Dawson: JJ, wonderful to be here again. Thank you for having me.

JJ: Well, you are recommended by Naomi Janzen. Those of you that remember Naomi, she was on the show, “Tapping Out Depression,” and we talked about EFT, a very powerful show. And she was certified through Dawson and his organization. So, before we get started on today’s show, which I’m excited to talk about because we have yet to talk about epigenetics on this show, can you give us a little background about your involvement, your creation of EFT, and what has led you to today?

Dawson: I will, and I’ll tell you why Naomi is certified, and also why we do what we do. So, I was interested in healing for a long time. When I was a kid, I was really depressed. I was anxious. I had PTSD. And when I was in my teens, I tried to fix myself by joining a spiritual community, and living communally, and studying spiritual teachings and personal growth and psychology. And that did result in improvement over the years, so over the next 20-30 years, I found my suffering diminishing, but not going away. And then in my 40s, I discovered energy therapies, and I also made a commitment to meditating daily. And I just can’t tell you, JJ, what an important commitment that is. It literally began to shift my life when I began to meditate every single day. And then I discovered energy healing modalities I hadn’t known before, like EFT, which uses acupressure and acupuncture points. And I found that problems I’ve had for decades sometimes suddenly began to go away.

But I also realized that these therapies were not going to make inroads in primary care. We weren’t going to see them in the places people need them, like clinics and hospitals and healthcare systems and the Veterans Administration, unless they were: (a) evidence-based (in other words, there was a solid foundation of studies, and research showed that they really worked), and (b) that they were consistent. Because you don’t want to just know that a therapy works. You want to know that a therapy works consistently. It’s like the formulation of a drug. If you take an aspirin or if you take a Tylenol, then you know that that tablet contains exactly the same ingredients. Same thing with psychology. You want to know that a treatment you’re getting really is delivering in that package everything that it promises to deliver in the research.

And so I got into science. I got into studies. I got into doing primary research and secondary research. And I also began getting into certification. So, Naomi is one of our certified trainers. And we have certified trainers and certified practitioners. And these people have gone through a long and very detailed training to make sure they can deliver the whole value of the therapy that is contained in the research. And so, that’s what has brought me to today.

JJ: And today, we’re going to be talking about your book “Mind to Matter,” and that you’re best-known for your research into epigenetics. And like I said at the beginning of today’s show, we haven’t really talked about that very much. A little bit here and there. Lisa Thomas has mentioned it in energy healing. But it’s nice to have a researcher and a scientist with us today to talk about it. So, first, let’s start off by explaining what epigenetics is and why it’s important.

Dawson: My first big book, my first bestseller, was called “The Genie in Your Genes.” And the idea behind that book was that your emotions, your feelings, your spiritual life, your quality of experience, is having an effect at the level of your genome. Now, epigenetics was really discovered in a big way around 2000, and researchers found that if they did minor changes to the diet of rats or mice, that these rodents changed dramatically. In one famous study which made the front cover of the Journal of Science,researchers tweaked the diet a little bit of this group of rats, and they epigenetically inserted a tag on the genome. So, again, there’s no change in the DNA. The rats’ DNA was exactly the same. But the rats with this little molecular marker on the DNA, they had no obesity, no cancer, and lived twice as long as the other group. And that was a stunner to science. That study dropped like a bombshell into the popular awareness: that just by tweaking the genome epigenetically, without actually changing the genome, the DNA sequence, that you can make these huge changes in the health of mammals. Later on, other researchers began to discover that you could do the same thing with humans, and that just shifting the human experience in some small way could either insert these little molecular tags on genes or remove them from genes, and that had a big effect.

And so, the culmination of this was a series of studies of EFT, where we looked at the effect of EFT, which usually uses tapping on these acupuncture points. And so, in one study I did, we took veterans who had very high levels of symptoms of PTSD, like flashbacks and nightmares, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and hypervigilance, and we gave them 10 EFT sessions. We had already done randomized controlled trials showing that these veterans got a lot better after EFT, and their symptoms went away. But in this second study, we looked at their levels of gene expression and we found exactly what we had expected to find, which was that these epigenetic markers are being shifted in their bodies, and their gene expression starts to alter.

And then, the final study in epigenetics and energy therapies that I wanted to draw attention to was the study of normal psychology patients who got a really detailed and careful and expert EFT tapping session, just one session. And the researchers found that between the beginning and the end of the session, 72 genes changed expression. Now, this again was stunning to think that a behavioral therapy, no chemicals, no drugs, just shifting your experience through tapping in one hour… So this is not 10 weeks. This isn’t 10 years. This isn’t 10,000 hours. Just one hour of EFT was able to shift the expression of 72 genes. So, in these ways, we’re learning now and developing the tools to measure in science the effects of yoga and grounding and meditation and all kinds of non-intrusive, highly beneficial, behavioral, spiritual, emotional interventions on the genome. That’s just what’s so exciting about science today is we’re showing epigenetically that these kinds of practices have huge effects on the body.

JJ: Was there a follow-up study to the one session, for the one hour of EFT, in terms of the 72 genes had changed their expression if people continued to follow up? So I’m thinking of a situation where someone does something one time, and it shifts it temporarily, or does it shift it permanently? And is that dependent on whether or not they continue with that said treatment, whether it be EFT or meditation? Or has there been any studies that show that someone only did it once, and in a year, maybe only a few genes reverted back or changed back or changed again? Has there been any research on that?

Dawson: Yeah, two things. One is that in that same study showing that 72 genes changed in one hour of EFT, researchers tested people again as a follow-up and found that even later, 38 of those genes had retained their differential gene expression. Also, in the studies of veterans, we found that when we looked at them six months later, we weren’t testing their genes six months later. We were, though, testing their symptoms of flashbacks, nightmares, and so on, and we found that even six months or 12 months later, their levels of symptoms remained lower, implying that their gene expressions have not changed. So, for most people, the change, once they have released the emotional impact, all those negative memories through EFT, the effect remains and is stable over time.

JJ: I love EFT. And in the show with Naomi, I linked it to EMDR, eye movement desensitizing and re-establishment, which she said there was a connection there. And because I’m a big fan of therapies that obviously interrupt certain brain waves and patterns, create new neural pathways, things that change behavior that aren’t just about the conscious brain, the 12% of our mind that people tell their stories and have their wounds, because we’re not moving any energy when we’re just in the conscious mind. So I’m always interested in looking for things like this that can actually move the needle faster for people who are struggling with things. But I also, at the same time, wanted just to make sure that we’re also recognizing or looking at some people do energy healing and they have sort of a relief in the moment, but then they revert back to the belief system or the conversation in their mind, some of those subconscious patterns and beliefs. So being able to laser through those, so that way, we don’t revert back or look at what other therapies could we be using, what other things need to happen in order to continue the progression.

Dawson: Yes.

JJ: So I think up until now, a lot of people… And I love this conversation of gene expression in epigenetics because most people do realize, to a certain degree, that everyone has the ability to have cancer, so to speak. We all have a cancer gene potentially of some kind somewhere in our bodies, or we’re introduced to environmental stimulus that could help us create cancer. But the difference is whether that gene is expressed or not. Is it based on the environment that we’re in? And so we have so much more control than we know to actually express these genes. So I want to talk about that a little bit because I know, obviously, your book must address that, “Mind to Matter.”

Dawson: The act of being in that conscious mind only, and then telling your same old life story over and over and over again, is to strengthen those patterns. And so, for example, in veterans, we find that if they tell a story over and over and over again, those neural pathways become bigger and stronger. And so, what you see in stories of veterans is that if they’re simply repeating the past… And this is true in all of us. Everything we’re doing is triggering neural plasticity and gene expression. And that means virtually every thought we have is triggering something, some sort of change in our body. And so, if you tell that story over and over and over again, then those connections get stronger.

I remember a veteran I met at a VA gathering, a treatment circle, and his name was Sam. And he turned to me when I opened the door, introduced himself and said, “Hi, my name is Sam. I’m a disabled Vietnam veteran.” And I greeted him. I introduced myself to him. He then turned to the next person coming in through the door and said, “Hi, my name is Sam. I’m a disabled Vietnam veteran.” He then turned to the third person and said, “Hi, my name is Sam. I’m a disabled Vietnam veteran.” And that was his chant, and that was his identity: “Sam, disabled Vietnam veteran.”

Now, when you stay in that identity year after year, decade after decade, then what happens is those neural connections become stronger and stronger and stronger, and your PTSD gets worse and worse and worse. In fact, research shows that people with untreated PTSD often do get worse after time. One famous study, for example, of World Trade Center first responders found that about half of those diagnosed with PTSD were diagnosed not after they were working in the World Trade Center disaster, but two, three, five, ten years later. They looked fine after the event. PTSD was not evident there. But then three years later, five years later, 11 years later, people get flashbacks and nightmares and symptoms. And so, PTSD, if you send signals through that neural wiring over and over and over again, it gets stronger. It actually starts to degrade the memory and learning centers of your brain as you repeat the past.

In one where we included their spouses as well as the veterans themselves, one of the spouses said after her husband had been treated, she said, “It’s been 42 years since Vietnam, and I feel I finally got my Robbie back.” So, for 42 years, he’s not been there. He’s been sucked into his past, sucked into his story, sucked into absence from the present by the trauma of the past. And suddenly after tapping, he’s back there. He’s emotionally present. He’s available to his wife. So we’ve had just thousands of these cases of people who have had their lives radically shifted. And I’ll talk about cancer in a moment, but in terms of PTSD and of stories repeating the past, the more we rehearse our old story of the past, the more it becomes a story of our present and our future.

JJ: Which is one of the reasons why I don’t really support people claiming certain diagnosis titles, like “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m a recovering drug addict.” It’s like you just said about the veteran, right? And to me, it’s not even the truth of the matter because it’s really not about the substance. It’s more about trying to negate the emotions. It really could be anything. Most alcoholics then either overeat or they go to… They replace their addiction is the point. And so, I know for people who feel stuck in these labels, it’s one of the reasons why that gets me, because I really want people to break out of identifying themselves in this finite way that usually is a limiting belief, and half the time isn’t really even the truth. So, I want to ask about these veterans. When you took them on the programs, or anyone in general that you’re looking at doing some studies on, are you taking their personal life and creating… If you’re working with me, are we going back through… Because I’ve done tapping. Are we creating what we say, the statement that we’re tapping on, are we doing any kind of talk therapy to find those things? Or in these controlled experiments, are you giving sort of standardized, generalized feelings, beliefs, and habits that people have, or are we going into the person to find sort of where the pinpoint of pain is for each person?

Dawson: Definitely. You need to really pinpoint not just the pain or the story, but pinpoint the neural bundle, pinpoint the neurons that are firing when they repeat that story. This process is called counter-commissioning. And research shows that if you are able to counter-commission that old response, then that neural bundle is no longer firing, it becomes silent, and then a chance to live your life free of that. So you need somebody who can actually pinpoint that for you and help you get to the root cause. You might be able to work on a lot of things by yourself, though. EFT is generally used as a self-help tool. But for example, we have one online program for women who are looking to lose weight, and many of them are really overweight. We’ve done several clinical trials, and on average, they need to lose 76 pounds to regain a normal weight. And they’ve also tried an average of 18 different diets. Many of them have spent over $200,000 trying to lose weight in their lives, and they can’t do it. And then they join our EFT program, and they’re not totally hopeful because of this long history of yoyo dieting.

So, how do you interrupt that? How do you shift that? And if the person is simply repeating themselves, if they’re recreating their identity over and over and over again, they are going to do more of the same and repeat their past. So the crucial thing for us is to interrupt those patterns. And you need somebody to really help you zoom in and figure out what is the pivot point, what is the central issue here that you can get to. And that usually does require an outside coach, an outside practitioner, a therapist, a psychologist, somebody to actually help you find that and work with that.

But that’s one end of the spectrum. That’s really difficult issues. If you have been repeating the same mistake financially or in your health or in your weight or in your relationship over and over and over again, then you probably need outside help. But most people who get into EFT, they’ll download my free EFT mini-manual. We’ve had over three million downloads of the manual online in the last 10 years. And so they’re downloading a free manual. They’re often just tapping along with that and find that they rapidly are able to deal with things like anxieties, fears, and stresses in their lives. So, both/and. To find those events, it’s usually that you do need targeting, but you can get to a lot of it as a self-help technique. And then, for those pervasive long-term issues, you need a coach or a therapist to help you target those patterns and then find the most efficient ways of breaking those habits and then shifting your behavior.

And the good news is that, as we follow people up, for example, in the weight loss program, we find that when they finish a weight loss program, so they’re now not in the weight loss program anymore, but they’ve learned EFT, and we monitor them for a year, they go on to lose between 11 pounds and 22 pounds in the year afterwards, because now they’re actually installing those new beliefs in their minds, their brains are firing in a whole different way, and now they have a chance to claim a whole new self different from the self they were in before.

JJ: Years ago, I created a program called the Six-Week Beach Body Program. I think we still have remnants of it somewhere online. But part of it was an EFT module about foods and triggers and emotional eating and things like that. So I know that it works. We used it. Absolutely, it’s a great tool for everybody. But this is just part of the work that you started with from EFT. And I want to go back to you mentioned something about cancer and we didn’t get there. We were looking at gene expression, and I went on my rant about addiction and labels because I really don’t like labels because I think it’s also in the eye of the beholder. Somebody can say, “I think you’re this,” and I look at astrology and say, “Of course, they’re that because that’s what their sign says.” And to me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It just is something different. So, let’s go back to the point you were going to make about gene expression and cancer.

Dawson: I want to tell a story because I have mentioned a couple of people like Sam up to this point, but in my books, like Mind to Matter, it’s full of science. There are over 400 scientific studies that I covered there. In my earlier book, “The Genie in Your Genes,” there are maybe 600 studies that I cover in terms of epigenetics and healing. But there are also stories of people in each book because I feel as though telling personal stories of people who have used these methods and have seen their lives transform is so impactful emotionally on us. And so, one of those stories was actually a close friend of mine, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the doctors found a lump on her right breast. It was actually measured at about two inches, five centimeters in diameter. This was a large tumor. And the first thing that they looked for in that case is metastasis. Has it moved to any part of the body? Has it migrated? And so they found that all of the lymph nodes under her right armpit were swollen and inflamed, indicating cancer had moved into her lymph system. Now, when it gets into your lymph system, it then can move rapidly around your body. Your lymph glands, lymph system, is like your bloodstream. And so it can move to different sites, distant sites in the body quickly. And sure enough, they then found three spots of inflammation on her right lung.

So this was a serious diagnosis. In fact, it was so serious that the doctor said to her when she got the final word about it at the cancer clinic she was being treated at. The doctor said, “Normally, we will be scheduling you for chemotherapy and radiation, a long course of both. But this is so serious, I want you to go straight from my office today to the radiology department to get your first radiation treatment.” And my friend Beth, who was obviously shocked by the diagnosis, to her great credit, said that she needed time: time to reflect, time to talk to her husband, time to talk to her advisers, and really think about what treatment course was best. So, Beth did not get a biopsy. Beth did not get a treatment plan right away. She then phoned me. She phoned other people, other friends. She emailed us, and she got a lot of opinions. She wound up getting, I think, five medical opinions.

And she decided, before plunging into chemotherapy and radiation and surgery, she said, “I’m going to see what I can do by applying all the energy techniques and stress reduction techniques I know are out there.” So she did almost everything you can think of. She got rid of all of her stresses in her life. She turned off the alerts on her cellphone. She quit watching the news, quit any kind of negative or stressful media. She got rid of stressful people in her life. She used to volunteer for a lot of charities, and so Beth just resigned from the boards of those charities. She began to do intensive energy work, energy healing. I and my wife did distant EFT, surrogate EFT with her, with my wife being Beth, imagining she was Beth, and then us tapping for Beth and those cancer cells. And then she did Qigong. She got external energy healing methods like reiki. So she really focused on shifting her energy.

So, she got the diagnosis in March of 2017, and with that, entered the cancer clinic in May of 2017 for a new round of tests. And those tests found, just eight weeks later, that the tumor had shrunk from five centimeters to 1.4 centimeters, and that all of the lymph nodes under Beth’s right armpit were all normal, all free, all clear, all free of those cancer cells. And so it was just a remarkable shift, and in only eight weeks. Now, of course, the doctor said, “Well, the tumor is 1.4 centimeters. We need to operate on it still.” But Beth and other doctors had said, “We think the tumor had died, and it’s just being steadily removed by your body. That’s why it shrunk by two-thirds.” So Beth elected again not to have surgery, and eventually blood tests showed that Beth was completely cancer-free.

So, that’s the power epigenetically of these therapies, of these techniques, like EFT, like energy medicine, like EMDR, on our bodies. In that study of EFT which showed 72 genes being regulated by an hour of EFT, among those genes were genes that code for suppressing breast cancer tumors, also suppressing prostate cancer tumors, also suppressing throat cancer and bowel cancer tumors, also for things like regulating your metabolism, also supporting the growth and memory centers of your brain, the white matter in those parts of the brain. So, again, those 72 genes were fulfilling very important cell functions, all of which have to do with making you happier and healthier. And so, think about this. Changing 72 genes in your body with one hour of a totally non-invasive self-help technique. This is just a miracle in terms of our ability to shift our own health and really change our whole life outcome purely through energy, like Beth did.

JJ: That’s a great story, and I’m sure it’s going to give a lot of people a lot of hope. I want to know, sort of a scientific question of… You’ve studied, let’s stay, 20 cancer patients, and out of the 20, how many of them either reversed or changed their diagnosis?

Dawson: We haven’t done cancer studies. We’ve done these cancer gene studies, but not studies with cancer patients because it’s very, very hard to get permission to do that from institutions. Basically, in the U.S., there’s a gold standard for cancer treatment. It’s chemotherapy and radiation. If you suggest that people might not get that, usually an institution will just turn you down flat, so it’s not usually possible to study cancer patients directly.

JJ: I didn’t know if maybe people were coming on their own, not necessarily through institution, but through just knowing, like if you have a network of people and you’ve been referred 10 people with cancer. I just was wondering if there was a ratio of success, if you will, because when you were listing all the things that she changed, I thought, “Well, why was she listening to the news in the first place?”

Dawson: I know.

JJ: Right? I mean, of course, things like that would cause cancer. So, of all the things that you listed, I was doing my self-comparing here, checking all those lists and going, “Okay, well, yeah, I don’t do that. I don’t do that,” and just self-reflecting. And I’m sure everyone else who’s listening is doing the same, like “Oh, what could I change?” either if I’m dealing with, whether it be a disease or a condition or whatever it may be. Is there a gold standard of all the things they need to change? Or is it again kind of honing in on what is it for you? And I say that from a position of I’ve just gone through a medical procedure, and it was one that I did lots of alternative things for, and I’ve learned a lot. And I had somewhat a little bit of success, but ultimately needed western medicine, not in the way that they wanted to give it to me, but in the way that I went in and requested that it be given to me. And I’ve still been managing my own progress and care, if you will. And so far, so good. But I am somebody that doesn’t watch the news, all those things that you listed. I was just curious.

But I haven’t done EFT throughout the process, and I was just curious as to, if someone is listening to this, and they have cancer, and they don’t want to do radiation, chemotherapy (because I know I wouldn’t), what are the rates of success? Because there is some point in time for some people, because everyone’s path is a little bit different. While we have all these powerful tools, sometimes maybe we don’t find the right one at the right time, and we have to not give in, but we have to do what we have to do. And so, then, we can use these tools in the recovery process. It may not be the thing that saves our life, but it makes a huge difference. It makes it possible for us to heal or have a successful surgery or release what we need to on the backend. So, is there anything out there that really speaks to that?

Dawson: Yeah. And what you want to do is make sure you get the best of all possible worlds. And modern medicine has lots of procedures that are good for certain things. Andrew Weil has an interesting list he publishes of what modern medicine is really good at, and what alternative medicine is best at. And obviously, if you have a fracture, you want to go to the hospital and have it treated. You don’t want to go to a shaman and have them chant. That was the best we could do 10,000 years ago, but nowadays we have wonderful tools at our disposal. Sometimes people do need a medication, or a little of a medication. For example, at one VA hospital, if there are patients on antidepressant drugs, they also get EFT, and then they are able to taper off their doses of those drugs as they meet certain treatment milestones of EFT. So it’s not either/or. It’s that modern medicine is really good at some things, and then alternative medicine is really good at other things.

And an example of those other things is autoimmune diseases or conditions like psoriasis and scleroderma and fibromyalgia, other autoimmune conditions. Modern medicine, you may get a painkiller, but there’s not much more they can do beyond that. And so you want to then use these other techniques, some of which are quite efficacious. I have a database on my nonprofit website of studies that show treatment of people for various conditions by energy techniques. And I list those in “Mind to Matter,” at the end of Chapter 2. There’s a list of the kinds of diseases that energy therapies have been used to treat successfully, and they’re all over the place, like Alzheimer’s. Energy therapies have been used successfully for dementia and Alzheimer’s and other forms of cognitive decline. So, all the way down the list, there are dozens of therapies which energy therapies are effective.

So, you want to use the best of both worlds. Sometimes you need modern medicine. Other times, you need energy therapies. Other times, you need a combination of the two. If you need a surgery, for example, why not do emotional release work and energy work before you go into surgery, and then do things like visualization and more energy work to visualize a successful outcome? There are studies showing that people who use guided imagery, for example, before surgery have better outcomes. And there’s also research showing that people who get EFT just before surgery have a shorter hospital stay and less hospital readmissions than people who don’t get EFT. So, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use both, and there’s no reason why you could think in terms of either/or. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

JJ: I agree. And I’ve done all of that, actually, except the EFT part. Although, I did do EFT. In fact, I think I did EFT on the way to the hospital, or I might have done it at the hospital. But I’m just curious, and I would love to see that list. I would love to see Dr. Weil’s list of what western medicine is really good at, and what energy medicine is better at. And some of those things made complete sense to me, and I understand that, and I would just be curious to find whether or not what I just went through is on the list of western versus eastern or alternative. So, I want to talk about your book. Let’s talk about “Mind to Matter.” Why did you write it? How is it different than “Genie in Your Genes”?

Dawson: Well, “Genie in Your Genes” is all about epigenetics. It explains what epigenetics is, then going through the physical shifting of the genome externally, which produces epigenetic changes, and then going on to emotional and spiritual experiences and how they affect gene expression. And then “Mind to Matter” followed very logically on from that because “Mind to Matter” is really an exploration of what we can change with our minds. And the example I use in the first chapter is I tell a story of a time when I was under a tight deadline for finishing a book. And I wasn’t getting very far with the completion of the book in my office and in my regular work life, so I just left.

I went to Hawaii for a couple of weeks and just gave myself the time to write the book. But every day, I’d leave the condo for a little while, and I’d go and play in the ocean. I love snorkeling and scuba diving, so what I would do is I’d ride a jeep, I would drive to some beautiful beach, and just spend an hour or two scuba diving or snorkeling, and then go back to the jeep, back to the condo, and resume writing. And this one particular day, I was in this beach called Lawai Beach, which has an offshore reef, and it’s a big area people go snorkeling. It’s maybe two or three acres in size. And so I spent a delightful hour or hour and a half just diving down to the bottom, swimming all over this big bay up to the reef, and between the reef and the beach. And it’s about 6 to 12 feet deep. It’s full of coral heads and beautiful rock formations on the bottom. And I just dived down to the bottom, back up to the top, and had a blast, and then headed back.

So, when I got back to the jeep, I put my hand into my pocket of my bathing suit to pull out the keys, and the pocket was empty. And so I was thinking in my mind, “Okay, not only do I have no way of getting into the jeep, but I clipped the key to the condo to the same key ring.” So now I’m locked out of both the jeep and the condo. And I looked back at this huge expanse of bay, thinking that somewhere in the several acres of bay, 6 to 12 feet down, there were two tiny keys. But I didn’t panic. I [39:45] my heart. I called the keys back to me through my consciousness, and I stayed in this coherent state. And “Mind to Matter” talks all about being in a heart coherent, at a brain coherent state. So I stayed in that state, and I swam all around the bay looking. But of course, I realized after an hour or so, dusk was falling. It was getting dark. I realized it was just an impossible task to find the keys. So, in the end, I swam back toward the shore, and I saw a man with three young songs, teenage boys, who were just getting off the water, and they’ve been swimming around for a few minutes, a last minute swim before it turned dark. And I got an intuitive nudge to go up and talk to them. So I swam up to these four people, and I said to them, “I noticed you guys have been diving to the bottom. Did, by any chance, any of you see anything, find anything on the bottom of the ocean?” And the youngest boy held up my keys.

And so I’ve had so many synchronous experiences like this, JJ. And it’s like logically this is impossible, but every day, every week, every month, there are so many of these that I began to think about what is it about the universe and about our lives that gives us these opportunities? So, in “Mind to Matter,” I explore what’s possible for you and what’s impossible for you. It’s easily possible to make a cup of tea. To manifest a cup of tea, I go turn the kettle on. Super easy. If I want to, though, manifest something really difficult, really big, really enormous, it can reach the realms of impossibility. If I were to just build a skyscraper in a week, it’s impossible. You can’t do that. But what can you do in between the cup of tea and the skyscraper? And the answer is a lot, and most people are inhabiting only a tiny fraction of their potential for creation. And so, “Mind to Matter” asks, what does science tell us about that middle ground? What does science tell us we can create? And the answer turns out to be far more than we believe. And so it’s about training us to believe what we can, knowing what science tells us is possible, and then become our fullest potential. Most people are living in a tiny fraction of their human potential. And “Mind to Matter” explains that it’s much bigger, and what the limits are, and how you can go far past the current boundaries of your personal reality.

JJ: Sounds like the scientific explanation of law of attraction.

Dawson: That’s what many people have called it. In fact, Jack Canfield, who is a close friend of mine, he was the star of the movie “The Secret.” And he said that it’s where “The Secret” meets the scientist, and it’s all the empirical evidence for those two things. Now, I want to just clarify that this is not an automatic process. I explain why some people are able to manifest all kinds of things. They’re just manifesters, people who are just automatic manifesters. There are other people who try and manifest, who fail over and over again. And there is really hard science, good, clear science, on the difference between the one and the other. So you want to learn what that science tells you, and then employ the practices in your life that can help you manifest things.

But there are all kinds of examples of that in the book. One simple example is a young man who was a freshman at MIT, and he was assigned to be an assistant at a lab. And in this lab, the grad students who work there were trained to precipitate sodium crystals out of a supersaturated solution. And the lab director knew this was a really hard test, and it was one of the tasks they had to do before graduation. But everyone knew it was really difficult. It took a lot of tries to figure out how to do this, to do it successfully. But this young man joined the lab, and he knew that people were supposed to do this one procedure in the course of their time there, so someone told him, “One of the things they do at the lab is they precipitate crystals out of a supersaturated solution.” So he read the instructions, and he grabbed the ingredients, and he did that. And the lab director came by and said, “What are you doing? What have you done?” And he said, “Oh, I read you guys are supposed to do this, so I just did that.” And she said, “You did that the first time?” And he said, “Yeah. I read the instructions. It seemed very simple, and I did them.” So he did this impossible thing.

And there are lots of studies, lots of stories from chemistry, of how people are able to do this. And it’s like a dark secret in chemistry. There are some people that are really good at producing reactions and chemicals, others who are really bad at doing it. And so this young man hadn’t got the memo that it was difficult yet. He didn’t know it was difficult. He knew it was possible, and so he did it. And there are hundreds of examples, both in the book and outside the book, of people who, by just not believing in their limitations, are able to do things they think of as being difficult or impossible.

JJ: Absolutely. Before you said that he wasn’t given the memo, I was thinking because no one told him it was hard, so he expected it to be easy, and therefore, it was. And that’s part of it. And what I love about, it sounds like, what “Mind to Matter” has, I’m that sort of intuitive believer. When I hear something, I always joke about Bruce Lipton’s book “Biology of Belief” because it’s one of those books that I have it, I’m staring at it right now, I haven’t read it (at least not all of it) because I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t need to be sold. I get it. I understand this. I intuitively know this. I have a deep knowing of this.” It’s the same thing to what you’re talking about: gene expression, epigenetics, the expression of our genes. But there are people that don’t believe it, that need to be proven by the studies that you’re doing, which is awesome because we need people like you out there, because there’s not a lot of people like me out there who hear it and intuitively go, “Yep, I know that’s true. It makes sense to me. It resonates. It’s a deep knowing. And I don’t need the proof.” But a lot of people need the proof. Our system needs the proof. Our western medicine needs the proof. And people need to be shown that, so that they know what’s possible. Because in order for them to believe and, therefore, implement and try and possibly live, they need to be brought into belief by what you’re doing. So I really appreciate that you have written the book and that it’s out there. And I would encourage everybody to get it. What would be the best place for them to get “Mind to Matter”?

Dawson: Through my website. The website’s name is mindtomatter.com. And if you go there, you can download a couple of the chapters free. You can read the reviews. We have this contest running periodically for people who are involved in the book, because what’s happened is a big community has sprung up around the book in the years since it was published. Now it’s out on paperback, and there are people following reading groups, people following masterminds, because there are techniques in the book. There are about 30 techniques for catalyzing these kinds of changes. They want to learn and study what these techniques are.

Again, people who just intend, like this one study, for example, showing that people intending to produce a change in the shape of molecules are not able to do it, but people who are intending to produce that change in the molecular shape and who are in this coherent state I mentioned are able to do it. So you need to train yourself to become coherent: mentally coherent and have brain coherence and also heart coherence. And so there are these techniques that make you a much better manifester than you otherwise would be. And those 30 techniques are all in the book.

JJ: Great. So, like you said, they can download a couple of free chapters as well?

Dawson: Yeah, a couple of free chapters. Also, they get a free copy of the EFT mini-manual which shows how to do tapping, as well as there are several free meditations. And those meditations have now been listened to by about 60,000 people, so it’s been remarkable how many people are using those meditations. Because these meditations help you achieve that mental coherence in which people can manifest. We’ve got those coherence meditations on mindtomatter.com, so people can download them and then have that experience and see how it shifts in their minds and also in their bodies.

JJ: So, again, it’s mindtomatter.com?

Dawson: Yep.

JJ: Okay. Everyone, go get your downloaded free meditations and chapters, and then, of course, buy the book “Mind to Matter.” I’ll be going there as well to download it because I love anything that’s a practice of law of attraction because it’s definitely what I’ve been teaching and promoting and helping people bridge the gap, for those that don’t understand or think it’s just about putting pictures on a vision board that you just hang on your wall and never look at again. So part of my mission is to bring some of that to everyone’s awareness. And I have a feeling your book will also add to the depth and the success of all of that as well. You have so much in your database and repertoire and all the studies that you have done over the years. And I know we could continue this conversation, and we might, on so many things that are important for people to know about. I know that we’ve talked about your book “Mind to Matter.” Is there another place people can get more of what it is that you’re doing and information about the things that you’re studying?

Dawson: There are several other sites worth knowing about, but they’re all linked through mindtomatter.com. One is the Veterans Stress Project. And if you know a veteran who is suffering, please do refer them to the Veterans Stress Project. Again, that link is at mindtomatter.com. Also, EFT Universe has a database of over 5000 stories on people using EFT for all kinds of diseases and psychological impediments. And they just write their stories up in detail about how to used it to overcome those things. So, EFT Universe is also a great resource. But again, that’s linked from mindtomatter.com. So, all of those things kind of funnel through that one book site, and then you can get access to the mini-manual, also the notations. And those are really powerful. We’re now doing EEG studies and MRI studies on people who are applying the meditation techniques, and we’re finding that they’re having ecstatic experiences that are far beyond where they moved in meditation previously. So, again, mindtomatter.com is really a good resource for all those things.

JJ: Great. Everyone, head over to mindtomatter.com and do what you got to do. Let’s keep the conversation going. Dawson, thank you so much for your research and for your publications, for helping to promote the power we all have to heal ourselves, to at least some extent, like we’ve talked about. I do appreciate that. And to being a light in the world. I know it started out as a personal reason why you were doing it for yourself, but of course, as any good healer would do, we share it with others because we want them to also heal themselves and feel the freedom and the joy and the happiness that we get out of what happens when we do that. So, thank you again for being on the show today.

Dawson: It’s a great pleasure. Thanks for sharing.