In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell speaks with Michael Trainer, author of Resonance, about how relationships influence biology, behavior, and long-term health.
They explore “resonance” as a state of nervous system alignment between people, and how loneliness and weak social networks contribute to chronic disease, dementia, and mental health issues. Trainer shares personal experiences from caring for his father, overcoming OCD, and finding healing through cultural immersion in Sri Lanka.
The conversation also examines “network sufficiency,” community as medicine, and why AI cannot replace human relational intelligence in healthcare.
Ultimately, this episode reframes health as something co-created through connection, trust, and community.
About the Guest:
Michael Trainer is an author, speaker, and founder focused on relational intelligence, social health, and the role of human connection in wellbeing. He is the author of Resonance, where he explores how relationships and nervous system co-regulation shape health as much as biology or behavior.
His work is informed by both personal experience, caring for his father through dementia and overcoming OCD following adolescent trauma and global exploration, including immersive time in collectivist cultures such as Sri Lanka. Through his writing and teaching, he focuses on how individuals and communities can build deeper connections, restore emotional coherence, and strengthen the social foundations of health.
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Discover Resonance — a thought‑provoking book that explores purpose, performance, and the art of thriving. Learn more today at resonance.biz.
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About the Host:
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream – toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
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Transcript:
What is the more that is possible? ‘Cause I, I believe that there’s a more that wants to live both through us and in the space between us, and the fundamental question I ask in the book is how do we become instruments for that song? So a warm welcome back to the Evolution of Medicine podcast. Here we are with Michael Trainer.
Welcome, Michael. Thank you, James. It’s an honor to be here. Great to see you. And, uh, for those of you who’ve been following along for a long time, and you have an amazing memory, you will know that Michael’s been on the platform before. So actually, what ended up being a, a pretty salient and important moment in my whole career was the pre-party to the 2017 IFM conference.
I was living in Venice then. You also lived in Venice. We were just becoming friends, and that event was all about the brain, and that was the first time that Dale Bredesen was really sort of cross-pollinating with all of the functional medicine community. And so many things happened at that party and that week, one of which is that, you know, Dr.
Christine Burke and many others from the functional medicine space took on the challenge of proving the methodology for the reversal of cognitive decline. And so, you know, that moment was really powerful, but, uh, you were, you came on and gave a talk that night. So it’s really cool to be here nine years on and to be able to talk about something that I think is, like, aligned and tangential, and it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on to come and talk about your new book, Resonance.
Thank you, James. Yeah, it was, uh, it was an honor. I actually still have both fond memories and, you know, just some incredible connections from, from that time with the forum and, um, Wanda meeting, uh, Terry Wahls. I mean, Dale Bredesen, obviously pretty legendary. As you know, I went through a, a pretty challenging, um, journey with my father, who had dementia.
And so, um, it’s been a deep passion of mine. With Resonance, uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve made the journey for my– which we knew each other during my peak mind days, but made the journey more into the context of the social aspect of medicine. As you know, you know, the greatest corollary to our long-term health and happiness is the quality of our long-term relationships, and I think it’s an area that, that is, that is deeply needed in the discussion right now.
And obviously, there’s a– which many of them are in your community. There’s a great many doctors who can speak to a lot of the other tenets of well-being and wellness, but I feel like on the social side, that’s an area that I had some experience and, and credibility in. So that’s, that’s really the essence of, of where I’ve been going with Resonance.
Yeah. I remember a few years ago you would share that you were sort of hard pivoting on your, your book idea ’cause I know this book’s been a long time, you know, in the offing. Maybe you could just share a little bit about it, like what was it about the term resonance that you’ve ended up here and, you know, why did it feel like a more authentic expression of, of who you are and what you’re here to do?
Yeah, beautiful question. Well, my last company was called Peak Minds, uh, and it was a beautiful journey. A lot of it was born out of my desire to help my father, who was literally a genius. He was very humble, but he– so he would never say that. He’d probably be uncomfortable if I said that. But he was literally a genius and, and had dementia.
He first had cancer, and then when he w- he– actually, cancer went into remission, and he was diagnosed with dementia. That was when I was building Global Citizen, a, uh, a music festival based in New York City. Um, and something about dementia hit me harder than cancer. Obviously, neither of them are, are, are, are diseases you want to, uh, come into contact with or, or to deal with with a loved one.
But dementia hit me harder because it was incurable, right? And so I took– I decided to take my father. I told him I’d take him on a trip anywhere in the world. Uh, he was too humble to ask for, for me to take him anywhere, and I took him to South Africa. And it was on that trip, which was honestly probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, to take that time and 10 days and create memories with the man I love the most on the planet.
It’s an experience I’ll never forget, and it was one wh-where even where he was kind of losing sight of the shore, where his cognitive, you know, faculties were diminishing and, and he, he had the awareness t-to realize it. It was, it was a memory. He, he would create these books, and I gave him “A Long Walk to Freedom,” Nelson Mandela’s biography, and he, he read it and reread it so many times, and he regifted it to me for Christmas, and it was one of the– It’s probably the material possession I prize the most.
But I, I actually write about that in the book. I write about something called the relational bucket list, which is this idea of how can we actually orient our life. You know, w- many people have heard about the idea of a bucket list, uh, as an, as an organizational principle to have kind of epic experiences in your life.
And I think it’s a beautiful idea. Some of our shared friends have been pioneers, Ben Nemtin and others in, in that field. But for me, the piece that, that I think is most integral is the idea of how we can use experiences to deepen our relationships. And when I started this book journey, the book that I actually was, was, I guess, given a contract to write or, or, you know, given a book offer for was called “Magnetic.”
And it was really based off the idea of creating experiences, which is still something I, I believe deeply in. But the publisher, because of the Global Citizen, wanted, I think, more of the how do you host Beyoncé on stage, and how did you wind up getting to host His Holiness the Dalai Lama? And those, of course, are deeply meaningful experiences in my life, but I didn’t feel that they were the things that while, while they were probably noteworthy and could catch an audience in terms of, of the marketability, it didn’t feel like the essence and the heart of really what I wanted to share.
A bit more like what I’m sharing in regards to my, my journey with my father. But I think the other piece is, which I think is true for all of us, is we evolve, right? And so I Wrote and then rewrote this book three times, um, and it’s been a six-year journey. And at first it was a very head-heavy orientation, hence, you know, “Peak Mind.”
It was very much oriented towards some of the cognitive tools that we can use to im-improve our relationships. But what I landed on was a much more holistic notion of relational health and relational intelligence, and really went deep into both the research and the science around, for example, co-regulation of our nervous systems.
Uh, reached out to, uh, to Lieberman, the head of neuroscience at UCLA. Went deep on both the science but also, you know, some of the, some of the, if you will, the musical elements of relationship building, which was also near and dear to my heart. So much more around coherence and how we actually orient ourselves, our own lives, but also our relational lives around that which is meant for us, and using our, our feeling actually as a GPS.
So both the hard science as well as, as a, a bit more intuitive orientation in terms of the thermostat of, of knowing who is meant for us and who’s not meant for us. I’ll give a cogent example be- so it doesn’t seem soft. So basically one of the things I talk about, and we talk about this notion in relationally of givers and takers, right?
And I, I think it’s an incomplete, though helpful, distinction. And what I talk about is, is something called batteries and black holes, right? So someone could be, for example, a taker in your life, right? For example, they might be broke, uh, they might be a, a broke friend and you pick up the bill more often than not, you know, for dinner.
But they’d be the first person to show up for you if, God forbid, you’re in the hospital or, you know, they make you laugh all the time, you know? Or, you know, you know, they… you need your kids picked up, they’re, they’re the first to volunteer. To me, that’s a battery, right? Like, that’s someone who still is generative.
That it’s really based off how you feel when you’re with them and, and when you leave their presence. Whereas someone who is a giver, you know, someone who’s always picking up the tab, you know, like it– They could be potentially utilizing their giving to manipulate you, right? To kind of hook you in to that subtle desire for reciprocity and then drain you energetically.
So, so what I’m getting at there is I think the common denominator is how do you actually feel around someone and how, what kind of feelings do they evoke? And a lot of that goes to the deeper science and the emerging science around, around our nervous systems and, and how we actually co-regulate each other, and we become both psychologically and biologically more similar to the sp- people we spend, you know, the most time with.
And so that journey and depth into what I would say is a more holistic orientation around relational health is what ultimately led to the birth of “Resonance.” Is this something that you can get better at? Is this something that you can improve, or is this something that you’re, like, born with a certain affect?
You know, maybe there’s certain, um, interactions you have within your life. You know, there could be ACEs, and there could be toxins, and there could be other environmental things that’ll affect your ability to be, like, co-resonant safety with others. Is that something that you can, you could change and improve, or are you pretty much set from, like, you know, whatever happened in childhood?
Yeah, I think that’s a g- a beautiful question. I’ll use a kind of a functional medicine metaphor that just occurred to me as you were talking, which is, as you know, and one of the things I, I went deep into as it relates to dementia is you can have a genetic predisposition, right? Like, you can have an APOE4 allele, and if you have one of those genes, you’re three times more likely to get dementia.
If you have two, they say you’re upwards of 10, 10 times more likely. But as you know, just because you have a, forgive the analogy, a loaded gun doesn’t mean you have to pull the trigger, right? So through epigenetics, through diet, lifestyle, you can manage down that risk significantly and, and never actually have the onset of dementia.
I would say in the context of relationships, you know, I think there are orientations, you know? I would say, for example, I would call myself now an ambivert, so I’m, I’m deeply extroverted, but I need to go recharge by myself. Like, if I don’t have time to recharge the battery that is me, I get wonky, and, uh, the metaphor I use in the book is out of tune.
But, but I was, as a child, to answer your question directly, I was a, a incredible introvert. So, like, I, I would not associate myself as, as being an extrovert at all. And not only that, and I share this story in the book, but when I was 12, my first experience abroad, I was actually jumped by a gang. About 20, 30 guys violently beat me.
And so as a young person, you know, 12 year-years old, I developed what, you know, medicine would call an obsessive compulsive disorder. And in essence, I ritualized my behavior to try to bring about a sense of safety in what, what now occurred to me to be an unsafe world or an insecure world. Mm. So imagine introvert plus trauma was not a combination for relational intelligence.
In fact, I just wanted to retreat into the nest of my home. But when, when college came around, so when I hit 18, that’s when I r- the, the OCD really flared up. You know, conventional traditional Western medicine, you know, recommended [00:11:00] basically antidepressants to, to manage down the symptoms that were, that were showing.
And I asked a deeper question of, “Okay, if I don’t wanna just treat the symptom and I actually wanna get to the root of this fear-based dis-ease or disorder, what would you recommend?” And they said, “Well, basically, w- the only thing you can do is what they call exposure therapy.” So, you know, if you’re arachnophobic, you know, you slowly get closer to a spider, you know?
Each day maybe you get an inch closer kind of thing. And not being one for half measures, I was like, “Okay, so basically I’ve gotta go as deep into my fear as possible.” And so my, my approach was I went to the other side of the world, as far from my comfort zone as possible. So I grew up in Chicago, in the city, and I wound up l- moving and studying abroad in Sri Lanka, which is literally, you know, the opposite side of the world, in a country amidst civil war, uh, where I stood out like a sore thumb as a six-foot-four white man, and lived in a village where, you know, we woke up at 4:00 in the morning to the sounds of monks chanting, and it was about as far from my frame and reality as humanly possible.
And I share that to say I wound up, which is a much longer story I go into, into detail in the book, but I wound up getting invited to study with a, a seventh-generation healer who, who had s- who had learned a, a, a form of Ayurvedic sort of shamanism, a, a, it’s called Bahusha Vidya, but it’s, uh, it’s basically an occult form of Ayurveda.
Because in Sri Lanka, unlike the United States, which I– which is part of the, the essence of, of what I get to in the book, you know, in Sri Lanka it’s a very collectivist-oriented culture, which we see in a lot of indigenous cultures, right? So the notion of individuality, which has been exalted in the Western societies, it wasn’t exalted in that same way.
So in Sri Lanka if I were to say, “James, can you pass me, uh, your book?” I would say, “James, “” which is, “Is there unto you a book that can be passed?” So it’s passive and directional. You don’t own anything, and so the way that that in- influences your consciousness is you become much more oriented towards the more of the collective rather than your individual center.
Like, your center of gravity isn’t you and your, you know, the, the exalted individuality that we see in the West. And so when someone in that culture, as, as my teacher told me, when someone in that culture has really lost their way, right? Which we see I, I think in the West we see a ton of, right? I, I was with an indigenous tribe in Venice, our, our former home, which is besieged by, by homeless populations, lo- many of whom are on some type of drug.
You know, and, and, and in, in those traditional cultures there, there wasn’t homelessness, right? No, no one could fall through the net because they recognized their interdependence. And so they said there are people here where their spirits are living outside of their body. That’s how the indigenous shared to me what was happening with the homeless population.
And that mirrored what I saw with my teacher in Sri Lanka. He said, you know, basically there’s all kinds of homeopathic, traditional oleopathic remedies for, for most ills, you know? We see that with Chinese medicine, various holistic traditions, Ayurveda, very advanced, you know, scientific way of looking at- medical traditions.
But he said when people get really lost, you know, which in the West might be someone who winds up in an insane asylum or winds up heavily drug addicted and it seems impossible to cure, their solution was an incredibly elaborate mechanism for bringing someone back into what he called the heart rhythm.
And the heart rhythm, as we all know but maybe don’t consciously think about, right, we all for the first nine months of our life were oriented and had our nervous systems evolve with the rhythm of our mother’s heart, right? We were in the amniotic fluids, in the darkness, in the waters, and the only thing that we had to orient ourself towards was the rhythm of the heart, our mother’s heart.
And so what he said is health is the heart rhythm. Health is the beating of that drum, that balance. And when someone falls out of balance, they’ve lost that rhythm. They’ve forgotten the rhythm of the heart. They’ve lost sight. It’s like they’re lost in the woods and they can no longer hear that rhythm.
And it’s the role of the collective, it’s the role of the tribe, it’s the role of the village to bring them back into rhythm. And so from sunset to sunrise, they would ritually recreate, they would put that person in the middle of the circle and create over two weeks, they would build an elaborate palm fraud city with flower altar offerings and fire dancing, and they would basically create this elaborate offering to bring that person back into a sense of being seen and heard by the collective.
And they would bring them back into… It’s what I call the SEAL Team Six. Like they brought in the heavy hitters ostensibly to bring that person back into balance because in that culture, there is no word for privacy, there is no word for possession. So if someone’s out of balance, we’re all out of balance.
And so the beauty of my exposure to that culture was in witnessing and in participating in the rebalancing of the collective, ironically on the other side of the world, I brought myself back into balance and I transcended the need for drugs. I was no longer obsessive-compulsive. What I was irrationally ritualizing, right, like I would check the doors, I would check the stove, I would do these traditional OCD behaviors, I realized I was just trying to assuage my anxiety through ritual.
But I didn’t grow up in a culture where there was a socio-religious traffic that made sense, so I created my own rituals, these neuroses like checking the stove. And when I went into a culture where there was embodied and authentic religiosity and ritual behavior, I was reminded of my heart’s rhythm and brought back into balance and therefore transcended my fear of other people.
And as you know me, James, like have since, you know, traveled. Travel’s one of my great passions and people are my great passion. And I think that’s part of the journey with this book is how do we How do we take our deep traumas or our deep fears and actually turn them into the gold of, of what is actually uniquely us?
You know, oftentimes those… My father, which is a story I share in the book, when he was 16, was burned horrifically, like third-degree burns down to the, you know, down to the bone, and was told he would never walk again. And so his whole life he was afraid of fire. And years later, when he shepherded me through the men’s work that I, that I’ve, I’ve shared with you personally, but I, I did the, this sort of, the mankind project when I was in my dark night of the soul.
My, my dad sponsored my trip, and he was one of 150 men. He was the only father that showed up to, to walk me through, not far from your hometown there in, in a place in the central coast of California in 2004. And that marked a sea change for me, and it was, it was an incredible instance where he showed up for me in a way that very few people had showed up for me in the past, which is part of why we developed the depth of the relationship that we did.
But during that process, we also did a sweat and we did council fires, and I saw that he had… The thing that he had once deeply feared, the fire, had become, become something that he deeply loved, you know? And it became, you know, it, it became the symbol for our deep connection together. And so I share that to say, I think that there’s, you know, there, there’s tremendous power in the things that we’re afraid of, and many of us are afraid of other people, legitimately so.
And, and we’re also in a brave new world now, obviously, with the advent of AI and other tools that can also perpetuate that fear. But what I share in the book is, is a seven principle, kind of like a Stephen Covey seven habits, but mine is a more of a seven principles that I used to help me basically come into a beautiful [00:19:00] relationship with other, other people, and I think that are tools that others can use to do the same.
So the long story-oriented answer to your question is, I think even if you’re oriented towards being a deep introvert or do not find yourself, do not hold yourself as relationally intelligent, I absolutely think, just like epigenetics, you can transcend the confines that, that hold you back and become much more relationally attuned.
Very interesting. Well, there’s so many pieces I wanna pick up from what you just shared. Um, one very brief story I’ll tell is that, you know, when I lived in Venice, we had homeless people who lived behind our house. It, it made my wife really uncomfortable because they would essentially have to move for us to get our car in every time.
But I found out, I spoke to one of them, this guy Greg, who lived behind me, that he had actually grown up in the house that I was living in at that moment. And so, you know, that You know, it, it sent me differently and I, because I had grown up in community, I did feel a different way of trying to interact with him.
So Rachel’s got this, my wife Rachel’s got this photo of me, my daughter, who was like four years old, wearing a Elsa outfit, and Greg the homeless guy all washing the car in the back of the house. Because, like, my first flush of feeling was to engage and connect because ultimately I felt like, you know, we live here, he has history from the house, and if you think in that community way of being, that’s just the natural way to be.
You know, Rachel wasn’t necessarily in that same viewpoint and actually felt, like, reasonably afraid, uh, because he would know whether I was there or not if I was traveling, and I understand that too. Young child, you know, um, single woman by herself at that point, so that, that, you know, that’s a, a common, uh, thing.
But I guess more broadly, you know, I’ve been speaking for the last six months about a new way of thinking about functional medicine and in actually It’s because of Dale Bredesen who coined this, but I– now that I wrote a book on group visits and community as well, he talks about network sufficiency. Hmm.
And ultimately, if you look at it through the biological level, you, you reduce your biological network sufficiency and you have disease. You reduce your biological network sufficiency and you have the kind of issues that you’re talking about. And it’s so interesting in that, like, so many of the interventions that you’re talking about are created in a culture where community is just the norm and the way that you’ve described it, so that it would be only obvious that interventions that build network sufficiency would end up with the full solution of what you want.
Whereas in America, we see this little problem as it’s pushed out. You know, Michael’s OCD, he needs this antidepressant. Ultimately, that’s not really a solution for everything because the issue was the lack of the, the network. You know, I think there’s a lot of parallels and, and insight into that, but that’s what’s really got me fired up at this moment.
It’s part of the reason why I wanted to do this interview is because I just see that, you know, your journey has taken you on a, a very similar path to understand a similar thing maybe from a different angle. Just wanted to take a moment to thank our mission partners for helping bring this podcast to you.
As you know, we are in the business of building a network of clinics that can reverse cognitive decline, and our partners in that are organizations. You can find out more if you go to goevomed.com and look at the mission partners. But first and foremost, TruNeura, if you go to truneura.com, you can get a demo.
Um, this is the underlying software that will connect this network of clinics, and we have an incredible mastermind session, a lot of cool stuff coming out of that company. Um, you can see here, uh, Fullscript. Thanks to Fullscript. With Fullscript, where we’re gonna help you take advantage of the tools that they have, um, to compete with things like ChatGPT and Function Health.
It’s gonna be awesome. Go to goevomed.com/fullscript. Uh, bigboost.marketing, if you need patients for your clinic, uh, or if you have any marketing needs, goevomed.com/bigboost is our premier s- uh, supporter in that world. And then please, uh, also check out Freedom Practice Coaching, built and scaled a very successful brain health practice and has been instrumental in helping practitioners with the non-clinical aspects of running a practice doing this.
These are our mission partners. These are people that I know well. These are people that are top of their sphere, and really excited to bring you, uh, the rest of the podcast. Enjoy. I think that’s beautifully said, James, and I, I think that’s so– it’s, it’s so astute, right? I think what… You know, oftentimes I remember talking to Ben Greenfield and, you know, it was right after he, he had published, you know, this tome on biohacking.
And I was like, “Okay, if you could distill it all down to, you know, one thing that you would say is your core recommendation, what would it be?” And he was basically like, “Get back into nature.” You know? And it’s like, you know, it’s, it- It, community, nature, th- these things that are, seem simple and, you know, we’ve been, as you know, we’ve been biologically wired through thousands of years of evolution.
And Terence McKenna said, “The world has changed more since 1992 than it did in the previous thousand years,” right? And we’re kind of in this brave new world where we don’t know. Like, we’re in a vast experiment, right? Like, think food, as you know, food used to be food, right? It wasn’t ingredients. That w- was the ingredient, right?
Like, now we have food-like substances that are, that are forming the basis for biology and obviously causing a great many diseases and, you know, inputs we’ve never explored before in terms of technologies and… I mean, I’m old enough now, I, I lived pre-internet. I grew up skateboarding, you know, before cell phones.
Uh, you know, and so we’ve had the advent of, of the personal computer, the cell phone, and now artificial intelligence in a very short period of time, and, you know, we don’t necessarily know all of, all of the ways those are gonna affect us as, as biologically and also socially. But I think in my view, the antidote to a lot of the challenges, no matter what we face, is in exactly what you’re talking about, is in about who is our network?
Who are the people that have our back? And, and where do we have people we can lean on and rely on? The st- you know, as you know, the statistics are staggering in terms of loneliness right now. I mean, surgeon general just declared it an epidemic. I think that’s the true epidemic of our time. And loneliness, by the way, isn’t just people who are alone.
It’s, it’s people who identify as lonely even, and especially, when they’re with other people. And the tragedy is many married people identify a- as alone and lonely. And so I think to me, we need a new– We, we need to remind ourselves of a new kind of GPS into how we can… You know, the book I talk, I call it basically being in tune.
So I use the metaphor of music ’cause music is so powerful. Uh, I don’t know if you… I, I don’t know if we ever talked about this before, James, but did you ever see Alive Inside? Okay. So based on your interest and, and Bredesen’s interest, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, and this is, this is a true story.
Uh, it’s a film called Alive Inside. I recommend anyone listening watches it. It won Sundance. It was probably eight years ago. And what it was was there’s a, there was a man who found out that, you know, he was going into the research around, around music and, and the medicinal value of, of, of music, which we’re, we’re just scratching the surface of now in the scientific community.
But Basically, he went into nursing homes, and I write, I write about an experience similar to this. When my father was diagnosed with dementia, I was, I was deeply afraid of putting the person I loved the most into a me- memory care facility. And so I did something what I call the flower blessing, where I actually bought a bunch of bouquets of flowers and went to a memory care center and just faced my fear and, and walked around and handed flowers out to, to people I didn’t know but, but just listened to their stories.
Somewhat similar probably to what you’re talking about with the, the homeless gentleman who lived behind your house. And it was deeply medicinal for me. And this gentleman offered flowers in his own way, which is he actually took the time to learn what people’s favorite songs were when they were children.
And there’s a scene which you can Google where there’s a man who’s kind of been left basically, which is unfortunately all, all too common in a, in a nursing care facility. He’s an elder African American man, and he’s sort of in the back of a room and he’s non-verbal, his head is down, he’s in a wheelchair, and, and he’s been basically left, ostensibly left to die.
You know, he’s, he’s just– he’s, he’s sort of just in the back there kind of, you know, very much alone. And this man took the time to find out his favorite songs when he was a kid. You can watch the scene. It’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen. He takes this playlist, and they place it on this man’s ears.
And I kid you not, James, he goes, “I remember 1939, Chet Baker.” And literally, in a way that no pharmaceutical intervention has ever done, music turned this man’s brain back on. He was verbal, he was communicative, he was coherent. And I can tell you as someone who lived with someone with dementia, the moments where they actually get into lucidity are so precious.
It’s, it’s, it’s like, it’s like a gift from God. And this man, through music, found, like, the cheat code. And, and he did it with multiple people. And, and this was actually part of the genesis for my interest in, in resonance, in moving more towards what is the more that is possible? ‘Cause I, I believe that there’s a more that wants to live both through us and in the space between us.
And the fundamental question I ask in the book is: how do we become instruments for that song? And what I witness in this incredible scene is here was something that was– Here was a man who was basically given up on, and yet they found the more that activated his deep memory and brought him back to life.
And I feel like this is such a powerful instance because I think just like our, our fingertips, we all have these unique notes. We all have these [00:29:00] unique… And I, it’s my particular belief that all of us are on this planet for a reason, and we have these unique notes that we are, that we’re here to offer to the symphony of life, and the world is waiting for us to offer that note to the symphony.
And I talk in the book about, I use min- musical interludes to illuminate the principles. You know, we think about The Beatles just because that’s a band that, that- Everyone knows. And it’s like John, Paul, Ringo, th- they were all incredible musicians in and of their own right. But somehow the more of them together was exponential, right?
It was The Beatles. It was the music that lives on for all of us. And it’s my belief that all of us have a more that wants to live through us, and the question is how do we tune our instruments such that we can be available for that? And oftentimes it’s our relational, it’s our relational intelligence, it’s our re- it’s the people we relate to that through which that more is born.
Yeah, I’d love to double down on that because, you know, you mentioned AI a couple times. I think a lot of practitioners are realizing that AI is extremely powerful and will be a part of medic- medicine or is already a part of medicine. A part of what we’ve been, you know, talking about is really that, like, in order to really maintain one’s relevance and to improve one’s value as a health professional, doubling down into the human element because that all the things that AI can do is gonna get better.
And so what is it about the sort of co-creation of health with another human that you can get better and better at? And I’m just wondering if you have some, like, tips for, like, a doctor or a health professional who’s feeling like, “Hey, I’m not the only one that can interpret these labs.” Right. “But maybe I am the only one that can co-create a healing process inside someone else and inspire and, and support them in their journey towards health.”
And I’m just wondering, what does it look like to tune an instrument for a health professional? A beautiful question. So I’ll give a very cogent example from a conversation I had yesterday for an hour with my cousin whose, whose son is, has been suffering from chronic migraines for nine months. Now, your audience probably has more insight into what would help him than I do, right?
But, you know, she was asking me about several of the folks we know in our community, you know, Mark Hyman and Dr. Amen and, you know, and I suggested I, you know, I do do function. I’m, you know, no relationship, but absolutely would I recommend getting labs? 100%. You know, I, I’m absolutely for some of the scientific tools.
And, and it’s incredible the degree to which I think AI will be a supportive tool. Now, the existential threat, if you will, or the elephant in the room is does it become a rep- does it replace those practitioners, right? I think that, that’s the question on all of our minds no matter who we are, right?
Because so much of our, our professional identity, so much of our purpose is, is rooted in that identity. And what I would share is my belief is the antidote to that particular existential challenge is relationally based, right? Because the one thing AI cannot do is the relational intelligence piece, right?
Can it analyze labs and look for algorithmically for, you know, incredible synchronicities and, and, and compare that with all the different research papers that are currently published? Yes. Can it do that potentially better in five years than most humans? Yes. Is that an existential threat? Yes. Like, let’s all– let’s, let’s keep it real.
And the one piece it cannot do is the interpersonal work, the interpersonal dynamic. You know, I talked with my, my cousin yesterday, and I said, “Well, you know, it sounds like you’re going to a lot of doctors that are quoting you, that, that are quoting you solutions commensurate with their frame,” right? Like, it’s, it’s a little bit like you’re a nail looking for a hammer, but you haven’t actually done the, the basic work, and you haven’t found the practitioner.
You know, most doctors, you know, obviously this, this is very well known, but it’s like, you know, they’re just– Like systematically, you’ve got, like, eight minutes, or maybe if you’re lucky, you got, like, 20 minutes just because that’s the, that’s the nature the system has kinda put together. And as you know, you know, nutrition is not part of most medical school trainings.
And she said, “Well, the one thing we haven’t done is, is the food piece.” She’s like… But she’s talking about doing advanced brain scans with Dr. Amen’s clinic. And I was like, “Look, I’m not saying don’t do the advanced brain scan. You gotta get the Holy Trinity, you know, sleep, food, exercise. You gotta, gotta dial in the, you know, the majors before you major in the minors.”
And I feel like what I said was, “Find the practitioner that takes more than eight minutes to understand, you know, what are the– what’s the family history? When did the migraines start?” You know. Your, your, your, your listeners will know way more than I will about how to do this with excellence. But it is to say, I think there’s gonna be a profound need, profound need for ch- kind of what I just shared about with the guy who found out and just took the time to know what the other person’s favorite music is, right?
I think the degree to which you’re willing to get into the interpersonal and to really become a specialist into the relational intelligence that is so yearned for by people. You know, I would, I would argue, I’m just making this up off the top of my head, I don’t have a, a research basis for this, but I would guess that a lot of people who go to therapy, yes, it’s they have traumas, yes, there are things they’re working through, but sometimes they just want someone who’s actually gonna listen to them for an hour.
You know what I mean? Because they, they, they have a devoid, you know, they have a void in their life of people who don’t, who, you know, who… They don’t have friends. You know, I think friendship is, is massively on, on the decline. And so to me, I would say to practitioners, you know, and this is just my own, you know, orientation and intuition is, can you become– how can you major in the areas that AI cannot replicate?
And for me, that is in the relational aspects, right? A-and then, of course, utilize the AI in the way that it’s excellent. I do think we should continue using tools that are helpful. I do do my labs. I do wear an Oura Ring. You know, like, but I also recognize that, that health is obviously way beyond those numbers.
And the things that I’ve found in my life that have thrown me off the most are when I feel relationally out of tune. You know? Like you can, your life can be singing on all cylinders. You can have an amazing job, be financially abundant, you know, everything’s going your way. But if you have a core relationship, your spouse, your child, where you’re not speaking or, or, you know, there’s discord, that is always on your mind.
That is affecting your nervous system. I, I… You know, my HRV, when that happens, my HRV is dropping, right? I, because that coherence is broken. And so I talk in the book about that, that notion of dissonance and how do we– ’cause it’s a very human thing, right? We move through dissonance. How do we move through dissonance and get back into resonance?
How do we actually use the tools that we have at our disposal to create coherence relationally? And I think from a medical point of view, you know, how can we both take our specialties, which is, I think, what, what the West does very well, right? You get to be an expert in a particular aspect of the medical field.
What I love about f-functional medicine is it’s a much more holistic. So that doesn’t mean you can’t be a specialist, but it’s a much more holistic approach. And to me, I would add to that holistic approach a relational frame, and, ’cause I think, I think especially in the age of AI, that will become, that will become the antidote to the, to the ills that plague us because unfo-unfortunately, more and more people will, if we continue in the direction we’re going, will be besieged by loneliness and addiction to, you know, the devices that probably are not just outside our body, will soon be implanted inside our bo- I mean, it’s gonna be a, a brave new world.
So how do we get back to the things that make us human? And to me, that’s rooted in relation. Yeah, I love that. Well, look, we’re definitely on the same, same wavelength and I see, you know, having written the book on group visits in medicine and encouraging practitioners to really focus in on the psychosocial elements of people, I think it’s more important than ever.
But I also think, you know, I’m, I’m ready to– I see that anyone can really implement into that. It’s not really just about healthcare and about the transformation of, of, of chronic disease care. It’s really about rebuilding the social fabric, right? Which is being sort of gnawed away for, for a few, a few generations and then, like, you know, with COVID just take it away from us and we see what a big impact it made.
I guess I’d love to ask you, you know, since we’ve known each other, like, you’ve lived in many places. You know, you’re all around the world a-and different areas. Like, what do you think about, like, physical stability? I mean, I had that life for a while too. Uh, lived in New York and Venice and LA and moving around.
I’ve been in one county here for, like, six years and, you know, just recognized that, like, it wasn’t sustainable for me, especially with children, you know, to, you know, to live the kind of life that I grew up in, which was actually a lot of travel, moving around, being, seeing South Africa, England, America, whatever.
And I guess I’d just love to, to understand your own thoughts on, um, you know, place as it relates to community building. I think it’s an incredible question. Pla- it’s, it’s, it’s honestly the question on the top of my mind and on top of my heart, you know, placemaking. I was journaling about it this morning in terms of, you know, I deeply want a home.
I’m staying currently in a beautiful ranch that a friend of mine has graciously… He moved to Mexico City, and, you know, I feel very graciously gifted with this space to create from, especially during this critical kind of book launch window, which, as you know, having been through the journey, is– can be destabilizing, uh, can also be incredibly beautiful.
But, you know, for me, I, and many of your listeners have what I deeply yearn for, which I write about, you know, as well in the book, i-i-is that notion of family, right? And so partnership, family, those are, those are the pieces as I think about… O-one of the things I ask in the, in the book and one of– is, is what’s your true north?
And for me, you know, it’s a question I ask myself every year, but especially every decade. I j- I, I, to s-speak vulnerably, you know, I think we were friends at that time, but when I did the event with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which at the time I did to kinda make my dad proud, that was 2016. You know, with that, I hit the 10-year anniversary of that this year, 2026.
And to be totally frank, 10 years ago, I thought my l-life would look very different. And I’m not living, uh, you know, I’m not complaining by any stretch, but I’m, you know, I’m, I’m– I haven’t created the kind of partnership and family and stability, for example, that you have in your life. That is something I deeply yearn for in my life.
And so I said, “Okay, over the course of the next 10 years, what am I optimizing for?” You know, I’ve had the good fortune of building some professional platforms that did very well, and I’m still ambitious. But I wouldn’t say that, like, you know, just theoretically, you know, I wouldn’t say that if, if all of a sudden, you know, I had a billion-dollar business in 10 years, that that would bring anywhere near the satisfaction or fulfillment as, say, having a profound, loving relationship and family with all– By the way, and I’m not naive to saying that that’s all bliss and utopia.
Obviously, the challenges and the, and the mirroring that that affords and brings. But I just recognize that, like, what, what I’m optimizing for, what my true north is and what I’m t- what I tune myself back when I get out of tune, when I, when I lose signal, is much more in tune with that. Like, I would like to find a place where I can call home, and to me, that, that’s rooted in the context of partnership and family.
And I feel very graced and blessed, and I know my f- my– for example, the grass is always greener on the other side, right? When I look, talk to my cousin who got married, you know, whatever, 20 years ago and has lived in the same place for 20 years, she probably sees me in Indonesia or Mexico and has a little bit of like, “Oh, wow, that looks great.”
And to be fair, as you know, having lived in a lot of places, I do think it is great. And, you know, humans were nomadic for a great deal of time, but they were nomadic oftentimes in the context of family, you know, p-partnership and children. And I think one of the great challenges we face, which is probably a c-podcast for another time, is the research now around relating, you know, and, and relationship and how we get into relationship.
And unfortunately, one of the fastest growing populations are For example, my demographic, single men who are unpartnered without children. And, and the s- the statistics now about, around young men are crazy. You know, I mean, I don’t know if you saw Scott Galloway’s work, but, like, the amount of men who have never been on a date, who have never even had a sexual experience into, like, their mid-20s.
Now, unfortunately, with these digital proxa- pro- you know, approximations, people aren’t even getting into the messiness of relating. So to me, that’s not a personal issue. I, I still prioritize relationship. I’m just looking to call in my person and doing the work to do so. Not a, that’s not just a fantasy.
That’s a reality I’m living into. But I do think that one of the great intentions personally, but also I think it goes to your pr- previous question professionally, is we are moving into a world approximation, right? Where we’re digital… Our digital atten- Like, digital entities are calling for our attention, and if we, if we’re not conscientious and structured and oriented around building our true relationships, our human relationships, unfortunately, I think potential and possibility can be lost, you know?
And so that’s something I’m really conscientious of, and I think I still, you know, per the point I made earlier around my youth, like, travel and meeting people and, and, you know, being in Mexico and connecting with, you know, a grandmother that I never would’ve met otherwise, to me is deep medicine. So that will always be a part of my life.
But I really want to create a home, a rooted place in nature where I can build family and then when appropriate, travel out together, as I know you do with your family, when the opportunity presents itself. So that’s the journey I’m moving towards in the next, in the next decade. But yeah, thanks for asking the question.
That’s, that’s definitely something I think about. Well, I appreciate that. You know, the other thing, you know, just I guess before we, before we wrap is that, you know, that I guess that, that feeling that you had in, in Sri Lanka where you saw a different way, you know- Yeah … having fam- growing up in community and seeing how, if nothing else, just downright efficient it is, you know?
Totally. Your friends get to do their own thing and, you know, the, the collective to be more valuable and coming back. I see there’s a huge pushback in nature. There’s so many memes online of people, “Yeah, I wanna go and buy some land and, and, you know, have all my friends live on there.” And, you know, I, I live in that too.
You know, I’ve been, been thinking about, like, um, living communally, and I think that one of the things that’s interesting is that as resources get stripped away from society, we go into sort of like a, a more bleak economic future. Community is the only answer. And- That’s right … ultimately it’s community or death.
And so it’s actually, like, pushing American society, I think, where it needs to go, not just on a human level, but also, you know, on a health level because of network sufficiency, psychosocial sufficiency, and all of those kind of areas. You don’t need as many resources when you’re supporting each other. So I think this is, you know, we’re, we’re gonna get some of the medicine, and I just wanna share my appreciation for you diving into the book and rewriting it three times and coming back to share message.
Um, I know, you know, the journey that it is, and I love the word resonance, and I think, um, that, you know, I think as people read it, they will be attuned to what’s necessary for them, for where we’re all heading. And I’m really grateful that you’re, uh, taking your chance to share your voice with, uh, with those who need to hear it.
Thanks, James. You’ve always been y- yeah, I think, a- an incredible leader in the field and pushing it forward in regards to, you know, holistic medicine, holistic health, functional medicine. Uh, we’ve known each other, I think, now almost a decade, so really grateful that you reached out, uh, to invite me onto the platform.
I know it’s– I know you have a tremendous number of incredible listeners that are in the functional medicine space. And yeah, and, a- and so anyone who’s interested, if you wanna learn more, you, um, you’ll probably link below, but resonance.biz has everything, and I, I’m gonna look to do more community-centered.
To your ve- to your very point, I think the piece that I’m most excited to build beyond the book is getting into that community activation. And so that… I’ll, I’ll post updates at resonance.biz on that, but I’ve got some really fun ideas about exactly that, like experiences that we can create together to further, I think, this, what I believe to be this very important work.
And it’s an area, you know, I’m not a medical doctor. I’m not medically trained. I’ve done a, a lot of research, but on the social side, I feel like, uh, I’ve, I’ve put in my, uh, 10,000 hours. So I, I, I really wanna continue to be in the listening and hopefully add value to those, uh, who are oriented towards relational intelligence.
Love that. All right. Well, this is the Evolution of Medicine podcast. We’ve been with Michael Trainer. Check out his book, Resonance. If you go to resonance.biz, you can get all the details on, uh, getting the book, hearing the book, downloading the book, buying the book. And, uh, Michael, thanks for your contribution, and thanks so much for tuning in.
I’m the host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time. So that was the podcast. What an epic session. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Evolution of Medicine podcast. We will be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
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