Ronnie Landis: Welcome to the holistic health and human potential podcast.

I am your host, Ronnie Landis. I’m an international speaker, author of multiple books, an integrative nutritionist, Transformation and embodiment coach, and simply a man who has devoted most of my life to the study, application, and integration of human potential. And it is my biggest inspiration to bring you weekly episodes that will expand your mind, challenge your paradigm, deepen your heart, and help you to embody the greatest version of yourself.

As I believe you are meant to do something incredible with your life in this podcast. The podcast exists simply to support you on that journey.

Greetings everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Holistic Human Optimization Show. I’m your host, Ronnie Landis, as always. And I am beyond excited for today’s interview with Mr. Dr. Dan Angle. And this is an individual that I have respected and really looked up to in the holistic healing world. For a number of years.

I actually had him on about two or two and a half years ago, um, when I originally started this podcast and that was a 90 minute interview that is definitely worth checking out. If you have not heard that episode, we dove into a lot of different territory. And went really deep because Dr. Dan goes very deep, which is one of the reasons I really love listening to him and being able to have conversations, um, that go into the depth of many different topics, both psychologically, um, emotionally, spiritually, and Physically into different, different aspects of the healing journey.

Um, and that’s exactly what we’re going to dive into today. So Dr. Dan, thank you so much for coming onto the show and joining me. We have a number of topics that I want to dive right in with you. But before, uh, before we get into it, I’d like to just kind of like give everybody a little bit of a. A rundown of your background.

I know you have, I’ve, I’ve heard your story before you shared it with me and it’s, it’s a deep story and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of bullet points, but maybe just in brief if you can share with people a little bit about your professional background and also what was like the impetus for you to get into the particular field of, of healing and health that you’re focused on now.

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, great questions. Um, well, I went to college to play soccer, didn’t really have much of a plan after that. And halfway through my degree, my advisor asked me what I wanted to do my chemistry degree. And I said, you know, I don’t really know is the only thing I really liked in high school. And he gave me some options, pharmacy, um, doing a PhD research track.

Neither of those sound very appealing or medicine. 

I was 

like, huh, well, great. The only experience I have with medicine is seeing the ER every time I go in with a broken something or other. And, um, but I remember having a fondness for that assessment and really finding it cool that I could go in kind of broken and bruised and come out.

You know, with some kind of like fix, so to speak, particularly like, you know, a new, a new cast and you brace a new like pharmaceutical that I had, you know, anti inflammatory pain relief medication. It’s like you go in, there’s an assessment. treatment and you’re out. And I was like, Hmm, I kind of like the hands on approach to that.

So, uh, started studying a lot of medicine, apply for medical school, went into medicine thinking I was going to do surgery or, uh, emergency medical care. And two weeks before, uh, medical school, I broke my neck and that was a great re trajectory. Cause prior to that, I was super gunner type a, uh, 4. 0 captain.

The team was just constantly on fire for perfection and wearing a halo screwed into my skull for the first three months of medical school finally slowed me down. And I was like, Hmm, well, maybe there’s more to this than just keeping my foot jammed on the accelerator and. And, and not really enjoying life much.

So it put me into this reflective phase, got into psychiatry and neurology. And, um, really just turned my whole approach to life around. I realized that I was really living up to other people’s expectations. And, um, I was curious to know more about the mind and the nature of the mind. And I’d always ask those questions, but.

I didn’t really think so much about making a profession out of it. So psychiatry was a really good fit and the neurology just because I broke my neck and I was like, hmm, why did I not get paralyzed? Whereas 98 percent of people that had the same injury get paralyzed. So it really took me into the field that I would eventually become connected to.

And that’s on the psychiatry neurology side. And then as you and I have talked about in the past, Another area that I geek out on and, um, and then, you know, fairly experienced in is in psychedelic medical research. Right. And I got into psychedelics after my medical training. Once I realized my medical training, even though there were things I was interested in, I didn’t like the way that we practiced.

them in the Western allopathic paradigm. Psychiatry right now is really all about psychopharmacology, 

Ronnie Landis: right? 

Dr. Dan Engle: And neurology is a very pessimistic field traditionally, because we’re really good at diagnostics, but we’re horrible at therapeutics. So I was like, no, I mean, I can, I had a practice in integrative psychiatry or something people get off of medications on to targeted supplementation, more of an orthomolecular approach, doing really good work, but there still wasn’t quite the soul of experience that I was tapped into.

And, um, I went through, I was going through a divorce at the time. I couldn’t feel it. I was totally locked down in my heart. And I had this really big, um, uh, curiosity about how to get more in touch with a feeling tone that was really buried under all my interpersonal trauma and early childhood trauma.

And, um, around this time of reflection, I was introduced to ayahuasca in an underground community. And in one weekend with ayahuasca, I learned more about myself than in one decade of psychotherapy. 

And I was immediately 

turned on, and I knew that that was going to be my life path, in some form or fashion.

So I closed up my practice, moved down to the jungle, and studied with, uh, teachers. There, uh, in a variety of different, um, healing styles, working with a variety of different medicines over the course of about a year, year and a half. And uh, it was really a powerful time for me to really see a completely different cosmology, a completely different healing paradigm, working with natural plant based medicines, more on the psycho spiritual and what we would describe as like the more subtle arenas than just in the physiologic or the physical arena.

Right. Plant based medicines and herbs work on each of those levels, body, heart, mind, and soul. And when we know which medicines to use for which indication, at which level, and in which sequence or series for people, then we can get more sophisticated in our healing methodologies because usually the natural plant based medicines are more effective.

With less side effects than pharmaceuticals. Uh, if you know how to dose them in the right, um, capacity and you know how to intervene at the right time, because oftentimes when people come to physicians, they come, you know, with their lifestyle completely upside down. Right. And most of the diseases of today are due to two things.

One is lifestyle imbalance and the others, toxicity that we don’t know how to clear out. And so I just got a whole new perspective and it’s been just a really fun field for me in a really dynamic time in medicine where a lot of these Traditional and contemporary fields and practices are coming together.

So I don’t mean to suggest that pharmaceuticals don’t have their place, because they do. And I don’t mean to suggest that psychedelics always have their place, because they don’t. Uh, and when we know how to use them really well in tandem together, then we get really sophisticated and we see better outcome.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Very, very well put. And I mean, there’s, that opens up a number of different rabbit holes in of itself, um, which we’re, I think we’re going to go into a little bit later. One of the things though, that you, that you kind of opened up there is, you know, when it comes to the psychedelic and Entheogen experience, my perspective is that.

The psychedelic experience is part of the overall human experience and it does, and it, and it’s, it’s a very, and to each their own for sure. I can only speak from my own experience and also just kind of like the evidence of like what happens with most people under the right set and sending under the right context, what can happen within themselves and the ability to, like you said, like speed up 10 years.

of psychiatric and psychological work that would otherwise may never even happen. And also the necessity for integration, right? That’s one of the things that I see is one of the challenges in that field in particular because we have a whole subculture of people That are kind of like, you know, you could liken it to like the experimental culture, although there’s a lot more information, there’s a lot more clinical information, people like yourself that are professionally out there doing the work and sharing the scientific literature.

There’s also this experimental side of it, which can be really helpful and useful. But I feel like the, the disclaimer for me that I’m always trying to get across is that this is not a recreational thing. This is not like smoking pot, even though I don’t think that should really even be a recreational, it’s more of a ceremonial, intentional thing.

And there’s also like this integration process that needs to follow. Right. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Absolutely. Yeah. The integration is key. Without the integration, most of the experience is, at best, a pipe dream, and at worst, very destabilizing. 

Ronnie Landis: Right. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Uh, and the, the integration, just kind of simply put, or the analogy is, that’s where we take our meditation off the cushion.

And make it workable for life. We take our yoga off the mat. We make it workable for life. We take that peak experience through the psychedelic process and we make it workable for life. And, and a lot of times when there’s a deep trauma that gets expressed. Uh, and ideally healed and metabolized through the system, but not always.

Sometimes it gets expressed and it gets kind of stuck. Um, many people, when I’m speaking with them, they, you know, end up finding me because they were stuck in the midst of a trauma. It’s not like they’re reaching out to say, Oh, I had the best experience ever. No, it’s more, it’s usually like, Oh my gosh, this freaking really crazy thing happened and I’ve been really turned upside down.

I need some support. And so the, the integration, I get really excited more and more about this conversation because, you know, five years or so, there wasn’t a whole lot of talk about integration three, four, five years ago, even in the psychedelic plant medicine conferences versus now at maps at visionary convergence.

At Horizons, you know, there’s more and more spoken about the need for psychedelic integration, and that’s an excellent addition and recognition, because that’s where the things really start to, the rubber meets the road, and things start to really be more streamlined for people to be able to use that experience, even if it was trauma based.

Because the integration includes, I mean, when you think of the term integration, integrate means to become more whole. Right. Right. Right. And that’s what, that’s essentially what the medicines help us do is they help us become more whole. They catalyze our consciousness. They don’t save us from our trauma or our work to do, but they help us get more clear about what that work is to do.

And usually that’s well into the integration process when that happens. 

Ronnie Landis: Dr. Gabor Maté. a trauma, not as the event that catalyzed or that’s associated with the trauma, but the disconnect that occurs within the human being as a response to the trauma. And so when you say integrate and becoming more whole, that has very deep meaning to me.

And I start to think more and more over the last year and a half, I’ve been looking a lot more in depthly at, The psycho spiritual crisis that we’re in as a culture, um, in looking at the, the, the mass epidemic of addiction. And really I looked into Gabor Mate’s work and for my own purposes and to work through my own stuff.

And it really led me to seeing like, All these addictive tendencies, no matter what the quote unquote addiction is, they’re, they’re all rooted in this, this seeming disconnect or this, this attempt to find connection or stimulation, um, from like a peak experience, whether that’s a caffeinated peak experience, that’s a, that’s a That’s an, you know, an ayahuasca peak experience.

That’s a, that’s a, um, a pornographic peak experience. It’s a, it’s a text dopaminergic peak experience, right? Um, Facebook, all that kind of thing. So I’ve been really, you know, looking at that. And so, um, I, and I want to kind of, I want to plant a seed for you to respond to that, but I just want to wrap that into.

Um, another thought just in terms of your, I want to, I want to basically get your perspective on what you believe holistic health is from a whole human perspective, a mind, body, emotional and spiritual level, and also where you feel most health or lifestyle approaches are missing the mark and leading people astray.

I know that I’m kind of throwing a lot of thoughts at you there. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, well, they’re all good questions and they’re all interwoven. Uh, I, I appreciate what you said about Gabor Mate. Uh, you know, he’s such a legend in the field. He’s so well spoken about the nature of addiction as it relates to trauma. Uh, Johan Hari wrote a really good book called Chasing the Scream.

And one of the summary statements from that book is that, Sobriety is not the opposite of addiction, connection is the opposite of addiction, and it’s because, uh, when we feel more disconnected and we’re going through the experience of our suffering, it can become really intense and it’s natural for us to find the agents in our immediate environment that help subdue that pain.

Mmm. It’s, it’s the suffering in isolation without meaning that creates the crisis. Mm-Hmm. suffering. Suffering is inherent to the nature of the, particularly the Western mind, because we’re such meaning makers and we, and we wanna find the reason that these things happen, have these kind of deep questions.

A lot of traditional cultures think that the question why is a dangerous question. 

Ronnie Landis: Oh, 

Dr. Dan Engle: right. And why can be a powerful question? If you know that who or what you’re getting your answer from is based in truth. But if we’re asking the question inherently, why did this happen? Then it come, you know, when we reflect what Einstein said about you can’t solve a problem using the same Right.

Right. Mindset or consciousness that created it. So if we’re, if we’re in a trauma place and we’re asking why, then we’re going to be answering that question based in trauma. So the question, why can be a really dangerous one or a really frustrating one. And because we’re consistently trying to find meaning, we’re going to, you know, life is life is the pain is a part of life.

Even if we’re going through, like, setting a broken bone, or childbirth, or losing a loved one, pain is inherent. Suffering is a choice. Suffering is usually based in this why question that gets stuck, that we don’t find a resolution for. But when we can find meaning in our suffering, this is like Viktor Frankl’s whole thing.

Theory in logo therapy, um, based in the book, man’s search for meaning, you know, that summary statement is the last of the great human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance. So I can choose my attitude regardless of the pain. And I can extract myself from the suffering because my attitude can trump my ego’s frustration about the situation.

If I lock in. The power of my mind to choose differently because the ego is going to be based in, like the Buddha said, it’s based in cravings, things that we want. Fantasies, desires, and it’s based in aversions, things that we don’t want, things that are painful, create suffering that we want to move away from.

When we can find the central place, we can find our central column or the power of our mind to choose differently in the experience, then we can start to remove ourselves or at least limit that. experience of suffering. So when we can find meaning in it, again, coming back to logotherapy and Viktor Frankl’s work and his whole experience in the, in the concentration camps, we can find meaning in the suffering.

It improves it greatly. And when we do that with the support and reference of others, it supports it greatly because we’re born to bond. And we’re social creatures, and we’re, and suffering in isolation just exacerbates the, the pain of all of it. And so, highly agree with everything, well, I don’t know about everything, because I haven’t heard everything that he, he said, but usually when I hear Gabor Monte speak about trauma and addiction, I get really curious, because he speaks a lot of truth about it.

So coming then back to your second question around the nature of healing and being in a healthy state, I think about, uh, the four levels that you mentioned, body, mind, heart, and soul. I tend to put them in a bit of a different hierarchy. Or you said body, mind, heart, and spirit. I tend to think about body, heart, mind, and soul.

They’re, they’re different layers of density, so to speak, like the physical body’s the most dense emotions are between the body and the mind. Because you can see the emotional landscape on somebody, usually from just the outside of being able to observe where they’re at, but you can’t, you You can’t really observe people’s mindset.

You don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes. Sometimes they don’t even know because right. Most of what our mind is generated from is subconscious material, 

Ronnie Landis: right? 

Dr. Dan Engle: Um, so, and then we get into the soul aspect. And, you know, I think of the soul being that part of ourselves. That’s most connected to fulfillment, purpose, and passion, the things that generate such a strong life force energy that we’re really like plugged into what, who we are and what we’re here to do.

And, and that, that soul, you know, the aspect of us that is the soul is more connected to spirit. And so when we think about optimization at each of those four levels, trauma can happen in each of those four levels. Trauma can happen in the body, it can happen in the heart, it can happen in the mind, it can happen in the soul.

When we get more clear about our assessment of people suffering when they come in, oftentimes people, I think 75 percent of, um, visits to primary care providers Is something that is inherently based in the heart or the mind. So they may come, somebody may come in with a physical complaint, but the origination or the, the, the thread of that symptom is from a challenge or a trauma or a dissonance in the heart, the mind, or potentially even the soul.

And that, and that, that hasn’t been metabolized or identified. So we need to get really sophisticated in our ability to assess where the original event is. And that’s not always easy when many of our primary care providers have on average, 11 minutes with any of their patients, right? So if you only have 11 minutes with your patient, you just start talking about like medications and dosages and side effects and that’s it.

So there’s a whole transition that needs to happen in the field of medicine and I think it’s an exciting time. You know, people like yourselves with podcasts and getting really good information out to the masses, starts to generate a whole new cultural landscape about what’s possible. And we know that the allopathic medical field has been dominant over the last hundred years.

And over the last 10 to 15 years, it’s been more oriented towards holistic medicine, integrative medicine, functional medicine. That’s been an improvement and the field that we’re moving into is transformational medicine, where people are actually willing, able, and interested in having an experience facilitated by a trained provider, a trained You know, somebody in the healing arts, so to speak, that would be able to facilitate a healing process that not only addresses their symptoms or their pain points, that’s oftentimes motivating them to show up in the first place, but it’s also stimulating as a doorway and an entry point into their potential for a full transformative healing.

Experience 

and 

transforming their own view of themselves, their own view of life, reconstituting them into a greater experience of wholeness and being able to transform them through that process to become more clear of who they are and what they’re here to do, how they can share their best self. And gifts with the world, 

Ronnie Landis: how do you feel that somebody’s personal identity or their self image plays into this whole process?

Right? In other words, who they believe they are. And that being that being kind of directly associated with the standards in which they operate their life. Um, And just, and just that, that identity piece, because one of the things that I’ve noticed just being in the personal development field for so long and studying psychology and the psychoneuroimmunology as well, which is a whole other topic of all this, um, one thing that seems obvious is that what somebody believes about themselves affects all areas, whether it’s, it’s their psyche, it’s their, it’s the heart, it’s the mind, it’s It’s the physiology for sure, and it’s also the soul.

I’m curious, like, what’s your perspective on, on that? And then I also have a side question, which is, I just don’t want to forget it, which is, what is an example of a soul trauma?

Dr. Dan Engle: Oh, good questions. Yeah. Uh, well, let’s take them in order. So identification, uh, you know, we get more clear over time of what our personal truths are. Yeah. Yeah. As, as children, we typically adopt the truths or the programs from our environment, from our families, from our culture, and we continue to do that throughout our adulthood too, unless we get more clear about who we are and what we believe, you know, taking what this term in Alcoholics Anonymous, honest inventory, taking an honest inventory of actually what’s true for me, versus what I’ve adopted As the cultural norm or the safe way to proceed or what my family has for expectations of me, et cetera.

So all of these things, they start to just get layered on as we are little sponges, you know, and 85, this is from child developmental psychology research, about 85 percent of what makes us who we are set before we’re five to six years old. Right. And that’s because around that time, That’s about the time that we go into school, it’s also about the time that we start to myelinate or connect the areas of language and memory.

So it’s really challenging even to get into some of the earlier stuff through the narrative of psychotherapy. Because many of us don’t even have memories prior to 5 or 6, and if we do have memories, there’s not really an accurate narrative or story about those memories. So, so much of what constitutes our identity is set early on, and until we start doing the deeper self development work, and taking those honest inventories, and really looking in the dark mirror, so to speak, and going down those rabbit holes of personal development, And oftentimes that means personal crisis, so that we can get clear on those things, you know, because crisis creates transformation every time.

And so, when we get into those reflective times, then we can start to unravel those early programs to get more clear about who we are, what, what do I believe about myself? What do I believe about life? What do I choose to believe? Uh, because I can choose again, coming back to Viktor Frankl’s statement, I can choose my mindset regardless of the circumstance.

Right. And I can choose to believe that even in the biggest crisis, That it too has meaning. And that I can find that meaning. And that meaning, you know, he describes different levels and layers of meaning. Meaning can be directed to my own personal process, my own service to the world, my own love of my family and community, or my experience of just the inherent aspect and benefit of finding meaning in suffering because it is training me to be potentially more resilient.

We have a challenge in resiliency in our culture right now. Our youth are less and less resilient. I think in many ways they’re smarter, and maybe even their, you know, their neurology is, is keyed and codified towards a very quick reaction time. Like, so many people, so many kids, particularly, are working in gamified platforms and connected to virtual AI platforms really fast.

It’s kind of iteration of technology that it’s, it’s hard to keep up with just inherently. And I think that’s part of why we are seeing accelerations in the numbers of depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and pain. These are the five primary psychiatric conditions that are going through epidemics right now.

And I think part of it is because we’re disconnected. Part of it’s because our trauma hasn’t been metabolized. Part of it is because our lifestyle has been turned upside down, and we’re really disconnected from the planet, and where our food comes from, and clean water, and we’re getting more and more toxic as just, the generations accelerate, because there’s more toxins in the environment.

There’s something like 300, 000 toxins that are, And you will either don’t even have clear scientific data for safety, something like 50, 000 new ones every year come out exact numbers are, but it’s about that. And so when we just appreciate that, there’s, there’s challenges that we haven’t seen before. And in some ways we’re more abundant than we’ve ever been, right?

There is, there is more food than there’s ever been. There’s a little more people to feed them. There’s less war. Um, there’s less pestilence. Um, you know, Peter Diamandis book, In Abundance, is just a good reflection of the fact that we can, depending on our perspective, we can see this as a really rich time or a really, um, frayed and polarized time.

I think both are actually true. Kind of like Dickens, I think it was Dickens in the Tale of Two Cities, the opening line is, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, right? Totally. Mm hmm. Yeah. So, the identificate, coming back to the identification piece. The identification piece is consistently the opportunity, and this is why I think the medicines help so much.

It’s because we can’t solve a problem using the same consciousness that created it. We can’t identify a more clear identity until we’ve stepped outside of our current identity for long enough to be able to decide if that’s actually true for us, if that’s actually what we desire. So we need something to do.

To offer us a different perspective, and that’s sometimes why traditionally the student will seek out the teacher or the community or the sangha to have a different reference point, a reflection with ideally like minded, like hearted, like spirited travelers along the path and that are willing to give me clear feedback.

About the nature of my own thoughts and identity so that I can at least have a discourse, I can at least start riffing it back and forth and see, you know, if, if my ideas, if my mindset is actually in, in the orientation that is going to lead me to the greatest degree of fulfillment, is my mindset connected?

In resonance to my identity and are those in resonance with my goals and when all of those are achieved, will that offer me the best likelihood for success and fulfillment and I don’t mean success monetarily or culturally. I mean, success is a human. Like intrinsic goals, what brings me the most fulfillment and so all of that has this growing, um, reflection time because there’s more and more information accessible, like day to day.

It’s like, I don’t know, some crazy statistic that the internet grows in informational, uh, amounts, doubling every few days or weeks or something astronomically. Thank you. Wow. Yeah. When we think about, like, how many emails go out, how many different blogs go out, how many different podcasts go up, how many different, like, X, Y, and Z continue just to show up in the informational database, this is an exponentially growthful time in the availability of information, which is why it’s so dizzying to know at times where to start to get your information.

Right. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of Tony Robbins. Quote, which is that we are drowning in information and we are, we are, um, starving for wisdom, right? And it’s like, and that into, into real, it’s a real thing, isn’t it? Because I know for me and I know for so many people, especially. You know, talking about the, the epidemics of excess stress and anxiety and sleep disorders and, and, you know, even the existential crisis of intrinsic meaning like you brought up.

So we’re seeking so much information. We have so much information at our fingertips. We have more opulent abundance of Every single category of the human experience, then maybe ever in history that we know of for sure. And yet we’re also in this kind of weird existential crisis of sorts. Um, and I kind of, and I would like to kind of maybe just elaborate on that just a little bit since, since you brought up the information thing, because Even, even being an information person, someone who has a career of disseminating information as a speaker and as an educator and a podcaster, it’s, it’s an, it’s a weird thing to know at the, at the behind it all that it’s like, it’s not even really the information that people need.

It’s the, it’s the application. It’s the wisdom. How do we integrate the information so it actually has practical value and doesn’t just become like a head trip. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think community is a really big one there. You know, when we think about how we learn, it’s usually in reference to others, ideally.

And that’s, that’s what school’s based in. That’s what religious, um, discourse is based in. That’s what trial and error in the, in the laboratory is based in, you know, it has to be an idea or a theory that we get to test out to see if it’s actually accurate or not. And you know, funny enough too, I think something like 70 percent of all Nobel Prizes for scientific discoveries were later found out to be inaccurate.

Wow! Right? So, even though we test something, and we think it’s legit, often times, even at the highest levels of science, It’s later found out to be, I don’t know if inaccurate is how it’s described, but I don’t even know if that’s the biggest part. I think a better way to describe that would be incomplete.

Right. Because our understanding is always evolving. We’re getting to understand more and more of the complexity and beauty of Of our universe and our physical environment and our relational emotional landscape and what is making up the nature of the mind, because we’re essentially the center of our own universe, each of our minds are the center of our own universe.

No one is going to be the center of my soul. And I can’t be the center of anybody else’s soul. And so to come back to one of your earlier questions, what is the nature of soul level trauma? I think about it in, in timelines because, uh, trauma gets passed on generationally, just like hair color and eye color through learned behavior.

If you know, a Rupert Sheldrake is really a pioneer in what’s called morphic resonance. And these learned behavioral patterns that get passed on generationally. So one example of that is you take two groups of rats. One group is the test group and you train them to run a maze faster and faster. The other group is a control group and they don’t do any of the training.

Each of those groups has offspring and babies, and then you run those babies through the maze, the parents of those babies that were trained will have babies that run the maze faster than parents that didn’t learn it. So that learned behavior gets passed on, you know, how do, how do birds know songs? When they weren’t even trained by their parents, so you have this ability to pass on information Generationally through the genetic code and we’re still not even totally sure about how that happens so our level of understanding continues to evolve and when trauma gets passed on transgenerationally it affects all areas of Existence in the being all four of those levels and potentially even beyond trauma affects the body affects the heart affects the mind affects the soul.

And so sometimes we’re dealing with trauma that didn’t even start with us, but it’s here still heal like ancestral 

Ronnie Landis: trauma or like trauma. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah. Ancestral trauma, cultural trauma. There’s a lot of cultural experience, just Gabor Maté is also fond of saying you can’t separate the mind from the body. You can’t separate the person from the environment, 

Ronnie Landis: right?

Dr. Dan Engle: So if there’s been an environmental trauma that we’re still metabolizing, that can also be a part of what gets passed on and includes our worldview and how we experience our life in connection with others. So these soul level traumas. That’s just one ancestral transgenerational trauma is just one of those.

Um, I think two of traumas that are so, so significant that it’s even deeper. Then the mind and even deeper than the heart and it can be this level of suffering that is It’s so strong and consistent and pervasive and what would be scientifically described as treatment resistant It’s so like it’s it can be Um, really, um, difficult to get into using the usual means, right?

Whether this is like usual means from an allopathic Western medical standpoint, which is like pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals, by the way, tend to just address the symptoms. They don’t test necessarily address the core issues, but there are other things that can start to rewire it too. And even those may not get into the deep aspects.

And sometimes even medicine work doesn’t get into the deeper aspect. But it may just be that, oh yeah, somebody had a medicine experience. Maybe it was facilitated by somebody who’s even awesome. And it didn’t seem like something happened. But, The opportunity is to stay with faith and stay consistent with the practice and stuff and stay in that process.

I’ll just give you one example of that. So I know of a friend who went through three separate deep experiences in medicine work, and she didn’t have any recall of the trauma that was getting metabolized. However, the facilitator, Recorded it and went back and shared it with her, but she didn’t have a really felt experience because she didn’t remember it and she’s hearing, you know, all these other like podcasts and interviews and books and blogs about people having amazing experiences.

And she’s had three and she doesn’t remember anything happening and doesn’t actually have a connection with healing. That did occur. So she had the opportunity to opt back in for a fourth one. And in that choice to opt back in, the day that she chose to go back into the process to continue to All right.

Like joseph campbell says in that cave that we fear lies the treasure we seek So to continue to lean into that fear Lean into that discomfort the night that she chose to go back for a fourth experience in a dream She remembered Everything that happened in the previous night. 

Ronnie Landis: Wow. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, totally. It was just a great example.

Like she just stayed with it and stayed with it and stayed 

with it. She stayed 

with the faith that something is happening. I’m going to believe that this process is serving me. That takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of compassion. It takes a lot of perseverance. Compassion for the process and herself.

Compassion for the fear. Perseverance in being able to consistently show up. Right? So, there are things that happen that may not meet our expectation. But one of the things about the medicine is two things. Like, the best thing you can do is drop all expectation and totally surrender. As long as you know you can trust the, the facilitator, the set, and the setting, everything’s been vetted, then, ideally, surrender fully and drop all expectation because the healing that happens is the one that’s most specific for the person going through it.

Ronnie Landis: So incredibly well put. One of the, one of the words that you mentioned is the word faith and faith is, is the deal, isn’t it? Like it, like when it comes to any kind of healing transformation, life transition, there’s, there’s so many different layers. That faith comes into play and because really like in our life We like to think that we know what the next step is and we like to think that we can predict The next step in our kind of in our whatever kind of planned out schedule linear linearized time tables And so we kind of like have this false Knowing of like what the next day is going to be.

But realistically, we really don’t know what the next moment to moment to next hour, the next day, the next month, the next year is going to be, let alone going through some kind of like, you know, initiation into a new identity, a new, a new, a healing, whatever the case is. And so this word faith keeps coming back up.

Like. The belief in the conviction in that which is unseen, but you know, but you, you, you feel it deep from within that takes the ultimate courage in a world of false predictability where everybody is trying to, you know, trying to basically, I guess, just predict the next step to actually step outside of that and the programming and the conditioning of the Western mind, I would say, and to go into faith and to persist.

One of the things that. That you had in that story that you mentioned that really touched me is that the persistence and the faith to just like, okay, I’ve done it once, I’ve done it twice, I’ve done it three times. And these aren’t like, like, you know, going to the casino and rolling a dice of, of, You know, rolling a dice and walking away.

Like this is like, this is intense stuff. Like ceremony, this is like, this isn’t something that people typically are looking forward to. I’ve never looked forward to doing an ayahuasca ceremony. I, I appreciate it, but it’s never like, Oh yeah, I’m so excited to go do this medicine ceremony. I can’t wait. You know, there’s a healthy amount of trepidation because I know that like, I might see some things and I might get, Shocked a little bit, um, at what, what comes up.

And so the two, but, but the point I’m making is that, you know, tying this thought process together, you know, oftentimes what I notice is that it’s the moment when you’re right at the brink, when it seems like, Your dream or or the or whatever it is that you’re you’re trying to achieve It’s like lost.

It’s like it’s almost at that point where you’re ready to give up It’s like all hope is lost But then you just push a little bit more and you persist a little bit more And there seems to be some kind of code there i’m, not sure if you have a perspective on that in the healing process just life in general, but First of all is what I’m saying does that make sense and do you have do you is anything come up for you when I When you think about like those moments where people are like ready to give up down and out They hit rock bottom and if they push a little bit more that tends to be the moment that they have the breakthrough Absolutely agree with everything you just said.

I’m in. Okay. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, you know, and it’s woven into our cultural narrative as well, that Joseph Campbell bringing back him in the hero’s journey also helped us identify. The classic hero’s journey includes that, that moment of choice. Potentially losing faith, throwing in the towel and walking away or giving up and, you know, being like, you know, just like surrendering to the, the, the death, so to speak.

And it’s inherent and it’s natural and it’s understandable and it’s a glorious opportunity. So I’m fond of. Inviting people to continue to lean into those things that are most uncomfortable. And I usually get really nasty looks. And people don’t want to punch me when I say, I’m so excited that this crazy fucking trauma challenge, like the depths of your pain, is coming up to the surface, because that’s when we have the most opportunity to heal it.

And, you know, it has to be a personal practice too. Like I, like, I, I’m not devoid of that. You know, there are times when I get completely like turned upside down because of my expectation. Like the reason that we’re not on video right now is because I have this crazy rash. Right. So it developed because I was snowboarding all week last week, and I got kind of sun stroked in subzero weather with my nose exposed while it was also sunny.

And then just like this heat rash just kind of blew up in my face. And, and I, I got like all tweaked out about it and I can, so I’m not devoid of that frustration. And the whole time that I’m watching my ego tweak out about it, I’m, I’m remembering. I have choice. I have agency. I can choose to believe that I can shift my perspective that I can learn from this experience that this is really a first world freaking problem in a big grand scheme of things.

So it’s all about perspective and consistently we have the opportunity to shift regardless. Now it’s, it’s, it’s harder for sure. Like when we’ve lost a child, when we’ve been maimed by trauma. Yeah. From a horrible accident, or when somebody that we really trusted betrays us. You know, these are the, these are the core wounds of the soul if we come back to that.

Core wounds of the soul, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, injustice, humiliation. These are, these are deep core wounds that get, that get nested at a level of depth that get harder and harder To extricate and sometimes we need support and outside facilitation to do that and oftentimes in the hero’s journey that comes in the form of some external force or external support.

Right? The hero is saved by this outside help at just the right time in just the right way. Like, like in Princess Bride, when they go see Miracle Max and Miracle Max gives him this like, you know, healing, uh, chocolate ball. It brings the, the, the hero back to life. Just one example, so we have that opportunity to shift our mind and shift our attitude and oftentimes I do believe that we get supported by the outside.

It’s sometimes harder to prove, um, but I’ve consistently seen that in my own life in a variety of different ways. Um, experiences working with friends, family, and clients in a variety of different contemporary and ancient texts about that same process that when we have faith, when we pray for support, it actually happens.

And there’s this awesome last story that I’ll share with you, uh, from a book called amazing grace by David Wolfe. And Oh yeah. Oh yes. Great book. And he’s got some great stories in that book. And one of the stories in that book. Is from Fatima, F A T I M A, Fatima is one of these places that people pilgrimage to have spontaneous healings or to be able to heal like chronic conditions.

And it’s legendary for people experiencing these spontaneous healings and there was a medical anthropologist, I think his name was Dr. Carroll, wanted to study what was happening for these people that had the spontaneous healing. And he put together like a hundred question. Questionnaire, sent it to people that had known experiences spontaneous healing and wanted to find out what was the common thread.

There was one thing, there was one question that was consistently answered between all those people. And that was at the time of them receiving a spontaneous healing or receiving the healing that they were pilgrimaging for, at the time of actually receiving healing. That healing. They were in the midst of prayer for healing somebody else.

Wow.

And so there’s the time that we get stuck in, in our own story. We get stuck in our own not met expectation, right? What’s the, one of the definitions of suffering is expectation not being met. So we get, there are times we all get stuck in those. There’s times of frustration where, you know, we’re just stuck in our own little I self, not having its little tantrum, and consistently the opportunity is to liberate ourselves from that and try as best we can to still do good work on behalf of others and serve the collective.

Like mother Teresa says, if you’re not having a good, good day, go do charitable work for somebody else because it does help because we’re all connected and we’re all having the shared human experience. And my, my liberation is connected with yours. There’s Lila Watson, uh, who’s the aboriginal elder. She’s also fond of saying, if you’re here to, to help us or to save us, then please go away, but if you’re here because you recognize that your future is interwoven with ours, then please stay.

Wow. And let’s get to work. 

Ronnie Landis: Wow. Wow. So many, so many great insights interwoven into, into that. One of the things that popped up for me was just a, just a question to ask ourself, which is. Is it the, is it the destination or the, the place that we’re going that creates the healing or is it the journey itself that creates the healing?

Mm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Great question. Like, it’s like, it’s like, you know, we’re, we’re winding down on time, but this is, this is a fascinating question. The fascinating point, I think, is that a lot of times we’re reaching for a goal in life because we want to feel a certain way. We want to achieve something. The person will make us become whatever, whatever the thing associated with the goal is.

So like, you know, Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee said this so well, I’ll probably paraphrasing, but he said that having a goal isn’t about achieving the goal. It’s about the journey towards it. Jim Rohn says that, you know, a goal is again, a goal is not about the goal. It’s about the person you become in pursuit of the goal.

It’s like these things keep showing up, right? So it’s like, is it even the healing journey? Is it really about the destination of being healed? There’s like, maybe we need goals and visions and, and kind of milestones or checkpoints because it actually. Pushes us into activity. It actually causes us to go on the hero’s journey.

And I imagine, I, I have my own opinion. I imagine you do too. I, I surmise that that probably is what heals us more than the pill or the thing, you know, that we’re going for. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I think it’s certainly about the journey. You know, really recognizing too that this life is very short, right?

Really fucking fast, man. And can we consistently orient towards gratitude for where we are at any point along that journey? Today, the best day ever get to connect with that, that idea of, um, ownership and personal agency and personal power to be able to choose.

Ronnie Landis: Beautifully said. Such a powerful, perfect, perfect way to conclude this incredible conversation. I’m so grateful for you and you making the time to show up and, uh, share this conversation with me and all the listeners. And, um, so where can everybody find out more about your work? And I know that you have your hand in multiple different pots.

Um, so what are the best resources people can use to, to learn more about you and your work? 

Dr. Dan Engle: Yeah, great question. Thanks for asking. Right now I’m running a neurological rehabilitation center called revive and we’re working on hardware technologies So like how do we optimize the nervous system the brain and look at the metabolics and like the whole human?

Aspect of healing and human potential so our focus is traumatic brain injury concussion stroke as a doorway to optimization and And, um, personal evolution and that, uh, center is called revive, revive treatment centers outside of Denver. So revive centers dot com and we’re opening up a, uh, another group, an agency.

Partner of mine and I are opening up a center in Austin that’s working on software technology. And so ideally when we move and merge software technologies, consciousness technologies, the psychology arena of optimization and we pair that with the neurologic optimization arena, then we get the best opportunity to transform.

People’s entire operating system, hardware technology, software, technology, up leveled operating system. And that’s the whole field of, uh, transformational medicine that’s opening up now into this next wave. And so we’re, uh, launching that probably around Q4 this year. That’ll come online. I’ll keep you in touch and informed with that.

Um, outside of that, my personal website is drdanielcook. com d r d a n e n g l e. Um, the education advocacy platform for medicine work, uh, that we are, uh, repopulating and turning into a larger umbrella organization for, um, a nonprofit called, uh, our full spectrum foundation doing more charitable work in the world, that’s called full spectrum medicine.

At full spectrum medicine. com. And, um, I work with a lot of people healing from TBI and concussion and, um, traumatic brain injury. And the book that I launched last year was received pretty well. And we’re going to, uh, launch the second version of that probably around Q2 or three of this year. And that’s the concussion repair manual.

Wow. 

Ronnie Landis: Wow. That’s, that’s such amazing work. It’s so, it’s so unique and so specified. And obviously, I mean, just that, that really speaks to, you know, the gift in the shadow or in the, the, the, the tragedy, so to speak, because if you didn’t have that experience that you did. Post soccer coming into this field.

This work probably never would have been birthed through you. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Totally true. Yeah. Right. It’s funny to see like how all these different experiences, uh, interweave to put us on our path, 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Well, once again, thank you so much. Just immense gratitude for you and the work that you do and you taking the time to, uh, chat with me and share this with everyone out there and, uh, grateful for you, Dr.

Dan. Thank you for existing. 

Dr. Dan Engle: Ah, excellent, Ronnie. Yeah, it’s been a great being with you and I look forward to our next conversation. 

Ronnie Landis: Likewise.

I hope you enjoyed this fascinating episode of the holistic health and human potential show. Before you head off, I want to invite you to go to my website for further podcast episodes in tons of free content on holistic health, natural nutrition, and human potential. Please go to www. ronnielandis. net to find out how to take your health and.

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