Aphantasia, Brain Mapping, Trauma, MS, and Sound Healing: Unexpected Connections Between Two ‘Unrelated’ Books

Hello and welcome to another episode of Aphantasia Experiments. I'm excited to have you here. I've been absent for a while. Sorry about that you know life is life. I work. I have four kids, three ish kids, three kids plus one adult who's getting married soon. So, you know, life is life. And it's hard to record episodes. And I don't always have stuff to talk aboutantasia, you know? It's hard. But this episode, I have some brain stuff to talk about, and I feel like that always connects to aantasia. So bear with me. And I feel like because if you're my people, you will be able to make the connections along the way and understand how this connects to Aphantasia and whatnot. So in this episode, I want to talk about two books I've recently read. I read them back to back. And back as I was reading them, I was making all sorts of, you know, connections, which I love making connections. It lights up all the dopamine perceptors in my brain. I don't know if that's actually the scientific medical terminminology for that, but it makes me feel good when I make connections. And I did when I was reading these two books. So I'm going to share those connections and why they matter and how that connects kind of sort of to Aantasia. Okay, so the first book I consumed, I don't say red, although I do usually say red, and I probably already said red. My husband always makes fun of me when I I say red, and it's actually an audiobook. So if you're one of those people, you know, whatever. I consumed the book, the Mind Maers, friendshipship portrayal in the Obsessive Quest to Chart the Brain by Eric Andrew G. I actually like wrote that down because I'm like, I should probably like start doing that. I should probably go back in touch and do it to all my other podcasts. I won't. But I should, but I won't. Anyway, so this book, the Mind Mappers, just like the title says, it's about the obsessive quest to chart the brain. So it follows these two neurosurgeons back in like 1920, 1925-ish, 1924. The neurur surgeons, Wilder Penfield, and William Cohn. Their partnership helped map the brain and led to the Montreal Neurological Institute. So the book is mostly set in Montreal. And because my family was from Montreal, during and around this time period, it made me just kind of like imagine my grandmother in this period, not in the 20s, but more in the 50s. Well, they were still there. And so I was kind of just invested in it because of that. But what this book really made me realize is all of this was happening less than 100 years ago. They were just beginning to link specific brain areas with functions, like speech, memory, and movement. So it's's just wild to me how far far I think we still have to come. Penfield, who was one of the neurural guys, he developed the Montreal procedure for epilepsy, which became the global standard and helps memory and thought to specific regions. So they were going in. But before that, nobody knew what was connected to what in the brain, right? This was not that long ago. Think about it. Back when these two guys were doing surgery less than 100 years ago, basically every surgery was like, you probably are going to die, but it's at least it's this experiment and at least we'll like learn something in the process. Like these guys, a lot of patients died because they didn't know anything about the brain. These guys figured it out by like experimenting basically on human people who were having brain problems. It's fascinating. So it's a really good read and it just makes you realize that there's so much more to discover with the brain. That's what I got from it. I was like, that we have so much more, so much growth to do. If you can consider the leap from the internet in the 1990s, to smartphones and social media in the early 2000s. Like, consider brain science science and consciousness. It's still in the dialup era, right? Like, if you think about it, that's what I really, truly think. I don't think we've come we've scratched the service on the brain and consciousness. And. Yeah, I just think how like if we've learned so much this much in a 100 years, like, think about how far we're going to go in the next 50 to 100 to 200 to 15, maybe 20 minutes from now, we're going to know more, right? Like there's so much to learn about the brain. So that's what I got from that book. And then I went to Audible because I got the other one from the library. And then I actually bought it for my dad for Father's Day because I was like, I think this is a really great read because I feel like he'll also think about his mother during that time. My dad had brain stuff as a child. He doesn't remember, but I was like, maybe he went to see one of these doctors. Who knows, you know? So I wanted to see if he made any connections too. And, hey, maybe that'll give him a little dopamine light up, too. Or maybe it'll, you know, bring back childhood trauma. I don't know. But either way, probably healthy stuff will happen. Hopefully. The next book I read, I went to O Audible and I was like, you know what? I'm going to see what new, cool stuff is out there. And I immediately was drawn to Christina Applegate's book. I have no idea if it's actually new or not, but I assume it's new, so it could be 2026, could be 2024. I feel like it's probably 2026. Oh, it is. I wrote it down.. It's called You with the Sad Eyes. a memoir. Published March 3rd, 2026. So this book is obviously a book Christina Apgate, Applegate, which I now know. She does not like that name, so let's all call her Kiki, because that's what she likes. That's who she is. The book is really amazing. I actually, I don't know why I was drawn to the book because I'm not like, I wasn't, I grew up, I'm an 84 baby, so I was a little late to the married with children. phenom, if you will. We watched it a little bit. I was like, I don't know, my parents were more into Roseanne. Probably the same kind of thing. I was more a Becky girl. But, anyways, I love her and Dead to me and Anchorman and the sweetest thing. And I've always really liked her, but I haven't really, I don't I'm not like celebrity. Oh, my gosh, I love Christine Ablegate. posters on my wall, you know, like that's. I'm not like that with anyone. Um Anyways, this is how the world works and the universe works. You see a book and you're drawn to it and you read it, and then you make connections and you' like, well, that's why I read read it. It's not because Christina Applegate, I was a big fan of Married with Children was because I'm making connections, people, you know? So anyways. Okay, I don't want to give, like, too many sposers because I do think it's worth a listen or a read, if you will, but I do think a listen.. I don't know. I just love listening to an audiobook. And I feel like my fantastic people out there probably are similar to me, although my husband thinks it's weird. And he's totally has avantasia too. But I like listening, especially for a memoir when they're reading their own stuff. Like, you hear the emotion and Christina Kiki. She, I like adored the way she read it. I wanted, I like, I wanted her to get an Emmy for just the way she read the book because of the certain words she emphasizes like, would kill me, like, make me laugh in one one paragraph and then in another I would be, you know, in tears for her. So she just does such a great job in reading that book. So performing it. Anyways, she talks a lot, and I don't want to spoiler, but spoiler, but also like none of this is going to be like, you can't read the book. All of it is like, worth reading. She talks about some childhood trauma. and I'm not going to get into the childhood trauma. You're going to read the book. But she goes through childhood trauma, and then later in life, she finds out she has MS. And she talks about the link between MS and childhood trauma. Like, she actually talks about it in the book, which I love. I love that I didn't know this about her, that she's a very spiritual person. At one point, and this is in the book and it's fascinating, she breaks her foot and the doctors tell her it's a 12 week recovery, but she wants to perform in this Broadway thing. She I won't tell the whole story story, but she she like visualizes and she knows like what to do consciously and she heals herself in six weeks. She's she did this. And I mean, probably to her own health detriment, but she did it, she was able to accomplishment like this because she she visualized it and whatnot. She believes in the the, you know, the woo stuff. I don't even like calling it woo stuff. Like the consciousness stuff and spirituality. And I think she understands a little bit of a bigger purpose. So, another part of the book, and I'll go back to the MS part because I isn't like connections, just with healthcare and whatnot. And and how like, how do we actually like, get anywhere with the medical system and consciousness and just all of it. So, back in time, going back in time, she found out she had breast cancer. Matt came from first, she had a scan, a mammogram, and it showed that her breasts were too dense. And then they sent her for additional imaging, I think, an MRI or additional scanning, I I don't know, and it showed breast cancer, and she was able to get the procedure, double mastasectomy, I believe. I hope I don't didn't butcher that, but because I'm terrible remember medical stuff. I'm terrible at remembering a lot of stuff. I should write more stuff down, to be honest. TBH.. But, uh she. Anyway, she was basically saved because she went for this additional scan. Now, last year, I went for a mammogram, and I was given the letter home that says, basically I have the most dense type of boobs. I have to come back year to get skin because it's harder to read. I was never sent for additional skins. Never follow-up Noel, like, I have no idea. Maybe I have it. And it's in my MRI, but I don't have access to this. There's a bit of privilege there, and I don't, not in any way faululting Christina Aguera, and it's not Aguular, it's obligate. It's not Christina, it's Kiki. Terrible name, sorry. Sorry, Kiki. Um, Oh, my God, I'm the worst. I'm the worst. I'm such a bad bad podcaster. I can't believe you guys are listening. Anyways, my point is she was able to do this, and then she's an incredible person. She went out and she, you know, tried to help more women have the ability to do this who wouldn't necessarily have that. The finances to get the additional scans and stuff. She was she set up some sort of charity or foundation or whatever to do that. So good on her. But now she has MS, and she knows there's a connection between childhood trauma and an MS, which she went and had a scan, and if I get this wrong again, I'm sorry, read the book, she had 60 lesions. lesions on her brain, on her cascan or whatever. Now, what I think when I listen to that is I'm throwing it a bunch of different directions. I'm thinking about this book that I just read and how like, we know nothing about the brain. Christina, Kiki, girl, like experiment, do some weird shit, because we have no idea what we're doing yet. We don't. And maybe there's something to do to fix those lesions. The brain is plastic, girl, we can fix it. So if you could fix your damn foot in six weeks, you can fix those lesions. And I was thrown back to this episode I watched on Gaia, and I don't have Gaia anymore. I was trying to cut back some stuff. And anyway, so there was an episode on something, I have no idea what it was, and then they were doing some sound healing stuff, and. they were doing it on Parkinson's patients, and they would like completely their convulsions would completely stop with this sound. And it took me back. This is how like my brain works, connections. It leaps me in different places. So it takes me to when I was doing sound healing on myself, and I would go to meditation classes and then I like bought my own singing bowl and tuning forks and I started doing like Reakia myself and sound healing and what happened during those sessions as I kept having memories come back, and they weren't necessarily always good memories. They were just memories. And as you know, I have affidasia. So my memories are not visual. They're just like the feelings, the emotions, the outcome, it's the whole thing. It's the memory without the visuals. And I would have these things come into my consciousness and what I would do, as I was like, you know, immersed in the sound situation, I would tell myself it was okay or like change the outcome, or, you know, be that like, extra adult in the background to say say, this is this is okay. Because all we have so many like micot traumas in our life. And this is what it revealed to me. I was like, I just kept doing it and I feel like it healed a lot of me. But I have no access to a scan of my brain, you know? And, you know, who knows? I could have MS. My doctor is the slowest at ordering tests. I started losing function in my hand last June, and now I have a surgery appointment in November. And that doesn't mean I have surgery. It means I have an appointment with the vascular surgeon. Who is going to look over my ultrasound that already confirmed that I have compression. and it just takes forever to do anything. But, like, I have terrible apraxia, I have avetasia. Is that from a brain lesion? I have no idea because I've never had a scan, right? Like, they're not going to just send me for a scan willy nilly. But Christina, perhaps because, and I don't mean this in a douchey way, and I'm hoping you're listening to this because I called you Kiki and we're friends now, is that if you could actually can like get multiple scans of your brain, well doing some sort of like like after doing sound healing, after doing, like, do experiments. And I'm not telling you to do any specific ones that sound healing and then shadow work, I feel like would be really, really good because I think there's so much when you when I was listening to the book, and I really, it was like, it really hit me in so many ways. There's so many layers to it, but there's this part of her that it's like she can see the lesson in the stuff, but you can still feel the anger that, you know, the scars were left behind, and I feel like the anger It's not that it's not like she I don't know. I don't know. I just think there's some healing that needs to be done, and it needs to be done. And, like, multi layered consciousness situation. You know what I mean? I hope you know what I mean. You're like, following this random connection, connect the dot. situation. Now, I want to be clear, I do not think that Christina Kiki Kiki, I don't think that you caused your own MS. I don't think that, you know, you were like, as a kid, you were like, trauma, I'm gonna put this in my brain. Like, that's not your fault. Um. But. I do think there's a connection, and I think she knows there's a connection. Doctors know there a connection. And I think that I think that we assume that neurologists are like the most intelligent people in the world and they know everything about the brain, and there's nothing more to be discovered, and that is a false, and it's a mockery of the universe. And I think that if you've listened to the telepathy tapes or if you've watched any sort of like deep dive on consciousness on any sort of, you know, spiritual programming, you'll agree that we really just have, we don't know. We don't know, we don't know. We don't know what we don't know. Also, I had no idea, like, legit zero clue that Kiki was in the Pussycat dolls. She, like, founded the Pussycat dolls as a dancer. She was a dancer, and then they added lyrics after. and then she wasn't in anymore, but, like, who knew? Anyways, that's a pretty cool, fun fact, and I hope that didn't spoil the whole book, 'cause that was a big, that was a big, like, what? I was cleaning the pool, and then she was talking about. this is my brain like goes in and out of books sometimes. She started talking about pussycat dolls and I had to like rewind. I was like, "What is she talking about? Pussycat dolls? At what point? I don't remember her being inussy cat dolls. Anyways, very good book and just makes you think they only really started talking about Aphantasia in 2015. That was like the year my daughter was born. was. Oh, my God, how old is she? 10 years ago, 11 years ago. Almost. Like, we have so far to go, and we have to, like, really look at these connections. And if you have the privilege of getting multiple brain scans in your life, do some experiments on yourself and try some weird, weird shit just to see, hey, maybe there's ways of reversing it. Maybe there's ways, you know, of manifesting a better brain. Maybe there's ways, you know, to change that trauma cycle outcome. There's gotta be, right? There has to be a way. So.. Yeah. Read the books if you have the opportunity. They're available on all your platforms. I think. I have no idea. Actually, don't clue.'t have a clue. But I got one of them from the library. And then I gave it to my dad for Father's Day, and I think he really liked the gift. Um I hope, I don't know. He smiled., man, I hate gift giving sometimes. I'm gonna try this new thing, though, that my son's fiance's friend told me at their wedding, like their recent wedding shower. Every time someone tells her something, some random fact, like, my favourite colour is blue. She'll just put it in a note in her phone under that person's contact. I'm like, that's great. So then when you go to give them a gift, you're not like, oh, what was her favourite colour again? What's their favourite vegetable? You know? So I thought that was a cool little thing. I'm not organized to do that enough to do it, but I have done it with one person. I don't remember who it was. So. Hmm, probably someone I will never buy a gift for, but I was like, I'm going to do it because they just said something random. So if you are organized enough to do that, that's a fun tip for me, to you, from not me, but someone else. You're welcome. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Didn't have much about advantageia, but really nothing. But my point is, we don't know, we don't know about the brain. I also think that perhaps there's like trauma for us that's blocking us from visualizing. I I also think there's stuff with the fascia, connective tissue. I don't know. We're going to figure it out together. Hopefully. All right, that's it for now. Toodleoo. Oh, if you want to get in contact, I have not been on Instagram in months because I get overwhelmed by social media and email. So if you want to get in contact. Good luck. But RoCreative at gmail.com or try me on Instagram. Or just wait until I come out of my cave. and we'll talk done. All right, it is yesterday or the day before, was the first day of summer over here, I guess everywhere. No, not everywhere. Right? Anyways, here in Canada, in Ontario. So the days are going to be longer, which means I get to see sun. It's very rainy today, so it doesn't feel like that today. But moods are lifted. The birds are out. Also, oh my gosh, I watched a documentary. This is totally. You're just like, if you have no desire to learn about birds, stop right here. But I love birds. I watched this documentary. I think it was funny. I was Amazon Prime. I don't know. I just had to put something on the background when I was designing something. And it was about crows or ravens, one of the blackbirds. And it talked about how they like stay within a two kilometre radius or two mile radius, like their whole lives and they kind of just like own that zone and they like know everything about everyone and they have like the best memory ever and you can like befriend them and not that you should, but I always think like I'm always like consciously talking to birds in my brain, you know, like telepathically, try to communicate. And I feel like they get me. So if you also feel that way, you know, cool. Someone sent me a reel the other day and it was like about millennials.. It was like what you were like in the early 2000s and it was like you dancing at a club and then what you were like, in the 2020s and it was like sitting outside, trying to track what which bird calls are being heard. I have an app that I haven't used it in a while because I actually know all the birds now because of that app. Was it Sparrow? I forget what it's called. But if you like have it listened, it'll tell you which birds are chirping in your backyard, which I find really interesting. And now knowing that the birds are like, always in the same area. I don't know why. I thought they were just, like, on a whole, like adventure of their entire life, you know, all the way to Florida or something. I don't know what I was thinking birds did, but I just think that's cool. And so now I see the, you know, the black birds in my neighbourhood. I'm like, hey, buddy, like, I got you, we're neighbours, you know? So, I don't know. I think that's cool. And, how's nothing to do with Advantageia? Someone said something to me on YouTube, and I only post like random videos on YouTube because I'm, again, I don't have time for this shit. This is not my job. I don't I just do it for fun. So I'll put a podcast here and then I forget about the rest. So I haven't posted it in YouTube in a while of it. Every once in a while, I got a comment. And commented like, man, you ramble a lot and you didn't talk abouthenasia a lot at all. I've listened to three or four episodes. I'm like, oh, man, you should stop listening because and I try to, I feel like I try to warn people if I'm not going to talk about advantageia, but it's like, also, I like making connections from other people's stories, and John Edward talks about this, actually, and how he's never going to leave out his own stories from his, like, his show is because the stories are like, how do you make connections with other people, right? So I like making connections, and I think if I can tell my story and you can make a connection, well, that's a benefit to you. And if you don't like it, and you're not a connecter, connectction person, then get a move in and go listen to like a scientificantasia podcast, and Bob will be your uncle. He's my dad, not my my uncle, but I love the expression "Bob's your uncle. I don't know why. I think it's a good one. So with that being said, Bob is your uncle and have a great day.