Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, this is the podcast for you. Today, I have the privilege of being joined by Dr. Jackie Lau based in Hong Kong at the moment. She is a neuroscientist, a strategic interventionist. She's a spirituality and relationship coach.
00:25
Before I go any further, please help me welcome Dr. Jackie. Hi. Hi, thank you, Roberta. I'm very happy and honored to be here chatting with you today. I'm so happy that you are here. Give us a bit of your background. Well, I'm a neuroscientist. I have a background in looking at the reward and reinforcement system in the brain, how I did my graduate study. I worked in a neuroscience lab that worked in obesity originally.
00:55
And now I moved to dementia and neurodegenerative diseases, mainly dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So what I do is actually looking at the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the genetic causes as well as the environmental causes for dementia. So that's the medical researcher side of me. Other than that, I'm a Tony Robbins trained strategic interventionist.
01:20
And I'm also a meditation teacher, a spirituality coach and relationship coach. When you're stressed, for example, what do you do? Take deep breaths, I sit down. There are moments when I allow myself to cry if I feel like it's too much, even for five minutes. As I get older, I find that it's so much better for me to realize if I cannot do anything about it right now, I shouldn't obsess over it because I'm just gonna feel worse. So there's an evolution to the way you dealt with stress.
01:49
So you peer over it, you experiment with it, and you come up with the way that works now. Yes. Oh, I used to eat a bowl of ice cream before. But carry on. Yeah. So in the context of ice cream, or when we resort to food for stress reduction, we're associating food to happiness, right? When your brain goes to the same thing over and over again, you associate that item to that emotion.
02:19
So for example, if I'm stressed and every time I'm stressed, I go to ice cream and soon enough, I don't have to be stressed. When I look at ice cream, I will feel better because my brain has a reward and reinforcement system telling me now I choose to associate pleasantness and relaxation to this item. That's neuroassociation. And the brain works in synapses, right? Neurons and neurons communicate through little gaps called synapses.
02:46
The more times we go to the same thing, the stronger the synaptic connection becomes. So it becomes hot wire next time when I'm hungry or when I'm stressed, I go to food. So that's the reward and reinforcement system. So in coaching, how do we use that? If somebody who's obese or who has an eating disorder, who has addiction to some form of food comes to me, how do I help this person?
03:13
I try to introduce a different item that's coexisting to the food item. For example, when this person tells me, I'm so stressed, and then their brain automatically has ice cream. Yes. At that moment, I interrupt them. I was like, Oh, do you like reading? They're like, Oh, why are you asking me about reading? At that moment, I actually introduced concept of reading to them subconsciously. And their subconscious mind next time when they feel the emotion of stress, they actually think of not just ice cream, but also reading.
03:41
Now they have two options rather than one to relieve their stress level. The reward changes but your brain still wants the reward or wants the way to deal with the stress. Exactly because we always go for what we feel pleasant with. We try to avoid pain so whatever we choose that will be the reward we associate the feeling of pleasantness with. And that circuit in our brain gets reinforced and strengthened.
04:10
Well, it's important for us to be careful with what we're thinking every day because if we're thinking about the government or haven't picked my tax or all the things we associate stress with, then it becomes stronger and stronger in the loop of repetition. So you say you're working on Alzheimer's and dementia research. We've always associated those diseases with people who are much older. Is that still the case? In America, it used to be one in six. Now, I believe it could be one in four.
04:38
about the age of 65 have dementia, some form of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. So it is much more prevalent in older people. At the same time, there's something called familial Alzheimer's disease or early stage that's genetic. If there's a family member that has a mutation in a certain gene or called APPPS1 gene, then you might have higher risk of developing Alzheimer's or dementia.
05:05
early age is usually genet because it's usually in older people. Right. There are certain pathophysiological changes in the body. It could happen 20 years before the symptoms of Alzheimer's happen. A beta protein in the brain, this can start accumulating in your brain 20 years before the symptoms of dementia appear. For the cases where you develop that as we go through degeneration in the nervous system,
05:34
Those ones, they're actually due to aging, obviously. Right. We can actually prevent that. There's a TED talk, they talked about how we can deal with it, how we can prevent it early, is to increase the synapses in our brain. So as we age, the synapses in our brain start deteriorating. A lot of people think it's irreversible, but actually, new research shows that it can actually be regenerated.
06:00
Learn something new if we don't go into that autopilot so often. We don't go to the same way of thinking. We don't drive the same way to work. We don't do things all the time the same way. We can actually train our brain to build new neurons and build new synapses. Typical example would be to learn a new language. That is a very beneficial activity for people who have a family history and try to prevent that from happening. Do activities that are not on autopilot
06:30
brain stays active. Exactly. And train our brain to create new wiring. What made you decide to become a strategic interventionist? All of us coaches, we came onto this path not by choice, it's really by chance. The role calls for us, not that we call for the role. I went to Australia very young when I was 18. Sometimes I didn't feel supported, because if your family's around you, the people who are supposed to care about you, they're there.
07:00
When I was in Australia, I had a lot of really great friends. But sometimes when I'm sick or something, I feel like, okay, I'm at home alone and I have to cook for myself. And I really realized care is something we earn from people. Nobody's supposed to care about you. You have to care about people first. So build that social network of care together.
07:20
When I realized that I wanted to go to an environment where I feel really supported by a lot of people. So I went to a Tony Robbins event. Good choice. Yeah. Ecstatic moment, right? And after that, I was introduced to so many concepts, ideas, ways to look at human behavior that I didn't think was possible. And after that, I picked up all Tony Robbins books.
07:44
programs, all the materials I could be exposed to, to improve myself. And I built a Facebook group just to share this knowledge. I started talking to a few of the people in the group. They found a lot of value talking to me and why didn't I become a professional coach? And that's when I started doing the subterritorial program and go to all these trainings. And, and of course, coaching is a live experience. You can't just study it, right?
08:10
Yeah, exactly. So I started talking to a lot of people just randomly and I did some voluntary work just to talk to different people who obviously are going through some hardship. I worked in a refugee center and I talked to a lot of refugees in Australia and I learned so many things from them. At that time, I realized this is my mission in life, reduce some suffering for a few people. That was 2014. I've been doing that ever since.
08:39
So you're a strategic interventionist, meaning you step in and coach people when they go through hardships? Strategic interventionist is just a fancy term for the school intervention that combines modern psychology, hypnosis, NLP, therapy, a lot of different strategies together to elevate. It's almost like a high-level subconscious mind intervention.
09:05
Yes, because that's where everything lies. We think we make choices every day, but we don't. It's the subconscious mind that does. Exactly. Sometimes it's always good to communicate with the subconscious. Talking about our needs to ourselves all the time would be helpful. Like, oh, I'm very mad today at my boss. And sometimes I would ask myself, why am I so mad or frustrated? Is that anxiety or anger or I feel misunderstood? What need am I trying to get from?
09:34
being mad. Can you relate to that Robert? Yeah, sometimes they call it a payoff. What is it feeding in you? What do you feel like you get out of giving in to being mad at that moment? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. Because I didn't want to feel hopeless or helpless, therefore I choose anger. The one thing I've always been curious about when it comes to the subconscious mind is
09:57
How do I use it for my benefit? Now that I understand it does things on autopilot based on what I've fed it in the past, how do I feed it differently so that it autopilots me to where I wanna go? That's a really great question. Let me ask you, Roberta. At this moment, I know it's early in Chicago. For the rest of the day, if you have an intention, what are the three feelings you want to feel today? By the end of today, I want to have felt I was pro-
10:26
productive, I had a happy experience. I want to feel like I contributed something to society somehow. That's great. So you want to feel productive, happiness and contribution. So we're having this chat early in the morning, you have an idea or an intention how you want to feel for the rest of the day. Actually, that's in your subconscious. You don't know that we actually set an intention the moment we wake up in the morning.
10:55
We have an intention to feel these three things, but you only verbalize it when I asked you. But you actually already have that at the back of your mind. That's your subconscious. And as we go on with the day, we start putting things in baskets. So you want to feel productive, happiness, contribution. Anything that is coming into our awareness, subconsciously, we put that into the basket of whether this thing is conducive to the three things I want to feel.
11:22
If somebody comes to you and started venting about their boyfriend or girlfriend, you feel very enthusiastic about helping. That will give you the feeling of productivity. Or you're like, oh my God, I'm trying to get my paperwork done. I wasted an hour on the phone with you. Come on. Already you're like, oh, that does not come. It's improtetive at all. You're like, you're in my way to feeling the things I want to. And we start judging everything that comes into our awareness, right?
11:48
We all do that. So it really depends on what does beneficial mean to you. If somebody calls you spontaneously, interrupting your schedule for the day, do we still consider that productive? That's your choice, right? Because you can choose however you want to see that. So in your subconscious, you have a set intention all the time. And subconsciously, we're judging everything as fitting or not fitting to what we consider as beneficial.
12:16
So to use the subconscious to your benefits is to examine that. How do we choose to label things as conducive or not conducive to how I want to feel? Aha! So it's up to us. Everything comes down to how we perceive what happens and the meaning we put into it. Exactly. All of us see things as having a fixed feeling. If you win the lottery, of course you got to be happy. But actually... Please!
12:45
Yeah, yes, right? But actually, the same thing can mean different things to different people. I am a very introverted person, actually. And my whole life, I struggled to be very outspoken, be very open. Sometimes when I see people who are very good at talking, engaging people in a conversation, I'm like, wow, how can I become that? Actually, when I talk to somebody like that, they're like, I struggle every day with being unfiltered. I offend so many people.
13:15
I wish I could be more introverted. Just an example, right? The same thing. While you are busy admiring them for being unfiltered. Yeah. Exactly. So the same thing that could be a dread to some people could be a blessing to other people. That's why you and I can have the exact same experience. We come out looking at it differently. You think it was a happy experience. I think I don't want to go through that again.
13:41
Exact same thing. Nothing has any meaning except for the meaning you give it. That's right. So now the spirituality and relationship coaching, how did you move from science to that? A lot of people ask me this. Actually, spirituality is such a deep and profound kind of system, right? It's not a belief. It is really just honoring our being. To think of everything as one is, for example,
14:10
A lot of people have this preconception of what spirituality or meditation or mindfulness is about. According to the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, there's a course called the Mystifying Mindfulness. There are a few figures that represent the ordinary stereotypes for spirituality or mindfulness, including the monk, the scientist, a zombie, a ninja, just to name a few. What does that mean is that...
14:36
A lot of people, when they see mindfulness, they're like, oh, people who practice mindfulness, they must be like a Buddhist monk. They have an alternative sense of the world. They have a very disciplinary lifestyle. They control their desire and they wash their mind. So that's the monk. The other one is the ninja. The ninja has a very strict sense of service. They sacrifice themselves in order to have a very disciplinary approach to the way they carry themselves.
15:05
They have a set of very impressive skills, just a very powerful warrior type figure. The third would be a zombie, has a slightly negative connotation. People who practice mindfulness, they're like zombies. They numb themselves to not feel anything. They let go of everything so they empty themselves. They blindly follow. It's almost like a blind religion kind of lifestyle. And the scientists. People who practice mindfulness, they care about therapeutics.
15:34
They have a creative approach, a new age kind of lifestyle, a new age kind of approach to look at the mind. They look at people's aura as a vibrational energy field, which can be explained by quantum physics. So give you an idea of the current preconception or misconception on spirituality. So those four figures, they represent current preconception.
16:03
of spirituality or what mindfulness is about. Why did I talk about these things? Because I want to introduce that mindfulness is actually not such a esoteric or mysterious kind of thing. It is actually a very practical way to honor our being. The reason why I got into it is because when I practiced a lot of the strategic intervention, I found myself very judgmental. Almost like when I see somebody...
16:31
I immediately identify certain traits. Like if they tell me, oh, I can't get up five in the morning to run. And I would just label that, oh, that's your limiting belief. We love talking about limiting beliefs these days, right? Or mindset. I remember I was talking to someone. They were trying to sell me something. And I felt like I didn't need it. No, it's your mindset. Change your mindset. I'm like, oh, hold on a second. Everybody throws this mindset word just to manipulate these days. What is going on?
17:00
As soon as somebody doesn't do what you like, you throw the mindset word on them. Yeah, sorry, carry on. Yeah, so a lot of words nowadays become such a thing in itself. Mindset or limiting beliefs. And the reason why we say that's a limiting belief, obviously, underline the label is rejection, right? You never hear somebody say, that's a limiting belief. That's really great. True. We try to label something in order to get rid of it.
17:29
But can we embrace that? If that's a limiting belief, then what? Because we're judging it to start with. We call somebody out of their limiting belief because we're judging them. That's right. And then I realized, oh my God, I'm so judgy. And then what is that in me that has the need to label people all day long? It's because I took myself as a role rather than a human. My role as a coach is to help people improve.
17:56
And I started seeing my own self imposing my belief system on other people. And I was like, that's no good. It doesn't feel gentle to life. And that's how I started meditation. And I started to observe myself, observe my own need, and take responsibility to everything I see you, honoring my own being. So that's spirituality. Basically, just to honor the spirit within all of us. Because we're not just an accumulation of the mind and the body.
18:25
We also have a spirit which is immortal and infinite. Does that make sense? It does, yes. Perfectly, yes. We are not even aware that we're judging other people when we do it because the meaning that we put into how they behave and what they say, even when we're coaching them, even us as coaches, we're coaches. Yeah, exactly. So I'd introduce the idea of the monk and the scientist and the ninja and the zombie.
18:52
through your podcast to dissolve this preconception of what mindfulness or spirituality is about. It is not something that only certain people can practice. Even a five-year-old, you can just, you want to sit there and feel how you feel today, communicate with the body, communicate with the mind, and get to know ourselves deeper. Understand why you feel the way you do right now. Exactly. I remember a podcast by a spiritual teacher called Michael Stone.
19:21
There's a practice that I really love. He said, next time when you go to the store, look at the things you're about to buy, knowing that you can actually afford it easily, but withhold yourself from buying it, just to stand there for five minutes and observe that feeling of the desire. How does desire feel like? Do I feel it in my chest? Do I feel it in my stomach? Do I feel tension anywhere? Just observe the feeling of wanting something. Very few of us do that. The feeling of wanting.
19:51
So that is a really great practice. So then how did you tie in the relationship coaching part? Because it sounds to me like mindfulness and spirituality is one thing. How did you then bring in the relationship coaching? Relationship is not just with other people, it's with ourselves as well. There's a Chinese guy called Lao Tzu, he is a philosopher and the Chinese proverb goes like, if there is peace in the nation, there must be peace in the home.
20:19
If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart. Everything that we use to relate to the world, the way we relate to our surroundings is really based on our relationship with ourselves. So relationships with other people ultimately depend on the relationship with ourselves. Right. So for example, husband and wife, and the husband comes home, he had a bad day at work. When he gets home, he didn't want to take it out on the wife.
20:48
and he thought he was separating the two. So he started to repress and suppress his feelings. But the whole time he's thinking, my boss told me zero progress. And then while I comes to him, how's your day? And he's like, yeah, good. And the wife can kind of tell some things up. The husband thinks I am such a good husband, I'm not dumping stuff on my wife. And he thought that's doing the relationship good.
21:11
But actually, whatever we suppress within ourselves, the feelings come out in other forms, like mood swing, disconnection of other people, other forms that other people can sense. So spirituality is really to understand, okay, let me observe my feelings. I am frustrated with my boss because I felt misunderstood. Why do I feel misunderstood? What need was it met today? Was it my need for significance?
21:40
my need for contribution, my need for certainty with my employment. Okay, these three needs, why do I have an illusion that my boss is responsible for my needs? I already give myself these needs because I am whole and enough. Then we no longer resort to the external circumstances to fulfill our needs. If we go back to the wife from this mindset,
22:07
We actually can communicate after processing our emotions to the wife. We can communicate and share then say, oh, today I had a bad day at work. Such and such happened, but I already thought about it. It was my own sense of insecurity. So I just want to share with you. Then the wife, she was like, oh, you're actually communicating with me. I don't feel like you're dumping stuff on me that you have taken responsibility for your feelings and you're just sharing with me.
22:35
and it becomes a very harmonious interaction. Because he took the time to understand himself first. So spirituality comes in when we realize our being is not defined by our function. And that's why when you introduce yourself, we always say, Hi, I'm Roberta, I'm a podcast host. We don't know how to just be, we must always attach what we do to that. Exactly. It's like me, I'm a neuroscientist.
23:04
strategic interventionist, all these things. And for me, it is not my identity. It is just some of the things that I spend some of my time doing. It's like I cook sometimes, I play the guitar sometimes, I dance sometimes, I coach people sometimes. So the role itself is just some of the things that I engage in. Not what defines you. Yes.
23:29
It can be just something we enjoy doing without being attached or identified with. If one day you're not a podcast host, if one day I'm not a neuroscientist, we start to be really confused. I was like, oh my God, who am I? That's why people go through identity crisis. Yeah, because you attach that to who we are instead of just being and knowing being is enough. Yes. Did you grow up in South Africa? Yes. From my very ignorant and humble understanding.
23:58
in a very spiritual place. So you share with me some of the idea about humanity. Yes, so I come from the Zulu tribe. South Africa has nine African tribes. I don't know if you've heard of King Shaka Zulu. When you hear the word Ubuntu, I know it's now become a global phenomenon, but when you hear the word Ubuntu, that's a Zulu word meaning humanity. My culture is founded upon the principle of I am because you are.
24:27
If I hurt you, I'm hurting myself. If I do something kind for you, I'm being kind to myself. I don't see you as separate from me. Back in ancient Zoro culture, there was no crime. We don't even have terminology for step-parent or half sibling or half that. Everybody's family. That's really beautiful. That reminds me of Australian Aboriginal people. They don't have concept of possession.
24:55
Everything is shared among everyone. All resources belong to everybody together. They don't have an idea of a bank account where this money belongs to me only. The land belongs to everybody. We belong to the land. All that we gather belong to everybody. There's no disconnect. Exactly. Yeah. So when you were talking about the spirituality part and how everything is interconnected, that's what resonated with me.
25:21
That's really great. I think the sense of separation is an illusion because science already looked at the electromagnetic and vibrational field of everybody. Dr. Joe Dispenza talked about my favorite. Yeah, your favorite. I love him. Yes. Bring high coherence. Yes.
25:51
We're all vibration and we're all emanating vibrational particles all around us all the time, up to like 1.5 meters, right? So we're actually sharing emotion to a person on a train that we don't know. We're actually affected, we're ripple to everybody. Literally, we are all one. We're all connected. We can tap into that and be cognizant of that knowledge all the time. We'll probably make very different choices in how we treat people especially. Exactly.
26:20
When we bring that into a relationship, if somebody comes to you, oh, I had a fight with my husband, I'm so angry. I would introduce the idea. What if there is anger between you, but nobody's angry? No, because I am angry, he's so angry. Then we're sharing the feeling together because it's inevitable, we're always sharing. So instead of blaming somebody to be showing certain things we don't like, oh, he's so angry at me.
26:48
And I'm like, oh, okay, why don't you share that together? There is anger between you. How do you want to resolve? This has been so informative, Jackie, and so much that we unpacked today. But I wanna thank you so much for your time. And before you go, please tell us all your social media handles so people know where to find you. Yes, thank you so much, Roberta. It has been a long time coming. Finally, we're chatting today. I'm so glad. It's been delightful. Just come visit my email, Dr. Jackie Lau Coaching.
27:17
So drjlaucocing at gmail.com. Find me on my website, Dr. Jackie Lau coaching. I'm not big on Instagram, I'm old school. So Facebook Dr. Jackie Lau coaching. I'll be very happy and honored to connect with you. Thank you so much Dr. Jackie Lau, the neuroscientist, strategic interventionist and the spirituality and relationship.
27:44
Coach, thank you for being with us today. Thank you so much Roberta.