01:17:07.967)
Hahaha

David (01:17:10.36)
That's fantastic. Okay, I'll see you in a second.

Lisa (01:17:11.701)
I clicked that from the New Yorker. All right.

Lauren Bernick (01:17:12.365)
That's pretty funny.