What if the missing ingredient in healing isn’t effort, insight, or intensity — but safety?
In this episode of Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?, Emily sits down with psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and stress researcher Dr. Dave Rabin for a deep, grounding conversation about trauma, healing, psychedelics, and the nervous system.
Dr. Dave explains why the body must feel safe before real transformation can occur, how vulnerability is not a weakness but a biological gateway to healing, and why many ...
What if the missing ingredient in healing isn’t effort, insight, or intensity — but safety?
In this episode of Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?, Emily sits down with psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and stress researcher Dr. Dave Rabin for a deep, grounding conversation about trauma, healing, psychedelics, and the nervous system.
Dr. Dave explains why the body must feel safe before real transformation can occur, how vulnerability is not a weakness but a biological gateway to healing, and why many modern approaches to growth fail because they bypass the nervous system entirely. Together, they explore the science behind touch, oxytocin, the vagus nerve, and the body’s innate pharmacy — and why regulation, not catharsis, is what allows change to last.
This conversation bridges cutting-edge neuroscience with ancient wisdom, reframing healing as a process of listening, softening, and restoring trust in the body. If you’ve been doing the work — meditating, journaling, therapy, breathwork — but still feel tense, guarded, or dysregulated, this episode offers a radically compassionate reframe.
In This Episode, We Explore:
•Why safety is the foundation of all healing
•How the nervous system responds to touch and presence
•What “psychedelic” really means (beyond substances)
•Why vulnerability is biologically necessary for change
•The role of oxytocin, the vagus nerve, and regulation
•Ancient medicine meeting modern neuroscience
•Learning to trust the body over external metrics
Key Moments:
00:00:00 — Why vulnerability is the gateway to healing
00:04:18 — Redefining “psychedelic” through neuroscience
00:09:42 — Why safety must come before transformation
00:15:36 — Touch as the fastest language of the nervous system
00:22:14 — Oxytocin, trust, and the biology of calm
00:29:08 — Why willpower doesn’t heal trauma
00:36:41 — Eastern wisdom finally validated by Western science
00:43:27 — Self-touch, co-regulation, and restoring agency
00:50:12 — Listening to the body vs. outsourcing intuition to devices
00:57:19 — Building safety as a daily practice
01:04:03 — What real integration actually looks like
01:11:22 — Healing as remembering how to feel safe again
About Dr. Dave Rabin
Dr. Dave Rabin is a board-certified psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and co-founder of Apollo Neuroscience. He has spent over 15 years researching chronic stress, trauma, and non-invasive healing modalities, including MDMA-assisted therapy, touch-based regulation, and nervous system resilience.
Website: www.drdave.io
Instagram: @drdaverabin
Where This Work Continues
Level 3 is where regulation becomes lived practice — a mastermind with advanced training, integration, and initiatory work, including a sacred pilgrimage through Greece.
Explore Level 3 here:
👉 https://zivameditation.com/pages/nextlevel
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