Gladden longevity — Episode #48

Steve Reiter: Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC, founder and CEO of Gladden Longevity. On this show, we want to answer three questions for you. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? And how do we live well beyond 120? We want to help you optimize your longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information. Now, here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden Today on the Gladden Longevity Podcast, I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis, and he is a trained optometry doctor. This is maybe one of the most interesting conversations that I've ever had on the podcast. We are going to be talking about really how to crack the code in the brain by going through the eyes. We're going to talk about vision from multiple perspectives beyond what you originally or initially might associate with vision. And I think you're going to find this to be one of the most fascinating talks that we've had. You're going to want to reach out and track this technology down and find somebody near you that can perform this. It's that amazing. So, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

I'm here today with Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis, so that's a name that just rolls off the tongue so nice and easy. Stel and I met at a conference together, and kind of immediately hit it off and thought: “Well, it'd be a great idea to do a podcast.” So, Stel, welcome to the podcast, the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Thank you, Jeff. It's a pleasure being here. I'm actually excited. It was great meeting you.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. And then just finding out there's another medical professional that's doing unbelievable things, and I was excited when I heard about your longevity.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely. And that's what intrigued me about you. So, why don't you introduce the audience to your story, to your background? Because it has a number of twists and turns that I think they're going to find fascinating. But just start off with, you went to school in Canada, and why don't you just run from there, and then I'll jump in, and we'll have a really interesting conversation.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yes. Amazing. So, yeah, my story's interesting. I've always wanted to be an optometrist ever since I was in grade 10. I was the only one in my family that wore glasses. And my optometrist always kept me interested and excited about what he's doing, explaining, and I thought this would be kind of cool. You sit in a dark room and talk to people all day long, and you get paid for it. So, I always set-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: A few professions like that, I think.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: So, I always set the intention of what I wanted. And I didn't realize, even in grade 10, that once I set that intention, how it unfolded and how it came alive. So, anyways, I did graduate. I was from the University of Waterloo School of Optometry. I tell people my life was perfect. I mean, I was on the varsity rugby team. I was a captain of all the teams that I was on, football, rugby, basketball, and valedictorian at school. I mean, I'm just perfect, right? Dated the captain of the cheerleading team. It was like a movie.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What happened?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. What happened was I married... We got married in 2003. Beautiful. Again, Brazilian beautiful, model-looking, amazing, unbelievable character. Perfect. Everything is perfect, perfect, perfect. And then we decided that we wanted to have children. And then the story starts. So, we find out that we have unexplained infertility for three years, unexplained infertility. And I was one of the husbands that would show up month after month to this clinic. And it was a little bit like a morgue. So, I felt the energy just draining. And I would ask: “What are you in here for?” And everybody kept saying everything's normal. Everything's normal. Everything's normal. I thought, how could everything be normal, and we have all these women that can't get pregnant? And it was on the funny side. I used to do what I needed to do, come out and wish the boys a happy journey, just to keep the excitement in that room to make sure that everybody was feeling great. And then my wife was surrounded by some positivity. Anyways, to make a long story short, I realized something was missing here. So, I told my wife, look, I go: "You go to Brazil, you need to be in an environment that's going to be supportive."

We ended up meeting a fertility doc down there that basically said that he only sees patients if they do a nutritional evaluation and an emotional evaluation. And I thought: “Wow, this is interesting.” And his success rate was 86%, and here it was like 30. And there was a husband's chair that was involved so that you knew what was happening. Being with Greek tragedy, I'm like: “How do I know they're putting anything in there?” There's a camera that was involved in the lab when they're taking the embryo, and they're doing the insertion. It was an unbelievable experience. Anyway, so on the first go, we're pregnant with baby number one.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Great.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: And full-term pregnancy. Fantastic. We're like: “Ooh, we're living the life.” We're back to perfect again. So, we decide to go back to get pregnant again, and we find out we're pregnant with baby number two and three.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, so you just spontaneously, you've got babies two and three? Is it twins?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: It's twins now. Okay.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Still perfect or are we getting [inaudible 00:05:54].

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Well, we're moving off of the not perfect now because we find out at the 20-week ultrasound that baby number two's not going to make it to birth.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: So, baby number two has a heart condition. So, you can imagine, at this point, it's-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yep.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Okay, this is where the journey begins. So, my wife went into premature labor a couple of times. And so, Michael, who's baby number two, passes away five days before Gabriel was born at 26 weeks and one day at two pounds. And the journey really begins now because we're in the neonatal intensive care unit for the next 146 days. And one of the docs at that time, we were talking, and he said to me: "One day, you'll understand why you have to go through this." I mean, I wanted to tell him where to go and say nobody should have to go through this. But he was right. He was right. And I didn't realize it till much afterward; obviously, I'm in a fight or flight response now, doing whatever I need to do. And my wife was in caring, nurturing mode to make sure that Gabriel stays alive. And then, at his two-year point, we discovered that he has what's called PVL.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: PVL?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Which is ventricular leukomalacia. Anyways, it's an issue with the white...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: White matter of the brain?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: ... Matter of the brain. So, the official diagnosis then came with cerebral palsy, quadriplegia, and spastic CP with dystonia. So, here's now the not-so-perfect situation, but a lot of people get upset or feel sad when I tell the story. But I always say it's the best thing that happened for me. And this is where the journey came for me in terms of where I am as an optometrist, and Gabriel has what's called ATNR; it's a primitive reflex that he sits in this position like this. And a colleague of mine that does vision therapy or NeuroVisual optometry had come over, and he said we can help him with vision therapy. And I looked at him like he had two heads, and I said: "We're optometrists; we deal with eyeballs. What does his body have to do with vision therapy?" He tried to explain to me, I didn't really understand what he was saying.

So, I did some research, and I find out that there's these vision therapy courses in the states. We didn't have them in Canada at the time. So, off I go to the US to learn about vision therapy to help my son. At that point, I realized it was more than just my son, but 25% of every classroom has a vision-related learning disability. And one of my colleagues who got nineties in optometry school discovered at one of the sessions that she had a learning disability, which blew my mind. And I said to her: “You're my hero.”

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Being able to overcome that and still score well. And Gabriel is, how old at this point in time when you're going down to do your training?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Gabes was one and a half, two, maybe.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: [inaudible 00:08:56] two years old. Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah, no, he was quite young. The other thing I say about the story, so, twofold. Number one, the docs back then, because he was so young and with all the imaging that they did, told us he wasn't going to see, he wasn't going to talk, he wasn't going to walk. At that point, I closed my wife's ears, and I said: “Don't listen to anything that you're hearing right now.” So, he was basically clinically deaf in both ears. The auditory testing showed profound and severe hearing loss. He had an eye turn that looked like strabismus with a lazy eye. Second highest prescription I've seen in my career. But again, the way that I work is everything's possible, and I don't listen to anything, and I do whatever I can in order to make what my vision of what my future looks like. So, now Gabriel is, eyes are straight, no prescription, hears perfectly well. They don't understand how and SickKids is... I think they're still running the study on him to figure out why he can hear because the treatment of therapy was to put cochlear implants in. They would've messed them up with the way that he sees or hears.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, just so people know, strabismus or a lazy eye basically is where one eye kind of wanders off. The eyes are not synchronized, and you need synchronized eyes to basically have a stereoscopic vision, so you can actually see in three dimensions. And so, when you have a lazy eye like that, it makes it difficult. You're getting different pieces of information, harder for the brain to integrate, and can be incapacitating on some levels for sure. So, where is he now? How old is he now, and what's he able to do? Is he still have the cerebral palsy or?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah, so he's ten years old now, and other than the mobility, he does everything. Okay. He's amazing, he's-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: He's in school, or he's...

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. Yeah, he's in regular school, grade five, and he has an educational system that supports him. All the integration that the school does is fantastic. And his personality's amazing. And in a lot of ways, he supports his classmates more than they support him. Yeah. It's almost like he's a sniffing dog for kids with learning issues.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's amazing. That's amazing. So, this is an unbelievable story. So, now what we really want to know is, what is this vision therapy? What are we talking about here? What went on for him?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah, basically, when we were learning about what vision therapy is, it was difficult because it shifted the paradigm on how we were taught in terms of eyes, vision, how we see, okay, and-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Well, you're an optometrist. So, when I think of optometry, I think about visual acuity. You go in, you can't see; I mean, in fourth grade, I couldn't see the blackboard very well. It's like: “Oh, okay, he needs to see an optometrist”, an ophthalmologist, I think I saw initially, and then you get refracted. They make lenses, you wear glasses, and you get contacts. I mean, this is what we think about with optometry is how do you get good visual acuity, so you can see 20/20 or better, maybe, but that's kind of what we think about. But you're talking about something different now, right?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Totally different. And the way that we perceive the anatomy. So, we say: “Okay, light hits the retina, it travels through the optic nerve, hits the visual cortex.” And that's how we see; that's how most people think. It's just a one-way system in what we term what vision is. What it actually is, though, is how does this information get to the back of the head, the occipital lobe, but then all the action happens afterward because you have the visual processing with the interaction of what's happening within the whole neurological system. Now, 80% of our brain is visual. So, once we look at it from a full body perspective now, so I'll tell you what the definition is that was given to me that I didn't really understand at the time, but now it makes a lot more sense.

And the reason it makes more sense to me is I'm also trained in neurolinguistic programming and timeline therapy, which deals with how the emotions impact neurology. So, what's the definition? It's the deriving of meaning. So, the visual information comes in how the brain derives that information, and we have 2 million bits of information that come into the brain, and we can only take in 126 of those bits per second. So, 2 million bits per second, we can only take in 126. So, how we derive the world will depend on how we filter it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: This a really interesting point that you make just, so the audience understands this. So, we think that you look out the window and what you see is what you're seeing, but actually, if you were to break it down, you're only getting fragments of information that are coming into the brain, to your point, 126 bits per second versus all the stimuli that are coming in. And it's your brain actually fabricating a reality. Your brain is actually fabricating a reality based on very partial information, quite honestly, which is a fascinating process because we look out there, and it's like: “No, I see it. I can see it; I can touch it. When I reach out, and I touch what I see, I can touch it.” I know it's there, but it's still, in many ways, a fabricated reality based on this partial information that comes in. So, that's fascinating to understand to begin with.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: And an example that I use all the time is you purchase a car. Okay. So, you purchase the car, you check it out, you know which color you want, what features you want, and all of a sudden, you drive it off that lot. The second you drive it off that lot, all of a sudden, you notice all these cars that are the same color as yours with the same features, the same everything. And then you think: “Where did all these cars come from?” Well, how come you didn't notice it before, but you notice it now? That's now the shifting. That's vision. So, that's the shifting of those 126 bits that you're aware of now that you can take in that information; that's how the process works. When we understand now, these 126 bits are coming in will depend on how we perceive the world. So, here's the deriving piece. So, we're deriving the information, and how we derive the information will then create the action. So, it directs the action. So, in other words, we take in the information our brain processes and then an action of some sort of curse.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Now, when you say action, are you talking about... If I just sit here and look out the window, I don't feel like I'm taking any action. So, are you talking about an action I would take, or are you talking about the fabricated reality that the brain is creating as an action? Or what are we talking about?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: No, no, I'm talking about the action that you are involved in. So, for example, if you look out the window, your background now is a beach. So, I'm looking at this beach; I'm reminded of Greece right now, and now I'm getting sentimental because I love Greece. So, the action is an emotion. So, there's still motion happening. Now, it also means action in terms of movement. Now, I don't want to get into the different types of movement, but let's deal with the physical. Now, let's say, for example, I'm upset, and the viewers can't see us right now, but if I'm upset, how does my body respond if I'm walking into this room? Am I excited with my posture up, or am I leaning forward with my posture down? I'm leaning forward. If I'm happy and excited, I'm walking in, and my body's in this position here. So, that's how we have a direction of action based on what's going on internally within my internal representation, neurologically. And 80% of that is vision. Okay. Now the last part of the-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's an interesting point right there because I tend to think of it, and you're teaching me something here. So, if I walk into a room and, let's say I'm happy, or I'm upset, or I'm nervous, or I'm scared, or there's something that's bothering me, it will change my posture, it will change the energy that I walk into the room with for sure. Right? A hundred percent. If I come in and I'm confident, if I feel safe, if I feel good, it's like: “Oh, hey, Stel, how are you doing?” Yeah. So, totally get that. But now you're equating that to that bodily reaction or action as you're saying to the vision process. And it sounds to me like you're expanding the vision process from what is being processed through the eyeballs and the retina back to the brain into our perception of reality that's simultaneously occurring with the visual stimulus. Is that kind of what I'm hearing? Is that right?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yes. Okay. Yes. And interestingly, you brought up energy. Okay, because this is the last piece of the definition. So, we have the driving of meaning, the direction of action, by a specific band of radiant energy.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Now, we can take this thing-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Let's go. Let's take it.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Okay. So-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Because radiant energy is interesting, and we all know that everything basically devolves down to energy in the end. So, I assume that this is tying into that. It may tie into the quantum level with possibilities and et cetera. So, I want to hear you.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Let me stay on a plane that most people can understand. If we look at the radiant energy in terms of the spectrum, the light spectrum, then we're limited to: here's light coming in. And that's what we see. This is red, this is blue, this is green. So, we see an object. If we expand the definition now and say a specific band of radiant energy, and what you said was: if I'm coming into this room and I'm excited, and I have great energy coming in, now you're creating the state of what it is that you're going to derive as well. Okay.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: I'll give you an example. I was nervous coming on the podcast, right? I'm not sure where you're going to go with it. I'm not sure the questions. I mean, I got an idea, but still, we're running a podcast, and I'm nervous. So, just before I come on, which even before I get up on stage, I change my state, put the music on: “Here we go, be present”, raise my energy level and excitement, and I'm coming in. And now, those 126 bits are going to flow according to what my energetic state is, which then allows me to derive the meaning that we're getting in this conversation.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: 100%. I was 100%... I was just talking about this with Lio. Lio has a daughter and, has two daughters, but they were going to school today here in Puerto Rico, and they were going to be pirates because of some geography with pirates associated here in Puerto Rico. But anyway, they were excited, and one of the daughters was saying: “This is going to be the best day of my life.” And then her eye patch broke, and then she found out that Lio wasn't going to be able to attend the ceremony. And she was sad for about 10 minutes, but then she was back to: “No, this is going to be the best day of my life.” And so, when she went to school, she's looking through the lens of “this is the best day of my life”. And so, what you're saying is, what energetic lens are you looking through? Right? Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. It's cool. You're basically, okay, we can talk about visualization, but the reason why active visualization, remember I said I've always wanted to be an optometrist. It was in my mind. I'm going, and I'm getting in there; it's going to happen. And I'm seeing it with conviction. You're already presetting your unconscious mind to look for the things that are going to guide you in that direction. So, it's a reverse engineering of the visual process. Now you say, well, is it real? If I ask you to think of a bell right now, is it a picture? Is it a sound? Like, what actually happens when I say: “Think of a bell.”?

All right. Some people say: “I see it”; other people say: “I hear it.” Some people even say: “I could feel the vibration of it.” So, that's how they take in sensorial information. Right now, the question is, I asked you to think about a bell. Is it real? It is to you. How do you know that it's that bell? Well, I don't know. You saw the Liberty Bell on a US dollar bill, something triggers based on past experiences, how we visualize, and why we visualize. And in terms of all the work that I do, people ask me: “What do you do?” I say: "I chang lives through vision." And anybody that's interested looks at me and says: "How? What do you mean? I've never heard that. I thought you were an optometrist."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, what you're saying here, just so the audience can keep up with the conversation, I think what you're saying here is you're changing the lens through which people are looking, so to speak. You're changing the lens, just like Lio's daughter was changing the lens from being sad back to “this is going to be the best day of my life”. And that became her energetic lens that everything else was being filtered through as this is what we're talking about. Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Perfect.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: And it's interesting because you mentioned changing the lens. A lot of people ask me, in terms of the vision therapy that we do, are we making things clear with optics? Which as an optometrist, yeah, 20/20, we're looking for visual acuity. With vision therapy, we're not looking for acuity. We're looking to how do we change the space? How do we change the lens, optically, in order for the neurologist to see things differently?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Now, this is fascinating.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: And this is a key piece here because it's a distinction that I'd love to explain if you're willing to go there because the amount of times I hear people saying to me: “What is this vision therapy? How come I've never heard about it before?” And it's literally life-changing for so many people. And if there's opportunities to talk about it in a podcast like this, I'd love to share it because then more people can benefit from it and change the paradigm.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, no. It's one of the reasons I wanted you on the show, for sure.

Steve Reiter: This episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast is brought to you by FocusCalm.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: FocusCalm is a headband that uses neurofeedback-guided meditations and relaxing games to help you manage your stress and anxiety, help improve your mental performance, and so much more.

Steve Reiter: Using the FocusCalm, a few minutes a day for three weeks, can improve your sense of mental well-being by up to 21%. Enhance your daily wellness routine by building habits to help you feel and sleep better.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right now, here, our Gladden Longevity listeners can get 10% off of a headband and a lifetime subscription when you go to focuscalm.com. That's F-O-C-U-S-C-A-L-M.com, and enter the promo code “longevity10”.

Steve Reiter: I have used the Muse headband for my meditation and neurofeedback since 2016. And in my opinion, I like FocusCalm better. With meditations like Stability in the Uncertain, Overcoming Aimlessness, Living in the Flow, Clarity from Cognitive Burnout, Stability from Distraction, and many more, the FocusCalm headband is an upgrade, in my opinion, and is now my go-to when I take a break from work and recenter my mind. So, once more, that's focuscalm.com and use the promo code “longevity10” to get 10% off your headband and the lifetime subscription.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What I've enjoyed about it is actually seeing the depth to which my meditation takes me. It's like instant feedback. It's such a cool thing. It's like you think you're meditating; well, how deep are you? And then when you go really deep, and it maxes out at a hundred percent, it's like: “Oh, okay, I guess I just got there.” Although as soon as you look at it, you drop down to 60. But it's fun. It's really fun. FocusCalm, train your brain to better focus and a calmer mind.

So, just so the audience is tracking with us now. We're actually talking about two different kinds of lenses. We're talking about what we'll call the energetic lens through which you're looking, but now we're going to switch and also talk about the lens, the actual lens that's bending light that you're used to with glasses or readers or whatever. We're going to talk about that lens and how that has an impact on neurology and opening up the brain in new ways too. So, with that as a little intro, why don't you tell us exactly what's going on?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: So, I'm really glad that you brought up the lens because, again, it's a physical lens that's not really a physical lens because we actually... When we prescribe lenses or spectacles, we specifically call them neuro-balancing lenses. Why balance? Well-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: In this vision therapy, you're using rebalancing lenses.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: The glasses I'm wearing currently, these are not balancing; these are acuity-defining or refining lenses. Just so the audience understands that. So, it's a different kind of lens. So, tell us about it.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Okay. It's a different kind of lens, and it's easier for me to explain if I give an example. Okay. Let's say a child's diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, ADD. And again, when I was in learning when I was in training, and I heard the statistic that 25% of every classroom has a vision-related learning disability. And I thought, one in four, how is that even possible, right? And then the explanation in terms of what the symptomology is. So, we know that 80% of ADD symptoms look exactly the same as vision-related learning difficulties. And one of them, so that I can explain, is what happens when a child is over-attentive? There's a go, go, go. It's a basically sympathetic response. So, what happens? Neurologically, the eyes have a hard time turning in. They have a hard time focusing, and the brain has to disregard peripheral information in order to hyperfocus centrally. Okay? It's like a lion chasing you. I mean, that's what happens. Don't read a book. Don't focus that near, flying that exit sign and running.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right. So, it's an interesting point what he's saying is when you go into fight-or-flight, your visual field and your visual ability to process narrows down. And you could think that that's adaptive, right? I really need to focus in on that lion that's coming at me. So, there's an element of that, but at the same time, you're losing peripheral vision and a wider perspective, if you will. So, this is what we're talking about.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. And neurologically, you're not losing the neurology you can... It's still functioning from a neurological perspective. From an awareness standpoint, you get this constriction of this periphery.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Now, if we have this narrowing of visual space, how's the child going to read? The book is... It's staccato. It's one word at a time because that's all their brain is taking in. Okay, how's that child going to move through space? Well, if all they are aware of is their face and their head, they can't visually take in their body. They don't know what it is. So, how do they respond? By moving, tapping, slapping, they move quickly, and they're very clumsy because they're not aware of things that are around them. So, they tend to stumble, and I'll explain the neuro-balancing lenses in terms of, think of a tightrope walker. If you have a tightrope walker and we're on top of Niagara Falls, and I say to you: “You know what? Just get across to the other side.” Are you going to go slowly or quickly? You're going to go as fast as you can to maintain momentum to run across. Now, what's the balancer? That big long rod that they hold...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: The pole that they-

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: The pole provides them the balance so that they can then slow down and move across in a way that's much more efficient. So, what do we do with lenses? We neural balance by opening up their space, optically. And then what you notice is now they can visualize more, they slow down, and it allows them to learn more efficiently. That's just one example. So, that the listeners can get a big picture on what we do in terms of neural balancing.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's a little bit... It's like a camera. So, if you close down the aperture, you're going to have more of a narrow field of view. Or if you have a wide-angle lens, you're going to get a wider perspective. So, what you're really doing, so to speak, is putting a wide-angle lens over the eye to force the brain to be aware of the periphery that the sympathetic nervous system is driving it to ignore. Correct?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Right. And then you're tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system once that occurs because you can't stay in a sympathetic response when you calm that response down.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. So, that's the key right there. So, what you're saying is that if we actually force the field of vision open, then it shuts down the sympathetic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: You got it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, cool.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: And the thing is, “forces” is a harsh word only because I always talk about safety. And again, you have to understand where the person's at and go into their world and understand their model of the world and then hold the space to allow for the learning to curve for them. And safety's a key ingredient here because if you crank open that space too quickly, it's like the neurology goes [inaudible 00:31:13], and then you get an apt reaction where they collapse even more, and they go even to more sympathetic. So, this is where the art comes into place. So, another thing that came up in our conversation-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, I can see that there may be two elements to the art and probably more. One would be maybe the degree to which you use a wide-angle lens. In other words, how wide an angle is the lens that you choose? And the other, I would imagine, would be prepping the internal lens through which they're looking, the emotional lens or the energetic lens, to actually calm to a point where it can actually be scooched open, not ripped open, but scooched open. So, you're working on both lenses to actually make this work. So, there's therapy, and then there's mechanical therapy, and there's sort of energetic therapy.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: It's all connected, it's in neurology, it's how do you tap into the neurology? I mean, what I was going to mention before that I loved it when we first met because we were having the conversation in terms of emotions and how did the emotions... How are they involved in all of this? Well, it's the same thing. If we're running programs since we were 2, 4, whatever, fear, anger, whatever. There are programs that are running, and they're so deeply driven in our values, the motivation of what motivates us. If we're running a program of fear, emotional fear, what's going to happen to the visual system? The exact same thing. And we can measure that now. We don't know exactly where it's coming from, but we can measure it.

So, now what happens after doing therapy or training, NeuroVisual training with the child, for example, with ADD, it automatically impacts the emotional state or the energetic lens. And what we hear from the parents all the time is: "Wow, they're a lot more confident. Wow, they have an air about them." It's easier for me to understand the depth of that because of the other training. And now I have the capacity to come on podcasts like this and explain it from different angles of what is that lens? Because there are different ways of actually viewing it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I think the sort of surprising thing here for me as I hear this is that we tend to think of the emotional state as the emotional state. But to think that you could make what I'm going to call a mechanical intervention where you open up the angle of the lens, so to speak, that that could then go back and change the emotional state. That seems like a stunning piece of information here. So, now you're not only the psychological underpinnings, which are important on the whole energy front, but being able to do something, mechanically, that is now impacting the emotional state and, therefore, the vision and the ability to take in information. That's phenomenal. I wonder who figured this out.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Well, okay, so I can take this in so many different directions. Guide me here because when I get excited, I just want to now just bombard with as much information as possible. So, who figured this out? This brilliant doc called Dr. AM Skeffington, Dr. Skeffington. And these are the basic information that we learned when we're going through these courses. But at the time, I didn't really have context, and I wasn't ready to hear it because, again, I'm going in from a perspective; “I just want to help my kid.” Okay. So, Dr. Skeffington came out with The Skeffington Circles.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Is this how you measure something?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: No. So, this is a description of vision. So, he uses circles to explain. So, the first circle is: Where am I? Where am I in space? And then I'm going to go through the energetic lens. It's also: Who am I?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Okay. So, there's the self-confidence piece. So, that's the first circle. Second circle is: Who are you? Okay? Or if it's an object: What is it? Okay, so I'm identifying. So, I have a way of identifying what's happening in front of me. How I identify it will be determinant by my knowing where I am first.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And sounds like safety's going to be associated with each of these circles, correct?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: If I'm feeling safe in who I am, that's circle one. Then circle two, is that a safe object? Is that a safe person? So, you're kind of looking at this, not to use the lens again, but we're kind of filtering this through the safety kind of assessment, right?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Yeah. And imagine now we have rapport. We met for the first time. So, the safety's wide open because of how the conversation started. So, if I say: who am I? I'm a NeuroVisual optometrist, it's not actually who I am, but it gives me depth and understanding of how we can have this conversation. Who are you? Dr. Jeff, longevity, all these other things. So, now, all of a sudden, I'm looking at it, and I'm saying: “Okay, so I know who I am. I know who you are now.” And where you are with respect to where I am, is now the third circle.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, got it.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: So, this is what we call “centering”. So, what place do I hold in this conversation, making sure that I can see through your lens of having a discussion of longevity, I can now understand who I am in terms of how that conversation can get enhanced in terms of vision? Okay, where are you in terms of podcasts? Amazingly further ahead than I am because I'd love to start mine too. So, I have perspective now. So, the second I can connect those three, the fourth circle is: communication.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: It's not verbal. The verbal part, what we say is 5%, right? There's body language that's involved in them, which is a huge piece. There's tonality, there's voice, and there are all these other things that come into play. So, I just said: “I'm so excited now because I can take this in different directions.” My communication just opened up the floodgates. Why? Because you allowed me a safe place to be confident in what I know in the knowledge. You're enhancing the conversation now with deepening the understanding for the listener to hear. And now, what happens when all four circles are lit up?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Communication, right?

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: No, it's the intersection of the four, which is now: coherence or emergence. This is where vision emerges. Now we're creating a vision of where this podcast is going, and we're bouncing back and forth so that there's a vibe, there's a frequency, there's an energy, there's an awareness at a much higher level. So, this is Skeffington's way of describing the vision, which was amazing. Now the other thing that came up that I do want to share that's important, we talked energy, we talked lens, and now I'm going to shift it a little bit to the emotional side because it's critical. And if I'm working with someone, this is now on the timeline therapy, the neurolinguistic programming portion, which I never thought was connected. I'm an optometrist, but it's still a vision.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Define “timeline therapy” for the audience.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: So, timeline therapy is basically we support the client or the individual to let go of negative emotions or what we call emotional legacies because we look at emotions as a good thing. And then to let go of any limiting beliefs that they might have. Usually, well, it's always at an unconscious level in order to move toward their potential of the future. And this is why I got excited when we had the conversation because that potential of the future, when you let go of these things and understand why things happen for us, not to us, which comes back to my story, now you're leading towards longevity because the system is working a lot more efficiently.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right. And this is now the hero's journey, quite honestly, of reclaiming your birthright to be yourself, right? Your unencumbered self. Exactly. Okay, beautiful. I see it now. Okay.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: Absolutely, hero's journey. And this is a way that I explain to clients when we start because a lot of people aren't sure. Same thing. What are we going to do? What's vision therapy? What are we going to work on? Emotions. There are a lot of unknowns. But when we understand emotional development, or you hear emotional intelligence, I like development. Why? Because it's easy for me to describe, medically, it's easy for me to describe, emotionally. But we all have, and we go through, these developmental milestones. We all have anger, sadness, hurt, fear, your guilt. We have to have them. Why? If we don't have fear, we'll kill ourselves. If we don't have guilt, we'll kill someone else. So, all of these are survival mechanisms. Now the one that I explain a lot is the rooting reflex. This is the one when a baby's born latches on the boob.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: To the nipple.

Dr. Stelios Nikolakakis: To the nipple because the baby needs to eat. It's a survival technique. But what happens when that reflex doesn't integrate? It's called a speech impediment. And then we walk around with a lisp, and we have to go through the speech therapist. You got it. And then they teach you how to integrate that reflex. Okay? That's the physical one. A common one that we see with concussion patients is a resurgence of the moral reflex. That's the startle reflex. Well, if we have a startle reflex, what do you think happens to the sympathetic response? You're constantly in anxiety. Now, if we go to the emotional versions of that, and again, I use my son as an example. He's two years old. He's getting ready to launch himself off the top of the stairs. And all he hears is me saying: “No!”

He's just taken on fear, but he has no construct or context around it other than dad just scared the bajepers out of me. Okay? Now we call them gestalts, but every fear situation now gets connected to the first unconscious awareness of what that fear is. And we hold onto these forever. Now, initially, it's a protective mechanism, but we're 30, 40, and 50 years old, guess what happens to the fear? And the anxiety keeps getting higher and higher and higher and higher.

So, understand now, if we transfer that to what we talked about in terms of the lens and vision, what's going to happen to the sympathetic system if we're in constant fear and anxiety all the time? Collapse, and so on and so forth. And here's the safety piece. So, now, with neural balancing lenses and vision therapy, that's a way to get at it. And I'll say it's more the physical, but from a physical construct. But now we have the other side where if you go from the emotional route, now you can let go of that emotion. How? Hypnotherapy and timeline therapy, what we do is we go back to the initial event and visualize it not being in it but above it. And the second my son realizes: "You mean dad was protecting me? I was protected." The story disappears. And now, the new reality, the new lens, has been created. So, now the lesson is: “I am protected”, not: “I'm scared based on what happened back then.”