Over time, that prayer, especially prayers of gratitude and intercession for others or thinking well-being for others, physically changes our emotional makeup and our chemistry. Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you. By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD. Welcome to The Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett, and I'm so glad you're here today. I am an OB-GYN, a board-certified OB-GYN in San Antonio, Texas, and we do this show not about surgery, which is my specialty. I'm a minimally invasive surgeon or MIGS, minimally invasive GYN surgeon. I specialize in robotic surgery for complex benign conditions like endometriosis and fibroids and stuff like that. We're going to talk about that on another show coming up soon. But on this show, we're going where the scalpel doesn't reach. That's right. This is an interesting show, I think, because I was reminded this week by a YouTuber that I saw about the importance of this show and why I'm doing it. First of all, I want to mention that today we're doing the sixth seed of the soul. It's called pray. Don't worry. I'm not going to get all religious on you, and I'm not trying to convert you or anything. We're going talk about prayer and praying as it pertains to your well-being and mental health. It's really cool stuff. We're going to talk about some of the science and ways that we pray and why we pray and what that has to do with wellness. For those of you that are new to the show, the seven colors back here are the seven seeds of the soul. They are the curriculum that we teach, and I've been going through each one, one at a time. They go be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. Today, we're doing pray. I'm wearing navy instead of teal. I'm breaking the rules. It's okay. I'm a rule breaker. Sometimes that happens. Today, we're talking about pray. The reason that I included this in the seven seeds of the soul is that it is a reminder that we are not all about us. That there is a world and energy, and whether you call it God or the universe or no matter what your take is on it, there is something outside of us. Prayer is a reminder for us to connect with that which is outside of us. That comes really close to meditation and to keeping our brains healthy, which helps keep our body healthy also. We're going to talk today specifically about prayer. The YouTube video that I saw this week was one called Goobie and Doobie. The show is called Goobie and Doobie. That's kind of a funny name. The episode that I saw was posted about two weeks ago. It is the story of how this neurosurgeon, brilliant MIT trained neurosurgeon, quit medicine and is living, I don't know exactly where he is, but his show is all about showing nature. He's unemployed and a fairly young guy. His name is Goobie, and his dog's name is Doobie. His dog is a little white fluffy dog, very similar to my Ollie Bollie who's sitting down here on the chair behaving himself. I'm going to leave him that way, my co-host. So, this video is interesting. It's a 48-minute video. It's got over 7 million views. It's him talking to camera the whole time. He's by a mountain stream and there are mosquitoes flying all around him. He's very Zen about the whole thing. He takes his time, and he goes through this whole discussion about how he went through training and what his hopes and dreams were going to be as a neurosurgeon in fixing people and his disillusionment at being able to fix them. In this video, which I highly recommend that you go see, we'll put the link in the show notes, he talks about a metaphor that he was talking to one of his buddies about where he as a neurosurgeon was doing a lot of spine surgery. He realized that there are a lot of people he can't help and a lot of people that he can, but basically their spine is just deteriorating and crumbling. It's like trying to patch up walls in a house where it's flooding, and there's a ceiling leak and you're continuously trying to fix the drywall and mop up the water without fixing the water leak and the roof leak. He goes on to say that he realized that what he was doing as a neurosurgeon wasn't really addressing the problem. He also went on to say that in his practice, he noticed that there were some people that made some lifestyle changes, and when they did, they got better and didn't need surgery. So, he talked about what those things are, and it turns out that they are foundationally the same things that we talk about here on the show. They ate mostly whole food, plant-based diet. They didn't smoke and drank very little alcohol. They got good sleep, good restoration sleep at night. They exercised regularly and moved their bodies and sweat. They also minimized salt, which I thought was interesting, and they managed their stress, which that's basically what we talk about all the time on the show are those five or six little things. I just thought it was so interesting that this keeps coming up. These things keep coming up no matter the expert and no matter who you talk to. He had left medicine, and his channel is beautiful. He's got these meditative videos of nature, and it made me think about the show and why we're doing it. I preparation for this lesson today and talking about prayer, it really overlaps a lot of what we're talking about with the stress relief, but also with the just mindfulness and taking care of ourselves. It doesn't require you to be religious to practice prayer. Prayer is just our outpouring of our requests and our thoughts and interventions. In fact, there are five basic types of prayer. I happen to come from a Christian background, but prayer is universal. In fact, I think it's so fascinating to look at all the different world religions and even atheism and scientists who don't believe in God as a god. There's still this concept of intervening or asking for things sometimes with our brains, sometimes with our words. In religious circles, there are five basic types of prayer. So, we're going to talk about them today. The first one is supplication, which means you're asking for something. This is the one I think we most commonly do when we're in a jam. Probably all the time we're asking, we’re like dear God, please help me. You guys, please pray for me. I need prayer vibes. I need good vibes and thoughts and prayers. Supplication is asking for something. The second type is thanksgiving. Just thank you, God, for my blessings and all you've given me. If you're not talking in a religious context, that's actually gratitude. Practicing gratitude is one of the keys to having better wellness and mental health also. The third one is adoration. This one gets tricky. For those of us that subscribe to religious thought processes where there is a thought that there is a God like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the adoration of the creator of force or God. But I also see this reflected in people who are scientists where they just appreciate and adore nature and the world around us and the intricacies of it. It's a different type of target, but the process that's happening inside of them I think is very similar. The fourth is confession. That's confessing your sins. Then the fifth one is intercession. Intercession means you're asking for somebody else. You're praying for somebody else or asking for somebody or something spiritually to intervene. The interesting thing about prayer is that one of my favorite quotes is from C.S. Lewis. It's attributed to C.S. Lewis. It's probably an idea that goes back further to a philosopher named Kierkegaard. The C.S. Lewis quote goes something like others I pray because it changes me. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically the quote. That's really the truth about it. When we take a look at what happens to us when we pray, there is some really interesting scientific evidence and more and more neuroscience evidence about what happens when we practice prayer. For one thing, as you practice prayer, especially if you're concentrating on love and compassion, which are major themes for prayer and meditation, whether you subscribe to a religious context or not, increasing those thoughts, even if you're not speaking them, it reinforces in a different type of the brain if you're speaking it. But just reinforcing those thoughts increases your serotonin and dopamine levels. Prayer not only changes our heart as we think about how we're changing what our thoughts are and our feelings, it actually drives our endocrine systems, and our brains physically change. If you look at your brain scans when people are praying, fascinating stuff. Over time, that prayer, especially prayers of gratitude and intercession for others or thinking well-being for others, physically changes our emotional makeup and our chemistry. I just thought that was fascinating. Beyond that, when we think about prayer, we're thinking about having a thought that creates a feeling that is an emotion. Those feelings in our body are energetic waves. These can be measured with frequencies. We're going to talk a little bit more about that concept in the last seed, which is attunement. Just for the context of prayer. When we're talking about praying and creating these thoughts and going through the process of meditative prayer, we're creating a different energy within our body. That energy goes outward from us and affects the world around us. We're learning more and more about being able to measure those effects. There is a really pretty old study. It's at least 20 years old that I remember that was done about the power of prayer from a distance on trying to heal people. So, a lot of times when people are sick, people who are supportive of them will form prayer chains or dedicate themselves to praying for them. It's really interesting as a doctor for me to see whether there's a measurable scientific effect on the patient's well-being based on what's happening with the prayer life, both within themselves and within their community. That prayer is helping to build community, but also the physical energy of it. The study that I'm referring to is one that was done on yeast, budding yeast, actually. It was a fascinating study. They actually showed that remote prayer could influence the growth of yeast in a Petri dish. It was a pretty controversial study. I haven't looked at it in a long time. I don't know whatever came from that, but I was fascinated with the concept. I'm also fascinated by the concept that prayer crosses all types of beings. People from everywhere and every religious type of organization or non-organization, that knowledge or that understanding that we have that deep knowing that there is something beyond ourselves and that we want to connect with it is a basic part of being human, and that spirituality is not something to be ignored. These days, I see a lot of unrest within religious communities. I think for good reason. I think our concept of spirituality is changing as we become exposed to a broader world and different ways of loving and caring for people. My challenge to you this week is to think about what prayer means to you and the different types of prayer and to incorporate that into your wellness and your daily habits, whether you're praying for yourself or praying for somebody else. Because it's good for you and it builds community. That's all I got for you today. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you next week at The Dr. Crockett Show. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.