The Deep Healing Project
The Wellness Brothers, Dr. Jake and Dr. Nick Hyde, talk about doctor stuff, or brother stuff, or sometimes both. Filled to the brim with humor, practical advice, and rich in-depth conversation, these brothers from opposite sides of the country connect on the topics that they truly love. Centered on holistic health, each podcast goes to the core of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and life.
The Deep Healing Project
The Healing Power of Forgiveness
What if your physical pain is rooted in emotional wounds? The Deep Healing brothers explore forgiveness as a hidden pathway to physical healing that conventional medicine often misses.
Your knee pain could be unprocessed resentment. Your frozen shoulder might be harboring unforgiveness. While these connections may sound far-fetched, Drs. Jake and Nick have witnessed remarkable physical transformations when patients finally release long-held emotional burdens. As they put it, unforgiveness acts like a poison you willingly drink while hoping it harms someone else.
Throughout this episode, we explore why people cling to grievances—sometimes for decades—and the surprising truth that long-term unforgiveness often reflects something deeper: unforgiveness toward oneself. The brothers share how the victim-perpetrator cycle perpetuates suffering across generations and how the simple (but not easy) act of forgiveness disrupts this damaging pattern.
The conversation culminates in a practical five-step forgiveness process that transforms negativity into gratitude. Step by step, they guide you through forgiving others, allowing others to forgive you, forgiving yourself, finding the lesson, and ultimately discovering gratitude for what you've learned. This process isn't about condoning harmful actions—it's about freeing yourself from emotional and physical pain.
Perhaps most compelling are the stories of "miraculous healings" witnessed when patients experience forgiveness breakthroughs, including one remarkable case where a young girl's leukemia disappeared overnight after completing a forgiveness exercise. These accounts challenge the notion of "spontaneous remission" and suggest the profound connection between emotional release and physical healing.
Whether you're carrying decades of resentment or just beginning to recognize how unforgiveness affects your wellbeing, this episode offers a compassionate framework for releasing what no longer serves you. Have you experienced healing through forgiveness? The brothers would love to hear your story.
here we are, another fine day with the finest brothers who do this thing. I think my name is dr nick. This is my brother, dr Jake.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody.
Speaker 1:And we're happy to be back bringing you another episode of the Deep Healing Project. That was all I prepared for this opener.
Speaker 2:I know you knocked that opener out of the park. I've got to say Great intro, Thank you. I know you knocked that opener out of the park.
Speaker 1:I gotta say great intro thank you well, I got my. It's my lucky, jake actually gave me this.
Speaker 1:Venus sun shirt that I'm wearing on and very retro, is retro and my four-year-old son loves it because it has numbers on it and I think he's like shirts don't matter, like there's basically dress shirts and then there's play shirts and his favorite shirts to wear it now have like numbers on it, because then he looks like he's playing soccer or something and he likes to play, like he's pretend that he's something other than himself. So he always makes me wear this shirt because this is my only one with numbers on it um, yeah, I think my son's pretty similar.
Speaker 2:He got his like first like soccer jersey and uh, it's the coolest thing for him ever. So I think he's on board now with that. What number's on that? Who is it? Sean Marion? Oh, the Matrix. All right, sean Marion, if you're listening, we're happy to have you as a guest on the pod.
Speaker 1:That would be an interesting episode, maybe For us especially.
Speaker 2:Very interesting. I'd start a whole new brand on Talk to the Suns. We get Sean Marion on, all right With that, nick, I have something I want to talk about. My interest was sparked in light of our pod last episode. Assuming we release these in chronological order, we did this will have been on the previous episode and you touched on it, and it's a very powerful topic and it's the topic of forgiveness.
Speaker 1:Do you want to get into that today? Well, it would be weird if we didn't, now that you brought it up.
Speaker 2:Do you have a better idea?
Speaker 1:I'll pivot. Oh yeah, let's do it. Forgiveness obviously is super important as Jake takes a sip of something here.
Speaker 2:That is my filler. Oh good filler. Yeah, this is my iced coffee. You got a beverage out there by our campfire. What do you got?
Speaker 1:Well, I just got black coffee. Your iced coffee definitely looks like whiskey in a nice glass, though Well, it is in a whiskey glass.
Speaker 2:a very nice glass though? Well it is, it is in a whiskey glass, a very nice glass, but doesn't that feel good to hold like a big, heavy scotch glass in your hands? Oh yeah, I'm a very kinesthetic guy.
Speaker 2:I like a good feel of something yeah and there's a coffee shop here in nashville that I like and they'll put like. And if you order a cold brew for there, they'll put it in a really nice whiskey glass with those big whiskey cube, ice cubes oh cool, and it just feels great I could do that at home. It doesn't have to be just for here. So anyway, I do like a good feel of something.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:But I do miss our happy hour episodes back in the day where we did have a drink.
Speaker 1:I know the first season of this podcast. We always did a Friday afternoon.
Speaker 2:And we always did a friday afternoon and, uh, we always had a drink. Yeah, well, the idea was you and I live across country from each other, but it's like we could still like have an after work happy hour as brothers who happen to be doctors talking shop, talking life, and that was fun. But now we're dads and we have to get up. Well, you have to get up early in the morning to pod. I do it right after I drop my five-year-old off at preschool and here we are drinking coffee together.
Speaker 1:All right, nick, forgiveness, yeah well, you know, I'll just put it out there. Those of you who like season one, the giddy silliness of you know, the brothers and the happy hour, we can do it. We could. We could find a way to do an episode like that. If you're like, yes, we need that, give us your feedback, ok.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe we'll in our programming. If we ever start thinking more than five minutes in advance, we can start having, like you know, every fourth or fifth episode, happy hour episode.
Speaker 1:Well, we want to get into some book topics. I mean, I've got a nice way of like you know, the finer things club kind of situation Book club.
Speaker 2:All right, I like it. One of us remember this?
Speaker 1:No, we'll do it, okay, well cheers. Let's start forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Okay, Forgiveness, A lot of people understand some of the value, but I don't think it's talked about enough in terms of health. Not just like health of relationships or family or community obviously incredibly important but actual health in your body. You want to get into that?
Speaker 1:Let's do it yeah.
Speaker 2:I do actually remember one of my first trainings for bioenergetic synchronization technique. Training for bioenergetic synchronization technique, the Saturday morning session opened up with a forgiveness lecture and I was kind of bummed at the time because I was like I was still a student and I'm like I want to learn techniques, I want some tangible tools and it's like everyone, slow down, we have to cover forgiveness and I remember having kind of a bad attitude about it, to be honest, but nonetheless, they walked us through an exercise and maybe by the time this episode's over, we'll get through that forgiveness exercise created by Dr MT Mortar Jr Five Steps of Forgiveness and I went through that exercise, initially begrudgingly, but then I went full-hearted and it became actually a real powerful thing that I think I shared a few episodes back. Anyway, we'll get into that or review it, because I'm sure we've talked about it, but it's really important. Now, forgiveness what are some famous sayings around? Forgiveness or unforgiveness? I'm thinking I'll go first.
Speaker 2:Thinking of one people like to say is like unforgiveness is like a poison you drink yourself while trying to harm another person. Yeah, and that couldn't be more true in my opinion. So the idea is we hold on to unforgiveness. That can manifest as bitterness, resentment, anger, hatred, and we think we're getting justice from a wrongdoing that happens to us by holding on to this negative emotion. The only one who really suffers with this choice is the person holding the unforgiveness, hence the poison you drink yourself hoping it harms someone else. So I actually have a theory about this that long-term unforgiveness. So this isn't like you betrayed me today, nick, and I'm just mad at you all day Steaming. No, this is like.
Speaker 2:Once that unforgiveness crosses a threshold of, let's just say, a year, and you still have unforgiveness. It's really unforgiveness for itself and you're projecting it onto another person, because I think we all inherently know that it harms us, it weakens us, it makes our life less joyful, less vibrant, less peaceful. I think we all know that. So if we choose to harbor that unforgiveness after an extended period of time, we really are just holding unforgiveness towards ourself. Otherwise we wouldn't make a choice that in that creates harm in our own life. So that's what I've done with a lot of my clients over the years. Like you're still mad about this thing and you're holding negativity towards this person from forever ago. Gotta look in the mirror. What haven't you forgiven yourself for? But you're like, because what happens is you hold guilt or shame and then, subconsciously, because you're holding that guilt, you will want to offset the guilt by creating suffering in your own life. Yeah, by creating suffering in your own life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, it makes a lot of sense and I think I see it a lot with. You know everyone it's hard to really face up to reality that you might not like yourself that much and I know some people can be funny about that. They can be, like you know, making jokes at their own expense and you know they could be like nitpicky about certain attributes about themselves that they'd like to change. You know, I think that's pretty human nature but in the course of like events right, I mean forgiveness to me is a lot about events more than just people. It's like this event happened in in the timeline of my life and it was kind of a turning point and I don't like it's been terribly uncomfortable for me that whole event happening and it's uncomfortable to have it in my mind. Why? Because you know I am at fault, I am partly responsible for what happened and therefore it reflects negatively on me.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's why part of forgiveness of another person is also owning up to your role that you played. That's part of Dr Mortar's five steps. It's like you're not completely innocent in this and even if it seems really one-sided like a random act of violence to you, it's like whoa that came out of nowhere, just wrong place, wrong time. Still it's worth investigating. I don't know what I did or didn't do. I'm not omniscient. I don't know everything. So if there is something in this story worth taking responsibility for, then I'm going to do it. Even if I can't ever nail it down and say like this is the thing that I did, you can still clear it by forgiving yourself for anything you did or didn't do, knowingly or unknowingly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what am I responsible for? Ever since that event has taken place, I'm responsible for my own healing and wellbeing. No one else is going to be, no one else is going to do it for me. So, yeah, taking that responsibility on and saying like, hmm, I could have dealt with this a year ago or five years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then there's the forgiveness of self because of any harm I may have caused, myself having not done forgiveness in that time span.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, since Roland always says sins of commission and omission.
Speaker 2:Right, so yes. So why do you think people sometimes really struggle with letting go of those things? I already have one theory. One theory is because they're trying to punish themselves for something that they're holding on to. Any other reasons you can come up with, I like to think maybe I'll let Nick likes to stew deeply on a big question like that. So I like to think sometimes or just what I've observed in other people is because they're like they don't deserve it. I'm not going to forgive them. They don't deserve forgiveness. There's like a principle behind it. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1:Certainly, certainly. That's true. I'd also like to add in it's just like this feeling of importance, and if you move on, then this important thing just slips away into the ethers. And I think that there's a lot of people who are not willing to move on when something's been so important to them.
Speaker 2:They're not willing to give up the story. Yeah Right, cause it's like. This is such an important part of my story, it's a feature of my life, and if you clear it, if you let that go, then you're letting go a treasure of sorts, or perceived treasure, something of value. I guess we do that if we consider victimhood, which our society sometimes seems to do, victimhood as value. You know these like victim competitions that people can get into and, yeah, you let go of that story, you let go of that identification as a victim, and then you're giving up something that maybe subconsciously, you think holds a lot of value in your life. That could be an obstacle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's funny. I'm remembering I had a dream last night where I got to ask ask Jordan Peterson a question at a conference. I don't know why I actually don't listen to Jordan Peterson that much, but you know he comes up and whatever feeds and I gotta ask him a question. I was like all of a sudden, like there's a microphone in front of me and he's on stage. Like this is how dreams go. You're like, oh okay, I gotta think of something.
Speaker 1:And the question I asked him was like, as a psychologist, so many people's healing story ends up coming down to how their parents wronged them. They're like my mom or my dad did such and such to me, or they didn't do such and such and now my life stinks. Right, I was never breastfed as a kid, or what you know, like that's. You know, people have these complaints towards their parent and it becomes part of their healing process. I think I think it can be healthy just having some awareness of what's happened to you, but then I find a lot of these people have a hard time progressing. So the question I asked Jordan Peterson is like what advice would you give to someone to move beyond feeling like a victim from their parents.
Speaker 1:You know the Louise Hay quote. Like we're all victims of victims, and I think it is important to acknowledge and obviously we got to get into the steps of forgiveness, because this kind of like just clears up how to do the process. But we do have to acknowledge that, like I felt certain things when that happened, when this person did whatever, but again, taking that responsibility, it's like do I want to spend the rest of my life here? Is this what my life's all going to be about at the end of the day? Like Count of Monte Cristo, he, you know, when he sees the love of his life and he's been spending decades in this whole revenge scheme he sees her and he's like I don't think this is that important. He was like wanting to get revenge on her, but he, you know, his heart changed. It's like what do?
Speaker 2:you really want? You want the love or you want the unforgiveness? Yeah, it's like my love got taken from me. Now people have to pay. Then it was like here's your love back. It's like, but I was planning this revenge for so long.
Speaker 2:It's what kept me going, and it's like nothing. You know, nothing's taken from me. Love is still here, you know. That reminds me of very difficult teaching of turning the other cheek. It's a tough one, right? I said wait, why would I do that? I was wrong.
Speaker 2:And I think, fundamentally, the turning the other cheek teaching has a lot to do with the victim perpetrator cycle, the idea of like hurt people hurt people, and so the idea of this cycle of human history of people or a person gets victimized and then they use that as justification to make choices that put them in a perpetrator role. So another way of thinking about that is every perpetrator sees themselves as a victim and then they justify their, their choices that create harm because of that. And so the idea of turning the other cheek is yeah, you were wronged. However, you don't have to see yourself as a person who was wronged, so you don't have to make choices based on that identity and thus stopping the victim perpetrator cycle with you. And another interesting thing about that is and I actually really just thought about this the other day uh, working with the client. It's like all right, people get victimized and they're like all right. Therefore, it's okay that I made this choice right. So you see that in societies and they're like all right, therefore, it's okay that I made this choice right. So you see that in societies and wars, things like that, like World War I guess, in the aftermath of World War I, germany, got punished pretty hard for that right. So it's like they're perpetrators and then the victors of World War I were like we're punishing Germany and it's like it's very justified, and then created some suffering for the next generation coming up in germany. They're like we didn't do anything, victim, just took one charismatic individual to rally this victim mentality in a culture to then justify wrongdoing again moving forward. And so you could make that case in any war that the people initiating the violence saw themselves as victims. Okay, so that's on like more of a cultural level. Now, on an individual level, we do that too. However, you could make a choice to not make decisions based on the wrong things that have happened to you, and that's kind of freedom.
Speaker 2:Now, the revelation that I had is usually it's like a perpetrator creates a victim and then the victim's like I can now justify harming others because I see myself as victim. But I realized, I realized this week. Some people do that. It's like I need someone else to suffer in order to right this wrong. But I think a lot of people and this would be like the category I fall into I don't seek to make choices that create harm for others. I mostly would seek choices to create harm where I'm the victim again.
Speaker 2:So I get victimized. I see myself as a victim. I justify poor choices that harm myself because I'm a victim, it's okay. So you can see this application all across. With any kind of let's call them habits, behaviors that we know aren't good for us. It's very possible that underlying this is a feeling of victimization. So it's like all right, I know I shouldn't eat like a whole bag of chips in a soda on the couch before bedtime, but yeah, yeah, yeah. But I see myself like I'm seeing myself as victim, so that's okay, or you know whatever other kind of hard right.
Speaker 1:I was victimized by my day and my schedule exactly responsibilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, life's not fair. My spouse was rude to me. My boss is coming down unfairly to me, so you know what? I can have this whole pint of ice cream right now yeah all right.
Speaker 2:So another thing about unforgiveness that I think people do, going back to what I said earlier, where it's like they don't deserve it. So a solution to that is because that might be true. They don't deserve it, they. So a solution to that is because that might be true. They don't deserve it. They harmed me, they did nothing to make amends. Why should I forgive them? Or maybe they've made a soft amends but not a wholehearted one, and you could tell it they haven't tried to make this right. They said, oh, I'm sorry, didn't mean to do that, they don't deserve my forgiveness. What do you have to say?
Speaker 1:to that I don't care about them, doesn't have anything to do with it. Yeah, this is what I tell people. Yeah, the time right. They're like yeah, they say that story and I'm like they're not in here. Yeah, they're nothing. Yeah, we're not talking about them. You know, what do you? What do you want to do for yourself? Yeah, it's a choice Lovingly, create your own reality that you like living in, even though this happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the choice is it doesn't matter if they deserve it or not. The real, underlying question is do you think you deserve it? Do you think you deserve the freedom from that experience or from that person who's harmed you in the past? Do you want to be tethered to them forever? Do you want them to be occupying significant real estate in your mind or your heart, or do you believe you deserve freedom from that? So if you're going to go with who deserves it, you have to make a choice. Do I deserve this forgiveness? It has nothing to do with the other person, and then you can ultimately make a choice that you know. Maybe I don't have to deserve this, maybe it's a gift that I can give myself today and you view forgiveness as a gift that's given, not earned. It's not transactional. It's just a gift that you can give yourself because you're choosing to love yourself in that moment. Not because you deserve love or you deserve forgiveness. It's because you want to gift that to yourself. How about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and being realistic, sometimes there's people who've had unbelievably painful things I mean, I don't have all the forms, hipaa forms signed to kind of go through some stories have had immense trauma that would make 98% of the world like let go of their trauma immediately because it's nothing compared to this, right, you know, people had some really bad stuff happen to them and they might not be ready to to let go and move on yet. So when that happens, this might be somebody who's listening right now and they're like I'm just really not willing to let go of this yet, I'm not willing to forgive this person yet. All I do I'm like, okay, then let's see if we can process some of the hurt so you don't feel the hurt anymore and we just go into letting go of the hurt and other emotions involved with the hurt, feeling isolated, feeling alone at the time. You know, it's like the der kramer syndrome stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, feeling powerless feeling, shameful yeah and try to we and we just try to unburden that part of the story, and so then when it's time to do the forgiveness, it's much easier. It's like, oh yeah, I don't really care anymore. A lot of that emotional baggage has been processed. So if you're like I'm not ready to do that, well, we have episodes on letting go. So far there's other places to see it online with Dr Hawkins. Do some letting go, just about underlying emotions of that event, or, with that person, process what you're willing to process. You know you don't read a 200-page book all at once. You read it one page at a time. So it's like you might have a big story here. You don't have to process it all in one sitting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just take one step in that direction. Yeah, all right, let's go through the steps here. So there's five steps. One step in that direction. Yeah, all right, let's go through the steps here. So I there's five steps. I get the order of step two and three reverse sometimes, but I don't think it matters, I don't think there were that particular order. Okay, caveat out there, all right.
Speaker 2:The first step is the obvious one is you forgive the other person. Forgive them in your mind, forgive them in your mind, forgive them in your heart. Why Not? Because they deserve it, not because they did anything to make amends. It's because you're choosing in this moment to give yourself this gift of forgiveness and freedom from that. So forgive them. Step two maybe it's step three, I don't know. Maybe it's step three, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Step two in this exercise is you give them permission to forgive you. You don't have to call them up you. Step three is you do that for yourself. You forgive yourself for any part you played, knowingly or unknowingly. Okay, those are the first three steps, and I recommend spending time with each one until you feel like that feeling is true, that letting you feel that release the other person, let them forgive you, or at least give them permission, so you're not the obstacle towards that healing, forgive yourself. Step four is what's the lesson? What did I learn in this? What value came of this? Maybe the lesson, or maybe, yeah, maybe the lesson is simply something that has now resulted in I am a more understanding person or I'm a more courageous person. I'm more patient now, more compassionate towards others. Maybe the lesson is just something simple like that, or maybe you learned something very practical in your life that's helped you move forward and mature.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just one last thing the lesson can be don't do this to someone else.
Speaker 2:Simple yeah, it can be that. Yeah, yeah, just any lesson. You can make a list. Sometimes there's a lot, but you just need one positive thing Like how is my life more enriched because of this experience I went through? And then step five is be thankful and grateful for the experience. Not the experience, but the treasure that came from the experience, the value, and so, beginning the exercise, it's unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness, negativity, and by the end you should be feeling grateful and thankful, and that's the real power behind it is the change in the feeling state regarding the experience you had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and don't don't do some like tropes or some you know some basic gratitude patterns for it. Try to really dig into the gratitude. Obviously you want to make it very visceral. You want to make the gratitude as visceral as possible. So if you just try one thing and you're like I'm grateful that it's not happening anymore, that might not be enough for you. I don't know, maybe that is, maybe it's like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling so much relief, so much gratitude that it's over. That could be really powerful. But you are trying to make it very visceral, right, we're talking about a feeling state and going back to the beginning of this pod and thank you, jake, for for spelling out the steps.
Speaker 1:But forgiveness being that or unforgiveness being that poison in your body and we do see it I mean, why are we talking about this? These are two, two guys who started out, as you know, body fixers, right, and that poison of unforgiveness, it completely depletes your acupuncture system in multiple areas of your acupuncture energy. It depletes that energy. It distorts the energy. It can create any symptom in the energy. It depletes that energy. It distorts the energy. It can create any symptom in the body. It really can. I've had people had like a frozen shoulder. That was unforgiveness. I've had lots of people who have knee pain could be unforgiveness. I mean that's that gallbladder meridian goes on the outside of the knee and that's a lot of unforgiveness and bitterness and then anger, depression, self-pity, can be liver, that's the inside of the knee. I mean I've seen a lot of that, that pattern.
Speaker 2:No, I've seen a lot of the quote unquote miraculous healings that happened in my practice came from a major forgiveness moment in their work, where something just miraculously seems healed. Forgiveness is, off the top of my mind, the most significant thing. I've also seen that in spiritual healings, when people are getting some kind of spiritual healing service or event and they have a huge physical health breakthrough, a lot of it also comes down to forgiving themselves for others and even in stories of spontaneous remission of things, say in a hospital setting, which is, by the way, I think one of the least scientific things on the planet is to call that spontaneous remission.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's totally unscientific to be like it just spontaneously happened and we're not going to investigate the why, and we don't need to look because it's just a spontaneous thing.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that's kind of a joke, because spontaneous remission happens a lot, say with big cancers, big tumors gone in moments and the stories compiled for the actual researchers that are like maybe this isn't spontaneous, maybe we should look into this. A lot of it's forgiveness as well and that's biblical too. A lot of the miraculous healings in the new testament aren't just like you're healed, it's also you're forgiven. Right, you're the theology major, not me. Yeah, well, you know you're forgiven.
Speaker 1:Right, you're the theology major, not me. Yeah, well, you know you're bringing up the cancer thing. I'm pretty sure we were both there together at one of the emergence process seminars and Roland, it was like Saturday morning. He's like oh, we gave this young girl who she wanted remote treatment and I think that maybe he was doing the remote treatment. We were there, he showed us remote treatment we don't have to get into remote treatment right now, but maybe that's a good podcast of the future and he did it. And then her homework.
Speaker 1:This young girl who had I think it was leukemia and like really in a bad spot, like a month to live or something, something crazy, she's in the hospital room. They give her forgiveness exercise in the journal about forgiveness. Anyways, we're in the seminar, we're set Saturday morning and they're like hey, we have some good news. They're like that person we were doing that remote treatment on. Like that person we were doing that remote treatment on, she doesn't have leukemia anymore. It was like overnight she stayed up all night. She wrote in her journal like all through the night, on, on, on, forgiveness and forgiveness, and by the morning she had no cancer markers in her blood anymore.
Speaker 2:Sorry about that. So you know, maybe, if you're listening to this, watching this, maybe give some forgiveness a chance here. And maybe not because anyone deserves it necessarily. It's because you can choose in this moment to be loving towards yourself. Maybe it's not even motivated by love, maybe you just want healing. You decided I've suffered enough. Maybe I don't want to suffer like I've been suffering, and you can make that choice. Give it a try. You have a cool story. Reach out to me and Nick. We'd love to hear about it, absolutely, or even not even because of the pot. Another story from the past, before you even listened to this. If forgiveness was a powerful healing moment in your life, we'd like to hear about it.
Speaker 1:Well, love and peace to everybody. Looking forward to the next one yeah, love you guys Looking forward to the sound of our own voices.
Speaker 2:Bye.