Chris Tate: Understand The Science of Change & Create a Life Full Of Abundance

Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.

Guy:  This week welcome to the show Chris Tate. He is a coach who combines the latest scientific research with a process of self-discovery that provides people with the knowledge, skills and support necessary to experience a life full of abundance.

He applies and teaches skills like metacognition and tools like meditation to recondition the body and subconscious mind to develop new habits and beliefs.

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Questions we ask in this episode:

Get More Of Chris Tate

• http://coachtate.com/

If you enjoyed this, then you’ll enjoy these interviews with:

• Dr Joe Dispenza: Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself
• Dr Bruce Lipton: How to Hack Your Health with Beliefs & Super Learning
• Dr Jeffrey Fannin: Tapping into the Law of Attraction & Subconscious Beliefs

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Full Transcript

Guy
[00:00:30] Hey guys and girls, welcome to another episode of The Health Sessions, of course I’m Guy Lawrence of 180 Nutrition, and we have a phenomenal episode as far as I’m concerned in store for you today. Our fantastic guest is Mr. Chris Tate. Now Chris … This was genuinely a podcast that was close to my heart and I was very, very excited about him. Just to fill you in the picture a bit. I’ve first met Chris working at a Dr. Joe Dispenza workshop last year and from that point he’s become a good friend and a mentor to me as well. I love his work and everything, what he’s about and what he’s doing.
[00:01:00] Essentially, what Chris does is coach the understanding of neuroscience, metacognition, quantum physics, and meditation, so we can use these new ways to create change in our lives. Ultimately it’s the science of creating change if we’re feeling trapped, if we’re feeling a bit stuck in our lives or we want to make change or we’re in a to stress-response all the time, Chris has the tools and the understanding and the background behind it, of what’s actually going on, the chemical level within the body, and then once we have that understanding how we can actually create real changes in our lives.
[00:02:00] Now I’ve been doing the work personally for over a year and it has been a game-changer for me. There are some big words that is used, neuroscience, metacognition, don’t worry about all of that, once we get into the topic today it will become much clearer. Once you can get beyond that the stuff is actually quite simple, but it’s not necessarily easy to implement because it’s quite challenging, but a phenomenal episode. Chris is a great guy, I’m so excited about being able to give this episode to you today and enjoy it. It might be one you might need to listen to a couple of times of course, just for it to sink in. I’m certainly going to listen to it again after I finish recording this, once it’s up on iTunes as well.
Don’t forget as well, guys, I’ll just quickly mention, I haven’t mentioned it for a while, we do, do this in video and they are transcribed as well, so if you want to just sit down and see our pretty faces for a while instead. We do have different mediums, and of course the transcripts can be read and that’s all back on 180nutrition.com.au, and of course we’ve got a host of other things there as well from free downloads to [inaudible 00:02:23] articles and everything to the products. You name it, it’s all in there.
[00:03:00] If you’ve never been back there before go on have a sniff around and see what you think, and simply drop us an e-mail as well, and of course if you get a lot out of this podcast please share it on with someone that you think might benefit from this and get them to listen to it, because it is changing people’s lives and it’s phenomenal. By leaving a review on iTunes as well and subscribing to the podcast and five-starring it, it’s a simple action, but it really helps spread this message along with us. Everything you do, guys, is greatly appreciated and I hope you’re enjoying the episodes that we are bringing to you because I’m pumped, I’m loving it.
We’ve got some amazing guests coming up very shortly too, including Mark Divine, Gregg Braden, and Amy Myers as well, are all booked in, and there’s more coming up as well. Anyway, I’ve got to stop talking, let’s go over to Chris Tate. This is awesome, enjoy.
Hey, this is Guy Lawrence, I’m joined with Stuart Cooke as always. Hey Stu, good morning.
Stu
Good morning, Guy.
Guy
Our awesome guest today is Mr. Christ Tate, and I should say good afternoon over there. Hey, mate.
Chris
Hey mate, how are are you?
Guy
Welcome.
Chris
Good to see you, guys.
Guy
Welcome to this, it’s wonderful.
Chris
Thank you. Thank you.
Guy
Apparently it’s snowing where he is, mate, we’ve got it good over here.

Stu
Did you say snow?
Chris
It is. It’s white outside.
Stu
I’ve heard of that strange phenomenon, but I haven’t experienced it.
Chris
Well, I’ll send some in your way, we have plenty.
Stu
Please do.
Guy
[00:04:00] Chris, look, first of all, thanks for taking time out and joining us today, it’s really appreciated. Topic, I love personally and to be able to share it today on the podcast is going to be phenomenal. The first little question I’m going to ask you before we get into it is, if you were on a cocktail party and you were in a room full of strangers and one came up to you and said, “Well, hi, what do you do for a living?” What would you say?
Chris
[00:04:30] I’d run. You know, I tell people that I’m a translator. I teach a form of life coaching, which is basically just a way of saying how to live life that incorporates neuroscience, quantum physics and meditation, really, all I do is I share my own personal story with folks. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a doctor, I’m literally just a guy that identified a place in his life that needed to change and I did it. I did all the steps that all the gurus said to do, and lo and behold I learned a lot and now I have an awesome life. I really just share my own path.
Guy
Brilliant. Brilliant. Can you take us back on a little bit of that path, mate? Because I know you had a corporate life, you’ve made some substantial changes, can you give us a bit of that background leading up before we get into the nuts and bolts of the neuroscience?
Chris
[00:05:30]
[00:06:00] I was a software engineer for 17 years. I did the whole corporate gig. I was working in DC for a long time and was faced with all the challenges that we all face, and whether we work in corporate or we work wherever, we’re going to have challenges. For myself I had noticed that I had a very short fuse, I was seeing everything in life as a threat to myself in many, many different ways. Then I had this dialogue, a conversation that was constantly going on in my head. I’m open and very honest that I have voices in my head, which we all do, whether you want to admit it or not, but mine were extremely obvious to me. I knew that in order for me to start to change I probably should address that first and try to understand exactly what was going on, and that’s what led me down the path of neuroscience and quantum physics, and then eventually meditation.
Guy
How long did that build up? You say you’ve been corporate for 17 years and then you were starting to get more angry and not happy with life, was there a definitive point or did it just slowly creep up in you year after year and then you got enough?
Chris
[00:07:00] It was to the point where I was clearly seeing that I wasn’t being the person that I wanted to be. It was a build up. It starts very early in life when before the age of six, whatever environment we’re in we perceive that environment in certain ways through the lens of a six year old. Then as that story develops, as we get older the beliefs are still there, the core beliefs are still there. We mature and our stories mature, but when you start to look at this work and start to look at yourself honestly, you can see that a lot of these belief start early and they’re complete, they’re the eyes of a six year old. Then all of a sudden you find yourself 40 and you realize you’re making the same choices that a six year old would make and that’s probably not healthy.
Stu
What sparked the challenge and what did you do first when you realized that something had to give?
Chris
[00:08:00] I was very fortunate I had people around me that had already been on this path. I was a triathlete and my coach, she was very much an enlightened being and started handing me books that I could read to better understand what was actually going on. She handed me a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and in The Power of Now, totally the core concepts in there, there are two. One is the origin of the ego which is quite fascinating, but the one that I really locked into was being the watcher. The concept of being the watcher from a neuroscience perspective, that’s called metacognition and it’s our ability to step outside of ourselves and observe the actions and the behaviors that we’re exhibiting, and the thoughts and feelings that we’re having. It’s almost like we have our own personal chaperone, that is ourself. I didn’t have a better solution so I purchased the audio books of that and I listened to it two hours each day going in and out of DC on my commute and I started practicing being a watcher.
[00:09:00] Over a six month period of doing this metacognition work, and understand I didn’t have any experience with neuroscience or much on quantum physics, but I knew something was changing because I was becoming very patient. It was no longer a question of being tolerant, I was actually engaged with people in a compassionate way and the dialogue, the most important thing was that the dialogue turned off and all of a sudden my mind went quiet. When I tapped into that silence … I’ve been to Chinese medical school, I did that, and then they talked about silence, well that just went straight over my head. I had no idea what that was because my head was certainly not silent in any way, but after a few months of practicing metacognition being the watcher, I experienced it and it transformed me. It was the most profound moments of my life so far.
Guy
I’ll jump in there as well, Chis, because I can imagine a lot of people are going to be listening to this today and they’re probably could be commuting to work right now, they’re caught up in the rat race, they’re feeling stressed, that they feel like there’s no out, there’s no escape.
Chris
Yes.
Guy
I’ve certainly been through that myself in different periods of my life and it can be overwhelming, but it’s trying to get that first step in to go right, “I’m actually going to listen to this today or change or be open.” Was it like a pain threshold that got to you so much you thought, “I’m going to try-
Chris
It was.
Guy
Right.
Chris
[00:10:00] Honestly, it was, and I think that if you speak to a lot of people that have gone down this path and to be clear again, I’m not a guru, I’m not an enlightened being or anything like that, I’m just some guy that decided he was going to do the steps and that’s the key, you have to do it. You have to do it. Dr. Joe always talks about, “We go and study science and we go to these workshops and we follow gurus and spiritual leaders, and we go to church and all these things, but if you don’t go and do it and incorporate it in your life it’s just philosophy.”
[00:10:30] For me, the core of my coaching is metacognition. Meditation is very important, there is no question, but it’s a tool. It’s just a tool and the whole purpose of meditation and education is so that we can live our lives in alignment with who we want to be, and we get to choose who that is. It’s free will, we can choose to be as “good or bad” as we want to be, but it’s our choice. For me, metacognition, being able to consciously observe myself in who I was being and realizing that who I thought I was being was not exactly who I want to be, that was the change.
Guy
Got it. Got it. Let’s … You look like you’re going to ask something there, Stu?
Stu
Well, I want to just dial it back to neuroscience as well, because you mentioned that this was neuroscience and quantum physics and they’re all wrapped together. Just for our audience that may not be familiar with neuroscience, could you just explain a little bit about that, please?
Chris
[00:11:30]
[00:12:00] Sure. I guess the technical definition of neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, that incorporates the brain and the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, autonomic nervous system. But for me, and I think that in this practice if you’re incorporating the concepts of neuroscience into your life it goes further than that. You have to start understanding what an emotion is, what is a feeling, what are habits, what is the science behind those things. Those are all conditioned processes that the body uses to create balance and that balance is called homeostasis. When we start to realize that, “I have a thought,” and that translates into a feeling, well, that’s a little molecule that’s zipping around in my body and there are parts of my brain that are monitoring this molecule to say, “Hey, are you imbalanced or out of balance?”
[00:12:30] Now when I have a different thought that isn’t in agreement with that balance I’m going to feel off. It’s going to feel weird. It’s going to feel like something’s not right and that’s what keeps people from moving forward in to change, is really that feeling of, “Man, something’s off,” but the fact of the matter is, it has to be off before it changes. Neuroscience is invaluable because it gives the science behind what is actually going on. You’re not crazy. You’re going through a transformation process at a molecular level, at a genetic level, and that’s the essence of … I guess, more of a necessity of having the education in this. It’s not just happy thoughts and happy feelings, it’s understanding that science is a language that makes these concepts tangible that we can relate to and incorporate.

Guy:
[00:13:30]
Because people are permanently, like what I’m finding and discovering there’s one theme that comes up in the podcast with all of these different people we’ve interviewed, Chris, is stress. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts in this as well, because obviously when you’re in a stress-response you’re in that high beat of brainwave, you can’t think rationally as well, instantly none of the information will go in at any level. It’s like, how do we get out of that loop? If our feelings distress are creating the emotions and then how we’re perceiving the world at it that time, which is in a very stressed or some panic of it’s all going on, and then that’s feeding back into the feeling loop. It’s just like this loop that’s going over and over and over, right?
Chris
That’s right.
Guy
How do we break that? How do we go right, “I’ve got to get out of that stress-response. I’ve got to, I’ve got to …
Chris
Absolutely. In my belief it’s very simple, it’s metacognition, because what metacognition allows you to do and what you’re describing there is … you did a great job, it’s the thinking and feeling loop, but I think Dr. Joe probably describes it [crosstalk 00:14:08].
Guy
That’s Joe Dispenza for the listeners.
Chris
[00:14:30] Joe Dispenza uses those those thinking and feeling loop, and the concept is that I have a thought that produces a chemical and then I have a feeling from making those, it’s called a hormone. Then all of a sudden I have a thought that’s equal to how I’m feeling and now I’m in the thinking and feeling loop. As Joe describes it, that can go on for days and weeks and years, and all of a sudden it becomes who you are. At that point there’s a part of your brain called the hypothalamus that says, “Okay, this is normal for this person.” All other systems of the body gather around and work together to maintain this state.
[00:15:00] What metacognition allows us to do is interrupt the cycle. Literally when you are watching yourself having a thought, a negative thought, a positive thought, whatever thought, as you’re watching yourself you are no longer producing the chemicals that are associated to the thought. You’re watching it. Now I know you guys have had Bruce Lipton on here, and what Bruce talks about is that every second 20 million cells come online. Those cells when they initially come online they don’t necessarily know what receptors, which are basically the doorways to the interior, to the genes of the cell. They don’t know what receptors are going to be on there and they look to the hypothalamus to say, “Hey, what’s the baseline, normal chemical state of this body?”
[00:15:30]
[00:16:00] If you’re somebody who lives your life based upon stress you’re going to have more stress hormones related to the sympathetic nervous system and to the parasympathetic nervous system. Those cells are going to have the image to support synthesizing those chemicals. When you interrupt that cycle you drop the hormone levels temporarily, 20 million new cells have come online and they’re looking for a new set of receptors. You have literally changed your body at a cellular level. What Bruce will say beyond that is that the way that genes get expressed, genes aren’t just turned on. Genes are expressed based upon the information coming to the outside of the cell.
Once again, metacognition allows us to say, “Hey, you know what? I’m in this negative thinking loop. I’m going to stop for a second and I’m going to start producing some good feelings even if they’re artificial at first. I’m going to start producing some good feelings. Now I’ve got 20 million cells coming online. My homeostasis has switched and I’ve literally changed my physical structure at a genetic level.” That’s the power of metacognition.
Stu
Wow. Is it as simple as simply questioning, “What’s happening to me right now?” I’m feeling really angry and then just stepping out and thinking, well, instead of being really angry and just getting caught in the moment, asking why I’m feeling really angry, is that-
Chris
[00:17:30] It’s simple but it’s not easy. It’s not easy. The reason why it’s not easy is this, is that 95% of all of our actions, all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are completely subconscious. Literally 95% of the day we’re walking around asleep at the wheel. What metacognition does is it allows us to check-in with ourselves to see, “Okay, what part of that 95% is firing right now?” When you catch those old beliefs, because that’s all they are. They’re just automated programs that have been conditioned into us at a very early age and they’ve been reinforced. They’re just neuro maps in the brain. All of a sudden you can grab those beliefs, and you can pull them into conscious awareness and start making conscious choices that, “Okay, when that person walks into the room I immediately anticipate the conversation that’s going to happen and I’ve prepared myself for it.” Physiologically that means my body is already prepared for it and nothing’s even happened yet, yet I’m ready for a [inaudible 00:17:45].
[00:18:00] You can start to see that and interrupt that process and start putting on in, and I call it a new perspective or a new lens on life. People say it’s rose-colored glasses, I think it’s the saying, and sure, great, bring them to me. I’d love to see through those all the time because I know that physiologically that’s a downstream biochemical mix that’s going to change my body at a genetic level. Just like all the negative beliefs that we put into our head, we can condition in positive ones as well and that’s our choice. It can become a conscious choice but it is not easy, it’s repetition.
Guy
[00:18:30] When you break the pot, because I’ve been doing this work now for over a year myself and personally I found that the changes are phenomenal, but it’s hard because it’s more of a feeling and sometimes it’s difficult to verbalize that. Do you find if you keep interrupting these patterns through being able to observe a metacognition, even if it’s only for 10 seconds during the day, with your experience do you find that if you continually do it then you become much more, I guess, aware of it or do you find it’s easy to get pulled back and slip back into this?
Chris
Absolutely.
Guy
Was it just like a muscle?
Chris
It’s repetition. It’s a muscle, mate. It’s like a golf swing. It’s muscle memory. It’s repetition. When I do coaching the first session with my clients I give them these little neon green stickers that they post all over their house, all over the car, all over their rooms or wall, all the sticker is, is a reminder to be the observer, watch yourself. By giving little tools like that all of a sudden we start to condition a body for a habit. It’s just a habit. I can honestly say that having been doing this now for, I don’t know, maybe six years I’ve been doing metacognition, it is rare that I don’t have a feeling come through that I don’t notice. Now that’s not to say I don’t have negative feelings, I do. I still have all the old programs, they’re still somewhere in there, they just don’t fire that often and when they do I’m aware, because like you said Guy, you feel it. It’s a feeling.
[00:20:00] I always describe meditation as nothing more than a feeling and that’s really what life is. Life is a feeling, yet we’ve been conditioned to trust our analytical minds versus what the folks in neuro, HeartMath are telling us as the actual, the smartest brain which is our heart. That sounds very, I don’t know, New Age, but the fact is the neuroscience is supporting that. That really, if we start living by feeling versus our analytical potential we’re truly trapping and tapping into a new source of our own individual potential.
Guy
Actually I was in the HeartMath Conference a couple of weeks back and they we’re talking all about the science, the discovery [crosstalk 00:20:32].
Chris
Brilliant.
Guy
It’s fascinating.
Chris
Brilliant. Brilliant.
Guy
[00:21:00] Before we kick on, can I take it back slightly? Because when you started applying this, because I know this is going to appeal to so many people, you’re still in the corporate world, you’re starting to apply this, you’re changing your neuro patterns over time. You’re becoming a different person to whom you thought you were because you’re getting rid of all beliefs and making new ones. Was it difficult to step out of that corporate world and how were the people receiving it around you at work as well?
Chris
Sure.
Guy: Because it’s hard because you’re then stepping into the unknown and that is the scariest place of all. Myself and Stu had to do it with 180, we had to let go of what we were doing to step into this. I know there’ll be a lot of people going, “I want to do that. That’s me, but I’m terrified.” Can you just talk that through before we finish off metacognition?
Chris
Absolutely.
Guy
I’m jumping around with it.

Chris
Absolutely. No, that’s okay. For me, it was I stepped out blind. I had not written my coaching methodology. I really didn’t know anybody out there coaching this stuff. I will say that it got to the point where I could not make that choice, and that gets back to what we just said about a feeling. It was so strong and I was so misaligned with who I was as a person and the actions that I was exhibiting in that particular environment, I didn’t have a choice. I literally didn’t have a choice. I would tell people that you have to be honest with yourself.
[00:22:30] When I coach folks and they’re talking about, “You know I feel this, and how do I make this decision or make that decision?” One of the most valuable tools I think that I help people with is making love-based or fear-based decisions, because really when we look at what’s going on here with our bodies, if you look at the autonomic nervous system it’s broken into two parts. You have the sympathetic which is your fight or flight and the parasympathetic, and the parasympathetic is everything that you would associate with cellular regeneration, digestion, respiration, circulation, those things, optimal health.
[00:23:00] Well, if you’re making a fear-based you’re triggering your sympathetic nervous system. You’re under threat. If you’re making a love-based decision you’re triggering the parasympathetic nervous system. For me and my clients, I always, when we get to that point where we simply don’t know what to do we start asking ourselves, “Am I making a choice here based upon love or out of fear?” That’s not to say that every single time you’re going to choose the love path, but when you become aware that you’re choosing fear over and over and over, that’s when a door opens up where you have to start asking yourself, “Okay, what’s really going on here?”
[00:23:30] Then the neuroscience kicks in and you’re conditioning your body and your homeostatis for those chemicals, and then we can go on and on and on, but really for me, it got to the point where I could not do it. I think to help folks out there that are in this, because a lot of folks are, a lot of folks are quite unhappy and misaligned with their day jobs start looking at that love-based or fear-based decision, and start asking yourself the hard questions of, “Who am I and who do I want to be?”
Stu
[00:24:00] How do you teach this? I’ve got a mental picture in my mind of coming to see you and you’re placing a device on my head that looks like something in from Back To The Future?
Chris
I do have a few of those if you want to see it.
Stu
I’d love to. What would the process be if I came to see you?
Chris
[00:25:00] The way that I work is that I only require people to see me three times. That’s it. I do three three-hour sessions, and in the first session we talk about the neuroscience and we talk about metacognition and that immediately, just the lights bulb go off. When you start to explain to somebody that 95% of their waking day they’re spent asleep, meaning they don’t even know what they’re doing as far as actions, and that only 5% of the day they’re aware of what they’re doing. That’s a big light bulb, and then you tell them that 90% of that 95% are beliefs that were instilled in you before the age of six, and then you take them back to the age of six and say, “Okay, what was your environment like? Where were your threats?” Then you say, “Okay, well how does that translate out into your adult life?” Literally that’s it, you guys, we’ve just had the first session, but at that point people are aware. That’s my mind-awakening process, you literally wake up and realize that you are making choices that are keeping you in your own circumstances. It’s all you. It’s all you.
[00:25:30]
[00:26:00] Then the second phase is we talk, the next week we talk about quantum physics. Quantum physics says that everything in life is light-based, meaning electromagnetism. When somebody first told me that I have no idea what that meant. Well, the definition of electromagnetism is a charged particle in motion. Your body is filled with 50 trillion cells conducting 100,000 chemical reactions a second. Those are all charged particles in their own motion. You are literally all light. When you start teaching people, “Okay, we’ve lived our lives by an atomian model based upon matter that represents .0001% of the atom. Now we have this other model to teach you how to live by the concepts of the energy and electromagnetism, and that represents 99.999% of the atom.” We’re not saying that one or the other doesn’t work or saying both works. We’re just saying, “Would you rather look at the 99% or the .01%?
Guy
Absolutely.
Chris
[00:27:00] That’s the second session and then the third session is coaching, and coaching begins, it is just simply, “What do you want to be? What is the best story that you could possibly write about yourself?” We begin to write those out. Just to add to this, my partner Angelina Lloyd, she’s a brilliant writer. She studied theology and psychology and she’s getting ready to start her doctorate in social psychology, she works with toddlers and she has a brilliant way to talk to toddlers. She says that she goes, instead of saying what do you want to be when you grow up she says, “What do you want to feel when you grow up?” Man, that just, it’s perfect because when you can start to get a child at that age, at that developmental age to start thinking in terms of feelings and understanding that, that as adults we know that that’s a physiological thing, that’s a genetic thing, and that it opens up a whole new world.
I use those type of concepts and asking my clients, “What do you want to feel on a daily basis?” They tell me a few feelings and I say, “Great, what do you already do in your life that produces that? Go do it, produce those feelings and know that every second 20 million new cells are coming online and they’re going to be different, because you’re producing different chemicals and your homeostasis has changed.
Guy
Amazing.
Stu
Wow. It seems like-
Chris
Then they didn’t come back. They do come back.
Stu
[00:28:00] It seems like you are dealing to or a lot of your clients are coming to you because of the programs that have been instilled through their childhood. What are your thoughts on the parents? I mean they’re obviously, me as a parent I’m going to be programming my children and I don’t know whether I’m programming them in the right way for the future, and it sounds like I’m probably not.
Chris
That’s a great question.
Stu
What are your thoughts?
Chris
[00:28:30] I was very fortunate, I have amazing parents. I grew up surrounded with love and I was immersed in it early and it was amazing, but I try to keep it very simple. I try to keep this work very simple, which is fear-based, love-based. I think that parenting needs to be love-based, it must be love-based, and that doesn’t mean that we don’t discipline our children. I’m not saying that at all. Children needs structure, people need structure, I need structure, we all need structure, we love structure. We’re part of a big organism of cells and we like structure, but I think as parents when we … Understand this to, I don’t have children.
[00:29:00] I don’t have children so I want to preference that as well, but in working with parents, in working with parents I do have a niece and a nephew that I love dearly its really, once again it’s watching ourselves as parents. We’re so quick to look out here in the periphery, to look out here on the movie screen and quantum physics. In quantum physics this is literally a movie and just like if you sit in a movie theater and you don’t like the movie playing you don’t run up to the screen and bang on the screen and bang the actors to stop. It doesn’t typically work. It doesn’t work. You have to change what’s projecting.
[00:29:30] In parenting the same way, what are you putting out? What are you really telling your children? Are you enabling them with love? Are you telling them to be creative and expansive or are you instilling your own fears in them and calling that love? Those are very different paradigms.
Guy
Massively.
Chris
I think once again, it’s self-observation.
Stu
Absolutely.
Guy
[00:30:00] It comes back to doing the work yourself first and then it’s going to have that ripple effect. You mentioned becoming the observer, let’s pull it back into metacognition for a sec then. We listen to this going, “Oh my God, right, I get this. I want to apply some thing.” You mentioned meditation was part of that work as well and that frustrate the shit out of everyone I will sit down with.
Chris
[Inaudible 00:30:12], daily.
Guy
[00:30:30] Daily, right. It’s just for years I couldn’t go, “Why am I doing this? This is ridiculous.” Where would you start, like is meditation in your mind a critical part of the component? If so, what would you suggest for somebody that’s never meditated before to try this?
Chris
[00:31:00] Sure. Meditation for me is, it’s simple as well and I need to keep things simple. That’s the best way to work in my life. Meditation is an opportunity for us to turn down that sympathetic nervous system and we know that the latest in neuroscience, it takes only moments when doing meditation properly to literally turn that sympathetic service system down … sympathetic nervous system down and turn the parasympathetic up and they’re balanced. If one is up, the other’s down and if one is down the other is up.

[00:31:30] By closing our eyes and placing our awareness on our internal environment, well, if you just simply look at that, if you have a threat out here, if there was a bear that was coming and ready to eat you, you would not be closing your eyes and feeling inside your body. Your body knows that, it immediately registers, “It’s okay, well there must not be any threats because she’s sitting there with her eyes closed focusing on her internal environment.” As a result of that there is a cascade of events that occur and the body begins to suppress that sympathetic nervous system.
[00:32:00] Now the other thing of that is it’s still, “Well, how do you do it?” Meditation is just a feeling, and if you ever come to one of my workshops or my talks I will say that 100 times in an hour. “Meditation is just a feeling,” and what that means is our ability to sense and feel the space inside and around our bodies is called proprioception, and proprioception is done by the cerebellum. When we engage in sensing and feeling space the analytical part of our brain must turn down. You cannot have an analytical thought and sense and feel space inside your body at the same time. You can’t do it. I’ve tried and I can’t do it.
[00:32:30]
[00:33:00] In meditation when we guide people through areas sensing and feeling different parts of their body, and Dr. Joe Dispenza once again does the best job that I’ve seen in describing how to go through the systems of the body and explaining it from a neuroscience perspective. When we engage in proprioception our analytical mind must turn off. When we close our eyes and we start to feel the space proprioception kicks in, our brainwaves slip out of beta, they get into alpha and eventually probably drop into theta, depending on how long we’re doing it. As a result of that the parasympathetic nervous system turns online, the electromagnetic signal produced by our 50 trillion cells doing a 100,000 chemical reactions a second gets enormous, and all of a sudden we’re having a huge influence on the physiology of our body.
Guy: That is a great explanation, mate, absolutely. I’ll just add as well, when I was at Dr. Joe’s workshop, because I was doing the measurements of the EEG.
Chris
EEGs.
Guy
Which could measure that response from the parasympathetic to the sympathetic and vice versa, by the time I’d finished the workshop I can do it in under a minute, which was incredible.
Chris
[Inaudible 00:33:24].
Guy
You can feel it.
Chris
It’s a skill, right?
Guy
Yeah, it was just a skill and you could feel it in the body go, “Boom,” like it just flicked over. It was incredible and I thought, “Wow.” That was the first time that I felt that I actually had control of my body and then this whole work within it and that was like the fuel to fire this to go, “Right, well, where can I take this and start putting it forward?”
Chris
[00:34:00]
[00:34:30] That’s exactly right. It’s just a skill and I recently partnered with a Canadian company called the Muse, they produce a home EEG headset. It’s just this little band that goes over your head and it connects Bluetooth to your app, to your smart phone and it teaches proprioception. I can literally take this device and I require all of my clients now to use it and I track their meditations daily now through a Muse portal. Literally in five minutes I can put this device in someone and say, “Okay now, bring all of your awareness to your heart and just feel that space.” They’ll sit there and sit there and all of a sudden when their brainwaves align to the proper proprioception brainwaves, they get this audio feedback of birds chirping. Then I say, “Okay, there, hear the birds? Feel what you’re doing. You got it. It’s done.”
[00:35:00] You don’t have to sit in caves for 40 years, I mean you can, that’ll be cool but you don’t have to. There are these type of devices out there that are absolutely opening opportunities to people that have said, “Simply I’m trying to meditate and I can’t.” Well, don’t give up because there’s a different way to explain this stuff that works.
Stu
I think I put my hand up on that one. I’m that person.
Chris
We’ve all been that person.
Guy
Why do you think we make it so hard for ourselves? Because, Chris, over here I’m getting asked a lot around meditation when it comes up at barbecue or conversations, and there always seems to be a struggle and confusion around it in the first place, like again we make it more complicated than what it actually is. Why do you think that is? It’s just human nature?
Chris
[00:36:00]
The thing is human nature, but I really think it’s language. Meditation was explained … it’s been around for thousands of years and has been explained in a language that was not necessarily accessible to the Western mind. Understand this is just me explaining my own perspective on it. When someone told me the first time I ever meditated to go within and find my inner child, that wasn’t the language that I needed to do the thing that they were trying to tell me to do. When sages say go within that is exactly what proprioception is, they’re saying, “Go feel the space in your body, and all of a sudden these things are going to happen and they’re awesome,” but I needed something more tangible.
[00:36:30] I think the language of science is what bridges the gap, and understand that science is not saying that what’s been done for thousands of years is wrong. Absolutely not, they’re actually affirming it. All of these ancient wisdom that we’ve been handed down now is beautifully meshing into neuroscience and quantum physics. Gregg Braden, brilliant, does a brilliant job of explaining this stuff in many of his books and lectures. We can’t dismiss 3,000 years of wisdom and now we have ways to measure exactly what they meant and then we have a language that can interpret it.
Guy
[00:37:00] Fantastic. That’s exactly what happened to me, until I hear it in a different language and it’s simply broken down piece by piece, that I could then, I have something tangible that I could work with everyday and that made complete sense.
Chris
Absolutely.

Stu
[00:37:30] I wonder as well as to whether it is, this new wave of habits that we are now being subjected to in terms of, and I’m just talking about my smart phone. It’s very rare that when we’re in a situation where we do have a little bit of time, but a lot of us now are picking up our smart phone, and immediately looking for satisfaction, gratification in terms of swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. It’s kind of, we’re becoming edgy now. We don’t have this, “All right, I’m going to sit down in a park bench and just watch people, listen to the birds.” It’s kind of, “Okay, check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.” It’s almost, we’re almost shaking because I have to have this information.
Chris
You are, it’s a chemical withdrawal. You’re feeding chemicals, that’s all that is.
Stu
I do wonder, it’s the technological age that we live in now, it’s technology can make it easier for us to find this inner space, but also harder because of all of the distractions that it offers.
Guy
100%, it’s just, mate, you’re spot on. I’ve got to the point where I was aware I was waking up in the morning and the first thing I do is pull down my e-mails for the da, and straight away I’d read one and it’s like, “Ohh! I could feel that stress coming up.”
Chris
That’s the sympathetic nervous system on fire.
Guy
It just needs to be a title of an e-mail or who sent it and the next thing my brain is gone, and then the next thing I know I can’t do a shit and I’m just like, my day started the wrong way. I’m so disciplined now that does not happen. I give myself 90 minutes minimum and I go through my routine and I’m doing things before I even go, and I think they can wait. I don’t care who’s banging on my door, [inaudible 00:38:48]. It’s like not-
Chris
[00:39:00] That’s right because until you take care of the self you’re not going to have your best game to give them. If we’re waking up and immediately stepping into the sympathetic nervous system and we’re under stress right off, when we get to work guess what? Our brains aren’t firing at their optimal state. We’re making poor choices. We’re making fear-based choices. It’s a trickle-down effect and it starts the moment we open our eyes.
Guy
It just comes back to that stress response every single time.
Chris
Every single time.
Guy
Then you combine it with the food that you’re eating, the lifestyle of sitting on your butt all day that you might be doing.
Chris
Absolutely.
Guy
The comforts around us that don’t stress the body in any good way at all, it’s [inaudible 00:39:31].
Stu
It’s crazy. Guy, next time you wake up in the morning perhaps substitute your phone habits for a shot of tequila and I think you’ll feel super calm.
Chris
That’s a great way to start the day. I’m taking off to Hawaii after this and I might start off that.
Stu
It’s perfect.
Guy
[00:40:00] To bring all that back into context of everything we’re saying of the topics so far, and we like to do this on the podcast. If you were to say the person listening to this is taking it all in, [inaudible 00:40:02] ahead, what three things would you give them today that they could action to start this process of curiosity and understanding more about that?
Chris
[00:40:30] I think the first thing to do is education. Education is key. Education is the fuel that gets us through this process. When you start doing this like metacognition and you start changing the homeostatic state of your body, the mix of hormones and neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that are floating around, you would feel off. You go through a withdrawal. You’re literally withdrawing from your old self and it’s very easy for you to say, “Something’s wrong,” or, “This isn’t working,” versus if you have the knowledge in hand to realize that these feelings aren’t actually an indication that it is working, all of a sudden you have an invaluable source of fuel.
[00:41:30] I think reading the works of Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza and Gregg Braden and Sean Carroll, the likes of those authors as brilliant scientists, I think it’s imperative. I would also encourage people to begin practicing metacognition. I started with The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle. I’m big into reading obviously, you hear, it’s what I do I research all day. Tolle is talking the same metacognition game but he’s using a different language, he’s using different words, and sometimes those words resonate with a certain person, different than maybe a scientist.
[00:42:30] Follow whatever excites you. Follow the feeling of enthusiasm, that won’t guide you wrong. I promise you it might guide you down a path you’ve never seen before, but it will be amazing. Educate yourself, begin practicing metacognition, and then also find yourself a tool that facilitates this process of change. I think the meditation is that tool. For me, it was very much based upon neuroscience and understanding what proprioception meant and I go to many Dr. Joe workshops. Dr. Joe Dispenza, because like I said he does a brilliant job of guiding us through a proprioception-based meditation, meditative process, but it’s a tool and it’s a powerful tool. That combination of education, actually doing the work, metacognition, and then finding tools where you’re doing the work. I think that those are the big three, and with those three you can change your life. I did.
Guy
[00:43:00] Fantastic. I will just throw in a tip there that I found really helpful doing the work, because I was a passive reader for a long time. I read, I read, I read, I read but I wouldn’t actually do the work. I was getting like a comfort from reading the books, but then not applying it because I was always intimidated by doing the meditation. I thought, “Well, I’m going to do five minutes every morning and just go and observe within.” That’s all I did, I didn’t want to put big barriers in the way and I thought, “Shit, if I actually want this and I want to do five minutes, I can make that happen.” That was the best thing I ever did, the best thing I ever did.

Chris
[00:44:00] Five minutes is huge, think about it, 20 million cells every second come online. You have changed the homeostatic state of your body, you’re going to have a different image. You have literally change in just that five minutes. We also know that in that five minute time period the sympathetic nervous system crashes and you have several hours post that five minutes, where the system is still offline, and the parasympathetic is still elevated. It has far-reaching effects when you incorporate and you’ve gotten that e-mail and you feel yourself getting worked up. Close your eyes, bring all of your awareness to your breath and just start feeling your breath going in and out of your body. Feel your lungs expanding, feel the air coming in your nose and out your mouth. Just keep it that simple and five minutes later when you open your eyes you will be a different person, I promise.
Guy
Perfect. Perfect.
Stu
[00:44:30] I get it. Is diet ever a consideration for your clients in terms of, especially coming from the corporate background where there’s a propensity to burn out and fuel yourself on caffeine and energy drinks and fast foods solutions? I think it will be quite tricky to then try and find your inner calm if your adrenals are firing because of the amount of caffeine that you’ve consumed?
Chris
[00:45:00] Yes, right, absolutely. I think it’s imperative. I was a collegiate athlete, I played football and baseball in college and that was always a part of my life. I’m a big cyclist now and I go to the gym several times a week. My diet is all-organic. I will occasionally have the gluten-free doughnut and I’m proud of it, because there’s a place right down the road here that does a great job and I’m certainly there a couple times a week. I don’t think we have to make it to the point where we’re being stressed out by our desire to change, because that’s how we get backdoored by our chemicals in our old cells, is that all of a sudden, “I’ve failed at my diet today, so I feel terrible.” Well, now you’ve produced all the sympathetic … It’s the cycle.
[00:45:30]
[00:46:00] What I tell folks is, “Do your best. Do your best every single day. Give it your best. Give it your honest. Observe yourself and then just take it for what it is. Move on to the next day.” But I think that regular exercise, eating organic, being very conscious of sugar intake … Personally, I do a lot of Paleo, I think it’s an absolute, critical process, but, and I’ll add this little piece to it, I do believe that the body is downstream from the emotional state. When I say that I mean that if we’re not addressing our emotions that are resulting in the chemicals and the homeostasis and the genetic expressions, it doesn’t matter how great the body is.
Stu
Of course.
Chris
It doesn’t matter because you’re going to always come back to who you were. I think it’s a balance of all of these stuff, but I don’t think that … I think that they’re all critical.
Guy
Great.
Stu
Perfect.
Guy
[00:46:30] We have a couple of questions on the podcast we ask everyone. The first one is, “What are your non-negotiables to be the best version of yourself
Chris
[00:47:00] That’s a tough one. I think the non-negotiable is being honest with myself. I’m not the best version of me everyday. This work does not mean that we’re not going to have challenges. It does not mean that we’re not going to have good days or bad days. This work is basically a process of doing your best every single day and then surrendering, literally releasing into the process. Every religion or mystical practice talks about that imperative element of surrender. That’s a huge part of this, is that you do your best, be honest with yourself. Don’t kid yourself, use metacognition and see who you’re being, and if you don’t like who you’re being, change who you’re being, because only you can. That’s it, nothing’s going to show up and all of a sudden be the catalyst for you to change. You are going to do the work and you are going to change, and then just releasing from it. You did your best.
Guy
Perfect.
Stu
Perfect.
Guy
Last question, mate, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Chris
[00:48:00] Best piece of advice, “Are you making fear-based or love-based decisions?” That’s the best one. That is a tool, it’s a tool that never leaves you. You didn’t have to pay anything for it and it is a window into what is triggering your sympathetic nervous system or your parasympathetic nervous system. That’s really what this boils down to, are you living life, perceiving it as one giant threat or are you living life from a state of curiosity, creation and a child-like energy? That tool was given to me many years ago and it was a key part of my personal growth.
Stu
Love it.
Guy
Love it. Love it. For everyone that’s listening to this, mate, they want to learn more about Chris Tate, where do they go for a website?
Chris
Sure, on coachtate.com, it’s T-A-T-E, and shoot me a line, shoot me an e-mail. I do blogs every couple of weeks. I’m going to get better about that. I try not to write unless I have something to say. I’m hoping that something’s going to come to me in the next two weeks, but just reach out, I love engaging new folks and I have a reference section, a reference material section on my website as well, where you can go and see my favorite authors and my favorite videos, YouTube videos, audio books, research papers, and then you can find more about Muse’s headset as well.
Guy
Brilliant. Brilliant, mate, and obviously there are Australian listeners, mainly, I think we’re 70% Aussies [inaudible 00:49:10] this, if they want to inquire about your coaching, do you coach overseas as well?
Chris
Oh yeah. The majority of my coaching is done remote. We do Skype. We do this. It’s a brilliant method so yeah, bring on the Aussies.
Guy
Excellent, Chris. That was awesome. I just want to acknowledge for all the work, the great work you’re doing, mate. You’ve been a great inspiration on my life personally as well and that was fantastic, it’s a big thank you for coming on the show today, Christ, that was awesome.
Chris
Thank you, and Stu, thank you so much, mate. I’m very grateful.
Stu
[Crosstalk 00:49:41]. Fantastic. Thank you, buddy.
Guy
Thanks [inaudible 00:49:44].
Chris
Thank you.
Stu
Bye.