WEBVTT - Andrew Huberman: How to Increase Your Dopamine by 60% & Optimize Your Brain’s Response to Stress 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.279 Friendship is one of the most reliable sources of predictability 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:05.840 that exists within human interactions. 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.719 Professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, doctor Huberman, launched the 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:14.120 Humoran Lab podcast concentrating on neuroscience and other scientific topics 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.720 neuroscientists neurobiologists. Andrew Huberman. 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.360 We could say this about any organism, but humans included. 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.480 We need the feeling of safety and acceptance. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.000 If ever, there was a practice that I wish every 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:27.960 human being on the planet would do besides go out 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.160 in view morning sunlight, it would. 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:36.519 Be weird throw to announce that we've reached three million subscribers. 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:38.919 We're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:42.000 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to hit that 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.280 subscribe button so you never miss out on any of 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.640 our new releases. We're dedicated to bringing you the content 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.360 you love. Our team carefully analyzes what resonates most with 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:56.160 you to bring on board the best experts and storytellers 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.040 to help you improve your life. Some of your favorite 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:04.319 topics are deep science, weight loss, physical fitness, navigating breakups, 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:09.720 habit building, and understanding toxic relationships. Upcoming episodes include one 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.000 of the biggest names in health and science world, renowned 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:17.679 relationship therapist, and your favorite manifestation expert is back to 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:21.520 drop new findings. Hit subscribe to not miss any of 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.040 these episodes. If you think of someone who would love 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:26.840 this episode, send it to them to make their day. 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:29.960 The number one health and wellness podcast. 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:38.000 Jay Seti, Jay Sheety. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.720 I'm so grateful that you decided to lend me your 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.760 eyes and ears for the next few moments. Today's guest 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.120 is one of your favorites. He's been on the show before. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.880 He's one of my favorite humans too. I'm speaking about 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.919 the one and only doctor Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist and tenured 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:57.640 professor in the departments of Neurobiology and by courtesy Psychiatry 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:02.560 and Behavioral Sciences at Stama School of Medicine. Doctor Huberman 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.600 has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.440 brain function, and neural plasticity. In addition to his role 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.120 at Stanford, doctor Huberman is the host of the incredible 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.240 podcast Huberman Lab. If you're not a subscriber already, which 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.600 I'd be very surprised, make sure you do subscribe. I'm 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.120 so excited to welcome my friend and incredible expert, doctor 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.280 Andrew Huberman. Andrew, it's such a pleasure to have you 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:29.760 here again. I'm so grateful that you took the time 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:32.200 out and I can honestly say I've spent time with 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.800 you offline and online, and what's been beautiful is just 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:42.320 your humility, your sincerity and genuineness across the board. And 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:46.360 I know we exchange texts and calls and messages frequently 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.040 and I'm just loving our growing friendship. So thank you 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.960 so much for what you do online but also who 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:53.959 you are offline to me personally as a friend. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.760 Thanks so much for having me here today and for 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.799 being such an amazing friend and a wonderful thing to 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:02.040 get get to know you better. And you know, the 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:06.720 public facing Jayshetty is an incredible person and the private 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:11.760 world Jayshetty is equally extraordinary in overlapping but also distinct ways. 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.560 So it's been a lot of fun and I look 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.040 forward to growing our friendship further. 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:18.520 Thank you, And I mean that's actually you know, I 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:20.760 never thought about this when I was preparing for our 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:25.080 conversation today, but maybe there's something beautiful to tap into 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:29.280 there and to hear about the neuroscience of friendship because 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.320 I feel that we keep talking about the loneliness epidemic 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.240 that we're experiencing in the world right now. We keep 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:37.600 talking about this feeling that people have of not being 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.320 seen by their friends, not being understood by their colleagues, 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.720 not feeling heard by their family members. People are surrounded 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:49.840 by lots of people but feel really disconnected. We're seeing 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:54.600 this growing rise of interconnectivity and more friends and more 0:03:54.680 --> 0:04:00.960 followers online, but then feeling really, saying what's the right word, 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.960 not even isolated or disconnected because we feel like we're 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.600 surrounded by people, but we feel emotionally distant from people. 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.200 What's happening from a neuroscience perspective as our friendships are 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:16.400 getting weaker even though our followerships and online friendships are 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:17.040 getting bigger. 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.800 So at the neuroscience level, we have to remember that 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.600 the brain circuitry, which of course is always linked to 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.640 the body. We want to remember brain body are fortunately 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.240 now understood to be interconnected. Five years ago, ten years ago, 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.400 that wasn't so much an accepted idea. But the nervous system, 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:35.320 the brain, the spinal cord and all the connections to 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:37.640 the body and back to the brain and spinal cord 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:42.359 are bidirectional and highly interconnected. So when we say brain, 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:44.359 I'm more or less using it as a proxy for 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.240 a whole nervous system, including body. The circuits that are 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:53.080 responsible for feelings of social connectedness are deeply, deeply rooted in. 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:54.640 Our need for safety. 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.240 We could say this about any organism, but humans included 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.120 need two things. I believe we need the feeling of 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.599 safety and acceptance. And so we are to have a 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:15.000 conversation about the kind of loftier words like peace, contentment, fulfillment, belonging. 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.800 I think I borrow that list, by the way, from 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:20.720 the incredible Martha Beck. So it's not a coincidence that 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.800 those rattled off my mind, But I feel like those 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.520 four words are so critical to what we all want 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.440 and what we all need at an aspirational level. We 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.960 can't have a discussion about those without also, I believe 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.680 having a discussion about the fact that we have hardwired 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:41.680 aspects of our nervous system, meaning genetic programs that are 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.920 written into the script of all our genomes, regardless of color, 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:49.800 regardless of background, that are just scripted into our genome 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.480 that allow us to breathe without thinking about it, digest 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.239 food without thinking about it, keep our heart rate going 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.480 without thinking about it, elevated if it needs to be, 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.880 slowed down if it needs to be, etc. And then 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.520 hardwired circuitry that is there for bonding with our caretaker 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.960 during early infancy and bonding with others of our species, 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.159 and evaluating whether there is safety and acceptance from the 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.520 other members of our species. Now, these brain circuits have names, 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:19.320 and we could get into that they almost all have 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.240 some connectedness to an area of the brain called the hypothalamus, 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.240 which sits above the roof of your mouth, which has many, 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.280 many dense collections of neurons we call nuclei, responsible for 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.840 everything from temperature regulation to feeding, to reproductive behavior and 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.120 on and on, all the basic kind of housekeeping things. 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:40.279 But connected to those brain areas are brain areas that 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.839 are associated with evaluating whether one is safe or not. 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.919 So safety and acceptance. Then we can break down in 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:48.440 the following way. If we look at it through this 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:53.680 neuroscience lens, safety is really about the ability to predict outcomes. Okay, 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.599 and the brain, after being responsible for all these housekeeping 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:00.000 functions heart rate et cetera, is largely a predictive organ 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.839 It wants to understand what's going to happen next to 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.320 the extent that it can then free up mental real 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.640 estate neural real estate to work on creative projects or 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.960 to build things, or to imagine things. Right, there's no creativity, 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.320 there's no building in the absence of safety. 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:17.800 Then it just becomes survival. 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.840 So the kind of older discussion, meaning in the eighties, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.640 nineties and early two thousands, the discussion about the nervous 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.240 system was we would hear about higher brain order functions 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.920 and limbic functions, right, weird hear about kind of primitive 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.480 lizard brain and more evolvrain and all of that is 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:36.920 frankly true. It remains true, and that language is perfectly fine. 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:38.760 But I think if we are to think about safety 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.520 and acceptance, we say, what is safety about? Safety is 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.480 about being able to predict outcomes when we are in 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.679 the company of people, or we know we have people 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:52.080 available to us. Should we need something food, maybe we 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.200 need a monetary loan, Maybe we need a word of encouragement, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.520 Maybe we need somebody to bounce ideas off of whatever 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:02.800 it is that constitutes safety for us. Subjective, highly individual well, 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.800 then when those circuits can quiet down, it says, if 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.480 you know, they can finally quiet down, and so we 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:13.400 have enough safety, so that then we can start to explore, 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.120 iterating what we have in terms of new jobs, new 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.200 creative ideas, new art, new you know, take a walk 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.000 with somebody you care about. Right, those are not the 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:23.520 sorts of things you do when you feel that you 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:28.360 are under siege, either real siege, physical siege, or emotional siege. Okay, 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.440 then acceptance gets a little bit trickier to sort of 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:38.040 pinpoint in the brain. Acceptance likely dovetails neurologically with this 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:42.160 these brain circuits for safety, because acceptance is really about well, 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:45.480 given the range of expressions that we have, our range 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:51.040 of humor, our range of political beliefs, our range of behaviors, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.840 can I predict that these safety mechanisms will still be there, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:56.960 These people will still be there, These things will still 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.760 be there. Will they turn on me? Will they on 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.360 me right? Will they laugh with my jokes? Or will 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:05.280 they decide they don't want to talk to me anymore 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.720 because of my jokes? These kinds of things. Now, what 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:09.440 I'm trying to not do here and at the same 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:13.719 time do is to put a neuroscience lens onto these 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.400 two things of safety and acceptance. But if we were 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:17.840 to just take a step back and say, what do 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:24.280 we know to absolutely be true? Well, safety and acceptance, belonging, peace, contentment, etc. 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.800 Come from a variety of sources. Certainly in our early 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:33.479 relationship with our caretakers, the circuits form that are basically 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.840 all about resonance with the caretaker. Alan Shore here at 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.680 UCLA has done beautiful work on this. I think the 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.760 book's title is called right Brain Psychotherapy, and it's really 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.800 about how the bonding of infant and typically mother, but 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.719 how the word caretaker the bonding of infant and I'll 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.800 just say mother since that's the more typical scenario. There's 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.400 actually a lot of synchronization of brain networks early on, 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.200 such that one's physical and mental state reflects the other 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:00.600 and so on, and so from the very early stages 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.000 that we come into the world, we are resonating with 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.880 other people. Call it energy, if you want, call it emotions. 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.400 It's neurochemical. Yes, it involves oxytocin, but a whole lot else. 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.560 In other words, we leave infancy and childhood and adolescence 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:17.640 if we have a healthy upbringing with a sense of predictability. 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:19.719 Someone can be there and then not be there. They're 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.040 accessible if we need them, etc. Now, that sort of relationship, 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.600 that connectivity between humans and safety and acceptance in those 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:31.480 relationships has been explored extensively. I think we've all seen 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:33.800 the image of the mother and child and the brain 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.120 imaging and seeing some sort of collaborative activation of their 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.360 brain networks. That's been explored extensively, and it's beautiful work, 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.400 and we could always use more of that sort of work. 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:46.880 What's been explored far less is the safety and acceptance 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.480 that occurs between romantic pairs, although there are laboratories starting 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:52.400 to do that, having people, for instance, look at the 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.839 face of their significant other angry, sad, et cetera, while 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:58.880 in brain scanners, even scanning of two individuals separately at 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.319 the same time, those sorts of things. Far less has 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.120 been done on this notion of friendship. But I think 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.719 in this day and age, when well, it seems like 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:09.080 everything is more complicated. 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:10.800 But I'm sure they've. 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:13.840 Been saying that for for decades or not hundreds of 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.920 thousands of years. What do we know about friendship? Friendship 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:20.320 is one of the most reliable sources of predictability that 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:24.720 exists within human interactions. Why because you can have many, 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.320 many friends, and you don't have to break up with 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:29.600 one friend to have another friend. When you were when 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:31.840 we're little, they say who's your best friend? And maybe 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:33.520 then you could only have one. But pretty soon we 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:37.480 realize that we can have many great friends, many best friends, 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:39.360 and I consider you one of those, Like we're growing 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.439 our friendship. But there's no sense of trade off, even though, 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.600 of course time is always a trade off. In fact, 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:47.200 you were at a gathering at my home with many 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:47.760 other friends. 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:48.040 Right. 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.360 This seems can be collaborative, typically in romantic relationships. While 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.800 there are exceptions to this is typically a pairing right. So, 0:11:55.800 --> 0:12:00.679 there are clearly brain networks that are overlapping with the 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:05.000 brain networks associated with parent, child or child caretaker relationships 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:10.600 and romantic relationships that involve the generation of safety and 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.280 acceptance among friends. The major difference, however, is that friends 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:18.079 throughout history, even when people lived in small villages, tended 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.960 to be dispersed by greater distances. And so when we 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.360 hear about the loneliness crisis, are we hearing about a 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.360 crisis of lack of connectivity with our parents, maybe with 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.520 our siblings, possible with romantic others. That's a whole domain 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.200 into itself. You cover a lot of that and the 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:40.640 challenges associated with finding and building healthy romantic relationship. But 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.000 what we know for sure, based on extensive research now, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:49.679 is that there's a real dearth of close friendships for many, 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.880 many people, not just in the US, but abroad as well. 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.240 Now we could make an argument that it's by virtue 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.120 of smartphones, but I don't think we want to go 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.400 there just yet. I think Jonathan Heights doing a beautiful 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.520 job exploiting those ideas, and he's far better equipped to 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.280 to kind of pinpoint the relationships causal er otherwise than 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.640 I am. But here's what we know for sure. With friends, 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:13.320 we can both hope for and expect safety and acceptance 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:15.760 by virtue of having lots of different kinds of friends. 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.360 Friends with whom we play sport, friends with whom we 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.600 just hang out, friends with whom we don't really talk 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:22.319 too much at all, and friends with whom we drop 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.040 into deep conversation with. So one of the things that 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.400 I personally have found to be immensely beneficial in my 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:33.559 own life, and for which it's clearly had an outsized 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.200 positive effect relative that the time required is a simple 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.199 good morning text that comes on a reliable schedule, meaning 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:44.440 every single morning. Now this might sound almost trivial, but 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.640 when I wake up in the morning, I either receive 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.640 or send a good morning text to Right now, they 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:55.440 are about three people in that kind of collection. They're 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.280 not talking to each other. But if I don't receive 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.840 that text by noon, it activates something in me. 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:03.480 It's not a ton of. 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.200 Anxiety, but it activates something. Are they okay? What's going 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.360 on with them? You know it isn't Why aren't they 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.040 checking up on me? I assume something's come up. But 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:16.120 the simple receival of a text from somebody saying good morning, 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.400 I think has both ancient and modern significance. Ancient in 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:22.440 the sense that one of the first things that everyone 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.200 experienced when we lived in small villages, because that's essentially 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.960 how we evolved, was to see faces of other what 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.960 biologists call conspecifics, other you know, and other same non 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:36.160 conspecific people like people that could be romantic partners or 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:38.400 family members or people we were going to work with. 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:40.760 We saw faces first thing in the morning, and we 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:43.400 know with certainty, because there's a ton of beautiful work, 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:47.960 mainly from Nancy Canwisher's laboratory MIT, a brilliant researcher, as 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:49.960 well as a woman named Doris Soo who now is 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.320 at Berkeley was at Caltech, that there's an immense amount 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.760 of neural real estate devoted to the processing of faces, 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.360 not just facial expressions, but human faces in particular. Now 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:03.960 monkeys have the same brain area for monkey faces, so 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:05.920 this is not an area that's just designed to. 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:07.200 See eyes, nose, and mouth. 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.200 It's a brain area that has neural real estate that 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.200 responds specifically to the faces of other humans in humans, 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:16.120 And there's a whole lot to talk about how it's 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.400 connected with areas of the brain involved in emotion and 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.600 emotion regulation, et cetera. But the simple act of sending 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:27.360 a good morning text to one person and receiving that back, 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.880 perhaps exchanging a note or two about what's your plan 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:33.280 for the day, doesn't have to be an extensive back 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.640 and forth, but the same person or persons consistently. I've 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.480 experienced in my own life, in times both good and 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.480 bad and kind of neutral, that it has this outsized 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.440 positive effect. And I don't think that's because you know, 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.720 I was lacking social interaction. My life is very full. 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:52.640 I have a very busy business life. I can go 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.280 online and see faces. But when we go online and 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.400 see a familiar influencer, or a familiar political figure, or 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.880 a familiar even family member, yes they're there, and I 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.400 think there's great power to that, But they aren't there 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.560 specifically to see us. Although as creators we know that 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:11.360 we are there to see our audience and for them 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.880 to see us, that's a real thing, but it's quite 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:18.680 different to have this exchange, this reciprocity. And I really 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:20.480 believe that if there was one thing that we could 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.280 each and all do to better our lives, no matter 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.320 how busy our social schedule or are at home environments, 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.480 is to have at least one, but probably one to three, 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.880 depending on your bandwidth, one to three friends that every 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.760 single morning, when you wake up, you text them and 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.240 they text you back, just a simple good morning. Why 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:44.160 Because it's the reliability. It's this notion of expectation being fulfilled. 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.200 It's not a huge expectation, and this brings us back 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.360 to safety and acceptance. Right, No one's going to text 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:52.280 us good morning if they don't accept us if they 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:55.520 dismiss us, and the safety is in the predictability of 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.400 the interaction. Now for people that walk to the corner 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.560 and they see the barista and they get their or 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.240 they see their neighbor, et cetera. The importance of saying 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:05.440 hello to people on the street. This is something that's 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:07.840 really fallen away these days. Depends on where you live, 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:10.159 but people are very much in their phones. People are 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:14.040 very much afraid, frankly, of how they will be reacted 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:15.600 to if they were to reach out to somebody that 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.439 they don't know. These basic human interactions take us back hundreds, 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.040 if not thousands, maybe even tens or hundreds of thousands 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:22.480 of years. 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:24.520 And if I were to put. 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.640 My money on any experiment, it would be that there 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:31.880 is dedicated neural machinery for these sorts of practices. And 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:36.720 while social media has wonderful contributions and significance to make 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.879 in the well being of our lives, I truly believe 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.560 that I am absolutely certain that these simple practices, just 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.560 as morning sunlight can profoundly affect our daytime mood, focus 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.320 and alertness in nighttime sleep. I think these simple practices 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.280 of saying good morning by text each morning to the 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.719 same person or people and receiving a text back sets 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.120 something on the shelf like Okay, we're good to move 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:02.119 forward to today. 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.400 Hey everyone, it's Jay Schetty and I'm thrilled to announce 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.320 my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.280 see my on Purpose podcast live and in person. Join 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.280 me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:21.840 with surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:26.120 or a CEO or business leader. We'll dive into experiences 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:30.520 designed to inspire growth, spark learning, and build real connections. 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.320 I can't wait to see you there. Tickets are on 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:38.240 cell now, Head to Jayshetty dot me and get yours today. Yeah. 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.920 Two things came to mind as you were speaking. Your 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.159 habit of the text every morning makes me feel like 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:48.760 you're getting to write a story with someone and force someone. 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.119 And so there's this sense of someone knows my story. 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:55.199 And now it's not like, oh, I speak to you 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.679 once a month and we're catching up on everything that 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.399 happened and you're missing the nuance and the extra in 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.119 the detail. It's like I'm getting to log my story 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.040 in every day which means I really feel this person 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.520 knows me and I know them. So now when we 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:12.639 do get together this weekend to break bread, I don't 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:16.679 have to do that in between small talk. They're already aware. 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.720 And now we're just almost connecting all the dots, as 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:21.960 opposed to I'm now using my time with you to 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.919 plot all the dots. So there's that sense of like 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.160 story exchange, which I think is so important. I find 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.800 that that my friends you've known me the longest, but 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:35.080 the ones that I also consistently text every day, they're 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.639 the ones that I feel understand the tapestry of my 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.119 life and I know theirs. And so now you're not 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.480 just looking at dots on a wall. Look, you're connecting 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.720 the dots in that meeting, which I think is I 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.120 don't know. I'd love to hear how that works out 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.240 from a neuroscience perspective. But the second thing that I 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.200 was reminded by as you were speaking was I feel 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:56.480 like writing down. I always encourage a lot of my 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.160 clients to do this, to write down a list of 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.720 emotions they'd like to experience with people. So it could 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:10.840 be things like adventure, discovery, comfort, humor, love, whatever it 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.119 may be just write down the list and then for 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.440 each one write down the name of a different person. 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.240 Ideally that fulfills that need in your life, because often 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.240 I feel like we put a lot of pressure on 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.960 our romantic partners or one person in our life to 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.720 be all these things, and the truth is, no matter 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.119 how phenomenal anyone is or how much they love us, 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.880 they just can't be that. And so if you have, hey, 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:35.520 I've reached out to this friend when I want some 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:37.639 adventure because they love it too. If I want to 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:39.520 see a sports game, this is the person I reach 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.720 out to. And then do the same in the opposite way. 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.560 Which one of those do you fulfill for your friends? 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.800 What emotions do you help other people create? And I 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.480 feel like if you look at friendship as a spectrum, 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:57.879 as this broad set of connection points, rather than like 0:20:57.960 --> 0:20:59.919 this is my best friend as you were saying, or 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.680 this is my number one friend, and we get away 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:05.959 from hierarchy and we move more into a spectrum, I 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.240 feel like that mixed in with the text today starts 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:13.840 creating a much more healthier network of what connection means. 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:16.640 As well. It's also not just the same person doing 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:18.560 the same thing every week. 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:19.280 Yeah. 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:24.440 I love the idea that by staying in contact regularly 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.200 we don't have to get caught up, and that then 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.000 we can just drop into what's most meaningful on that 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.719 particular day and maybe even have more available to us 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.600 to have a new experience, right as opposed to just 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.000 catching up. And then, of course there are those friends 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.359 that we catch up with and it feels like it 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:44.359 was just yesterday. Definitely, But I'd be willing to bet 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:46.159 that those were people that you spent a lot of 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.600 day to daytime activity with them from a university, or 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.119 you spend a lot of time just in the kind 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.840 of everyday shared experience for a while, and then when 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.639 you see each other again, it's like being right back there. 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.960 The neuroscience of this hasn't been explored near but given 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.440 that our very own Surgeon General highlighted the loneliness crisis 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:08.919 as one of the major crises in the world today, 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.960 I think that in terms of simple solutions to big 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:19.119 important problems, developing more connectivity with people through simple practices, 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:21.240 and again we're talking about a text here. I mean 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:23.560 I will be the first to say that if you 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:25.960 can hop on a phone call or you can get 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.240 on you know, a video chat with somebody that would 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:30.760 certainly be better, but many people just don't have time. 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:31.160 For that show. 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:36.679 So in terms of spending time with people in a 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.160 deeper and richer way, you know, getting the drop in time, 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:42.600 as it were. I love that you mentioned adventure. I'm 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:45.000 almost forty nine. I turned forty nine in just over 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:49.399 a month, and I would say that the first forty 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:51.919 nine years of my life have been marked by a 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:55.320 real thirst for adventure, a ton of curiosity. Now I 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:58.360 really feel myself entering a completely different season of my life. 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:01.520 I'm sort of hoping this would eventually happen, in part 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:05.200 because you know, I took some some kind of dangerous turns. 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:07.520 You know, I took risks with my with my life 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:09.919 at points where I didn't really intend to do that. 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:12.159 But you know, you seek enough adventure, you're gonna you're 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:14.840 gonna find adventure, and you have to be quite careful. 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:17.600 I have friends with whom I had tons of adventure, 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.360 and then now the adventures are far more docile and quiet, 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:26.760 and of course the internal adventure is real as well. 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.560 I think that friends with whom we can just be 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:35.439 one version of ourselves are wonderful friends. With whom we 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:40.120 can be all versions of ourself is especially wonderful. That's 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:43.280 the acceptance piece. Typically, I think we look more for 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.560 that in romantic relationship. This notion of just like safety 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:50.199 and acceptance being hallmarks of healthy romantic relationship, I think 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:52.760 those are also the hallmarks of healthy friendship. It's just 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:54.879 that with friendship we can be a bit more segmented 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:57.480 in terms of the number of different aspects of self 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:01.320 that we need safety and acceptance with. I think with 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:04.639 friendship also, you know, I've found it to be the 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:08.040 case that really knowing what's going on with people has 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:10.600 become a little bit more difficult. There's this there's this 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:13.760 kind of odd thing right where we're more interconnected in 0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:17.320 terms of availability of communication, but we're less aware of 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:19.399 what's really going on for people. In fact, on the 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:22.280 way here, I had a call with a friend and 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:25.240 their headset was making a lot of noise, and so. 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:28.080 We agreed. 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:30.720 They said, Hey, how about I just turned mute mine 0:24:30.880 --> 0:24:33.359 and for the next two minutes. I'm not kidding. This 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:34.679 is how they this is what they said. 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:39.040 They said, just tell me, like what's on your heart 0:24:39.640 --> 0:24:40.600 or what's in your heart. 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:42.680 Hopefully it wasn't on your heart? What's in your heart? 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:45.639 And I was like, oh, wow, that's tough. You know, 0:24:45.720 --> 0:24:48.760 that's tough. I mean, I okay, and I know that 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:50.960 they're listening, and then but it's very silent on the 0:24:50.960 --> 0:24:52.960 other end, and I'm kind of speaking into a vacuum 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:57.520 there because they're not hearing anything. And then had maybe 0:24:57.560 --> 0:25:00.560 just two minutes before we curled up the hill because 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:02.800 of the reception in the area that we're in, as 0:25:02.840 --> 0:25:07.040 you know, is always complicated to just get feedback. It 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:09.680 was very interesting, like I realized that I felt close 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:11.600 to them before, but just the notion that they would 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:14.200 ask me that how do I feel? Not what's going 0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:17.120 on lately? Not you know, am I feeling good or bad? 0:25:17.160 --> 0:25:20.920 Like a valuation of feelings, but just like what's going on? 0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:24.000 And I stumbled a bit at first, but I can 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:26.640 realize in saying it now, like I'm quite moved by 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:29.800 the fact that they would ask that of all things, 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:31.920 as opposed to like what's going on, what's your next 0:25:31.960 --> 0:25:34.440 podcast about? And coming to visit that sort of thing. 0:25:34.800 --> 0:25:36.760 And so like I'm taking a lot of cues these 0:25:36.880 --> 0:25:41.160 days from people that make me feel very seen and accepted, 0:25:41.480 --> 0:25:43.520 you're one of them, I must say, Like, I don't 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:45.160 just say that because we're in front of these microphones 0:25:45.200 --> 0:25:46.879 and sitting here, like you and I have been in 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:49.520 touch a lot lately, through good times and hard times 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:51.440 and a lot of different things. 0:25:51.240 --> 0:25:51.920 It's not. 0:25:53.720 --> 0:25:56.440 A coincidence, though, that I think that we're here because 0:25:56.600 --> 0:25:59.399 and talking about this, because I think that ultimately the 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:01.560 questions that we ask of the people we care about 0:26:02.320 --> 0:26:04.720 are just as important as reminding them that we're there. 0:26:04.800 --> 0:26:08.120 Because when we ask a question like you know, what's 0:26:08.160 --> 0:26:11.119 in your heart, what we're really saying is you know, 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:14.399 like what's really going on for you, as opposed to 0:26:14.920 --> 0:26:18.520 like what's the next podcast about? Which is an interesting 0:26:18.560 --> 0:26:21.040 question to me, but you know, so you know, this 0:26:21.119 --> 0:26:23.560 is more your territory than mine. But I think in 0:26:23.600 --> 0:26:26.280 the end, I think it comes back to safety and acceptance, 0:26:26.480 --> 0:26:29.720 simple behaviors like a good morning check in, and then 0:26:29.920 --> 0:26:33.600 asking questions that might feel a little bit challenging for 0:26:33.640 --> 0:26:35.639 the other person to answer at first, but that really 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:40.119 show a depth of care and interest that go beyond 0:26:40.200 --> 0:26:43.119 just kind of like narrative and storytelling. And I think 0:26:43.320 --> 0:26:46.760 one thing that I'm also very eager about these days 0:26:46.920 --> 0:26:51.040 is breaking down some of the traditional stereotypes, like you know, 0:26:51.119 --> 0:26:52.919 for anyone that's listening to this and goes, oh, you know, 0:26:53.080 --> 0:26:55.120 I didn't you know, men don't talk that way or something, 0:26:55.160 --> 0:26:58.120 it's like, actually they do. They do, and if given 0:26:58.200 --> 0:27:01.520 the chance, they will open up about things that perhaps 0:27:01.560 --> 0:27:03.439 they hadn't even thought about. And I confess on one 0:27:03.480 --> 0:27:05.800 of those people, maybe it was my y chromosome and 0:27:05.880 --> 0:27:07.080 got in the way of me thinking like, wait, what 0:27:07.119 --> 0:27:09.200 do you want me to talk about? What's in my heart? Hey, 0:27:09.200 --> 0:27:13.280 actually that's a really great question, thank you. And so 0:27:13.480 --> 0:27:16.280 I think this brings us back to these early circuits 0:27:16.320 --> 0:27:19.200 that are all about safety and acceptance, that are all 0:27:19.240 --> 0:27:23.200 about being able to predict things and basically to say, okay, 0:27:23.520 --> 0:27:26.600 I don't have to be vigilant. That's really what safety 0:27:26.680 --> 0:27:30.600 is about, is about turning off the neural circuits for vigilance. 0:27:31.040 --> 0:27:33.520 When we turn off the neural circuits for vigilance, we 0:27:33.560 --> 0:27:37.159 can start to direct our neural circuits, vision, auditory, whatever 0:27:37.280 --> 0:27:40.680 thoughts towards an awareness of things that are both inside 0:27:40.720 --> 0:27:44.080 us and around us that keep us in that calm state. 0:27:44.080 --> 0:27:46.840 I mean, vigilance is associated with stress. Stresses associated with 0:27:46.840 --> 0:27:48.919 a narrowing of the visual field and narrowing of the 0:27:48.960 --> 0:27:52.119 auditory fields. I'll just use this analogy because my sister 0:27:52.160 --> 0:27:55.760 and I last last summer, we always go to New 0:27:55.840 --> 0:27:58.680 York for our birthdays together. We went and saw what 0:27:59.200 --> 0:28:02.920 the Harry Potter like. Oh it's so good, right, and yeah, 0:28:03.280 --> 0:28:06.680 is wild? I mean the effects are so unbelievable. She's 0:28:06.720 --> 0:28:10.560 a big Harry Potter fan. I'm not okay, but just 0:28:10.560 --> 0:28:12.280 just spectacular effects. 0:28:12.320 --> 0:28:14.040 It was just so wild. I couldn't believe it. 0:28:14.080 --> 0:28:17.879 But there's this library in the play where it's a 0:28:17.920 --> 0:28:20.480 magic library, where when one of the books is taken 0:28:20.480 --> 0:28:22.960 out about a particular subject, the books around it actually 0:28:23.080 --> 0:28:27.439 morph and change to reflect the same subject material. And 0:28:27.480 --> 0:28:30.159 when I saw that, I immediately said, that's how the brain works. 0:28:30.560 --> 0:28:33.120 The way the brain works is a kind of pseudo hypnosis. 0:28:33.200 --> 0:28:36.720 Hypnosis is about context and context setting and narrowing of context. 0:28:37.160 --> 0:28:40.200 All of us have such a wealth of historical, present, 0:28:40.640 --> 0:28:44.120 and future thinking cognition in our brains, but when we 0:28:44.400 --> 0:28:48.000 get anchored to a particular emotional state or topic, what 0:28:48.120 --> 0:28:51.760 ends up happening is that the available topics around it 0:28:52.000 --> 0:28:55.160 change in reference to how stressed we are. When we 0:28:55.200 --> 0:28:57.800 are stressed. All the topics, all the books on the 0:28:57.840 --> 0:29:00.320 shelf around that stress, are about that thing in how 0:29:00.360 --> 0:29:02.920 to solve it. And actually, this is why stress enhances 0:29:02.960 --> 0:29:05.920 our memory for solving that the things that can help 0:29:06.000 --> 0:29:09.160 us solve that particular issue. But guess what is given 0:29:09.240 --> 0:29:12.840 up all the other distantly or not so distant, really 0:29:13.080 --> 0:29:16.440 related topics that lend themselves to creativity, to thinking about 0:29:16.560 --> 0:29:20.360 novel combinations of things. This is why our friend Rick Rubin, 0:29:20.760 --> 0:29:25.160 I think, is such a spectacularly creative individual, because he 0:29:25.280 --> 0:29:27.640 spends a lot of time putting his brain and body 0:29:27.680 --> 0:29:32.320 into a state in which he can remain in contact 0:29:32.360 --> 0:29:37.160 with these other related or seemingly unrelated topics. Whereas when 0:29:37.160 --> 0:29:39.760 we're in a stressed mode, when we have to problem solve, 0:29:39.800 --> 0:29:44.240 when we are in vigilance, excuse me, we absolutely narrow 0:29:44.280 --> 0:29:47.240 our cognitive fields, our visual fields, our auditory fields. We 0:29:47.480 --> 0:29:50.760 limit what we think is possible. And so I think 0:29:51.200 --> 0:29:55.440 great friendships, to bring it back to it, great relationships 0:29:55.440 --> 0:29:58.480 of all kinds have enough safety and acceptance in them 0:29:58.920 --> 0:30:01.280 that we can make our way through the practical constraints 0:30:01.360 --> 0:30:04.000 of the relationship in the day, the week, and the year. 0:30:04.520 --> 0:30:07.760 But that there's also a sense of creativity that there 0:30:07.800 --> 0:30:11.000 are new elements allowed to be brought in because there's 0:30:11.120 --> 0:30:14.080 enough safety and acceptance that we can turn down those 0:30:14.160 --> 0:30:16.200 vigilance circuits absolutely. 0:30:16.560 --> 0:30:20.440 How do we then with circuitry that's built for safety 0:30:20.440 --> 0:30:23.320 and acceptance When you're talking about everything that you talk 0:30:23.360 --> 0:30:26.680 about on the Hoopoman Lab, things that I talk about 0:30:26.760 --> 0:30:32.240 from a maybe more spiritual wisdom perspective, they're all hard things, 0:30:33.000 --> 0:30:37.400 and safety and acceptance generally in our current understanding of 0:30:37.400 --> 0:30:42.440 those words, feels like comfort and security and easy and simple. 0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:45.560 And then all of a sudden you're saying cold plunges, 0:30:45.840 --> 0:30:49.160 infrared sauna, beginning of a circadian rhythm in the morning, 0:30:49.520 --> 0:30:53.640 strength workouts, like all this other stuff, which initially is discomfort. 0:30:53.760 --> 0:30:56.440 It's difficult, it's doing hard things. And I know this 0:30:56.520 --> 0:30:58.160 was something you've been thinking about a lot, but I'm 0:30:58.160 --> 0:31:01.560 just trying to make that connection. We're wired safety and acceptance, 0:31:01.600 --> 0:31:03.440 but then all the stuff that's good for us seems 0:31:03.440 --> 0:31:05.640 to be hard, at least in the beginning. 0:31:06.040 --> 0:31:07.320 Yeah, it's a great question. 0:31:07.520 --> 0:31:09.840 So the twist in all of this is that the 0:31:09.880 --> 0:31:14.880 nervous system loves predictability, even if the predictability is arriving 0:31:14.880 --> 0:31:18.120 through hard things. So I would say the major theme 0:31:18.400 --> 0:31:22.200 of the Huberman Lab podcast has been tools we call 0:31:22.240 --> 0:31:28.280 them protocols to anchor one's physiology in some predictable states. 0:31:29.160 --> 0:31:33.800 I've never actually articulated that, but that's really what it's about. 0:31:34.560 --> 0:31:36.920 So why you get sunlight in your eyes in the 0:31:36.920 --> 0:31:38.360 morning because. 0:31:38.080 --> 0:31:41.160 It wakes you up. I could tell you it increases. 0:31:40.760 --> 0:31:43.040 Cortisol in a good way early in the day, that 0:31:43.120 --> 0:31:45.640 it sets the time around your melatonin secretion for later 0:31:45.640 --> 0:31:45.920 at night. 0:31:45.960 --> 0:31:47.000 It helps you sleep at night. 0:31:46.920 --> 0:31:50.000 And that's all true, but it creates a sense of predictability. 0:31:50.400 --> 0:31:53.400 It allows you to know that for the next series 0:31:53.440 --> 0:31:55.440 of hours, you're going to feel more alert, and at 0:31:55.520 --> 0:31:57.760 night you're likely going to be able to fall asleep 0:31:57.760 --> 0:32:02.360 more easily. Cold plunges, to my mind, people debate whether 0:32:02.400 --> 0:32:03.920 or not they're valuable. 0:32:03.760 --> 0:32:04.960 For combating inflammation. 0:32:05.120 --> 0:32:08.760 They are, whether or not they're valuable for increasing metabolism, 0:32:09.280 --> 0:32:12.280 probably not to a huge extent. But one thing we 0:32:12.320 --> 0:32:15.880 know for sure is that they if done correctly, they're uncomfortable, 0:32:16.120 --> 0:32:18.280 But after you get out, you have an increase in 0:32:18.320 --> 0:32:21.840 these three neurochemicals that we call the catacholamines, dopamineupen effort 0:32:21.880 --> 0:32:25.720 nor epinifferent and you feel more energized and slightly blissed. 0:32:25.280 --> 0:32:28.320 Out for the next two to four hours. 0:32:28.360 --> 0:32:30.840 It's a real effect because those are real chemicals, and 0:32:30.920 --> 0:32:33.960 they've served that role for hundreds of thousands of years 0:32:34.000 --> 0:32:36.240 in humans, and they will continue to serve that role 0:32:36.240 --> 0:32:39.800 in humans. So the cold plunge is not so much 0:32:39.880 --> 0:32:43.160 about pushing yourself as it is figuring out a way 0:32:43.200 --> 0:32:46.280 that you can overcome a sense of stress and then 0:32:46.400 --> 0:32:49.880 safely overcome a sense of kind of resistance to getting 0:32:49.880 --> 0:32:54.120 in the thing, and then safely increase these neurochemicals that 0:32:54.160 --> 0:32:58.480 then predictably shift your state to be more alert and 0:32:58.520 --> 0:33:01.400 at the same time relaxed, little bit blissed out, if 0:33:01.400 --> 0:33:03.880 we want to call it that. So you know, we 0:33:03.880 --> 0:33:07.080 could list off protocol after protocol, right. If you tend 0:33:07.080 --> 0:33:09.640 to eat meals at a consistent time plus or minus 0:33:09.640 --> 0:33:12.000 an hour, doesn't matter if you're fast or not, you'll 0:33:12.000 --> 0:33:14.160 tend to be hungry about fifteen minutes or so before 0:33:14.160 --> 0:33:17.240 those meals. This is a wonderful thing because it increases 0:33:17.280 --> 0:33:21.960 this predictability. This lends itself to safety and acceptance because 0:33:21.960 --> 0:33:24.120 it allows you to have to not have to think 0:33:24.160 --> 0:33:26.400 about a number of other things. So, you know, I've 0:33:26.400 --> 0:33:30.120 been criticized and fairly so that, gosh, there's so many protocols. 0:33:30.160 --> 0:33:32.720 How could anyone possibly do all these protocols? And the 0:33:32.760 --> 0:33:35.000 truth is that many of the protocols are you know, 0:33:35.040 --> 0:33:37.600 it's a buffet, and many of them, like how to 0:33:37.680 --> 0:33:40.200 organize your workspace or when you travel for jet lag, 0:33:40.640 --> 0:33:42.760 it's individual as to whether or not people. 0:33:42.560 --> 0:33:44.880 Want to do them, and of course they're all optional. 0:33:45.280 --> 0:33:46.720 You know, this isn't law. 0:33:47.640 --> 0:33:51.600 So the idea, however, is that through some simple basic 0:33:51.680 --> 0:33:54.120 behaviors viewing sunlight, a little bit of a walk after 0:33:54.200 --> 0:33:56.959 a meal, a little bit of sunlight in the evening, 0:33:57.520 --> 0:33:58.920 dimming the lights in the evening. 0:33:59.000 --> 0:33:59.920 You know, these are the base. 0:34:00.360 --> 0:34:03.160 Eating it more or less consistent meal times and mostly 0:34:03.520 --> 0:34:06.400 unprocessed or minimally processed foods for the majority of your 0:34:06.400 --> 0:34:09.040 food intake. Doesn't matter if you're vegan, vegetarian, or otherwise, 0:34:09.800 --> 0:34:12.279 you're going to feel much much better. And part of 0:34:12.320 --> 0:34:14.960 the much much better is feeling more alert and more 0:34:15.040 --> 0:34:18.319 vitality during the waking hours and better sleep at night, 0:34:18.440 --> 0:34:20.840 which just kind of seesaw back and forth into feeling 0:34:20.840 --> 0:34:25.600 better overall, and thereby free up energy for things like 0:34:25.640 --> 0:34:26.760 sending the morning text. 0:34:26.840 --> 0:34:27.040 You know. 0:34:27.120 --> 0:34:29.040 So I think I'm very glad you brought this up 0:34:29.040 --> 0:34:31.920 because I think people hear, oh goodness, another thing to do. 0:34:32.239 --> 0:34:34.279 But if you think about it that way, it's going 0:34:34.320 --> 0:34:36.640 to be self limiting. But if you think about it 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:38.720 as each one of these things takes a minimum amount 0:34:38.760 --> 0:34:40.480 of time, and you can do the walk and sunlight 0:34:40.520 --> 0:34:42.399 thing in the morning combined, and may if you miss 0:34:42.440 --> 0:34:45.359 a day, no big deal, No big deal. These are slow, 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:48.120 integrative systems. Your system will recover just flying, but down 0:34:48.239 --> 0:34:51.560 on a consistent basis. You're going to feel much better, 0:34:51.600 --> 0:34:54.600 and you're going to have more energy, and you're going 0:34:54.640 --> 0:34:57.480 to be able to think about what you might want 0:34:57.520 --> 0:35:00.040 to do in your creative life and then do that. 0:35:00.320 --> 0:35:02.879 You'll have the time and energy to think about what 0:35:02.920 --> 0:35:05.840 you might want to do relationship wise, or friendship wise, 0:35:05.960 --> 0:35:09.120 or building out these aspects of life. So it was 0:35:09.239 --> 0:35:12.080 never the intention that people do so many things that 0:35:12.080 --> 0:35:14.680 they don't have time for friendship or kids or relationship, 0:35:15.239 --> 0:35:18.040 or that their entire family or relationship be centered around 0:35:18.080 --> 0:35:21.680 these protocols. Rather, they're designed to be weaved into everyday life, 0:35:21.760 --> 0:35:24.200 and sometimes when people experience pain points like people are 0:35:24.200 --> 0:35:27.960 having attentional issues, or people are experiencing depression, or they 0:35:28.040 --> 0:35:30.160 have a particular creative project and they want to tap 0:35:30.200 --> 0:35:33.279 into like open monitoring meditation for instance, very different as 0:35:33.320 --> 0:35:36.200 you know, far better than I than other forms of meditation. 0:35:36.480 --> 0:35:39.480 Then they can access those specific tools. But I don't 0:35:39.480 --> 0:35:42.879 want to romanticize ancient times, but there was a lot 0:35:42.880 --> 0:35:46.360 more predictability in some domains of life in ancient times, 0:35:46.680 --> 0:35:48.719 assuming people were living in small villages, there was a 0:35:48.760 --> 0:35:51.879 lot more predictability, but there was also a lack of predictability. 0:35:51.920 --> 0:35:54.080 Someone could take off on a hunt or a gather, 0:35:54.840 --> 0:35:58.879 and if they didn't come back, we might assume they're 0:35:58.920 --> 0:36:01.319 never coming back. Two nights later, they might come back 0:36:01.360 --> 0:36:03.520 and say that was a close call, or they come 0:36:03.560 --> 0:36:04.480 back with a great yield. 0:36:04.560 --> 0:36:06.399 We don't know, you know, we don't know. 0:36:06.280 --> 0:36:08.080 What it was like, but you can be sure that 0:36:08.120 --> 0:36:11.719 the same neural circuits that were responsible for stress and 0:36:12.280 --> 0:36:17.640 lack of safety and therefore vigilance back then are very 0:36:17.719 --> 0:36:20.680 much alive in our brains now. So again, the protocols 0:36:20.680 --> 0:36:24.719 are designed to think about it like putting ingredients in 0:36:24.760 --> 0:36:27.400 the refrigerator. You don't know what you're gonna cook, but 0:36:27.440 --> 0:36:29.840 you have a lot more available to you as options 0:36:30.239 --> 0:36:32.680 when you have when you know that all the basic 0:36:32.719 --> 0:36:37.560 macronutrients are covered, everything's all the bases are covered, and 0:36:37.600 --> 0:36:39.239 then you can start to think about what you would cook. 0:36:39.239 --> 0:36:41.480 Whereas if you've ever arrived late in the city, you 0:36:41.520 --> 0:36:43.480 get to your airbnb or your hotel and you see 0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:45.400 like three or four things and one lousy pan and 0:36:45.440 --> 0:36:47.160 thing one. Now you have to get the other kind 0:36:47.160 --> 0:36:49.439 of creative. We have to adapt. And we've all done 0:36:49.480 --> 0:36:52.560 the unhealthy option because that was the only thing, or 0:36:52.600 --> 0:36:55.600 fasted because that was the healthiest option. So I think 0:36:55.640 --> 0:36:58.319 what we're what we're getting to here is that the 0:36:58.440 --> 0:37:02.839 human brain, like all animals, all animals need to know 0:37:02.880 --> 0:37:05.400 where they're going to sleep that night. I mean a 0:37:05.440 --> 0:37:07.399 dog goes into a new environment and is like trying 0:37:07.400 --> 0:37:10.080 to figure out where's its spot. It's all about space. 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:12.719 You talk to any expert dog trainer, they'll tell you, 0:37:12.719 --> 0:37:15.759 you know, it's all about negotiating space. Can they touch you? 0:37:15.840 --> 0:37:17.799 Can they not touch you? Are they allowed to be 0:37:17.840 --> 0:37:20.319 near you? Do they have to stay afar? Can they 0:37:20.360 --> 0:37:21.440 go into every room? 0:37:21.719 --> 0:37:21.880 You know? 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:25.399 You look at small children foraging an environment, however rambunctious 0:37:25.480 --> 0:37:27.880 or calm, they're trying to figure out, like, what am 0:37:27.880 --> 0:37:29.400 I allowed to do here? What am I not allowed 0:37:29.400 --> 0:37:32.560 to do here? Sometimes by testing us as adults, we 0:37:32.600 --> 0:37:35.359 do the exact same thing. We need to know where 0:37:35.440 --> 0:37:38.280 we are, We need to orient in space and in time, 0:37:38.840 --> 0:37:42.799 and then we need to know, like what's available to me? 0:37:43.080 --> 0:37:44.759 Where am I going to stay tonight? Is one of 0:37:44.800 --> 0:37:47.759 the most fundamental questions that we ask ourselves every single day, 0:37:47.760 --> 0:37:49.239 except if you know where you're going to stay to night, 0:37:49.280 --> 0:37:51.279 you don't ask yourself that, and you have mental real 0:37:51.400 --> 0:37:53.560 estate to devote to other things. So what we're really 0:37:53.560 --> 0:37:58.000 talking about here is is bookending the extremely basic fundamental 0:37:58.120 --> 0:38:01.080 drives of the human brain for safety and acceptance. And 0:38:01.120 --> 0:38:04.520 then at the very other end is these aspirational things 0:38:04.520 --> 0:38:08.920 that we all seek, right, these notions of connectedness, of purpose, 0:38:09.000 --> 0:38:12.920 of fulfillment of peace. Again, I'm borrowing from Martha's beautiful 0:38:13.000 --> 0:38:16.600 list because I think it's so fundamental and it captures most, 0:38:16.600 --> 0:38:18.680 if not all, of what we all seek. But I 0:38:18.719 --> 0:38:21.759 think that we get very much caught up in the 0:38:21.880 --> 0:38:25.839 how to reach goal A or be how to write 0:38:25.880 --> 0:38:27.480 the book how to make the money, how to grow 0:38:27.480 --> 0:38:30.799 a social media account, and we forget that at the 0:38:30.840 --> 0:38:34.600 core of everything is our relationship to our surroundings, to 0:38:34.680 --> 0:38:37.319 our inner landscape, into each other. And it always comes 0:38:37.360 --> 0:38:41.879 back to safety and acceptance and where we feel uncomfortable, 0:38:43.560 --> 0:38:46.360 where we feel like we didn't do things right or 0:38:46.400 --> 0:38:48.600 others didn't do them right for us or to us. 0:38:48.880 --> 0:38:51.400 It always boils down to those two things. 0:38:52.480 --> 0:38:55.279 Yeah, you reminded me of a question I have to 0:38:55.320 --> 0:38:58.359 ask people, is what's your most repeated door? Because when 0:38:58.360 --> 0:39:01.000 I was looking at the research on thinking, the idea 0:39:01.200 --> 0:39:03.759 was that not only well, we're having a lot of 0:39:03.800 --> 0:39:05.480 thoughts every day, but a lot of the thoughts we 0:39:05.520 --> 0:39:08.960 have are repetitive. And going back to your point on protocols, 0:39:09.440 --> 0:39:11.840 I feel like the reason we have repeated thoughts is 0:39:11.840 --> 0:39:15.040 because we haven't yet built a protocol to help that 0:39:15.080 --> 0:39:17.680 thought go away. So if you built a protocol, like 0:39:17.880 --> 0:39:20.160 I know where I'm sleeping tonight, you're now no longer 0:39:20.239 --> 0:39:22.839 having that thought of where am I sleeping tonight? And 0:39:23.360 --> 0:39:25.760 we may be asking ourselves a very different thing today 0:39:26.040 --> 0:39:28.600 because we figured out where to sleep, but we might 0:39:28.640 --> 0:39:30.919 be thinking like how I'm going to pay that bill. 0:39:31.000 --> 0:39:33.800 How am I gonna deal with that issue at home? 0:39:34.239 --> 0:39:35.399 What should I say to my kid? 0:39:35.520 --> 0:39:35.719 You know? 0:39:35.800 --> 0:39:38.240 Whatever? It is, right, We all have different challenges. Everyone 0:39:38.280 --> 0:39:40.920 has a different set of issues that they're struggling with 0:39:41.080 --> 0:39:44.880 or dealing with. And because we haven't created a protocol, 0:39:45.239 --> 0:39:48.320 we keep asking that question, and that question then creates 0:39:48.360 --> 0:39:52.399 panic and creates anxiety and create stress and eventually could 0:39:52.480 --> 0:39:55.960 lead to burnout if someone just keeps propelling that thought 0:39:56.520 --> 0:39:58.840 and doesn't create a protocol. So I love the idea 0:39:58.920 --> 0:40:02.640 that people shou build the protocol that links with their 0:40:02.680 --> 0:40:05.960 most repeated thor rather than having to think, oh god, 0:40:05.960 --> 0:40:08.480 I've got to do twenty five things, it's like, well, no, 0:40:08.680 --> 0:40:10.759 what is the thing that is keeping you up at 0:40:10.840 --> 0:40:12.920 night or what is the thing that's causing you the 0:40:12.920 --> 0:40:16.160 greatest anxiety and try and solve for that. It's like, 0:40:16.160 --> 0:40:18.560 if you're out of milk, you go and buy milk. 0:40:18.640 --> 0:40:21.040 You don't say I've got to buy twenty five other things. 0:40:21.320 --> 0:40:23.760 You just go filled a part of the refrigerator that's empty. 0:40:24.000 --> 0:40:25.399 Does that align on Yeah? 0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:26.040 Absolutely? 0:40:26.280 --> 0:40:31.120 I love what we're bridging over and over here is 0:40:31.440 --> 0:40:38.080 the very practical foundational elements of safety with these aspirational things. 0:40:38.160 --> 0:40:43.640 You know, I'm a big believer in physiology driving mental states. 0:40:43.760 --> 0:40:46.440 They go the other way to emotional states drive physiology. 0:40:46.480 --> 0:40:49.319 It's bidirectional. Of course. One of the reasons why I've 0:40:49.360 --> 0:40:54.160 been so emphatic about respiration protocols is a my lab 0:40:54.200 --> 0:40:56.680 published a clinical trial on this in collaboration with David 0:40:56.719 --> 0:41:00.160 Spiegel in our department of psychiatry, which basically could be 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:05.399 summarized the following way. If you emphasize exhales, you tend 0:41:05.400 --> 0:41:09.320 to calm down, meaning you make them longer, more and intentional. Normally, 0:41:09.520 --> 0:41:13.040 we inhale actively and we passively exhale. Other species do 0:41:13.080 --> 0:41:15.279 it the other way around some other species. If you 0:41:15.400 --> 0:41:19.400 deliberately emphasize your exhales, the duration, the intensity, or just 0:41:19.760 --> 0:41:24.759 even control the exhale actively, your heart rate slows. When 0:41:24.840 --> 0:41:28.600 we emphasize inhales, we don't necessarily have to do hyperventilation 0:41:28.840 --> 0:41:31.640 or tumo breathing or anything like that. We could, but 0:41:32.280 --> 0:41:35.200 those forms of breathing tend to bring up our activation state, 0:41:35.719 --> 0:41:40.200 and they emphasize inhales, both by virtue of vigor duration 0:41:40.760 --> 0:41:43.239 or just putting more conscious attention to them. And there's 0:41:43.239 --> 0:41:45.760 a reason for this, it's called respiratory sinus a rhythmia. 0:41:45.840 --> 0:41:49.320 It's an actual phenomenon that links the heart and the 0:41:49.400 --> 0:41:52.120 vagus nerve and our diaphragm and our lungs. 0:41:52.200 --> 0:41:53.720 It's a beautiful mechanism. 0:41:54.239 --> 0:41:56.640 When I'm overthinking at night and I want to fall asleep, 0:41:56.800 --> 0:41:59.359 I start doing long axhale breathing through my mouth. Now, 0:41:59.440 --> 0:42:02.000 sometimes I'm out, I just fall asleep. I know that 0:42:02.040 --> 0:42:05.280 because I wake up sometime later I realize it worked again. 0:42:05.480 --> 0:42:08.239 Other times it doesn't work so well right. And one 0:42:08.280 --> 0:42:12.160 of the most common questions I get is how to 0:42:12.239 --> 0:42:15.239 turn off repetitive thoughts. Now there, it's a bit of 0:42:15.280 --> 0:42:19.719 a skill because you know, frankly, repetitive thoughts oftentimes are 0:42:19.760 --> 0:42:23.359 serving an adaptive purpose. But we can get stuck on them, right, 0:42:23.480 --> 0:42:24.759 or they can get stuck in us. I don't know 0:42:24.760 --> 0:42:26.839 which one it is. But one of the reasons why 0:42:26.920 --> 0:42:31.000 I'm such a strong believer in people doing a practice 0:42:31.000 --> 0:42:34.359 like yoga nidra, which you know, and I must say, 0:42:34.440 --> 0:42:38.480 I know I've upset to some extent some people by 0:42:38.880 --> 0:42:42.840 coining something very similar non sleep deep rest or NSDR. 0:42:42.880 --> 0:42:45.040 I want to make very clear that I have the 0:42:45.120 --> 0:42:49.400 utmost respect for yoga nidra as an ancient practice. Neither 0:42:49.520 --> 0:42:53.200 Yoga nidra, of course, nor NSDR or anything I developed. 0:42:53.239 --> 0:42:54.440 It's just that NSDR. 0:42:54.760 --> 0:42:57.080 It's a little bit different in that it removes intentions 0:42:57.440 --> 0:42:59.440 and it tends to involve a little bit less of 0:42:59.480 --> 0:43:02.240 some of the linking of chakras and things like that 0:43:02.239 --> 0:43:05.319 that yoga nidra does. With no specific purpose in mind 0:43:05.360 --> 0:43:08.080 behind designing that way except to be able to adapt 0:43:08.080 --> 0:43:10.960 it to the laboratory context. Okay, what do we know 0:43:11.000 --> 0:43:13.960 about Let's just call it it's original named yoga nidra. 0:43:14.480 --> 0:43:17.880 The goal is to stay awake, to be conscious while 0:43:18.600 --> 0:43:23.640 deliberately relaxing the body. That's a very useful practice feel 0:43:23.719 --> 0:43:27.320 similar to meditation in a way, could be called a meditation, 0:43:28.640 --> 0:43:31.160 but it has some distinct benefits. First of all, a 0:43:31.200 --> 0:43:34.040 beautiful study that was done in Denmark I had a 0:43:34.040 --> 0:43:36.400 medical school in Copenhagen showed that people that do a 0:43:36.480 --> 0:43:41.759 yoga nidra practice get a sixty percent increase in baseline 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:45.040 dopamine levels in the basal ganglia brain area that's associated 0:43:45.040 --> 0:43:47.920 with the preparation for movement and the withholding of movement. 0:43:48.480 --> 0:43:51.560 So it essentially can be looked at as a practice 0:43:51.600 --> 0:43:54.960 that changes neurochemicals in the brain that restore mental and 0:43:55.000 --> 0:43:57.759 physical vigor. That's how I think of yoga nidra. It's 0:43:57.840 --> 0:44:00.600 sort of like sleep. There are some stuff that he's emerging, 0:44:00.640 --> 0:44:03.520 including some that I'm planning with doctor Matt Walker at Berkeley, 0:44:03.600 --> 0:44:05.880 one of the pre eminent sleep researchers in the world, 0:44:05.960 --> 0:44:08.160 that are going to explore whether or not little pockets 0:44:08.160 --> 0:44:10.399 of the brain are actually sleeping or in rapid eye 0:44:10.400 --> 0:44:12.720 movement sleep like states during yoga nidra. 0:44:12.960 --> 0:44:14.239 If you think about rapid. 0:44:13.960 --> 0:44:17.480 Eye movement sleep just as a very relevant aside, it's 0:44:17.480 --> 0:44:19.400 a state in which the brain is very active and 0:44:19.400 --> 0:44:22.920 the body is completely still, much like yoga nidra. Okay, 0:44:22.960 --> 0:44:26.120 brain active, body still. Now, what's unique about yoga nidra 0:44:26.600 --> 0:44:29.799 is that there's this instruction in the nidra if it's 0:44:29.880 --> 0:44:33.759 a traditional one that talks about going from thinking and 0:44:33.840 --> 0:44:37.200 doing to being and feeling. Okay, So let's step back 0:44:37.200 --> 0:44:41.240 as neuroscientists when we say thinking is a lot about 0:44:41.280 --> 0:44:44.040 anticipating future. It could be about thinking about the past, 0:44:44.080 --> 0:44:45.960 it could be thinking about things that are happening now. 0:44:46.000 --> 0:44:50.360 But it's a very four brain dependent process doing is 0:44:50.480 --> 0:44:56.080 basal ganglia action generation withholding action and four brain circuitry 0:44:56.120 --> 0:44:58.600 as well, you know, I should say prefrontal cortical circuitry 0:44:58.600 --> 0:44:59.000 as well. 0:44:59.560 --> 0:45:01.360 Now being and feeling. 0:45:02.160 --> 0:45:03.759 Now, this is starting to sound a little bit like 0:45:03.920 --> 0:45:07.520 quote unquote softer language, but there's nothing soft about this language, 0:45:07.560 --> 0:45:09.319 because if we just put a neuroscience lens on it, 0:45:09.360 --> 0:45:11.520 we say, okay, what is that really about. That's about 0:45:11.560 --> 0:45:15.399 bringing ourselves from exterroception monitoring of the external world beyond 0:45:15.400 --> 0:45:18.080 the confines of our skin, to monitoring of the internal 0:45:18.080 --> 0:45:21.040 world within the confines of our skin. And there's something 0:45:21.160 --> 0:45:25.040 magical about shifting our perception to inter reception from our 0:45:25.080 --> 0:45:29.200 skin inward in that it takes us out of thinking. 0:45:30.080 --> 0:45:33.719 Whereas when we're monitoring the external world for reasons that 0:45:33.840 --> 0:45:36.600 are sort of logical but a little bit harder to articulate, 0:45:37.080 --> 0:45:40.279 then it's more about anticipating things, trying to figure out 0:45:40.280 --> 0:45:42.680 what goes with what, what's separate from what. The moment 0:45:42.719 --> 0:45:44.520 we get to the level of our skin and inward 0:45:44.840 --> 0:45:47.640 we know what's what and what's separate from what. 0:45:47.800 --> 0:45:51.239 It's just us inward. So there's one thing. Rarely do we. 0:45:51.160 --> 0:45:53.719 Think, oh, here's my brain and here's my leg now 0:45:53.800 --> 0:45:56.480 Ndra then steps us through that. And so what it 0:45:56.520 --> 0:45:59.560 does is it brings all of our cognition into this 0:45:59.640 --> 0:46:02.920 internal receptive mode and then boom, we are in this 0:46:03.080 --> 0:46:05.840 mode of being and feeling. So I don't think of 0:46:05.880 --> 0:46:08.680 being and feeling as turning off thinking. I think of 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:11.400 it as bringing thinking to the level of our sensation 0:46:11.680 --> 0:46:16.200 of our body. Yoga nidra, I think, is perhaps the 0:46:16.320 --> 0:46:21.200 most powerful practice for learning how to turn off one's thoughts. 0:46:21.560 --> 0:46:24.360 And so when one steps back from the research literature 0:46:24.480 --> 0:46:26.200 and says, Okay, what do we know for sure about 0:46:26.280 --> 0:46:29.799 yoga nidra and SDR. We know that this can be 0:46:29.840 --> 0:46:32.279 done for ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, or an hour. 0:46:32.440 --> 0:46:37.520 We know that it can very reliably improve levels of wakefulness, cognition, 0:46:37.800 --> 0:46:43.360 and vigor post nidra. We know that it restores dopamine 0:46:43.440 --> 0:46:47.040 levels to a market extent in the basal ganglia. 0:46:47.239 --> 0:46:48.760 We know that the brain goes. 0:46:48.600 --> 0:46:51.440 Into little pockets of sleep like states. This needs to 0:46:51.440 --> 0:46:53.919 be explored further. And we know that it mimics rapid 0:46:53.960 --> 0:46:56.680 eye movements sleep. And we know that people who do 0:46:56.760 --> 0:46:59.320 it find it easier to make themselves fall back asleep 0:46:59.360 --> 0:47:02.600 should they need, and they develop much stronger powers of 0:47:02.640 --> 0:47:05.600 autonomic regulation, their ability to take themselves out of stress 0:47:05.640 --> 0:47:08.040 if they need to. I mean, if ever, there was 0:47:08.120 --> 0:47:11.960 a powerful practice, Yoga Nidra is that practice. 0:47:12.160 --> 0:47:13.320 And so when I step back. 0:47:13.160 --> 0:47:15.399 From the landscape of practices that can help us turn 0:47:15.440 --> 0:47:16.439 off thinking or etc. 0:47:16.760 --> 0:47:18.640 This is probably a good time to just, you know, 0:47:19.560 --> 0:47:21.160 mention that you know. 0:47:21.400 --> 0:47:25.680 Meditation I view as an exploration of one's own consciousness. 0:47:26.480 --> 0:47:29.480 I also view it as a perceptual exercise, shifting one's 0:47:29.520 --> 0:47:32.760 perception to a particular location as opposed to just wherever 0:47:32.840 --> 0:47:36.359 the mind may take it. Put simply, it's far more 0:47:36.360 --> 0:47:39.279 profound than that, as you know and as many know. 0:47:39.520 --> 0:47:43.440 But meditation has been shown to reduce stress, improve focus, 0:47:43.520 --> 0:47:45.880 improve memory. I'm thinking mainly of the studies by Wennie 0:47:45.880 --> 0:47:48.719 Suzuki's lab at NYU. I'm thinking of the studies that 0:47:48.800 --> 0:47:51.560 were done out of the University of Wisconsin that are 0:47:51.560 --> 0:47:54.680 talked about in Altered States, which is a wonderful book, 0:47:54.680 --> 0:47:57.840 and the work that you've talked about in your books. 0:47:58.520 --> 0:48:01.600 When I think about Yogan Non Sleep, Deep Breast, it's 0:48:01.600 --> 0:48:04.080 really about restoring mental and physical vigor and getting better 0:48:04.120 --> 0:48:09.040 at regulating one's own autonomic internal kind of hinge, going 0:48:09.080 --> 0:48:12.160 back and forth between sympathetic and parasympathetic, that you know, 0:48:12.239 --> 0:48:14.520 kind of fight or flight and rest and digest, alert 0:48:14.560 --> 0:48:18.600 and calm, learning how to adjust that in a conscious way. 0:48:19.360 --> 0:48:21.800 And then when I think of practices like breath work, 0:48:22.440 --> 0:48:24.279 well depends on the breath work. And then we can 0:48:24.320 --> 0:48:27.799 simplify it by saying, when inhales are more vigorous and 0:48:27.880 --> 0:48:30.640 made longer deliberately than exhales, heart rate goes up. 0:48:30.680 --> 0:48:31.600 Alertness goes up. 0:48:31.880 --> 0:48:35.000 When ex sales are made longer and more vigorous and 0:48:35.000 --> 0:48:37.560 done deliberately, well, then heart rate tends to go down, 0:48:37.600 --> 0:48:39.600 and we tend to shift more towards the state of calm. 0:48:39.719 --> 0:48:42.680 And then, of course there's hypnosis, and hypnosis to me 0:48:42.960 --> 0:48:47.640 is self hypnosis, which is a clinical tool that David 0:48:47.680 --> 0:48:50.240 Spiegel and others around the world, but mainly David Spiegel 0:48:50.280 --> 0:48:54.000 and his father popularized within the formal field of psychiatry, 0:48:54.520 --> 0:48:58.560 and hypnosis is a combination of alertness and calm that 0:48:58.600 --> 0:49:01.919 we know lends itself to neuroplaticity. What is hypnosis really for. 0:49:02.280 --> 0:49:04.880 It's not meditation, it's not to calm down, is to 0:49:05.040 --> 0:49:08.640 solve a specific problem, to quit smoking, to learn how 0:49:08.640 --> 0:49:11.520 to regulate pain, to you know, any number of different 0:49:11.560 --> 0:49:13.920 things that hypnosis has been shown in peer reviewed studies 0:49:13.920 --> 0:49:16.560 to do. So when I step back, I say, okay, meditation, 0:49:16.719 --> 0:49:19.120 non sleep, deep breast aka yoga nidra, I should say 0:49:19.160 --> 0:49:22.520 yoga nidra aka non non sleep, deep breast breath work 0:49:22.560 --> 0:49:25.320 and hypnosis. Well, now we have a kit of tools 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:28.760 that are available to us to adjust our internal state, 0:49:29.360 --> 0:49:31.360 and any one of those could be used to turn 0:49:31.400 --> 0:49:34.560 off thinking. But the most powerful one, in my opinion, 0:49:35.520 --> 0:49:37.880 and by way of experience and sort of how I'm 0:49:37.960 --> 0:49:40.080 viewing the research literature, I'm sure there are others out 0:49:40.120 --> 0:49:42.360 there that would disagree with me, and that's fine, is 0:49:42.480 --> 0:49:45.400 yoga nidra. If ever, there was a practice that I 0:49:45.520 --> 0:49:47.600 wish every human being on the planet would do besides 0:49:47.640 --> 0:49:50.800 go out in view morning sunlight, it would be yoga nidra. 0:49:51.200 --> 0:49:54.000 And of course this has been available for thousands of years, 0:49:54.320 --> 0:49:57.680 and unfortunately it has not gotten the traction worldwide that 0:49:57.719 --> 0:50:00.200 I think it deserves, and especially at this time I'm 0:50:00.200 --> 0:50:04.319 in human history, when the world seems so tense with 0:50:04.440 --> 0:50:07.920 friction of all sorts of kinds, but also internal friction 0:50:08.040 --> 0:50:11.439 for people, I think it's just, you know, it's something 0:50:11.480 --> 0:50:14.120 that I really really want to shine a light on 0:50:14.520 --> 0:50:19.799 as a tremendously beneficial tool for turning off thoughts when 0:50:19.840 --> 0:50:23.480 it's necessary and for accessing you know, some people call 0:50:23.520 --> 0:50:27.920 these atypical states, but most people go from sleep to 0:50:28.040 --> 0:50:31.520 waking and sleep to waking without really an exploration of 0:50:31.560 --> 0:50:33.879 what those different states are like. So, in any event, 0:50:34.280 --> 0:50:37.560 forgive me for being long winded, but are those are 0:50:37.560 --> 0:50:39.239 the tools that when I step back and I say, 0:50:39.239 --> 0:50:42.719 where is there great neuroscience and physiology to support their use? 0:50:43.680 --> 0:50:47.400 What are the specific uses that seem especially valuable for 0:50:47.440 --> 0:50:50.200 one practice versus another? And how do these practices differ 0:50:50.239 --> 0:50:53.879 because they often get conflated. Somebody starts breathwork and we think, oh, 0:50:54.120 --> 0:50:55.840 it's this type of breath work or that type of 0:50:55.920 --> 0:50:58.520 without thinking about what's being emphasized and where the heart 0:50:58.560 --> 0:51:01.520 rate is going. Or you think meditation, and of course 0:51:01.560 --> 0:51:03.920 there are many different kinds of meditation. Actually, I'd love 0:51:04.000 --> 0:51:06.560 to know from you. I know of kind of traditional 0:51:06.600 --> 0:51:10.120 third eye meditation, and I'm aware of open monitoring meditation. 0:51:11.040 --> 0:51:13.640 What other sorts of meditation do you do. 0:51:13.640 --> 0:51:17.279 As you mentioned this breath work, there's visualization and there's 0:51:17.360 --> 0:51:23.000 mantra or sound. So the meditation on the repetition of sound, 0:51:23.000 --> 0:51:27.160 whether that be natural sounds, whether it be instruments, or 0:51:27.200 --> 0:51:30.560 whether it be the repetition of mantra in your own voice, 0:51:31.160 --> 0:51:36.280 or the collective chanting, which it's done through ancient times, 0:51:36.320 --> 0:51:39.360 of the collective chance of sacred sounds. It is considered 0:51:39.400 --> 0:51:41.840 one of the forms of meditation. And it almost feels 0:51:41.880 --> 0:51:47.719 like a humming, kind of cocoon effect of being kind 0:51:47.760 --> 0:51:52.360 of surrounded by this sound that's repeated again and again 0:51:52.400 --> 0:51:54.560 and again. So it can kind of get you into 0:51:54.600 --> 0:51:59.600 that kind of submerged, immersive, drowning feeling that I think 0:51:59.640 --> 0:52:04.520 most if they've done a sound bowl meditation, have experienced 0:52:04.520 --> 0:52:06.839 some form of what that could feel like. And again 0:52:06.880 --> 0:52:09.600 you're getting into that atypical state. But going back to 0:52:09.640 --> 0:52:12.239 what you were saying, what really resonated for me and 0:52:12.480 --> 0:52:14.799 what I've always appreciated about your work, Andrew, I said 0:52:14.800 --> 0:52:17.359 this last time you came on the show, is this 0:52:18.000 --> 0:52:23.880 connection between these ancient practices and the modern euroscience. To 0:52:23.920 --> 0:52:26.239 back it up, like when you've talked about many many 0:52:26.280 --> 0:52:30.080 times about sunlight in the morning. I mean Suria numashkara, 0:52:30.080 --> 0:52:33.040 which I mentioned last time is sun salutations. That is 0:52:33.080 --> 0:52:35.799 the practice that you would do when you wake up 0:52:35.800 --> 0:52:38.200 in the morning and you salute the sun. And it 0:52:38.360 --> 0:52:40.640 was this idea of allowing the sunlight to enter it 0:52:40.640 --> 0:52:42.719 through your eyes. And now you're talking about yoga nedra 0:52:42.760 --> 0:52:45.440 at the end of the day to go to sleep again. 0:52:45.960 --> 0:52:48.160 To me, it's you've found. 0:52:47.800 --> 0:52:50.960 This way of not only broadcasting and helping people come 0:52:51.000 --> 0:52:55.520 to these practices, but helping them be translated into modern 0:52:55.560 --> 0:52:57.840 day language, which I think is so needed with a 0:52:57.960 --> 0:53:01.200 scientific backing and going back to yoga, I can personally say, 0:53:01.320 --> 0:53:03.839 just from a personal practice point of view, I had 0:53:03.840 --> 0:53:06.400 a surgery two years ago, and I was in so 0:53:06.480 --> 0:53:10.040 much physical pain during that first month of recovery. The 0:53:10.080 --> 0:53:12.400 only way I could go to sleep was through yoga 0:53:12.440 --> 0:53:15.840 nidra because the thoughts of pain and of stress and 0:53:15.920 --> 0:53:19.319 of potential redamage or whatever it may have been, were 0:53:19.440 --> 0:53:22.480 so high that that state could only be lowered through 0:53:22.560 --> 0:53:25.840 yoga nidra. And when I'm jet lagged and I'm traveling 0:53:25.880 --> 0:53:28.600 across the world, yoga nedras might go to to be 0:53:28.680 --> 0:53:32.040 able to switch off in a new country when I'm like, gosh, 0:53:32.120 --> 0:53:33.560 I'm going to be up all night, will I make 0:53:33.600 --> 0:53:36.640 it to my work thing tomorrow. Yoga nidra completely allows 0:53:36.680 --> 0:53:39.640 me to remove those thoughts and allow myself to fall asleep. 0:53:39.680 --> 0:53:43.320 So I use it all the time, and I couldn't 0:53:43.400 --> 0:53:46.040 encourage it. I'm so glad that you're broadcasting and helping 0:53:46.040 --> 0:53:49.240 people understand the science behind it, because, yeah, these ancient 0:53:49.239 --> 0:53:51.520 practices make sense, but they need a new language and 0:53:51.560 --> 0:53:53.680 a new translation today. 0:53:53.840 --> 0:53:57.800 Yeah, Yoga nidra has such similarity to rapid eye movement 0:53:57.880 --> 0:54:00.360 sleep as far as we know, it's not the exact 0:54:00.400 --> 0:54:04.160 same brain state, but the similarity again is mind alert, 0:54:04.480 --> 0:54:07.840 body still, which is exactly what happens during rapid I 0:54:07.960 --> 0:54:10.160 movement sleep. And we know rapid eye movement sleep is 0:54:10.320 --> 0:54:15.680 essential for formation of memories, for uncoupling of negative emotions 0:54:15.719 --> 0:54:19.520 from previous day experiences. It tends to be more enriched 0:54:19.560 --> 0:54:21.560 in the later parts of the night and so on. 0:54:22.560 --> 0:54:25.239 For me, yoga nidra is the practice to do when 0:54:25.239 --> 0:54:26.719 I wake up in the morning but I don't feel 0:54:26.760 --> 0:54:30.080 completely rested. I'll do anywhere from ten minutes to thirty 0:54:30.120 --> 0:54:32.880 minutes of that and then in the afternoon instead of 0:54:32.920 --> 0:54:35.880 a nap, I'll do Nidra and sometimes I'll fall asleep, admittedly, 0:54:36.480 --> 0:54:37.799 and then if I wake up in the middle of 0:54:37.800 --> 0:54:42.520 the night, Nidra is my solution. I think that mind 0:54:42.640 --> 0:54:47.960 active body still is such an interesting and frankly unusual 0:54:47.960 --> 0:54:51.200 state unless we're in rapid movement sleep that most people, 0:54:51.600 --> 0:54:54.600 until they try it, can't really appreciate the immense value 0:54:54.600 --> 0:54:56.759 that it brings. But the beautiful thing is it works 0:54:56.840 --> 0:54:59.520 the first time, and it works every time. Our mutual 0:54:59.560 --> 0:55:03.040 friend Krubin, we're both lucky enough to know him and 0:55:03.040 --> 0:55:04.360 to spend a little bit of time with him. And 0:55:05.000 --> 0:55:08.840 Rick has a practice that he does. I know because 0:55:08.840 --> 0:55:11.759 I went and visited him last summer and he would 0:55:11.840 --> 0:55:13.800 just sit there with his eyes closed, in his body 0:55:13.920 --> 0:55:16.200 very still. And at some point I asked him what 0:55:16.239 --> 0:55:18.879 are you doing and he said, well, I'm thinking. And 0:55:19.040 --> 0:55:22.160 I said, what's the benefit of doing this, you know? 0:55:22.280 --> 0:55:24.640 And he said, well, I come up with ideas this way, 0:55:25.239 --> 0:55:27.640 and I thought, oh, that's interesting, and it immediately rung 0:55:27.640 --> 0:55:29.360 A bell I had a guest on my podcast. It 0:55:29.360 --> 0:55:31.920 was actually the first guest ever on my podcast. Professor 0:55:31.960 --> 0:55:34.320 by the name of doctor carldis Roth. He's an MDN 0:55:34.320 --> 0:55:39.600 a PhD. He's the world's arguably top bioengineer in the 0:55:39.600 --> 0:55:44.840 field of neuroscience. He's also a psychiatrist, so he sees patients, 0:55:45.360 --> 0:55:47.120 and he also has raised five children. He's one of 0:55:47.120 --> 0:55:49.440 these feetoms. His wife's centurologists at Stanford that you know. 0:55:49.480 --> 0:55:53.600 He is a remarkable person, very deep thinker. And I 0:55:53.640 --> 0:55:55.359 was talking to him on the podcast and he said 0:55:55.400 --> 0:55:58.120 that he has a practice whereby at night, after his 0:55:58.200 --> 0:56:00.560 kids go to sleep, he sits at the table or 0:56:00.560 --> 0:56:05.280 on the couch, stills his body completely and forces himself 0:56:05.320 --> 0:56:08.640 to think in complete sentences for about an hour. And 0:56:08.719 --> 0:56:13.279 I thought to myself, WHOA, that's a wildly unusual practice. 0:56:13.600 --> 0:56:15.440 And I said, what is it about? And he said, well, 0:56:15.440 --> 0:56:18.080 that's how I structure my ideas. That's where new ideas 0:56:18.080 --> 0:56:20.640 come to me. So Carl's doing that, Rick's doing that. 0:56:20.680 --> 0:56:22.560 You start looking back through history, you find out that 0:56:22.560 --> 0:56:24.280 Einstein had a walk in practice. 0:56:24.600 --> 0:56:25.200 That then he would. 0:56:25.280 --> 0:56:28.120 My father's a theoretical physicist, so this is where I 0:56:28.200 --> 0:56:28.560 learned this. 0:56:28.719 --> 0:56:30.839 But presumably this is verifiable. 0:56:31.120 --> 0:56:32.880 I'm sure someone will tell me it's not true, but 0:56:33.160 --> 0:56:35.680 enough people have told me it is that I'm inclined 0:56:35.719 --> 0:56:40.239 to at least describe it where he would walk, then 0:56:40.400 --> 0:56:45.880 stop and allow his thoughts to continue as if emotion, 0:56:46.360 --> 0:56:49.440 mind active, body still, and then repeat. So this is 0:56:49.480 --> 0:56:52.239 a very unusual state of mind that I think has 0:56:52.280 --> 0:56:54.479 real value. And we know in sleep rap an eye movement, 0:56:54.480 --> 0:56:57.239 sleep in the associated dreams, or where we work out 0:56:57.239 --> 0:57:00.520 a lot of novel solutions to hard daytime problems. And 0:57:00.560 --> 0:57:03.520 I can confidently say that the field of neuroscience can 0:57:03.560 --> 0:57:06.719 say so much more about the different states of the 0:57:06.800 --> 0:57:09.200 mind in sleep than we can about the states of 0:57:09.200 --> 0:57:10.040 the mind in waken. 0:57:10.400 --> 0:57:12.200 It's kind of amazing. It's twenty twenty four. 0:57:12.239 --> 0:57:14.600 We know all this information about different brain areas, what 0:57:14.640 --> 0:57:17.720 happens when you stimulate this, these neurochemicals in that, and 0:57:17.800 --> 0:57:21.640 yet we have words stage one, two, three, four, rapidi 0:57:21.720 --> 0:57:25.440 movement sleep, slow wave sleep. We have real mechanistic understanding 0:57:25.520 --> 0:57:28.160 of the states of the mind and body in sleep, 0:57:28.840 --> 0:57:33.439 and very very little language to describe like the state 0:57:33.480 --> 0:57:35.120 of mind that we happen to be in right now. 0:57:35.520 --> 0:57:37.800 So we can talk about hypnosis, which is a narrowed 0:57:37.800 --> 0:57:42.960 context calm but alert, in which neuroplasticity brain changes are 0:57:42.960 --> 0:57:45.560 more available to us. This is supported by clinical and 0:57:45.640 --> 0:57:49.160 research data. We can talk about being attentive, we can 0:57:49.200 --> 0:57:51.640 talk about being stressed, but if you think about a 0:57:51.800 --> 0:57:55.480 it's not like very crude understanding. And so when I 0:57:55.480 --> 0:57:59.880 think about practices like body still, mind active, or even 0:58:00.040 --> 0:58:02.440 you know, something that I found immensely beneficial. Every Sunday, 0:58:02.480 --> 0:58:04.840 I try and take a long hiker walk, and I 0:58:04.880 --> 0:58:08.360 try and just let my mind spool out whatever ideas 0:58:08.680 --> 0:58:11.800 it happens to have. You know, I like to think 0:58:11.840 --> 0:58:14.720 it's accessing some subconscious that's been you know, kind of 0:58:14.760 --> 0:58:16.800 packed with ideas and experiences during the week. 0:58:17.040 --> 0:58:19.160 But what do we call that? I call it a 0:58:19.200 --> 0:58:20.400 walk or a run or a hike. 0:58:20.920 --> 0:58:23.720 But I think that the different states of mind that 0:58:23.800 --> 0:58:26.560 we can go into during the day need more attention, 0:58:26.960 --> 0:58:31.200 not just from neuroscience researchers, but from people in the 0:58:31.240 --> 0:58:35.640 fields of meditation, people in the fields of health and wellness. 0:58:35.840 --> 0:58:37.880 You know, what are the different states of mind? And 0:58:37.920 --> 0:58:41.400 so I would say that the last you know, really forty, 0:58:41.680 --> 0:58:45.840 but you know, thirty mainly, But five or six years 0:58:45.840 --> 0:58:48.720 of my life I've been a public educator in the 0:58:48.760 --> 0:58:51.680 realm of trying to teach people ways to harness their 0:58:51.720 --> 0:58:54.720 physiology in ways that serve them best for mental health 0:58:54.760 --> 0:58:57.840 and physical health and performance. But I'm now starting to 0:58:57.880 --> 0:59:00.800 get very, very curious about how to evolve this thing 0:59:00.880 --> 0:59:04.120 that we call brain states, and our understanding of not 0:59:04.200 --> 0:59:07.320 just through language, but really understanding how to bring our 0:59:07.360 --> 0:59:10.120 mind into sharp focus, how to be in the best 0:59:10.120 --> 0:59:13.960 state of mind for connectedness, when to turn off empathy, 0:59:14.680 --> 0:59:16.840 when to turn on empathy. I mean, these are all 0:59:16.840 --> 0:59:19.240 circuitries within us that are possible, and of course we 0:59:19.320 --> 0:59:22.240 have variation among us as a species as to whether 0:59:22.280 --> 0:59:24.760 or not we lean more towards logical thinking or empathic 0:59:25.200 --> 0:59:28.440 you know, affiliative thinking, these kinds of things. But you know, 0:59:28.480 --> 0:59:31.880 I really believe that you know, people like you Jay 0:59:32.000 --> 0:59:34.520 have an important role to play, and that the conversation 0:59:34.640 --> 0:59:38.800 between neuroscientists, people who have knowledge of meditative practices like yourself, 0:59:39.920 --> 0:59:42.760 there's real value in the overlap. And you said, you 0:59:42.760 --> 0:59:44.960 know that you were grateful that we're talking about these things, 0:59:45.000 --> 0:59:48.240 ancient practices and what they might mean if I've learned anything, 0:59:48.280 --> 0:59:50.200 And I think I'm finally old enough that I can 0:59:50.240 --> 0:59:52.840 make that statement if I've learned anything in my life, right, hopefully, 0:59:52.840 --> 0:59:55.720 my life will continue, but if it, you know, should 0:59:55.720 --> 1:00:00.280 I go someplace else before I anticipate. I think it's 1:00:00.320 --> 1:00:02.560 become very clear to me that whether or not you're 1:00:02.560 --> 1:00:06.160 talking about yoga tradition, or you're talking about neuroscience, or 1:00:06.200 --> 1:00:08.440 you're talking about traditional medicine or some of the more 1:00:08.480 --> 1:00:12.680 alternative medicines, the overlap in those Venn diagrams is where 1:00:12.720 --> 1:00:17.040 the real money is. And I don't necessarily mean financial gain. 1:00:17.160 --> 1:00:21.320 I mean that's where the great ideas are. So I'm 1:00:21.360 --> 1:00:25.280 perfectly happy to talk about yoga, NIDRA, NSDR, brain circuits, 1:00:25.280 --> 1:00:29.680 associated dopamine, basal ganglia, because ultimately, if I'm here to 1:00:29.720 --> 1:00:32.560 do anything, it's to try and bridge these silos and 1:00:32.680 --> 1:00:35.840 bring people's awareness to the fact that we've all been 1:00:35.880 --> 1:00:38.160 talking about the same thing, and we're all seeking the 1:00:38.200 --> 1:00:48.240 same things. Safety, acceptance, creativity, you know, these connectedness, purpose fulfillment. 1:00:48.520 --> 1:00:52.200 These loftier ideals start with having our physiology in a 1:00:52.240 --> 1:00:53.160 place where we can. 1:00:53.080 --> 1:00:56.040 Reliably move forward not have to worry about. 1:00:55.760 --> 1:00:58.160 Certain things, and then a little space opens up and 1:00:58.200 --> 1:00:59.720 so on and so forth. But I think there's a 1:00:59.760 --> 1:01:02.440 real calling now for anyone that's interested in the brain, 1:01:02.560 --> 1:01:05.960 anyone that's interested in health and anyone that's interested in 1:01:06.040 --> 1:01:08.960 humanity to really start paying attention to the overlap in 1:01:09.000 --> 1:01:12.480 the ven diagrams between rem sleep and waking states, between 1:01:12.520 --> 1:01:17.240 ancient practices and modern practices. And I should warn that 1:01:17.240 --> 1:01:19.240 that person or those people, You're going to take some heat, 1:01:19.840 --> 1:01:22.400 you know. But ultimately, the ability to go between these 1:01:22.440 --> 1:01:24.760 silos and to bridge them, as we're trying to do 1:01:24.840 --> 1:01:28.240 now and hopefully making some ground in this I believe 1:01:28.280 --> 1:01:32.800 we are is going to serve humanity very very well, 1:01:33.200 --> 1:01:37.000 because it's just been too long whereby people are holding 1:01:37.080 --> 1:01:42.000 back knowledge. The secret of some chemical, the secret of 1:01:42.040 --> 1:01:45.200 some practice, there's no secret. The secret is they all 1:01:45.280 --> 1:01:48.480 work to some extent. The question is what are the commonalities, 1:01:48.480 --> 1:01:51.000 what are the mechanisms, and what are the practices that 1:01:51.120 --> 1:01:53.240 allow people to bring their brain and body into the 1:01:53.240 --> 1:01:56.880 state that best serves them and other people. And it's accessible. 1:01:57.240 --> 1:01:59.160 But we have to have a slightly open mind about 1:01:59.160 --> 1:02:02.640 the language. We have to give up the ego saying oh, 1:02:02.640 --> 1:02:05.560 that's my practice, that that breathwork is the domain of 1:02:05.680 --> 1:02:09.479 my school or my thing. And frankly those arguments aren't 1:02:09.480 --> 1:02:12.640 working anymore anyway, because information is so freely available on 1:02:12.680 --> 1:02:15.240 the Internet. So in any case, there's a little bit 1:02:15.280 --> 1:02:17.920 of editorializing there, I realize, but it's also a calling 1:02:17.960 --> 1:02:20.400 to anyone that's interested in the mind and in the 1:02:20.440 --> 1:02:24.280 brain that you know, neuroscience is no longer the unique 1:02:24.320 --> 1:02:26.760 domain of neuroscientists, and I know that some of my 1:02:26.800 --> 1:02:29.280 neuroscience colleagues are like, oh boy, you know here he is, 1:02:29.320 --> 1:02:31.480 just as if it's accessible to anybody. I'm not saying 1:02:31.520 --> 1:02:34.760 you can be a neurosurgeon if you aren't trained in neurosurgery, right, 1:02:35.120 --> 1:02:37.360 but I'm not saying that you can be an advanced 1:02:37.400 --> 1:02:40.040 meditative practitioner without putting in the hours. What I am 1:02:40.160 --> 1:02:44.640 saying is that there's overlap in the ven diagrams of 1:02:44.680 --> 1:02:50.440 these different fields. Sure, and the more collegiality, the faster 1:02:50.520 --> 1:02:52.240 and further we're going to go as a species. 1:02:52.400 --> 1:02:53.800 Well, I think it goes back to what you were 1:02:53.840 --> 1:02:56.720 just saying a few moments ago that we only have 1:02:56.800 --> 1:03:01.200 a language for and I'm going to an umbrella term here, 1:03:01.200 --> 1:03:04.200 but we only have language for the extremes of experience. 1:03:04.520 --> 1:03:05.760 So what you were saying is when you're on a 1:03:05.840 --> 1:03:08.360 hiker a walk, you don't have a term for what 1:03:08.520 --> 1:03:11.640 that feels like, because it's not an extreme of being 1:03:11.680 --> 1:03:15.000 asleep or being awake. It's kind of like this in 1:03:15.040 --> 1:03:18.000 between cerebral state that we don't have a language for. 1:03:18.440 --> 1:03:20.959 And I think that on a micro level makes sense 1:03:21.000 --> 1:03:23.320 to all of us, where we have words like I'm 1:03:23.400 --> 1:03:27.280 angry or I'm sad or I'm upset, but our word 1:03:27.400 --> 1:03:31.720 for is okay, right, Like our word for okay is okay, 1:03:31.760 --> 1:03:35.120 which isn't a great descriptor of how we actually feel. 1:03:35.640 --> 1:03:38.520 And so we're only good at describing things in extremes 1:03:38.520 --> 1:03:40.600 on a micro level. And then if you zoom out 1:03:40.600 --> 1:03:44.200 and take that on a macro level, that translates as well, 1:03:44.560 --> 1:03:47.000 where we're only good at dealing with these extremes. And 1:03:47.040 --> 1:03:49.880 when you're saying ven diagram, it's saying, well, get away 1:03:49.920 --> 1:03:52.280 from the extremes and look at the overlaps. But I 1:03:52.320 --> 1:03:54.680 think we as a society on a micro level and 1:03:54.760 --> 1:03:58.280 at a macro level, have only learned how to deal 1:03:58.320 --> 1:04:01.240 with the pendulum swing on either side, all the extremes 1:04:01.280 --> 1:04:04.760 on either side, and therefore anything in the middle or 1:04:04.800 --> 1:04:10.080 the gray starts to feel uncomfortable, starts to feel It's 1:04:10.120 --> 1:04:12.160 not easy to say whether it's right or wrong, and 1:04:12.200 --> 1:04:14.560 therefore it's like, well, we're not even going to go there. 1:04:14.960 --> 1:04:17.760 And I think anyone that I've spoken to at the 1:04:17.760 --> 1:04:19.760 top of their field, you being one of them, anyone 1:04:19.760 --> 1:04:23.400 we've ever had on the show, is far more interested 1:04:23.440 --> 1:04:26.640 in the gray, is far more in the gray, and 1:04:26.800 --> 1:04:31.280 is spending far more time exploring thought that is unclear, uncomfortable, 1:04:31.680 --> 1:04:35.720 and uncertain, because that's where life really has lived, in 1:04:35.760 --> 1:04:39.320 the unpredictable. That's the adventure, that is the adventure, that 1:04:39.440 --> 1:04:42.120 is the adventure. And I feel that that's why humans 1:04:42.160 --> 1:04:44.440 want to go to space, Like why is everyone fascinated 1:04:44.480 --> 1:04:47.640 by space? Because it's not clear as to what it 1:04:47.760 --> 1:04:49.720 is and what's out there and where it is. And 1:04:50.080 --> 1:04:52.600 of course not many people will get to go to space, 1:04:53.040 --> 1:04:55.880 at least for now, but the idea being the same, 1:04:56.000 --> 1:04:59.000 that there has to be that curiosity from all of 1:04:59.080 --> 1:05:01.520 us to say, oh, where where are we in the 1:05:01.560 --> 1:05:04.320 same place? Like where are we connected on our idea? 1:05:04.360 --> 1:05:08.240 And where are there things that aren't similar but maybe 1:05:08.240 --> 1:05:11.400 they're connected in a different way. And I think being 1:05:11.440 --> 1:05:15.960 able to oscillate between connectivity and disconnectedness is a need 1:05:16.000 --> 1:05:18.520 for the brain and the mind as opposed to this 1:05:18.600 --> 1:05:21.600 feeling of again, it goes back to what we started 1:05:21.600 --> 1:05:25.400 with safety and acceptance makes us feel today that you 1:05:25.520 --> 1:05:31.000 can't allow yourself to engage in an idea that doesn't 1:05:31.040 --> 1:05:34.680 fully connect with yours because that feels unsafe. 1:05:34.840 --> 1:05:39.600 Right, especially right now, right things feel very polarized. 1:05:39.720 --> 1:05:40.080 Correct. 1:05:40.120 --> 1:05:42.320 You know, I'm putting in a very strong vote for 1:05:42.880 --> 1:05:46.720 the League of Reasonable People, which is hopefully everybody, right, Like, 1:05:46.760 --> 1:05:50.240 I don't want to sound overly sentimental, but like I 1:05:50.680 --> 1:05:53.080 and maybe I'm just too emotional lately, but I am 1:05:53.200 --> 1:05:56.520 so pained by the amount of fighting that I see 1:05:56.800 --> 1:06:00.160 that I know will not result in any anything. It's 1:06:00.160 --> 1:06:02.520 not going to solve the problem for either side, right. 1:06:02.920 --> 1:06:05.000 I guess at forty nine, I feel old enough to 1:06:05.040 --> 1:06:10.280 say this, Like, I still have hope, but that's obviously 1:06:10.280 --> 1:06:13.400 not a solution. I think that when we really get 1:06:13.440 --> 1:06:18.240 down to the neuroscience of self understanding, when people really 1:06:18.280 --> 1:06:20.840 start to understand that the human brain is a magnificent 1:06:21.720 --> 1:06:24.920 machine and organ but that it has limitations, and we 1:06:24.920 --> 1:06:27.600 can start to understand our own limitations, you know that 1:06:27.680 --> 1:06:30.000 it can take us just up to this point, but 1:06:30.120 --> 1:06:35.000 not further, and that we can rely on healthy collective 1:06:35.000 --> 1:06:38.640 thinking healthy collective thinking to get us over these divides. 1:06:38.880 --> 1:06:41.960 I think that's when we're finally going to evolve as 1:06:41.960 --> 1:06:44.919 a species. I really do, when we start being able 1:06:44.960 --> 1:06:48.360 to exit our own brain and our group think to 1:06:48.440 --> 1:06:52.000 be able to really come to solutions, because often we 1:06:52.080 --> 1:06:55.040 just think in terms of compromise and conflict, which are 1:06:55.360 --> 1:06:59.480 essential things to think about, But ultimately, understanding the limits 1:06:59.480 --> 1:07:03.240 of our cognit and how emotion drives cognition is really 1:07:03.280 --> 1:07:05.760 how we're going to be able to evolve our beliefs 1:07:05.760 --> 1:07:08.160 about what's possible. And by the way, that's not meant 1:07:08.200 --> 1:07:10.600 to just be a bunch of aspirational word salad. That's 1:07:10.680 --> 1:07:14.200 like a real possibility if we can just have the 1:07:14.200 --> 1:07:16.800 self reflection to understand we know certain things, we believe 1:07:16.840 --> 1:07:19.600 certain things, but that this neural architecture that we call 1:07:19.640 --> 1:07:22.640 our brain is limited in the extent to which it 1:07:22.680 --> 1:07:25.200 can see into the future and make the best decisions 1:07:25.440 --> 1:07:28.840 for everybody. We operate thinking that, but that's not how 1:07:28.880 --> 1:07:31.200 it works. And of course we can't look to any 1:07:31.200 --> 1:07:34.680 one individual to solve the problem for everybody, now, will 1:07:34.680 --> 1:07:35.320 it be AI? 1:07:35.480 --> 1:07:35.840 I don't know. 1:07:35.880 --> 1:07:37.840 That involves a lot of trust in AI and these 1:07:37.920 --> 1:07:41.200 large language models are trained in many ways the same 1:07:41.200 --> 1:07:43.440 way that a neural network. It trains itself up how 1:07:43.440 --> 1:07:45.360 a young brain develops and makes sense of the world. 1:07:45.480 --> 1:07:48.160 So I don't have any immediate solutions. What I do 1:07:48.240 --> 1:07:51.480 have is a piece of neuroscience knowledge that was at 1:07:51.560 --> 1:07:55.320 least new to me that most neuroscientists aren't aware of. 1:07:55.400 --> 1:07:57.560 But I think this is one of the most important 1:07:57.560 --> 1:08:02.240 discoveries in the last one hundred years of neuroscience. It's 1:08:02.280 --> 1:08:04.800 a collection of studies on an area of the brain 1:08:04.880 --> 1:08:08.000 called the anterior mid singulate cortex. Most people have never 1:08:08.040 --> 1:08:12.120 heard of this brain area, including many neuroscientists, doctor neurosurgeon. 1:08:12.200 --> 1:08:14.600 They know where it is talktor a neuroscientists unless they 1:08:14.600 --> 1:08:17.439 teach neuroanatomy, which I happened to. Most don't know where 1:08:17.439 --> 1:08:19.040 it is in the brain, and most didn't know what 1:08:19.120 --> 1:08:21.720 it did because it hadn't been explored. And then a 1:08:21.760 --> 1:08:24.120 colleague of mine at Stamford School of Medicine named Joe 1:08:24.160 --> 1:08:27.720 Parvezi did an incredible study where he was doing neurosurgery 1:08:27.720 --> 1:08:30.160 and stimulating different brain areas as a means to try 1:08:30.200 --> 1:08:32.519 and find the location where he needed to do the surgery, 1:08:33.080 --> 1:08:36.320 and he stumbled upon an area called the anterior mid 1:08:36.320 --> 1:08:40.559 singulate cortex, where if he stimulated with an electrode, people 1:08:40.600 --> 1:08:44.360 because they were awake during the neurosurgery, would report feeling 1:08:44.840 --> 1:08:48.080 as if there was some conflict pressing on them. Some 1:08:48.600 --> 1:08:50.719 one't even described as I feel like I'm driving into 1:08:50.720 --> 1:08:52.479 a storm, but I feel ready. 1:08:52.680 --> 1:08:53.840 I can do this. 1:08:54.800 --> 1:08:58.200 Others reported a different set of words, but the words 1:08:58.360 --> 1:09:02.760 essentially converged around the same set of subjective experiences, which 1:09:02.760 --> 1:09:05.840 are I feel challenged, but I can do it. It's 1:09:05.920 --> 1:09:08.759 kind of forward center of mass. And then other studies 1:09:09.000 --> 1:09:12.400 separate laboratories discovered that people that take on a new 1:09:12.439 --> 1:09:15.639 practice that's challenging for them, their anterior mid singulate cortex 1:09:15.720 --> 1:09:20.799 grows in volume. Other people who fail to successfully engage 1:09:20.800 --> 1:09:24.120 in a regular challenging activity, the anterior mid singulate cortex 1:09:24.160 --> 1:09:25.720 didn't increase in volume in the same way. 1:09:25.760 --> 1:09:27.400 So very interesting brain structure. 1:09:27.439 --> 1:09:29.160 And there's I would say about a dozen or so 1:09:29.240 --> 1:09:32.240 really quality studies in humans, a bunch of animal models, 1:09:32.280 --> 1:09:34.880 but they're a bunch in humans that point to the 1:09:34.920 --> 1:09:38.080 intermid singulate cortex as a site in the brain associated 1:09:38.120 --> 1:09:40.439 with the feeling of tenacity and will power. 1:09:40.520 --> 1:09:41.360 To push through. 1:09:42.240 --> 1:09:46.040 It's heavily interconnected with the dopamine reward system, heavily connected 1:09:46.120 --> 1:09:48.240 frankly with a lot of different brain areas. It's a 1:09:48.320 --> 1:09:50.640 hub for a lot of inputs and outputs. So what 1:09:50.680 --> 1:09:53.679 do we know about the interimid singulate cortex. Perhaps most 1:09:53.720 --> 1:09:56.320 interesting of all is that this is the brain area 1:09:56.720 --> 1:09:59.240 that seems to preserve its size and even grow in 1:09:59.280 --> 1:10:02.280 size in what are called superagers. Superagers are people that 1:10:02.360 --> 1:10:05.800 maintain their cognition later into life. These are people that 1:10:06.240 --> 1:10:10.960 don't undergo the normal age related decline in cognition separate 1:10:10.960 --> 1:10:13.720 from Alzheimer's type dementia. You know, everybody as they get 1:10:13.720 --> 1:10:16.679 older develops less working memory, the ability to keep ideas 1:10:16.680 --> 1:10:21.240 in mind in the short term. Superagers seem to overcome 1:10:21.280 --> 1:10:25.400 all that and they live longer. So you could say, well, 1:10:25.439 --> 1:10:27.880 this is a case of reverse causality. They live longer, 1:10:27.920 --> 1:10:29.719 so they have a bigger brain area called the interim 1:10:29.760 --> 1:10:31.719 and singular cortex. We don't really know what the direction 1:10:31.840 --> 1:10:36.160 of causality is. Could just be correlation, but it all 1:10:36.160 --> 1:10:40.400 gets ultra interesting when you start to tack together willpower 1:10:41.080 --> 1:10:45.400 the taking on of new things, learning things in neuroplasticity 1:10:45.479 --> 1:10:48.400 and life span. And it may be that that quad 1:10:48.479 --> 1:10:52.120 fecta represents what we think of as the will to 1:10:52.240 --> 1:10:55.360 live is associated with an intense curiosity and desire to 1:10:55.360 --> 1:10:58.200 bring in new ideas and modes of thinking. And new 1:10:58.200 --> 1:11:00.759 ideas and modes of thinking then feedback on our feelings 1:11:00.760 --> 1:11:03.840 of how we could gain reward internal reward of course, 1:11:03.880 --> 1:11:07.360 dopamine being the universal currency of reward as a means 1:11:07.360 --> 1:11:08.120 to move forward. 1:11:08.120 --> 1:11:08.840 What does this mean? 1:11:09.040 --> 1:11:12.800 This means that everybody I believe can become a better 1:11:12.920 --> 1:11:16.280 human being by taking on challenges. What is a challenge 1:11:16.280 --> 1:11:20.680 that can grow the inter amid singulate cortex. Well, unfortunately, 1:11:20.720 --> 1:11:22.680 it's a challenge that you don't want to engage in. 1:11:22.760 --> 1:11:26.200 So if you love running, it's not going to do it. 1:11:26.400 --> 1:11:28.400 If you love resistance ring, it's not going to do it. 1:11:28.439 --> 1:11:30.880 If you don't want to meditate in the morning, and 1:11:30.920 --> 1:11:34.000 you do five minutes or ten minutes of meditation, then 1:11:34.080 --> 1:11:37.960 you just enhanced the activation of your inter amid singulate cortex. 1:11:38.040 --> 1:11:40.519 So it's about it's not just about doing hard things, 1:11:40.560 --> 1:11:43.160 it's about really pushing through resistance. And the reason I 1:11:43.160 --> 1:11:46.000 bring this up now as opposed to a discussion about 1:11:46.080 --> 1:11:48.879 like how to get more tenacious or have stronger willpower. 1:11:48.920 --> 1:11:49.640 It will do that. 1:11:50.000 --> 1:11:52.080 Okay, we know that when the inter amid singulate cortex 1:11:52.120 --> 1:11:54.599 gets bigger, it translates to a lot of different areas 1:11:54.640 --> 1:11:57.280 of challenge, not just the area in which you challenged it. 1:11:58.080 --> 1:12:02.080 The reason is, I believe that this lofty notion of 1:12:02.160 --> 1:12:07.479 humans evolving to more collective thinking, to embracing new ways 1:12:07.520 --> 1:12:11.920 to bridge divides that harm human beings at scale or 1:12:12.560 --> 1:12:16.760 just locally, is going to emerge through only through the 1:12:16.800 --> 1:12:22.519 willingness to embrace the internal friction that is hearing things 1:12:23.080 --> 1:12:26.559 and seeing things that we don't like and being able 1:12:26.600 --> 1:12:31.599 to take a stance of adaptive response whatever that is. Now, 1:12:31.600 --> 1:12:33.200 of course, there are things that we hear and see 1:12:33.200 --> 1:12:35.680 and don't like that activate enough of a sense of 1:12:35.720 --> 1:12:38.519 injustice in us that that's all it does. It just 1:12:38.520 --> 1:12:40.960 brings us to the point of wanting to impart justice. 1:12:41.479 --> 1:12:44.400 But what I'm talking about here differences in opinion, strongly 1:12:44.439 --> 1:12:47.639 polarized views that lead to all sorts of things, as 1:12:47.640 --> 1:12:51.120 we know, good and bad and everything in between. And 1:12:51.840 --> 1:12:56.840 if people had the capacity to feel that friction and 1:12:56.920 --> 1:13:01.519 to stay in a mode of some open cognition. I 1:13:01.520 --> 1:13:03.599 think we would come up with novel solutions. I really 1:13:03.600 --> 1:13:08.960 think the next iteration of human beings is collective consciousness. 1:13:09.320 --> 1:13:12.000 You know, it sounds lofty, sounds woo, but it's basically 1:13:12.320 --> 1:13:15.759 lots of minds working together, even minds that oppose one another. 1:13:16.120 --> 1:13:20.040 In ideology, as a means to find out novel solutions 1:13:20.120 --> 1:13:23.120 to hard problems that vex us all and that in 1:13:23.120 --> 1:13:26.559 some cases really harm us all. 1:13:27.520 --> 1:13:28.680 It's it's a. 1:13:28.680 --> 1:13:32.200 Real thing with real possibility. But it's going to require 1:13:32.240 --> 1:13:35.200 that we all get not necessarily tougher, but that we 1:13:35.320 --> 1:13:38.400 get more resilient at the level of being able to tolerate 1:13:38.360 --> 1:13:42.599 internal states that normally would impede adaptive thinking. 1:13:42.960 --> 1:13:50.160 Yes, yes, and and the ability to engage in uncomfortable thinking. 1:13:50.439 --> 1:13:52.439 And I love that definition that you gave. I saw 1:13:52.560 --> 1:13:56.800 this brilliant quote the other day on social media, and 1:13:56.800 --> 1:14:01.320 it is from a Christian page or post, and it 1:14:01.439 --> 1:14:06.000 said the essence of Christianity is not learning to love Jesus, 1:14:06.000 --> 1:14:08.840 but learning to love Judas. And I was thinking how 1:14:08.880 --> 1:14:10.559 brilliant that was because it goes back to that point 1:14:10.600 --> 1:14:14.360 of what's uncomfortable, like it's easy to love the good 1:14:14.400 --> 1:14:18.519 person it's learning to love or understand, at least the 1:14:18.600 --> 1:14:21.680 person who may have done, you know, something that you 1:14:22.240 --> 1:14:25.880 didn't recognize or didn't understand or didn't fully connect with. 1:14:26.520 --> 1:14:29.479 And I think often we see that and we think, oh, 1:14:29.520 --> 1:14:32.240 but then there's no accountability, there's not this, there's no that. 1:14:32.360 --> 1:14:35.559 But really, what we're saying is are we willing to 1:14:35.600 --> 1:14:37.960 do as you said, the most challenging thing, which is 1:14:37.960 --> 1:14:41.400 something you don't enjoy doing. It's not something you're excited by. 1:14:42.000 --> 1:14:44.960 If you're enjoying the challenge, it's no longer the challenge 1:14:45.040 --> 1:14:47.880 right if you're it's always like I remember a training 1:14:47.880 --> 1:14:50.000 and conditioning coach used to tell me, like Jay, if 1:14:50.000 --> 1:14:52.400 you're sitting in the cold plunge, just to get your 1:14:52.439 --> 1:14:54.439 minutes up so you can tell someone how long you 1:14:54.520 --> 1:14:56.439 sat in there. He goes, then that means it wasn't 1:14:56.439 --> 1:14:58.479 hard beyond that certain point. It was like, you should 1:14:58.479 --> 1:15:00.960 get out once it's easy because it's not having the 1:15:01.000 --> 1:15:02.040 effect you wanted to have. 1:15:02.160 --> 1:15:04.640 That's right, and no longer an adaptive stimulus. 1:15:04.960 --> 1:15:05.280 Correct? 1:15:05.640 --> 1:15:07.639 Can I offer an alternative protocol? 1:15:07.720 --> 1:15:07.960 Please? 1:15:07.960 --> 1:15:10.080 People always ask me how cold should the cold plunge 1:15:10.120 --> 1:15:12.040 be or the cold shower and how long should I 1:15:12.040 --> 1:15:15.880 stay in? And it's so variable depending on the person, 1:15:15.960 --> 1:15:18.800 the time of day. Obviously, only do what's safe, right, 1:15:18.840 --> 1:15:21.000 So don't go so cool that you can you can 1:15:21.040 --> 1:15:24.880 get a cardiovascular effect that's not good. But it's very simple. Actually, 1:15:24.920 --> 1:15:27.120 if you want it to translate into the real world 1:15:27.240 --> 1:15:30.280 in the best way, you ask yourself right before you 1:15:30.320 --> 1:15:32.360 get in, on a scale of one to ten, how 1:15:32.400 --> 1:15:35.280 badly do I not want to get in? And I 1:15:35.280 --> 1:15:37.880 would say that if it's five to ten, well that's 1:15:37.920 --> 1:15:40.519 a wall. If it's anywhere in the fire, that that's 1:15:40.600 --> 1:15:42.840 one wall you have to get over. So then you 1:15:42.920 --> 1:15:45.640 get in, and then at some point there will be 1:15:45.680 --> 1:15:48.200 the desire to get out. That's the second wall. Maybe 1:15:48.200 --> 1:15:51.200 it comes within five seconds, maybe it comes within twenty seconds, 1:15:51.360 --> 1:15:53.000 that's the second wall. So what I would do is 1:15:53.040 --> 1:15:55.439 count walls. What are the quote unquote walls. The walls 1:15:55.479 --> 1:15:59.240 are waves of adrenaline being released into your body. And 1:15:59.280 --> 1:16:02.519 sometimes they are very close together, those waves, and sometimes 1:16:02.560 --> 1:16:05.600 they're more distantly spaced apart. Now, of course, at some 1:16:05.600 --> 1:16:07.599 point you go numb and then you don't feel them anymore. 1:16:07.760 --> 1:16:11.200 We don't suggest that, but if you think to yourself, gosh, today, 1:16:11.240 --> 1:16:12.439 I really don't want to get in. 1:16:12.920 --> 1:16:14.360 That wall is a really tall wall. 1:16:14.400 --> 1:16:16.920 Well, just getting in for fifteen twenty seconds is going 1:16:16.960 --> 1:16:20.920 to accomplish something meaningful for this anterimid singulate cortex. It's 1:16:20.960 --> 1:16:24.120 going to accomplish something meaningful for the adrenaline release that 1:16:24.120 --> 1:16:27.519 you're going to experience. So it's less about the temperature. 1:16:27.560 --> 1:16:29.960 I mean, obviously the temperature plays a role than it 1:16:30.040 --> 1:16:34.519 is your subjective relationship to the whole thing. For instance, 1:16:34.560 --> 1:16:37.080 if you do cold exposure at night when you're tired, 1:16:37.120 --> 1:16:39.280 it's a far and away different experience than in the 1:16:39.320 --> 1:16:41.439 morning after going for a run and you're too warm. 1:16:41.720 --> 1:16:45.200 So I can't say forty five degrees fahrenheit for ninety seconds, 1:16:45.240 --> 1:16:47.479 although if you want to start there, that's fine, provided it. 1:16:47.560 --> 1:16:48.120 Safe for you. 1:16:48.600 --> 1:16:51.600 But as you watch these walls of adrenaline come at you, 1:16:51.960 --> 1:16:55.120 as it were, pay attention to what they feel like. 1:16:55.680 --> 1:16:58.760 That's what you'll recognize outside the ice bath. Yeah, in 1:16:58.800 --> 1:17:02.240 a hard conversation, it's not that you can make yourself 1:17:02.280 --> 1:17:05.600 so resilient that your adrenaline system doesn't work. It's that 1:17:05.640 --> 1:17:08.160 you learn to recognize the state of having adrenaline in 1:17:08.200 --> 1:17:10.920 your system and staying calm. And then I actually had 1:17:10.920 --> 1:17:12.559 this happen the other day. I was in a really 1:17:12.560 --> 1:17:17.200 hard yesterday, a hard conversation something first thing in the morning. 1:17:17.200 --> 1:17:21.559 It was like, wait, what seriously misunderstanding hard conversation? And 1:17:21.640 --> 1:17:24.200 I remember, here we are, our voices are going up. 1:17:24.400 --> 1:17:26.880 We weren't yelling, but like it was a peaceful morning 1:17:26.920 --> 1:17:29.080 until that moment, and you could kind of feel the 1:17:29.200 --> 1:17:31.120 energy in the room going up. And I was thinking 1:17:31.120 --> 1:17:33.400 to myself, Okay, how am I And I thought, Oh, 1:17:33.400 --> 1:17:37.240 this is like a wall in the thing. And I said, 1:17:37.280 --> 1:17:40.080 and I said, because we have this language at home. 1:17:40.120 --> 1:17:42.880 I said, I feel like there's a wall of adrenaline 1:17:42.920 --> 1:17:45.680 hitting us. Whether we both started laughing, and then we 1:17:45.760 --> 1:17:47.759 kind of reverted to what we were doing and then 1:17:48.000 --> 1:17:51.000 we calmed down, and you know, we talk about taking breaks, 1:17:51.000 --> 1:17:52.960 and that's wonderful. It's a wonderful tool that you talked 1:17:52.960 --> 1:17:55.400 about in your book on relationships. There's so many valuable 1:17:55.400 --> 1:17:57.640 tools in there. By the way, it's like, thank you 1:17:57.720 --> 1:18:00.320 for writing that book, so valuable. 1:18:00.360 --> 1:18:01.040 Everyone should read. 1:18:01.040 --> 1:18:05.120 It should be standard curriculum, standard curriculum in every school, 1:18:05.800 --> 1:18:08.599 in every home. I really mean that Jay doesn't tell 1:18:08.640 --> 1:18:10.439 me to say this, I really mean this, I really 1:18:10.520 --> 1:18:15.160 truly mean it. Well, it's entirely appropriate because it's true. 1:18:15.560 --> 1:18:20.240 But noticing those walls of adrenaline and realizing that when 1:18:20.280 --> 1:18:24.320 we're in those adrenaline filled states, our cognition is shifted. 1:18:24.360 --> 1:18:27.120 We don't have solutions that we had five minutes ago. 1:18:27.560 --> 1:18:31.200 So learning to watch those pass in the cold plunge, 1:18:31.200 --> 1:18:34.080 in the cold shower, on a hard run or whatever 1:18:34.120 --> 1:18:35.960 it is, but the cold seems to be the universal 1:18:36.120 --> 1:18:41.519 stressful stimulus for everybody is so valuable more than marking off, 1:18:41.600 --> 1:18:44.439 you know, fifteen minutes or five minutes in the cold plunge, 1:18:44.760 --> 1:18:47.840 and some days it's fifteen seconds, sometimes it's thirty. And 1:18:47.880 --> 1:18:50.679 for somebody learning the cold plunge, it's like, hey, can 1:18:50.720 --> 1:18:52.800 you just even get near the thing or in it? 1:18:53.400 --> 1:18:56.000 And I think there's real value there. Yeah, So in 1:18:56.040 --> 1:18:56.640 any event, But. 1:18:56.720 --> 1:18:59.240 I know, I love that translation into real life because 1:18:59.240 --> 1:19:02.800 I think what's happened is we're dealing with a lot 1:19:02.840 --> 1:19:07.759 of everyday things with so much pain that that pain 1:19:08.479 --> 1:19:11.760 is then creating more pain for us for others, and 1:19:12.080 --> 1:19:16.439 we never end this, or we create this never ending 1:19:16.479 --> 1:19:18.759 cycle and loop for ourselves and others where we stay 1:19:18.760 --> 1:19:21.400 in the pain. And what we're all saying is what 1:19:21.439 --> 1:19:23.479 does it take. Just as we have to learn to 1:19:23.520 --> 1:19:27.120 sit in that cold and regulate ourselves and adapt, what 1:19:27.200 --> 1:19:30.120 does it take to sit in the pain outside of 1:19:30.160 --> 1:19:33.479 the tub, regulate ourselves, rise to a place of peace, 1:19:33.960 --> 1:19:36.960 and then respond and then get together. And as you said, 1:19:37.000 --> 1:19:40.920 the League of reasonable the real league of reasonable people, 1:19:41.080 --> 1:19:44.880 Like I think we'd all aspire towards that. I think 1:19:44.880 --> 1:19:46.720 when I hear that, I think we all go. I 1:19:46.720 --> 1:19:48.479 think I'm a reasonable person. I think most of us 1:19:48.520 --> 1:19:49.120 would say that. 1:19:49.200 --> 1:19:50.519 I think it lives in all of us. 1:19:50.600 --> 1:19:54.280 Yeah, and it's a brain state that takes certain things 1:19:54.320 --> 1:19:57.040 to get to on a regular basis. I mean, there's 1:19:57.080 --> 1:20:01.120 some people that perhaps are outside the margins for which 1:20:01.680 --> 1:20:04.439 participation in the League of Reasonable People is impossible. But 1:20:05.040 --> 1:20:06.560 even as I say that, you know, one thing that 1:20:06.600 --> 1:20:08.559 I've tried to do as I get older is to 1:20:08.640 --> 1:20:11.800 limit cynicism. You know, in my home growing up that 1:20:11.880 --> 1:20:15.240 there were many beautiful emotions and concepts and things I 1:20:15.280 --> 1:20:18.160 was exposed to by virtue of the wonderful people that 1:20:18.200 --> 1:20:20.479 my parents were. They had flaws like everybody else. But 1:20:20.960 --> 1:20:22.839 one of the things that I've really tried to discard 1:20:22.880 --> 1:20:25.400 as I've gotten older, is cynicism. It's one of the 1:20:25.400 --> 1:20:27.240 things that my sister and I talk a lot about, 1:20:27.520 --> 1:20:31.000 like it never served anyone well to be cynical. You 1:20:31.040 --> 1:20:35.599 can be critical and discerning, but cynical doesn't accomplish anything 1:20:35.760 --> 1:20:40.240 except to separate us from people. That's my belief. And 1:20:40.280 --> 1:20:43.439 I'm not trying to encourage people to be soft in 1:20:43.439 --> 1:20:46.160 a way that's unsafe for them. Like I said, be discerning. 1:20:46.880 --> 1:20:52.080 You know, safety is important. But cynicism, I don't know. 1:20:52.040 --> 1:20:52.479 What it is. 1:20:52.520 --> 1:20:57.600 It's like an ego fed negativity that sort of implies 1:20:57.640 --> 1:20:59.519 one is better than other people, but it actually is 1:20:59.560 --> 1:21:01.400 usually the opposite. It usually comes from a place of 1:21:01.439 --> 1:21:05.960 deep insecurity, right. It's a very dismissive stance. And so 1:21:06.479 --> 1:21:08.720 I almost caught myself a second ago saying, oh, you know, 1:21:08.800 --> 1:21:11.280 making a kind of joke about what's a cynical joke about? Well, 1:21:11.320 --> 1:21:14.960 there are probably people who can't. I actually believe that 1:21:15.040 --> 1:21:19.080 we are all capable of having access to this reasonable 1:21:20.120 --> 1:21:23.160 feature within ourselves. But it involves a state of calm, 1:21:23.200 --> 1:21:27.640 a feeling of safety, and you know, I guess you know, 1:21:27.760 --> 1:21:31.400 laced into everything I'm saying today is is it is a. 1:21:31.400 --> 1:21:32.840 Kind of a hope and an aspiration. 1:21:33.560 --> 1:21:35.760 You know, I've kind of gotten to the point now 1:21:35.800 --> 1:21:38.519 where I feel like, if I don't say it now, 1:21:39.080 --> 1:21:40.840 what am I going to say it? And how old 1:21:40.840 --> 1:21:41.920 do you have to be? I used to think you 1:21:42.000 --> 1:21:43.559 had to be forty years old to write a book. 1:21:43.760 --> 1:21:45.040 I thought that, I thought I have to be forty 1:21:45.120 --> 1:21:47.120 years old to write a book, and I realized that's ridiculous. 1:21:47.160 --> 1:21:50.640 People much younger than forty write amazing books, amazing and 1:21:50.720 --> 1:21:53.920 important books. And then I thought, well, how old do 1:21:53.920 --> 1:21:55.880 you have to be in order to have had enough 1:21:55.920 --> 1:21:58.000 life experience to be able to say things that are 1:21:58.040 --> 1:22:00.400 aspirational about how you'd like to see the world where 1:22:00.400 --> 1:22:03.960 people change for the better. And you know, I've decided 1:22:04.000 --> 1:22:07.040 that the age on that is is one day, you know, 1:22:07.680 --> 1:22:10.400 like one day. So this is a bit of an 1:22:10.479 --> 1:22:14.320 encouragement for people out there. If you have ideas about 1:22:15.439 --> 1:22:18.320 ways that you and others can be better to really 1:22:18.920 --> 1:22:21.639 like write them down and evolve them right that they 1:22:21.840 --> 1:22:24.599 often need some evolution to be able to be received 1:22:24.600 --> 1:22:27.960 in the right way, But then share those I was 1:22:27.960 --> 1:22:30.679 thinking a moment ago, I wanted your opinion on this 1:22:30.840 --> 1:22:34.800 so in thinking about emotional interaction and the ways in 1:22:34.840 --> 1:22:38.160 which the world can be beautiful or challenging depending on 1:22:38.640 --> 1:22:42.439 the energy that's around us. I once read, I forget 1:22:42.439 --> 1:22:44.519 his name, so forgive me. He's an investor. I think 1:22:44.520 --> 1:22:49.760 it was on the Tim Ferriss podcast, A very successful investor, 1:22:49.840 --> 1:22:53.240 young guy. I think he lived in Trucky, of all places. 1:22:53.439 --> 1:22:55.799 He once said, you know, email is a public post 1:22:55.960 --> 1:22:58.439 to do list. And it completely changed in that one 1:22:58.479 --> 1:23:00.439 moment the way that I thought about email, because the 1:23:00.520 --> 1:23:02.400 emails are useful, but then I realized, oh yeah, I'm 1:23:02.439 --> 1:23:03.840 like going in there. It's like all these things I 1:23:03.840 --> 1:23:05.680 need to do. And when I started my laboratory, I 1:23:05.760 --> 1:23:09.599 knew I had two major challenges. One, get grants so 1:23:09.640 --> 1:23:11.840 I could do the work you need money to do research, 1:23:12.120 --> 1:23:15.479 publish great papers. And that meant had to interact with 1:23:15.520 --> 1:23:17.800 my lab into a bunch of other things. Other things 1:23:17.880 --> 1:23:20.360 were important, teaching included, but those were the main ones. 1:23:20.680 --> 1:23:22.439 Email was a public post to do list, so I 1:23:22.479 --> 1:23:24.799 needed to be very careful in terms of my interaction 1:23:24.880 --> 1:23:29.320 with email. Nowadays, I feel like social media is a 1:23:29.600 --> 1:23:34.559 public not necessarily projection, but evacuation of emotion. So when 1:23:34.560 --> 1:23:36.320 I go on to social media in the morning. If 1:23:36.360 --> 1:23:40.040 I'm not careful, they really careful and thoughtful about what 1:23:40.200 --> 1:23:43.200 I look at. I'm basically getting the emotional energy of 1:23:43.320 --> 1:23:46.679 all these people. And some of them, like you, are 1:23:46.720 --> 1:23:49.240 trying to help people, and some of them are just 1:23:49.920 --> 1:23:54.120 in evacuative expression of their pain. Others are in evacuative 1:23:54.160 --> 1:23:56.960 expression of cynicism. And I don't think I'm alone in this. 1:23:57.120 --> 1:24:00.400 Like I'm a pretty sensitive person, or maybe I'm getting 1:24:00.400 --> 1:24:03.679 more sensitive, but I'm very sensitive to this stuff. 1:24:04.120 --> 1:24:04.920 Like it's not like. 1:24:04.880 --> 1:24:06.360 It can throw off my whole day, but I can 1:24:06.439 --> 1:24:08.680 quickly get drawn down a rabbit hole of something. And 1:24:08.680 --> 1:24:12.240 then we talk about dopamine hits or the addictive properties 1:24:12.240 --> 1:24:14.640 of social media, and that would be a fine conversation, 1:24:14.720 --> 1:24:15.679 but that one's been had. 1:24:16.000 --> 1:24:19.880 But what about all the energetic bombardment and that the 1:24:19.920 --> 1:24:22.839 need for discernment and filtering of all this stuff. 1:24:23.200 --> 1:24:25.960 I wish, you know, I could label up like a 1:24:26.000 --> 1:24:29.600 positivity score, And it's not to avoid the realities of 1:24:29.640 --> 1:24:33.080 the world. But I think, I don't know, does this 1:24:33.120 --> 1:24:35.479 stuff affect you? Because I do my work so that 1:24:35.560 --> 1:24:38.360 it doesn't permeate me. But you know, just like if 1:24:38.360 --> 1:24:40.240 someone wakes up in a bad mood, you can take 1:24:40.240 --> 1:24:41.519 care of them. But if they wake up in a 1:24:41.560 --> 1:24:44.280 bad mood every single day, it's pretty draining on your 1:24:44.320 --> 1:24:48.080 home environment. So what do you do in order to 1:24:48.160 --> 1:24:51.360 keep emotional boundaries? Especially online? 1:24:51.800 --> 1:24:56.080 And the funny thing is the predictability of negativity doesn't 1:24:56.120 --> 1:24:57.599 reduce its effect. 1:24:57.840 --> 1:25:00.920 Well, it also has a gravitational pull. I mean, I'm 1:25:00.960 --> 1:25:04.920 on X and Instagram and the other you know, threads 1:25:04.920 --> 1:25:08.000 and Facebook and all of them, you know, but I 1:25:08.120 --> 1:25:12.120 noticed that on some of the platforms in particular, like 1:25:12.160 --> 1:25:15.240 there's a gravitational pull, like people are there to fight. 1:25:15.600 --> 1:25:18.360 And now when I look at that, I think, you know, 1:25:20.120 --> 1:25:22.840 some of them are saying highly intelligent things, some of 1:25:22.880 --> 1:25:26.599 them are not, but like they gotta have a lot 1:25:26.640 --> 1:25:27.919 of like pain inside. 1:25:28.560 --> 1:25:29.960 I think that's what I was going to touch on. 1:25:30.040 --> 1:25:33.840 I think it's that. To me, the thing that has 1:25:33.880 --> 1:25:37.080 been most helpful in all of it is a genuine 1:25:37.120 --> 1:25:43.280 sense of deeper empathy and compassion for the energetic state 1:25:43.320 --> 1:25:48.160 of the world. The systems that have let people down 1:25:48.920 --> 1:25:54.800 and truly made them feel that they can't rely on them, 1:25:55.800 --> 1:26:00.519 and the systems that have done a disservice in justice, 1:26:00.920 --> 1:26:05.080 which has now led to this emotional evacuation as you 1:26:05.160 --> 1:26:09.519 called it, and to me using it as a way 1:26:09.560 --> 1:26:15.360 of having deeper empathy, deeper compassion, a genuine sense of 1:26:16.640 --> 1:26:21.960 recognition that although everyone does have choice and does have agency, 1:26:22.360 --> 1:26:28.360 definitely there is an overarching energetic system that is almost 1:26:28.439 --> 1:26:32.360 keeping people imprisoned in this space, and that prison is 1:26:32.400 --> 1:26:36.760 now addictive to stay in. I feel for that. I 1:26:37.320 --> 1:26:41.080 deeply feel for that, and it affects me because I 1:26:41.160 --> 1:26:46.240 recognize that people haven't been set up for success by 1:26:46.320 --> 1:26:50.200 the education system, by the way the economy is set up, 1:26:50.280 --> 1:26:53.240 by the way anything's set up, like, it's not set 1:26:53.240 --> 1:26:55.400 people up for success. And naturally for people in their 1:26:55.400 --> 1:26:57.400 home they went a lot of people went set up 1:26:57.400 --> 1:27:00.200 for success. And so we have to zoom our and 1:27:00.200 --> 1:27:02.320 look at the context because if I zoom in and 1:27:02.360 --> 1:27:05.280 just look at that one tweet or that one comment, 1:27:05.640 --> 1:27:08.559 oh god, it's like a bullet to the chest, you know. 1:27:08.640 --> 1:27:12.040 And it's like I've always had this vision and I've 1:27:12.120 --> 1:27:14.320 kind of done it mentally sometimes because I can't do 1:27:14.360 --> 1:27:17.320 it physically. And for every person that feels that way, 1:27:17.320 --> 1:27:19.280 I've always wanted I was like I wish I could 1:27:19.320 --> 1:27:23.080 sit down with every person individually who felt a certain 1:27:23.120 --> 1:27:29.080 way and have a contextually relevant, honest, authentic conversation with 1:27:29.200 --> 1:27:32.400 each person and beare my soul and be vulnerable and 1:27:32.439 --> 1:27:35.880 open my heart. But we can't. And I also know 1:27:35.960 --> 1:27:38.599 that one post can't do that for everyone, Like it's 1:27:38.600 --> 1:27:42.639 not possible for one quote, one image, one message, one 1:27:42.680 --> 1:27:46.880 podcast episode that will speak to everyone to make everyone 1:27:46.880 --> 1:27:49.800 feel seen, heard and understood. I could just about do 1:27:49.880 --> 1:27:51.600 that on a one to one level, let alone a 1:27:51.640 --> 1:27:54.360 one to one hundred million level. How are you going 1:27:54.439 --> 1:27:57.479 to do that? And so I also have empathy for myself, 1:27:57.600 --> 1:28:00.800 and I extend that compassion back to myself and recognize 1:28:01.080 --> 1:28:04.639 I'm a limited human being who, just as that individual 1:28:04.720 --> 1:28:07.439 is limited by their systems and their setup and their energy, 1:28:07.840 --> 1:28:10.559 so am I. And there's no way in which I 1:28:10.600 --> 1:28:15.200 could respond to this individual and satisfy this exchange with 1:28:15.200 --> 1:28:17.439 one hundred and forty two hundred and eighty characters, like, 1:28:17.479 --> 1:28:20.960 how's that even possible? And so I think, to me, 1:28:22.520 --> 1:28:26.960 deepening my compassion and empathy externally and internally have been 1:28:27.000 --> 1:28:32.439 the only relevant tools, as woo wo or as spiritual 1:28:32.479 --> 1:28:36.799 as they may sound, because there is no practical habit 1:28:36.880 --> 1:28:40.919 based solution that I can give you some tactics and ideas, 1:28:40.960 --> 1:28:43.360 but I know as well that at one point they're 1:28:43.439 --> 1:28:48.400 just logical and theoretical and practical, but they're not. Yeah, 1:28:48.439 --> 1:28:50.240 they don't feel. They don't hit me there, and so 1:28:51.000 --> 1:28:54.600 to me, I've seen it all as a simulation and 1:28:54.640 --> 1:28:58.000 an experiment to deepen human emotion, deep in human empathy, 1:28:58.040 --> 1:29:05.960 deep in human compassion, and a reminder of my fallibility, 1:29:06.120 --> 1:29:10.280 so that I can embrace my own insignificance, so that 1:29:10.360 --> 1:29:13.080 I can therefore take shelter in the Source and the 1:29:13.200 --> 1:29:16.479 universe and God, and to allow for space for that. 1:29:16.920 --> 1:29:19.120 If I was able to control every one of these 1:29:19.160 --> 1:29:23.720 things and make it work perfectly, I may, in a 1:29:23.840 --> 1:29:27.080 very crude sense, you may, under false pretenses, stop believing 1:29:27.080 --> 1:29:30.240 you're the controller to some degree. And I think anyone 1:29:30.280 --> 1:29:33.960 who's experienced success in certain domains starts to feel like 1:29:34.000 --> 1:29:37.080 the controller in their relevant fields. And I think all 1:29:37.120 --> 1:29:41.479 of these things are expedited in order just to encourage 1:29:41.479 --> 1:29:45.360 you to have an ego death and pulverize the arrogance 1:29:45.400 --> 1:29:47.400 of whatever kind. By the way, I don't mean in 1:29:47.439 --> 1:29:50.880 a sense of that I feel I'm important, but we 1:29:51.000 --> 1:29:53.679 all have a sense of I'm the controller. I can 1:29:53.720 --> 1:29:57.640 make things work, I know what's right, I'm this, I'm that, 1:29:58.120 --> 1:30:00.519 And this is all reminding us of we're not the controller. 1:30:00.560 --> 1:30:03.080 We have to ultimately take shelter. We have to ultimately 1:30:03.439 --> 1:30:06.120 give up the reins, and I ultimately have to surrender 1:30:06.840 --> 1:30:10.240 and accept that there is a greater source, there is 1:30:10.280 --> 1:30:13.519 a greater power, and that when I'm in connection with 1:30:13.640 --> 1:30:16.639 that and I'm in service of that, then I'm happy 1:30:16.680 --> 1:30:19.320 and I'm joyful. But if I'm trying to be that 1:30:20.400 --> 1:30:24.280 or extrapolate energy from that to control and navigate, then 1:30:24.760 --> 1:30:26.960 I'm forever going to be unhappy. So to me, that's 1:30:27.080 --> 1:30:29.640 a quick version of the stuff that I try and 1:30:29.720 --> 1:30:32.479 work on not to be helpless. I don't feel helpless 1:30:32.479 --> 1:30:38.080 in that I feel at home. It's almost like, you know, 1:30:38.360 --> 1:30:41.320 when you're taking shelter of a greater source to take 1:30:41.360 --> 1:30:43.120 care of things you can't take care of. It's not 1:30:43.160 --> 1:30:46.240 because you're helpless or because you're weak. It's actually the 1:30:46.280 --> 1:30:48.200 greatest sign of strength to know I can call up 1:30:48.240 --> 1:30:51.360 a friend to help me. You know, Am I more 1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:54.320 strong because I can move home myself and not ask 1:30:54.360 --> 1:30:56.680 anyone for help? Or am I stronger because three of 1:30:56.760 --> 1:30:58.599 my friends came and helped me out and carry the load. 1:30:59.400 --> 1:31:02.160 I'm stronger asking for help. I have a bad community 1:31:02.160 --> 1:31:05.559 and network. You'd say that person smarter in healthier, and 1:31:05.640 --> 1:31:07.880 so I think of that same way on a universal level, 1:31:08.560 --> 1:31:10.320 at least I tried to. I'm working on it. 1:31:11.080 --> 1:31:13.639 I love that, and I realized from what you said that, 1:31:14.400 --> 1:31:17.240 you know, the greatest sense of safety seems to arrive 1:31:17.800 --> 1:31:22.760 from not trying to control everything. And it's counterintuitive, right, 1:31:23.200 --> 1:31:26.280 you know, we think, okay, well, how do you get safety, Well, 1:31:26.320 --> 1:31:27.839 you have to get rid of vigilance. 1:31:27.880 --> 1:31:28.920 How do you get rid of vigilance? 1:31:28.960 --> 1:31:30.880 Well, you decide what you do and don't have to 1:31:30.880 --> 1:31:35.719 pay attention to And at some point, if one decides 1:31:35.920 --> 1:31:38.280 I can't control all of this, you have one of 1:31:38.360 --> 1:31:41.679 two options. Either that means you're just waiting for that 1:31:42.080 --> 1:31:48.120 wave to come demolish you wave of whatever, or you 1:31:48.200 --> 1:31:54.040 trust like you trust in something. Two, make everything okay 1:31:54.800 --> 1:31:58.080 even if that wave comes. You know, and I've talked 1:31:58.120 --> 1:32:01.920 before on podcasts. I believe in God, I do, you know, 1:32:01.720 --> 1:32:04.400 And of course I believe in everyone's right to believe 1:32:04.560 --> 1:32:06.840 or not believe what they believe in. I think that 1:32:06.880 --> 1:32:11.800 the notion of giving up trying to control everything and 1:32:11.840 --> 1:32:17.040 giving over control two more universal forces or a universal force, 1:32:17.280 --> 1:32:21.040 whatever one's mode of thinking happens to be I believe 1:32:21.080 --> 1:32:28.559 they're entitled to is probably the most peace inducing step 1:32:29.000 --> 1:32:29.759 I've ever taken. 1:32:30.760 --> 1:32:31.680 And I thought it. 1:32:31.640 --> 1:32:35.360 Would be, you know, matched with a little sneaking, you know, 1:32:35.520 --> 1:32:36.320 voice in the back. 1:32:36.439 --> 1:32:38.080 Yeah, But but it's not. 1:32:39.040 --> 1:32:41.479 And I don't know how that works at the level 1:32:41.600 --> 1:32:45.320 of neuroscience. I know there are neuroscientists who are trying 1:32:45.320 --> 1:32:49.000 to explore this, and as the data evolve, I'll certainly 1:32:49.080 --> 1:32:52.000 pay attention to it, not with the intention of trying 1:32:52.000 --> 1:32:57.640 to undermine any kind of larger sense of anything, but 1:32:58.000 --> 1:32:58.679 just out of interest. 1:32:59.760 --> 1:33:01.520 Far far, too interesting. 1:33:01.560 --> 1:33:03.960 There's actually a woman at Stanford. I haven't yet to 1:33:03.960 --> 1:33:05.840 talk to her. We should both talk to her, she said. 1:33:06.200 --> 1:33:08.080 I forget her name at the moment, because I just 1:33:08.120 --> 1:33:11.000 learned about her work in the Department of Anthropology, who 1:33:11.080 --> 1:33:15.479 has spent her entire career studying people's inner voices, people 1:33:15.520 --> 1:33:18.600 who hear voices, people hear the voices of others, and 1:33:18.680 --> 1:33:21.040 sure this sometimes goes into the domain of people who 1:33:21.040 --> 1:33:24.720 have auditory hallucinations and so forth, but also just these 1:33:24.760 --> 1:33:28.040 different scripts that people have in their mind that include 1:33:28.040 --> 1:33:31.360 their own voices and other voices, voices we've internalized from childhood. 1:33:31.600 --> 1:33:33.360 This resonates with me a lot because when I was 1:33:33.400 --> 1:33:35.880 a kid, after my parents who put me to sleep, 1:33:36.160 --> 1:33:39.120 I used to arrange dialogues between people I had heard 1:33:39.120 --> 1:33:41.320 that day, and I could hear their voices in very 1:33:41.640 --> 1:33:45.320 clear ways in my head, and I would remember things 1:33:45.320 --> 1:33:47.240 they said, and I could create these dialogues. And so 1:33:47.320 --> 1:33:51.320 I've also always had a very strong audiographic memory. It's 1:33:51.360 --> 1:33:53.639 not as if everything I hear I remember a verbatim. 1:33:53.680 --> 1:33:55.760 That actually would be a super skill would have saved 1:33:55.760 --> 1:33:58.960 me in a lot of arguments. But in all seriousness, 1:33:59.120 --> 1:34:03.479 I think what you describe about essentially a letting go 1:34:03.640 --> 1:34:07.759 or a giving over of the need for the control 1:34:07.800 --> 1:34:10.679 that we all experience. The desire for control is really 1:34:11.439 --> 1:34:15.280 where the solution wise. I think I know this because 1:34:15.280 --> 1:34:17.800 many people have said it, and it's very hard to do, 1:34:17.920 --> 1:34:21.400 but that once one does it. 1:34:20.600 --> 1:34:21.960 Once, you know you can do it again. 1:34:22.120 --> 1:34:23.799 Yeah, And it's a practice, a practice. 1:34:23.800 --> 1:34:26.320 It's not you write it down and it's done. It's 1:34:26.320 --> 1:34:28.800 a practice. And you know, I also am thinking about 1:34:29.160 --> 1:34:32.840 the kind of counterintuitive nature of the fact that we're 1:34:32.840 --> 1:34:37.320 talking at once about letting go and not trying to 1:34:37.360 --> 1:34:40.640 control everything, but also pushing oneself to be more resilient 1:34:40.720 --> 1:34:42.400 and tenacious and things of that sort. 1:34:42.840 --> 1:34:45.120 And so I feel like all of life is like that. 1:34:45.800 --> 1:34:47.960 All of life is about, Yes, you need to take 1:34:47.960 --> 1:34:49.960 care of your physiology, you need to get your sleep 1:34:49.960 --> 1:34:52.080 at night, but it's also okay to get a bad 1:34:52.160 --> 1:34:52.960 night's sleep every. 1:34:52.760 --> 1:34:53.400 Once in a while. 1:34:53.560 --> 1:34:56.479 It's okay to not do every protocol. In fact, it's 1:34:56.560 --> 1:34:59.720 encouraged to not do every protocol. The expectation on us 1:34:59.840 --> 1:35:03.120 is not perfection rights, it's I think being able to 1:35:03.120 --> 1:35:07.280 toggle between these different states. I think that one of 1:35:07.320 --> 1:35:09.639 the best things about social media. One of the best 1:35:09.640 --> 1:35:13.919 things about podcasts is that you know, speaking and listening 1:35:14.680 --> 1:35:19.000 is the human narrative. Certainly writing certainly plays poetry and 1:35:19.120 --> 1:35:22.280 music as well dance. There are other forms of communication, 1:35:23.120 --> 1:35:25.200 certainly sculpture and I hear we go on and on. 1:35:25.800 --> 1:35:27.959 But as a great. 1:35:27.760 --> 1:35:31.720 Podcaster David Cenra, who hosts The Founder's Podcast, it's kind 1:35:31.720 --> 1:35:36.160 of a like a nerds podcast of if so many 1:35:36.360 --> 1:35:39.160 interesting founders, like a founders of companies that he sort 1:35:39.200 --> 1:35:43.200 of does for that what I do for science and health, 1:35:43.240 --> 1:35:45.960 and what you do for health and spirituality and so 1:35:45.960 --> 1:35:48.200 many more topics, psychology and so on. 1:35:48.800 --> 1:35:51.240 David does for founders and company founders. 1:35:51.600 --> 1:35:55.559 And he said, you know that podcasting and to some extent, 1:35:55.600 --> 1:35:59.960 social media, but really podcasting is the human narrative record. 1:36:00.080 --> 1:36:03.400 Did radio Radio used to be live, Sometimes it was 1:36:03.479 --> 1:36:05.920 recorded and then played, but there wasn't an archive that 1:36:05.960 --> 1:36:07.800 you could go access, and where there was, it was 1:36:07.840 --> 1:36:11.240 a fairly sparse archive. I think we're going to look 1:36:11.280 --> 1:36:13.479 back one hundred years from now, and whether it's in 1:36:13.640 --> 1:36:17.559 AI form or in its traditional form as it is now. 1:36:18.000 --> 1:36:21.720 I think people speaking onto the internet is our you know, 1:36:21.760 --> 1:36:25.360 this is our stone tablets, these our cave drawings. 1:36:26.640 --> 1:36:29.600 It's wild, it's wild, and. 1:36:29.880 --> 1:36:32.680 I like to think it's serving the evolution of our 1:36:32.720 --> 1:36:36.759 species at some level. Certainly it's creating a historical record. 1:36:37.680 --> 1:36:40.760 I often think about this, like so many thoughts, so 1:36:40.800 --> 1:36:45.880 many emotions that people have don't get transmuted into useful 1:36:46.040 --> 1:36:48.800 tools that others could benefit from. I think this is 1:36:48.840 --> 1:36:51.439 why we love music and poetry and things that capture 1:36:51.439 --> 1:36:55.040 an essence. Actually, I recall now, this is what I 1:36:55.080 --> 1:37:00.960 wanted to ask you about please. Lately, I try I 1:37:01.000 --> 1:37:05.640 spend real time trying to feel experiences more than just 1:37:05.680 --> 1:37:06.320 think about them. 1:37:06.360 --> 1:37:07.839 I have a very. 1:37:07.840 --> 1:37:10.800 Like you know, kind of dominant analytic mind. I'm trying 1:37:10.800 --> 1:37:15.040 to think, strategize, understand, makes sense of always been like that, 1:37:15.680 --> 1:37:19.200 but in recent years, and especially this last year, I've 1:37:19.240 --> 1:37:22.880 just tried to like sense what's going on outside me 1:37:23.000 --> 1:37:26.759 and in me. And this form of intelligence is something 1:37:26.760 --> 1:37:29.360 that people have talked about for hundreds of thousands of years. 1:37:29.439 --> 1:37:32.760 It's a different form of intelligence. It's the one that 1:37:33.680 --> 1:37:37.680 I think has access to our unconscious mind in a 1:37:37.720 --> 1:37:39.880 way that thinking doesn't always have access to. 1:37:40.920 --> 1:37:42.599 It's not necessarily linked to emotion. 1:37:43.280 --> 1:37:46.040 It's just more of a are we drawn toward away 1:37:46.040 --> 1:37:48.839 from where we kind of neutral about a given person 1:37:48.920 --> 1:37:53.120 or experience, and it draws on a different set of 1:37:53.160 --> 1:37:53.919 neural circuits. 1:37:55.800 --> 1:37:57.280 And I started. 1:37:56.960 --> 1:37:59.479 Thinking about this in large part because of my love 1:37:59.479 --> 1:38:02.120 of dog. You know, my dog Costello I put down 1:38:02.120 --> 1:38:04.559 in July of twenty twenty one, and I always loved 1:38:04.880 --> 1:38:07.920 the bulldog because the first time I ever went to 1:38:07.920 --> 1:38:09.600 a dog show, which everybody should do. 1:38:09.640 --> 1:38:11.360 By the way, have you ever been to a dog show? 1:38:11.400 --> 1:38:12.000 Now we should go. 1:38:12.320 --> 1:38:14.320 So I was taken to a dog show by my 1:38:14.400 --> 1:38:16.840 then girlfriend when I was a post doc, and she said, 1:38:16.880 --> 1:38:18.800 you gotta go to a dog show, and it was 1:38:18.880 --> 1:38:20.559 and so we went to the dog show, but we 1:38:20.600 --> 1:38:23.360 didn't attend the show in front is the show where 1:38:23.360 --> 1:38:25.760 they're going over things and walking around and getting preyed around, 1:38:25.800 --> 1:38:28.200 and that part's cool. But the really cool part is 1:38:28.240 --> 1:38:30.400 you go in the back where you have all the 1:38:30.439 --> 1:38:33.719 dog breeders, with all the different breeds of dogs, usually 1:38:33.720 --> 1:38:37.160 five or six of each breed, and you can see 1:38:37.200 --> 1:38:40.800 the immense variation both in the structure but also the 1:38:40.840 --> 1:38:44.120 temperaments and therefore the nervous systems of these different animals 1:38:44.160 --> 1:38:46.360 all the same species also dogs, by the way, you 1:38:46.360 --> 1:38:49.200 have little ones and you have giants in Chihuahuas and 1:38:49.240 --> 1:38:52.000 great Danes in the same species. As far as I know, 1:38:52.040 --> 1:38:54.200 it's the greatest variation and brain and body size of 1:38:54.240 --> 1:38:59.120 any species. There's probably a you know, another species out 1:38:59.160 --> 1:39:01.280 there that someone will point doubt that you know makes 1:39:01.320 --> 1:39:03.880 me wrong, but it's at least the far end of 1:39:03.920 --> 1:39:06.600 the continuum in that sense. So I'm back there and 1:39:06.600 --> 1:39:08.200 I'm thinking I really want a dog. At some point 1:39:08.200 --> 1:39:10.479 I'm thinking I want a Rhodesian ridgeback, or I really 1:39:10.520 --> 1:39:12.400 like the you know, the wolf founds. I really love 1:39:12.439 --> 1:39:14.960 the Afghans. They look like people in dog suits, the 1:39:15.000 --> 1:39:18.160 way they want to move around and so so bright eyed. 1:39:18.240 --> 1:39:20.760 And then I looked over in the corner and there's 1:39:20.800 --> 1:39:26.479 this row of bulldogs snoring like a xylophone. And I 1:39:26.520 --> 1:39:28.559 went over and I asked the woman there, I said, 1:39:29.040 --> 1:39:31.840 an interesting breed of dog and said, oh, they're the best. 1:39:31.880 --> 1:39:33.439 And I said, well, everyone here says that about their 1:39:33.479 --> 1:39:36.120 breed of dog and said, yeah, but they're really the 1:39:36.200 --> 1:39:39.479 sweetest and they are the essence of efficiency. And so 1:39:39.520 --> 1:39:41.280 I woke one up and I started playing with it, 1:39:41.400 --> 1:39:46.040 and you realize that they don't react unless they need to. 1:39:46.080 --> 1:39:48.600 Some have more energy than others, but when they need to, 1:39:48.600 --> 1:39:50.600 they have a lot of energy available to them. But 1:39:50.600 --> 1:39:53.360 they have very little spontaneous movement. Now I'm not like this. 1:39:53.960 --> 1:39:56.720 I think I'm probably becoming more like this as the 1:39:56.840 --> 1:40:00.559 years go by, through some effort. But other breeds of 1:40:00.560 --> 1:40:03.679 dogs are constantly moving. They're like peripatetic. They're constantly moving. 1:40:03.680 --> 1:40:05.759 They're constantly moving, and it makes me a little nervous. 1:40:06.080 --> 1:40:08.840 Whereas the bulldog just made me feel very calm. So 1:40:08.920 --> 1:40:11.440 I got Costello not that day. I got him elsewhere, 1:40:11.800 --> 1:40:15.280 and I found that his presence, even his loud snoring, 1:40:15.880 --> 1:40:19.600 made me very calm. And he was not reactive to 1:40:19.680 --> 1:40:22.599 things that did not require reactivity to He was reactive 1:40:22.640 --> 1:40:25.160 when appropriate. And I'm not saying the bulldog is the 1:40:25.160 --> 1:40:27.880 perfect breed. In fact, I discourage people from getting them 1:40:28.000 --> 1:40:30.000 unless they have the means to take care of them, 1:40:30.040 --> 1:40:31.400 because they tend to have a lot of health issues. 1:40:31.400 --> 1:40:32.200 They're very inbred. 1:40:32.320 --> 1:40:35.960 It's kind of a cruel breed, especially in its modern iterations. 1:40:36.360 --> 1:40:41.559 But every dog has a different energy. So pay attention 1:40:41.600 --> 1:40:43.880 to how much spontaneous movement there is. Pay attention to 1:40:43.880 --> 1:40:45.600 where they put their eyes, how readily they just go 1:40:45.680 --> 1:40:48.439 to sleep or or not, how quickly they stand up 1:40:48.439 --> 1:40:50.760 and move, and then start to look at people, and 1:40:50.800 --> 1:40:53.320 you start to realize there's tremendous variation there. There's a 1:40:53.360 --> 1:40:56.400 bright eyed inness to certain people you're one of them, 1:40:56.479 --> 1:40:59.040 other like really at the level of their eyes that 1:40:59.080 --> 1:41:03.120 are there with you, and that also exude a feeling 1:41:03.160 --> 1:41:06.479 of calm. And so I've started paying more attention to 1:41:06.600 --> 1:41:08.640 how things make me feel. And I think This is 1:41:08.680 --> 1:41:11.479 why going on social media now, I feel like I'm 1:41:11.479 --> 1:41:14.439 eating twenty fifty five different cuisines at once, which would 1:41:14.439 --> 1:41:16.840 be disgusting, Whereas if I just kind of focus on 1:41:16.840 --> 1:41:20.719 one or two things, like I love different cuisine, different types. 1:41:20.520 --> 1:41:22.160 Of food, but I don't want them all at once. 1:41:23.160 --> 1:41:25.880 And so I think as humans, we are meant to 1:41:25.920 --> 1:41:28.479 experience a huge array of what life has to offer, 1:41:28.520 --> 1:41:30.479 and people have to offer not all of it, but 1:41:30.680 --> 1:41:34.840 a lot of it. And I feel like being able 1:41:34.880 --> 1:41:36.960 to sense into kind of the essence of music, or 1:41:37.000 --> 1:41:39.920 the essence of a person's presence, or the essence of 1:41:39.920 --> 1:41:43.080 a group, for me, has been very informative toward just 1:41:43.160 --> 1:41:46.000 kind of like realizing they're these different ways of interacting 1:41:46.560 --> 1:41:49.599 with the world. I don't want to sound too abstract here. 1:41:49.680 --> 1:41:51.880 I think what we're really talking about here is turning 1:41:51.880 --> 1:41:54.280 off traditional modes of thinking, which tend to be single 1:41:54.400 --> 1:41:58.920 track or dual track, and sensing energy, I think is 1:41:59.000 --> 1:42:03.519 more about taking a broader band analysis of what's going on, 1:42:03.640 --> 1:42:06.960 more visual field, more sensory field, and bringing it all 1:42:07.000 --> 1:42:10.519 in at once. And this is what we at least 1:42:10.600 --> 1:42:13.880 understand other animals to do, because they lack language at 1:42:13.960 --> 1:42:16.240 least in our form, and so they have to make 1:42:16.280 --> 1:42:19.240 decisions about moving toward, away from, or staying in a 1:42:19.280 --> 1:42:23.960 neutral position based on a kind of gestalt, like a 1:42:24.000 --> 1:42:26.280 whole picture of something. And I think it can be 1:42:26.320 --> 1:42:30.120 a very useful rudder with which to navigate. Now, of course, 1:42:30.160 --> 1:42:32.599 we also have to sharpen our attention and sharpen our 1:42:32.640 --> 1:42:36.240 intellect around certain things. But I think as time goes on, 1:42:36.360 --> 1:42:38.839 I'm I don't know, I'm trying to become more bulldog 1:42:39.040 --> 1:42:42.520 like for myself and for the people in my life. 1:42:42.640 --> 1:42:46.280 Because Costello made me feel safe, certainly made me feel accepted. 1:42:46.360 --> 1:42:50.679 He was very stubborn, but he also he took great 1:42:50.720 --> 1:42:55.160 delight in things, and he also could be quite the 1:42:55.160 --> 1:42:58.920 protector if he needed to be. And so I really thought, like, wow, 1:42:58.960 --> 1:43:01.040 if ever there was some energy is to embody, it 1:43:01.040 --> 1:43:03.559 would be the bulldog energy. And maybe for other people 1:43:03.560 --> 1:43:05.760 they need to embody a different energy. I think we 1:43:05.760 --> 1:43:08.479 can learn a lot by paying attention to animals, you know, 1:43:08.720 --> 1:43:10.639 Like I said, I spend some time with Rick Rubin, 1:43:11.120 --> 1:43:12.960 and I won't compare him to a bulldog. He's not 1:43:13.000 --> 1:43:17.760 like a bulldog like he's like a wolfhound. He's extremely 1:43:17.920 --> 1:43:22.080 still but then when he opens his mouth, that mind 1:43:22.720 --> 1:43:26.639 is it's like it's a force. And I know Rick 1:43:26.680 --> 1:43:29.040 well enough to know that he has this amazing ability 1:43:29.080 --> 1:43:31.360 to get very close to the energy of music and 1:43:31.400 --> 1:43:34.040 other people, but he doesn't get absorbed by it. It 1:43:34.080 --> 1:43:38.040 doesn't change him in a way that changes your experience 1:43:38.080 --> 1:43:41.520 of him. He's having experiences, but like there's a stability 1:43:41.560 --> 1:43:42.120 to him. 1:43:42.439 --> 1:43:47.040 He's like this cord of reliability, and I. 1:43:46.960 --> 1:43:49.280 Think that's one of the reasons why people gravitate towards him. 1:43:49.280 --> 1:43:53.280 It's also that beard is pretty often and your energy too, 1:43:53.360 --> 1:43:55.760 my friend. I haven't figured out what animal you are 1:43:56.000 --> 1:43:58.960 I'm looking for. I haven't figured it out, but it's 1:43:59.280 --> 1:44:02.680 You're very loving, but you're also very discerning. I think 1:44:02.720 --> 1:44:05.920 this is something that people probably don't realize about you. 1:44:06.000 --> 1:44:09.600 I'm not your psychologist, but you know, but you know 1:44:08.920 --> 1:44:14.240 you have a gift. You have a gift, and you 1:44:14.280 --> 1:44:18.360 give your gift in such plentiful ways and so many 1:44:18.360 --> 1:44:23.280 people benefit. And so you've also clearly learned to surround 1:44:23.280 --> 1:44:26.559 yourself with people that allow you to give and to receive. 1:44:26.880 --> 1:44:28.400 I say this with great admiration. 1:44:29.120 --> 1:44:30.960 I think I know you well enough now to like 1:44:31.160 --> 1:44:36.360 I know your heart like and yeah, yeah, I can 1:44:36.439 --> 1:44:39.479 feel it, like I can feel your love for what 1:44:39.520 --> 1:44:45.040 you do and how badly you want people to get it, 1:44:45.080 --> 1:44:48.720 but you know better than to do anything but just 1:44:49.040 --> 1:44:52.000 create an offering, and as a consequence, people flock to it. 1:44:52.880 --> 1:44:53.439 I love it. 1:44:53.600 --> 1:44:56.519 I love it, and I've grown tremendously from your books, 1:44:56.520 --> 1:45:00.200 from your teaching. I tell you this offline, so I'm 1:45:00.600 --> 1:45:03.200 now saying it. I'm now saying it recorded because I 1:45:03.200 --> 1:45:07.560 think it's really important that people understand that the podcasters, 1:45:07.680 --> 1:45:11.400 especially like whether or not it's you or Rick or 1:45:11.600 --> 1:45:14.800 Lex or and there's so many others, right or Joe 1:45:14.920 --> 1:45:17.479 or Tim or Whitney or whoever, Like, there's so many, 1:45:17.479 --> 1:45:21.640 too many to list, Like, we're all just being ourselves. 1:45:22.360 --> 1:45:25.599 That's the beauty of it. It's like Costello being Costello. 1:45:26.120 --> 1:45:28.680 And to some extent, sure there's you know edits and 1:45:28.680 --> 1:45:30.640 production all that kind of stuff, but it's just you 1:45:30.800 --> 1:45:33.800 being you. And to me, that's the most beautiful thing. 1:45:34.360 --> 1:45:36.920 It's what really works and it's what really matters, and 1:45:36.960 --> 1:45:39.280 I think it's what people should do even when there's 1:45:39.320 --> 1:45:42.719 no recording. You certainly do you know you're the same 1:45:42.760 --> 1:45:44.760 am mic and off Mike. It's one of the things 1:45:44.800 --> 1:45:48.160 I love about you, and I think it's what people 1:45:48.280 --> 1:45:51.240 we need to do. We all need to like also 1:45:51.280 --> 1:45:53.400 embrace that unique wiring that we each have. 1:45:54.160 --> 1:45:56.639 So absolutely well, Andrew, thank you for those kind words, 1:45:56.640 --> 1:45:58.559 and I don't take them lightly. I know you mean them. 1:45:58.560 --> 1:46:01.479 And what I've really share today is you've also shared 1:46:02.600 --> 1:46:06.160 the part of you that comes out naturally when we're together, 1:46:06.600 --> 1:46:09.080 and same with me, the part of me that's fascinated 1:46:09.080 --> 1:46:11.439 by neuroscience and everything you teach and and I think 1:46:11.479 --> 1:46:13.840 that's the beauty of it too. It's that I hope 1:46:13.840 --> 1:46:16.960 that everyone has been listening and watching today knows and 1:46:17.040 --> 1:46:19.200 loves you for what you do on a daily basis, 1:46:19.200 --> 1:46:22.439 but then can accept that there are different facets to you, 1:46:22.520 --> 1:46:25.120 There are different elements to you. There are different things 1:46:25.160 --> 1:46:27.639 that you're curious about, and you've shown them all today 1:46:28.000 --> 1:46:29.920 and laid them out. When they come to Huberman Lab, 1:46:30.320 --> 1:46:33.679 they're getting something very specific and they're getting that part. 1:46:33.800 --> 1:46:37.559 But you allow yourself to showcase different parts of your 1:46:37.560 --> 1:46:39.400 personality and I'm grateful that you shared that with me, 1:46:39.439 --> 1:46:41.519 you share that with my community. I want to thank 1:46:41.520 --> 1:46:45.479 you for joining me today and being so open and 1:46:45.560 --> 1:46:48.599 vulnerable and giving with your space and energy. And I'm 1:46:48.640 --> 1:46:52.439 glad that you feel confident and open enough to be 1:46:52.479 --> 1:46:55.519 able to do that, because it goes back to everything 1:46:55.560 --> 1:46:58.920 we've discussed today. We all want to feel safe and accepted, 1:46:59.680 --> 1:47:02.639 but in order to do that, we want all parts 1:47:02.680 --> 1:47:07.160 of ourselves to be accepted. Otherwise we can't truly feel safe. 1:47:07.240 --> 1:47:09.840 And so if I'm only accepted for one part of me, 1:47:10.240 --> 1:47:13.080 then I don't feel safe, and I feel safe only 1:47:13.120 --> 1:47:15.680 sharing one part of myself, then I'm not truly accepted. 1:47:16.160 --> 1:47:18.120 And so I think everything we've talked about today comes 1:47:18.120 --> 1:47:22.240 around beautifully full circle. And thank you for making me 1:47:22.280 --> 1:47:26.160 feel safe and accepted. Thank you for being safe and accepted. 1:47:26.320 --> 1:47:29.640 And I hope everyone who's listening and watching today focuses 1:47:29.680 --> 1:47:31.639 on doing that for themselves and the people they love. 1:47:31.760 --> 1:47:35.240 That would be a beautiful ripple effect from this show, 1:47:35.280 --> 1:47:37.760 that people go off and create that space for the 1:47:37.760 --> 1:47:38.679 people in their lives. 1:47:38.680 --> 1:47:41.280 So thank you, my friend, Well, thank you so much, 1:47:41.320 --> 1:47:44.080 thanks for having me. And as I said, I'm such. 1:47:43.880 --> 1:47:46.439 A huge fan of what you do and who you are, 1:47:47.200 --> 1:47:50.120 and you know and thank you for the kind words 1:47:51.000 --> 1:47:53.960 you know. I confess I have a bit of low 1:47:54.080 --> 1:47:57.120 level anxiety and sharing parts of myself I haven't shared 1:47:57.560 --> 1:48:01.479 publicly before, but since I was a kid, I always 1:48:01.720 --> 1:48:04.120 want to venture out a little bit further than the rest, 1:48:04.840 --> 1:48:09.240 usually with a pack, but sometimes alone. And you know, 1:48:09.280 --> 1:48:14.160 I'm trying to embrace positive change in myself by example. 1:48:14.640 --> 1:48:17.919 I mean, I am fallible and flawed like everybody. 1:48:17.960 --> 1:48:21.080 I have areas that still need work, certainly, and I'm 1:48:21.120 --> 1:48:23.880 going to keep working away and sharing what I learn. 1:48:24.479 --> 1:48:27.320 And I'm grateful for all of it. And I'm especially 1:48:27.320 --> 1:48:29.880 grateful to you right now, So thank you, my thank you, 1:48:29.840 --> 1:48:30.720 and I appreciate you. 1:48:31.280 --> 1:48:34.000 If this is the year that you're trying to get creative, 1:48:34.080 --> 1:48:36.639 you're trying to build more, I need you to listen 1:48:36.680 --> 1:48:39.599 to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break 1:48:39.640 --> 1:48:43.799 into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods 1:48:43.840 --> 1:48:47.679 that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving 1:48:47.720 --> 1:48:50.240 what you do. If you're trying to find your passion 1:48:50.320 --> 1:48:53.760 and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you. 1:48:54.240 --> 1:48:56.479 Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value, 1:48:56.800 --> 1:48:59.200 Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all 1:48:59.240 --> 1:49:02.840 of the value. That's the success comes when you say 1:49:03.240 --> 1:49:05.360 I like this enough for other people to see it.