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Being STRONG is more than just how much weight you can lift.
The Strong New York Podcast is dedicated to inspiring you to become your strongest self- in the gym, in business, in relationships and in life.
Join Kenny as he sits down with his strong as fuck buddies and shoots the shit on what it takes to be strong willed, strong minded and physically strong. Season one features everyone from entrepreneurs and local business owners to doctors and industry leaders in the fitness and wellness space.
With over a decade of experience, Kenny Santucci has made himself known as one of New York City’s top trainers and a thought leader in the health and wellness industry. After transforming his life at 15 years old through fitness, Kenny made it his mission to transform the lives of those around him.
Kenny has trained some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Jon Bon Jovi, Liev Schreiber, and Frank Ocean, and has been tapped as a fitness expert sharing his training approach with Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Runner's World, SHAPE, Well+Good, among other publications.
Kenny is the creator of STRONG New York, NYC's only Health and Fitness Expo. Strong New York is an immersive day of workouts, wellness experiences, panel discussions, and inspiring conversations with the best in-class wellness professionals, industry leaders, and change makers who are sharing their expertise on today's hottest wellness trends and first-hand experiences on how to optimize your overall health and life.
You can find Kenny at The Strength Club, his private training and group strength training facility in the heart of Manhattan located on 28th and 5th Ave in New York City.
Welcome back to another episode of Strong New York Podcast.I'm your host, Kenny Santucci, and as always, we are cracking cans of Celsius open, so grab yourself a can and live fit.Also, go to AmericHealth.com, get your blood work done, understand what's going on in your body so you can live the most optimal life you can imagine.Uh, today's guest is Dr. Dave Rabin.He is a psychiatrist.He is a neuroscientist.He's the co-founder of Apollo Neuroscience, and he has also just put out a book last week, 2 weeks ago- Last weekcalled The Simple Guide to Being Alive.Now, you guys know how much I un- I love neuroscience.I wanna understand more, and I think it is the foundation of, um, whathow we're gonna learn how to take better care of ourselves.So without further ado, Dr. Dave Rabin.Dave, the book, Simple Guide to, uh, Being Alive, I think there are so many people who areor life, society, has c- overcomplicated life.Mm-hmm.And we've made it so much harder.We don't know how to sleep.We don't know how to calm down.We don't know how to communicate.Give us a little hint as to, like, what the book's about, and so we can get you, uh, get some book sales here.Yeah.Yeah, I mean, I think in, in short, you know, I've, I've been, as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, I've been in school for longer than most people can ever imagine.Right?Like, I've been in school for 12 years of advanced medical and neuroscience training after college.It's a lot of school.Yeah.And I've learned a tremendous amount.But what was mind-blowing to me after I graduated from all of my training was that I learned even more, arguably at least 50% more, from seeing patients and living in the real world that should have been taught to me in school, should have been taught to me much younger.Mm-hmm.That, like, how we learn, and it's like we'reI realize, you know, we're asking people to learn fairly complex things without actually teaching them about the basic neuroscience of learning- Mm-hmmwhich we now understand well enough to teach anyone, like to teach an elementary school student, which is that the more you do anything and the more meaningful your experiences are, the tighter you learn them.And when you learn experience through doing or through experience, which is called bottom-up learning from, like learning to ride a bike or learning to walk- Mm-hmmwe, uh, or learning to play sports, you don't learn that by reading an instruction manual.You learn it by watching somebody do it and then emulating it and feeling the feeling in your body, right?Of being in the right position, of getting up on the bike and having it actually stay up under you, right?It's a feeling.That's called bottom-up learning.We don't really, we don't really teach people that way in most school, and now w- with Gen Z, we don't teach people that way at all because almost all learning is through screens since Gen Z.So people are really struggling with how to learn, and stress is interfering with that.And so from studying chronic stress, I've, over the last 20 years, I've learned a tremendous amount about how to accelerate learning and how to make learning more fun and easy, and how to translate that into actually preventing and healing mental illness.And so that's what's in the book.Well, I think that's what's so important about any job or any career that somebody's trying to go, trying to get these days.It's like, well, you need all these degrees.I think our generation has overcomplicated it.Or it's like- Absolutelyyou have to learn it from a book.You have to take a test on it.But then you never actually get to do the thing.Mm-hmm.Whereas in the past, like I said, I think we've overcomplicated life, where it's like, all right, you wanna become a electrician?All right, go hang with an electrician for the next 5 years.Right.Do all the shit he does.Learn, and you'll understand more than learning from a book.So that's basically what the book's about.I mean, it's a huge part of it, right?Yeah.It's, it's kind of like the core basis of how all of that works, which is that what you're describing is called mentorship, right?Mm-hmm.It's having somebody else who's a teacher, who's already done what you're learning to do and who already is adept and skilled at it, holds a safe space for us to learn how to do that thing.Mm-hmm.Right?Like when you're learning to do a new exercise in the gym that might potentially hurt you if you do it wrong, you might benefit from having a trainer show you.Sure.Right?You guys do that professionally here.So that kind of mentorship creates safe space, which then activates the vagus nerve on the inside of our bodies that governs all rest and recovery to actually put the body into a state that allows learning to happen.It facilitates learning more rapidly, more fully, and through full-body understanding rather than just, like, memorization, which fle- is fleeting, right?It disappears after 2 to 4 weeks if you don't use it.Mm-hmm.So what you're really doing by, through mentorship and teaching is we're holding safe space, which is activating part of the nervous system that creates a space that is, you know, optimized for learning to stick.Well, I mean, that's kind of how we learned for tens of thousands of years.Right.That's how we've done everything.Right, and through oral tradition and through experience.But that has been lost, and now we're seeing for the first time ever in Gen Z, Gen Z is the first generation, I don't know if you've seen these, this news, but the first generation that is scoring worse on standardized measures of cognition, reasoning, lear- reading comprehension, and math than the previous generation.So whatever complaints we may have about the education system over the years, generally speaking, aptitude and s- and skills have been going up generation after generation until Gen Z, and now they're sufficiently down- Mmwhich gives us grave concern as a society and should be like a red flag on the field because as soon as we start to see critical reasoning skills and learning comprehension and math skills go down, that means that our education system is failing, and we are regressing as a society.And so that needs to be remedied immediately, and part of the reason why we, they, that we suspect that to be the case is because starting in Gen Z, many of those kids started learning from screens rather than people.Yeah.And when you learn from a screen, you get the opposite of safety because screens give you blue light.They give you fast, rapid stimulation.You don't have to sustain focus on anything for intense period of time, right?You can just swipe and scroll and s- and et cetera, and you aren't getting the calming- Safe, ah, teaching from having a, an expert- Mm-hmmtraining you.Well, you, you had mentioned that in the book.We like finally had come up with these computers that we keep in our pocket, and they make us feel smarter than we actually are.But only because we can look up all this information.I feel like that's what's wrong with the younger generations now, not to sound like our parents or our grandparents, but they don't actually know- they never learned anything by experience.They just know what they saw on screen.Mm-hmm.Now, I read a while ago, I forget where the hell I read it, but it's basically saying that a different part of the nervous system or a different part of the brain is activated when we're communicating in person versus on a screen.Like there's something going on there.Could you explain that a little bit better as to like how that's not the same type of human connection?Yeah, absolutely.So, so when you and ISo going back to like in-person teaching- Mm-hmmand the benefits of that, right?When you and I are in person, and say you're training me to do something or I'm training you to do something, we're sitting here making eye-to-eye contact together.We're starting out the process of learning by recognizing what, that we share common humanity, right?You onceI recognize that if you're teaching me something, you were once in my position, learning from somebody else, and then you realize that you were once in my position, learning from somebody else.And so there's a certain common humanity of, and sameness that's acknowledged before we go into this new learning session together.Mm-hmm.Does that make sense?Yeah, yeah.And that is part, part, like part of that is what happens in person that's so powerful is when we make eye-to-eye contact, when we share body language, when we sit facing each other and our bodies start to emulate a certain, ah, l- like conversation back and forth, and you're listening to me and I'm hear- or I'm, and I'm hearing and seeing you, we just, we enter a state called limbic resonance, which, or start to enter a state called limbic resonance or coherence, where your emotional nervous system in your brainisresonating in the same frequency as mine.So we start to be on the same vibe, literally.Mm-hmm.And so that helps us to learn faster because that being on the same vibe together, the su- the closer we get to that faster, the soonerIf you're teaching me, my body gets into a state that's ready to receive the information that you have to offer me.Does that make sense?Yeah.There's, there's definitely like a chemical or a physical interaction that's happening that we don't even realize.Right.It's invisible- Yeahbut we feel it.Mm-hmm.And that's why when you're around somebody who really knows how to teach or you're around somebody who is somebody you respect, who is like really good at like creating safe space to ask questions non-judgmentally- Mm-hmmright, you feel really good because you're in a state that your body is li- is able, n- like, uh, neurologically, the fight or flight system is turned down, the sympa- the vagal parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system is turned up- Mm-hmmand all blood and resources get diverted away from skeletal muscles, which are required for fight or flight, into immunity, digestion, empathy, creativity, um, discovery, sleep, digestion, all of the good stuff that we want to be active when we're safe and at rest.And every time we practice that, it's like bodybuilding a muscle in the gym, but the gym is in here.It's an emotional brain gym, and we take it with us everywhere we go.So every time we notice that we're veering off into, you know, chronic, into stressful thoughts or thinking about the past or the future, we can literally redirect ourselves back to the body and come back to that strength and that emotional attention gym that we have.Yeah.I, I think it's so important that we, we treat the brain more like the body, right?Like everybody's like, "Okay, I wanna train my body.I wanna get it stronger."This is simple, easy, and understandable.But the brain is the exact same way.Mm-hmm.And we need to train it to do that.And I think we're missing a lot of that, that human connection nowadays.We don't have the ability to be around people as much because everybody's like, "Oh, you wanna ha- do a, a podcast?Well, let's do it on the phone."Or, "You wanna doWe'll do a Zoom call."And I'm like, "No, I, I don't wanna do any of that.I wanna be around people as much as I can, 'cause I wanna train that muscle as much as we can.Yeah.And I think, you know, going, jumping onto the next topic of, like, sleep.We were talking, you know, your, your book dabbles and, you know, when you talk about the importance of sleep.I'm one of these people who likes to hustle, and likes to work, and likes to push, and push, and push.Same.The onl- yeah, and I'm guessing you, I mean, spent 12 years in school.Um, you know, the, uh, the idea behind not being able to do that when it comes to sleep, you know, you can't, like, hustle your way-into better sleep, and I think that's one of the hardest- No, you cannotYeah.The, kind of dive into that a little bit about how we, how we become better at sleeping, and how we could calm down the central nervous system a little bit.So, so the first part is we have to understand a couple things about sleep that are really poorly taught, that I talk about in the book.So the first one is that sleep is something we were all born knowing how to do.So s- a lot of people, many, many people, like probably close to 30 to 50% of people, have at some point in their lives developed a thought process that they've practiced that goes something like, "What's wrong with me that I can't sleep?"Mm-hmm.There's nothing wrong with you, and you can sleep.It's not that you've lost the ability, it's that we're getting in our own way of f- asking, by asking the wrong questions.If you ask your self-critical part of your, of yourself, "What's wrong with you that you can't sleep?"Guess what?A whole bunch of answers are gonna pop up that could be proposed solutions to that-answers to that question.But they're not right, because the question is, is wrongly founded.Mm-hmm.There's nothing wrong with you.Every single human being, and the scientific evidence is, is overwhelmingly supportive of this, which is that 99.9% of humans worldwide biologically were born to sleep for a third of their lives on Earth.So think about that.So that's, like, our baseline state of the body, is that we were born to sleep- Mm-hmmfor a third of our time on Earth.Not, "What's wrong with me that I can't sleep?"So is that, is, does that make sense- Yeahfirst off, why that question shouldn't be asked, right?Doesn't make- It should be as natural asIt is as natural.Yeah.It's not that it should be.It's that it is.What, what, what happens is when we ask a question like, "What is wrong with me that I can't sleep?"you create an inner source of stress and fear in the body that is self-generated, because when you think that there's something wrong with you, then you start to have questions about whether or not you can keep yourself safe.And sleep is theor whether you can trust yourself, and sleep, you have, is one of the most vulnerable parts of our entire existence because we're physically paralyzed for part of sleep, and you're defenseless.So to be able to fall, to, to be able to fall asleep, we have to be safe, and if we create an inner source of threat, like the feeling of what's something being wrong with me, then I have just created a feedback thought loop in my brain that is literally self-sabotaging sleep from the inside, because it's creating a fight or flight fear response.Every time I ask what's wrong with me and try to answer that question, I'm creating a fear response in my body- Mm-hmmthat practices and strengthens the fear loop rather than the, "I was born to sleep.I'm going to breathe at the way, the way that I breathe when I sleep and imagine myself already sleeping."That's a very different approach.Does that make sense?Yeah.Yeah, totally.Uh, Chris, could you unplug the water fountain over there please?I don't know why that keeps going off like that.That's annoying the shit out of me.Can you hear that thing?I just noticed it when you mentioned it.Oh, my God.I'm sure you notice all the noises I hear.Oh, everything.Everything.Um, so we could talk ourselves out of this- Yeahis what you're saying.You can- Because- You can talk yourself out of it, you can think your way out of it, you can feel your way out of it- But-by just remembering the core principles- Mm-hmmthat sleep requires safety, safety all around.Not safety, not the idea of safety, the felt safety in the body, which means familiarity, certainty, and comfort and soothing.So you don't want anything new in your bedroom or your area of sleeping.That's why it's hard to sleep the first night you go to a hotel.Everything around you is new.Newness stimulates the fear center of the brain, the amygdala.So we're, how do we get, how or how have most of us gotten to this point where we don't feel safe and we, we have trouble sleeping?'Cause I don't know too many people who don't have trouble sleeping.Well, there's, there's, I mean, the main reason is because we're overstimulated during the day.Mm-hmm.So every time you pick up a phone and look at a screen, you're taking in stimulation to your amygdala.You're taking in blue light, you're taking in rapid fire, lots of information at once.When you look at your phone for half an hour in today's day, you are taking in as much information as the average human being took in in a week of being alive in the 1950s.So think about how many half hours of screen time we have each day.Mm-hmm.If each half hour is a week of the 1950s life, then we're having multiple weeks of information amount coming in within one day.Our bodies were not designed for that.We didn't evolve for that.The environmental pace has outpaced our coping s- our nervous, nervous system's evolved ability- Yeahto cope with it, right?And so the system, by the time we're trying to wind down for bed, s- is still overstimulated and amped up, and doesn't have, like, the normal cues from the environment of like, oh, the sun's going down.And- YeahI'm noticing, like, the temperature getting cooler, and I'm noticing the sounds changing.And, like, you're not, like, you don't have, most people don't have a wind down routine, and you combine that with, of course you're struggling to sleep because now your mind's noisy when you finally go into bed, 'cause you've been over- overstimulated all day.And then you've, of course will naturally, people will start to ask themselves and think, "What's wrong with me that I can't sleep?"The trick is to remind yourself that it's not, there's nothing wrong with you, the environment is overstimulating.I'm just going to have to reset by re-curating my environment a little bit more.So that means, like, again, s- creating soothing environments, removing anything new from the bedroom, you know, using, like, soothing sensations around you, soothing smells, soothing music, soothing touch, um, and doing slow, deep breathing, all, and imagining visualization, imagining yourself sleeping, all help to get you there.So there's so many products out on the market now.I mean, you have these machines that, you know, uh, a sound machine, and a cooling bed, and eye mask, and mouth tape, and nose tape, and all these different things.Do we necessarilyDo, do these help us sleep?Are they enhancing the, our sleep performance, or are they just kind of a distraction at this point?I mean, s- so some of them definitely help with sleep, uh, for certain people.Sure.I think that what's really hard for the general public to understand when they look at sleep products available, when something like 30 to 50% of people are struggling with sleep right now, 30 to 50% of Americans, we're talking, like, well over 100 million people are struggling with some part of sleep, and most of these products don't actually have any scientific proof that they work to enhance sleep duration or quality.Mm-hmm.And so we wanted to create something that actually was scientifically proven to work.And so, um, back in 2020, we released Apollo, which was a tool that uses sound waves to calm the body.I'm wearing it on my chest.Um, and you can wear it on your ankle or anywhere on your body.On your wrist, yeah.Yeah, when you sleep.Ankle's the most popular spot for sleep.Um, and it, uh, it delivers, like, effectively a soothing soundtrack for your skin that feels like a hug or a purring cat that helps rock you to sleep faster.And we just published a study, uh, in over 900 people with Aura Ring that shows that in just as little as one night of calming your body, which is the same thing that happens when you deep breathe properly, you get on average 46 more minutes of sleep a night with increased REM and it, and sustained deep sleep architecture.So that's as much sleep as Ambien from using a wearable product that you just turn on and it does its thing automatically.Mm-hmm.Which has never ha- it had been dis- nothing like that has ever been discovered before in the history of sleep medicine and science.So it's really, really exciting for wearable tech right now.So dive into that a little bit more.Where'd the idea come from and, you know, how'd you guys kind of discover this?Because- SureI kn- I know the vagal nerve is so important when it comes to stress and calming the body down, um, but kind of dive into how you came up with the product.Well, so I was working, um, as a psychiatrist, I was working with veterans with severe PTSD.Mm-hmm.And it started in about 2012, and then went in through 2018.This was, like, a very large percentage of my patient population, and all of these people had insomnia, very severe insomnia, just, and in addition to all the other symptoms of PTSD they had.And these people were, they went through basic training and they served overseas, so, like, they were very, very well skilled at dealing with stress, and they came back and were siv- were very sick.Couldn't w- WhyCan we, can I stop you?Yeah.Why is that, do, because these guys get used to, like, living in this fight or flight battle zone for a long time, and then come back here and you would think they'd be more calm, but in a, in reality, they're actually more restless.Why is that?Well, in the, so what we think is happening is that, and what science is showing is happening, is that when the body is in states of extreme prolonged stress for an extended period of time, it adapts to that state.So when they come back after spending nearly every day worrying about whether they're gonna survive or not, they come back to civilian life where they don't have the same kind of threats, but they're, mentally they get that, but their m- body does not.And so their body constantly remembers that it has to be braced for impact at any moment.Yeah.But they're just at the grocery store.So then they're checking out at the grocery store, somebody drops a bottle behind them, it makes an exploding sound, and their body breaks it, braces for impact and goes into a full flashback, right?And so that's what happens to these folks because their bodies are s- are effectively stuck in a chronically stressed state, and it- that stressed state is very metabolically expensive, so it takes all the resources from the rest of the body to operate.Now, explain the, the science of that.There, is it the nervous system?Because when you say the body, it's like, is it the nervous system?Because it's gotta be some sort of the, part of the brain that's getting triggered.But you're saying like, we, we understand the, the frontal lobe understands, like, "All right, I'm in a safe space.I'm okay."But what part of the brain is actually being affected by that-or is stuck in that pa- space?So the part that gets trained the tightest is the amygdala- Mm-hmmwhich is the fear center of the brain.Sure.And that interprets contrast and newness and uncertainty.So effectively, that part gets trained to be hyper, what we call hypervigilant to your surroundings, always looking over your shoulder, never necessarily feeling safe, always making sure that you're watching out for yourself because there may not be somebody watching out for you.Mm-hmm.Right?And if you're not watching out, then you could die.So the amygdala gets trained into this fear loop that then associates with all the other experiences you have had over that time that it's being stimulated.Mm-hmm.So it's not just the situation you were in, it's the smells, the tastes, the s- the sounds, the s- you know, the sights, everything gets associated with the, with the threat response through the amygdala.Then that trains the whole adrenal system in the body, which we call the HPA axis or the hypothalam- h- hypothalamus pituitary axis that goes straight to your adrenal glands and results in that huge stress response of adrenaline increasing and- Adrenaline and cortisolnorms, right, all the s- all the things that- Yeah.What-over time cause disease.And now we, we tend to see, like, cortisol obviously coming up, and that starts to affect the way we could rest, we develop even muscle tissue.Mm-hmm.You know, could you dive into that a little bit?Well, I mean cortis- so the, the body'sI guess the way to think about is not necessarily with respect to cortisol 'cause it's pre-cortisol- Yeahthe problem.So the body, if you think about it from a resource allocation perspective, the human body has blood, and blood delivers 2Blood has 2 functions.It's delivering resources like oxygen, vitamins, and minerals- Mm-hmmto every, and glucose, to all parts of all cells in the body, and it's also carrying away waste, right?So when we are at a normal resting state, we have about 20% of our blood going to skeletal muscles, and then we have about 20% going to, uh, like liver and kidneys.There's like 5 or 10% going to brain, 5% for heart, and then there, the rest of it is kind of distributed throughout the body, which is a decent percent.It's like tens of percents, and you canThe body can say, "Oh, I'm digesting food, so I need more blood," and the body freely gives that blood through regulation of the vagus nerve.Mm-hmm.As vagus nerve activity goes up, the body has the ability to redistribute blood to sleep, digestion, immunity, reproduction, creativity, empathy, all the things that we don't want to be active when we're running from a lion.Yeah.But when we think we're running from a lion or we're actually running from a lion, and the nuance there is it doesn't matter if the lion's real or not, the lion could be your email or the news or it could be, uh, past trauma that you're reminded of, the body takes all 80%-plus of that blood flow and d- and re- and when the stress response system gets activated, it squeezes tight all the blood vessels going to reproduction, immunity, digestion, and then reallo- and then dilates all the vessels going to skeletal muscles.And it reallocates blood flow so that the skeletal muscles are getting 80-plus percent of blood flow so that if we need to fight or flee in any moment, we're ready to do it.The body's like, "Brace for impact."It's ready to do what it needs to do because it perceives we could die at any moment.Mm-hmm.That is not a state where learning is getting any resources.It's a state where learning is turned off except to get to survival.Mm-hmm.Does that make sense?Yeah.So sleep is imp- is completely inhibited.Cortisol gets increased, and that's not affectingThat, that over time has a long-term effect on muscle mass and the way we build muscle and all that, but more than anything, all of the learning systems in the body are deprioritized with resources because the body's single 2 focuses are fight or flee.Mm-hmm.Nothing else matters if we are under a state of chronic stress.So every system that's not related to fight or flee is turned off and getting m- minimal resources and minimal waste pickup.So imagine how long you would survive with one meal a day and p- you know, garbage pickup every 3 months.Like, it wouldn't be pretty.Yeah.Right?No, it, it's actually scary that you- Amy, you're asking about how chronic stress affects long-term survival.See?Even my watch knows.Um- The robots are judging us.Um, so going back to what you were saying, how you discovered how this could help calm people down.Yeah.You know, 0 one of the things I think is so important is the idea of human touch, being around people who kinda calm you down, you feel good with them.I love acupuncture.I think that's one of the ways that I, I find very calming, like when they pin your ear and it calms your nervous system, I love that.But talk about the, the product a little bit more.Well, so you wereSo youIt goes back to what we were talking about originally with the power, the healing power of human connection and why in-person experience is so important- Yeahfor healing and growth.And ultimately in my patients- Mm-hmmwho I was treating with severe PTSD- We were, we knew all of the techniques to teach them to heal and to recover, but they were so stressed out from their, from their past trauma that they couldn't even learn the stuff we were teaching them, the meditation, the breathwork, the workout routines, the exercise routines, the cognitive psychotherapy routines, all of that stuff.They're like, "In office, I understand it.I get it, doc."And then they go home and try to put it into practice and they're so stressed out that they haveTheir body resists learning new habits.The learning stops.Oh.Does that make sense?Yeah, yeah.So we're basicAnd then they're like, "What's wrong with me that I can't learn this thing that I know works?"And then it just sets them up for failure.So what we realized is what helped them actually reduce their symptoms more than the things we were teaching them, and the medications, was human connection, soothing touch, soothing music, and experiences that made, that soothed them and made them, reminded them that their bodies were safe.So we thought, well, what ifAnd of course, through the psychedelic research, MDMA-assisted therapy also activates, as a molecule, activates the safety pathways in the brain.So I thought, well, if all of this is around, works around safety, what if weAnd safety activates the vagus nerve, that's the molecular neurological pathway.What if we could create technology that activates the vagus nerve through the safety pathway by touch, by way of touch, and then w- write songs for your skin instead of your brain that help to bring the body into a state of calm?And so we spent 4 years working on this at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for veterans, and then we started making wearable prototypes and tested it on ourselves after doing our first double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical studies.And we showed that not only is this the very first technology ever to boost heart rate variability, the leading metric of performance and longevity, and vagus nerve activity in people with chronic stress and people with mental illnesses like PTSD, it's the first technology to improve sleep just by wearing it, and cognitive performance, and recovery after physical and mental stress.And we started testing it on ourselves, my wife and I, and we don't have a diagnosis, and it was life-changing for us.Like, the amount of sleep we got back, the amount of energy we had the next day, it was unbelievable.And so we realized, this is 2019, we had to turn this into a consumer product that anybody could access.And so we released it and called it Apollo after the god that, Greek god that gave the gift of music and medicine to humanity.So what's a good amount of deep sleep or REM sleep that we should be getting or we should be shooting for?Because I feel like a lot of people now have wearables.We're all wearing something to, uh, work on our sleep and work on our, uh, you know, our step count, but like, I don't think most people understand what they should actually be, even be getting.And then how could I improve that where using the wear- using Apollo?So the, the reason why Apollo is so, works, it, and why, is why people use it is because it, they don't have to do anything.You just take it, you connect it to your phone, and then you put it on your ankle, and then you go to bed.Mm-hmm.And, uh, and it turns on automatically to wind you down and put you to bed, prevent your wake-ups when you are trying to sleep, and then wakes you up in the morning at the time that you ideally should wake up in between your REM cycles.So Apollo just does it for you, and that's why it's such a unique intervention, and that's why it's been so successful in hundreds of thousands of people, um, and all of the clinical, 17 clinical trials we've conducted.Um, the way that, the way that we get back to, to that is that we need to remember that s- that sleep is our baseline state.Mm.Like, sleep is the, is the core state where our bodies evolve to rest and recover, and we can't achieve peak performance consistently without prioritizing peak recovery.They have to be in balance.It's like we, you don't have to, you can't drive forever and not refuel your car.Mm-hmm.We all accept that as a reality.Yeah.But that's the same for our bodies, and we don't really think about them that way.But our bodies need maintenance.Our carOur, our bodies need fuel.They need high-quality fuel, and they need high-quality maintenance, and most of that fuel and maintenance comes from us just listening to it.And so, um, the, you know, tracking your REM sleep and your deep sleep and your total sleep time, you know, is really about optimizing the percentage of time during sleep that we spend in deep and REM sleep.We don't really have a cap.We wanna get it more each time.Mm-hmm.Ideally, we're spending most of our time sleeping in deep and REM sleep.The more time we do that, the more vagus nerve activity goes up, the lower our heart rate goes down when we're sleeping as a sign of rest, uh, high quality rest, and the more that our HRV goes up.But again, the whole point is that you feel rested the next day.And what most people don't realize is that the best wearable trackers, the best wearable trackers are, like, 65 to 75% accurate at best for sleep staging.They're, like, 95% accurate, like Oura Ring, for sleep, total sleep time and HRV and heart rate, but they're only, like, 65 to 75% accurate for deep and REM sleep and other sleep stages.So it doesn't really make that much sense to fixate so much on the individual amounts and numbers of deep and REM sleep.Mm-hmm.It makes more sense to fixateto, to not, to not fixate at all, to just, like, use it as a guide after you've checked in with yourself in the morning and said, "How rested do I feel?"And then check to see maybe once or twice a week, is my ring or my watch showing me the same kinds of results or not, right?Because it's not always accurate.Like, nothing is more accurate than your ability to feel your own feelings.Mm-hmm.And the, the wearable technologies are ways to help us learn to become more in touch with how our bodies feel and what to do with them when we're trying to get into an optimal state of learning.We wanna trend all the good stuff like deep and REM sleep and HRV up over time, but the optimal level is not necessarily known.We just want it to keep going up.So just to close up the whole idea behind sleep, we should all be getting, you know, the recommended dose of 7 to 8 hours of sleep?I mean, what's your- Well, it'sI mean, it's not evenThat's what I mean.It's not about that.Yeah.It's about how rested do you feel.Yeah.So if you get 7 hours of sleep but basically no deep and REM sleep, you're still gonna feel like shit.Can I say that?Yeah, yeah.You're still gonna feel like shit.So is that helpful?No.Right.So, like, Michael Breus, the, the sleep doctor who's a very good friend and collaborator on Apollo because it's the only thing that he's seen work for his patients, you know, we talk about this misunderstanding about sleep.It's not about theIt's not about getting a total number of, of amount of hours.It's about how e- how efficiently are you sleeping and how qu- what is the quality of your deep and REM sleep as a percentage of the total.Mm-hmm.Ideally, you want your deep sleep plus your REM sleep to be, like, half of your total sleep or more.Yeah, yeah.Right?So that matters more than anything else, and the reason why we know that is because people take drugs like Ambien, which also gives you somewhere between 40 and 60 hours of sleep or 40 and 60 minutes of sleep a night back- Mm-hmmthe same as Apollo, by the way.Now you can get the same amount of sleep back with Apollo as- And you don't have to take Ambienand you don't have to take Ambien, and you have no side effects.And Apollo helps your REM sleep improve by calming the body.Ambien gives you the same amount of sleep back as Apollo, but it hurts REM and deep sleep, which is why people feel often groggy and un- unpleasant- Yeahthe next day, and they have other side effects.And so you don'tMost people don't want that.Like, it's not worth the risk of havingof sleepwalking or sleep eating or sleep driving, like the side effects of Ambien, or feeling groggy the next day or any of those things be- just to get 30 more minutes or f- or 60 minutes more sleep.And so we're trying to create- Mmas, as doctors and as scientists- Yeahbetter alternatives that are healthier and safer that work with the natural systems of the body to help people heal.Mm-hmm.And so going back to the wayLike, Apollo is a bottom-up tool.It teaches through experience, through feeling in the body, this is what it feels like to feel calm before bed.Mm-hmm.This is what it feels like to sleep through the night, right?That's a bottom-up learning tool.The book is a top-down learning tool like all books that help to explain, give you the map, and the, theThis is the path of how to walk from where you are to good night sleep every single night.Apollo is the feeling.And through our work with veterans, we learned some people, and in fact most people, need to feel what it feels like first.Then they can learn top-down through words.Does that make sense?Mm-hmm.So for anybody out there who's struggling with sleep, don't obsess about the amount of time.It's how good you feel the next day.Don't obsess about anything.Yeah.The more you obsess, the more you stimulate your fear center in your brain.The whole point is just to make sleep gentle- Yeahand easy and fun, and just remember, I know how to do this.I got this.But do you think we're too far gone when it comes to society as a whole?Like, we need to have multiple platforms we're all working on, and we have to have, uhWe have to check our phones every minute.Like, I rememberI don't remember very clearly, but I remember a time when it's like you didn't have to check a phone.You didn't have to worry about who's emailing you.You still don't.I mean, just to be the c- just to be the devil's advocate here- Well, how do you do it?You, you still don't.You have a kid.You're married.You have multiple businesses.You're still, uh- I still see patientsstill seeing patients.How do youLike, how do you calm down?I, I mean, first off- Because there's gotta be some levels of stress within your jobOh, tons of stress.Yeah.Yeah.My life is con- stress is inevitable.Yeah.Right?Like, all we can do is try to con- try to, like- Manage it and so forthand, and try to see it as a growth opportunity- Yeahand limit the amount of stress.But, like, stress is always there.Mm-hmm.You know?Like, my car just broke down the other day, and it was the first day we're moving into a new house.Like, talk about unpredictable stress, and right before I left forthe same day I left for this trip.Yeah.Right?Like, that was a huge amount of unexpected stress, but you j- we just have to look at it from the perspective of Not why me or what's wrong with me that the stress is happening.If you- Just handle ityou probably notice the same language nuances that I described with sleep.It's about asking the right questions.It's not when stress comes, I'm not asking, "What's wrong with me that I have to deal with this right now?"Or, "What's wrong with me that this happened to me?"Or, "What did I do to deserve this?"Those questions I have eliminated from my consciousness through practice.Mm-hmm.Now, when stress comes, no matter how bad it is, I ask, "What can I learn from this right now?"Right?How can I grow from this experience right now?And that transforms distress into eustress, which is good stress.Mm-hmm.The, the kind of stress that helps us to grow.So by developing those kinds of techniques, I've learned youwe can all learn to b- body build that emotional, those emotional muscles in our brains- Mm-hmmanywhere we are.Again, it's like the same things that you guys do with people here in the gym.Sure.But we're trying to help people realize that there is a very powerful and effective gym that lives up here that we can take anywhere.Yeah.So how do you start t- teaching people these techniques?Because I work with people a lot, and I know a lot of people come in here stressed out.And part of what we do here, uh, as trainers and, you know, the, the way I like to run my program is that we always have somebody work out with somebody else.Mm-hmm.So when you're in this communication period where you're talking to somebody else, you kinda lose track of all the stuff that's, you know, kinda worrying you outside, and you're only focused on the workout.And somebody else is kinda reliant on you, so you can't be, like, checking your phone all the time.I see a lot of people when you go to, like, a big box gym, people go to the big box gym, and they're sitting on the, you know, a piece of equipment, and they're texting away, and they're d- And they haven't gotten any work done, and they've been there for over an hour.You know, what we try to do is IYou're in and you're out.In the hour, we're making sure you maximize what you get, but you also have this chance to communicate and have somebody else rely on you.And I think a huge part of life that a lot of people are missing these days is having a purpose.Mm-hmm.You know?And purpose goes hand-in-hand with service.I think every, every job, every career, everything we're trying to do is, is a life of service.So how do we service people the best possible way we can?So in your practice, how are you teaching people these techniques to calm down?Now, you, you had mentioned breathing.Obviously giving them the Apollo so that they could sleep and then could calm them down.But, like, I feel like if it was that easy, we'd be able to solve a lot more people's problems.So, like, what is the best way you've found that could help people de-stress a little bit or understand stress and how to manage that, and then how to kinda tackle life- Yeahon a day-to-day basis?Yeah, you know, I thinkI mean, I think it is arguably a lot easier than we, than we let on because we're not teaching people how to do it properly.Mm-hmm.You know?And, and this is what I talk about in the book, is that a lot of the science behind how we learn and how we make decisions has been known for over 50 years.It just, we're teaching people in school science from pre, pre that time, from, like, 50 years ago, and it hasn't been updated.So for instance, uh, we have a choice in every decision we make.Every time we look at our phone, every time we choose to think about something, every time we choose to put our attention on anything, we're choosing to give our power to that thing and allow that thing to mingle with our energy.Mm-hmm.So if we choose to look at our phone and doomscroll, we're choosing to allow that energy from the phone to mingle with our energy.And if that's not serving you or if it's not contributing meaningfully to you and your quality of life, then it's diminishing you.So youSo theYou know, I keep my phone in do not disturb nearly all the time, to the annoyance of s- great annoyance of some people, but- But I check my phone basically once an hour when I'm awake and, you know, with the exception of, like, a few hour- an hour in the morning and a few hours at night.And I just make sure that, like, anything that's emergency or on fire I've addressed.But I don't let my phone control when I pay attention to it.I don't let it send me notifications because it wants my attention, or it wants me to think that it wants my attention.I do not allow that.That's not acceptable in my world.My phone is not in charge of where my attention is, right?So, like, s- setting simple boundaries like that with how we use technology and making sure that we use technology intentionally.For me, using technology's about building community.It's about bringing people together.So when I'm interacting with my phone or with any screen device, I'm doing things with it primarily with the intention of bringing people together and creating community, not the opposite.Mm-hmm.And so that, and you know, and making people laugh, and, like, creating, like, fun.That's what I use technology for.It has that ability, right?Like, we just released an, uh, an Apollo ver- an Apollo app for the iPhone that I think I might have showed you, um, that is free, that delivers Apollo's scientifically backed, patented vibration patterns through the iPhone to any one of the 1.4 billion people with an iPhone worldwide.So now you can share a vibe with a friend for free that turns their iPhone into a healing te- technology that is clinically proven to heal you and increase your vagus nerve activity and heart rate very quickly.Wow.So it's literally that simple.It's just how we think about where we're putting our human energy.What's the app?It's, it's the Apollo Neuro app.Yeah, you just go to the i- App Store.You can jump on the same vibe I'm on right now- Mm-hmmwhich is the Good Vibes vibe, and it's free.And you just go to the Apollo Neuro app in the App Store.It's 2 words.And you can download it, and, and then you can shareYou know, it literally makes it as easy to share positive feelings with other people- Mm-hmmas it is currently easy to share negative feelings.Yeah.And so if we choo- but if we choose fear, if we choose, you know, to look at other people suffering, if we choose to invite negativity into our lives, then we're making that choice.There's no other way around that, right?Other than recognizing that we are making the choice and make a different choice.Yeah.I mean, as much as I try to force my mind into thinking more positively and be in a better mood, I still feel like there's this wave of anxiety and stress always coming, you know?And IMaybe that's the way I'm programmed or that's the way I grew up, but I feel like a lot of us nowadays feel this wave of, like, uncertainty coming, and we don't know what to do.How do you talk people out of that?Well, so anxiety is dir- the amount of anxiety we feel, the size of that wave- Yeahis directly proportionate to how many things we're paying attention to that are not under our control s- in this moment.Mm-hmm.So certainty comes from the feeling of your attention being on things you can control, and basically in any given moment, there's only 6 things we can control.There's your breath.There's your listening attention, there, like m- meditation and mindfulness, your ability to just tune into whatever you want any time.There's touch.There's smells, paying attention to smells and tastes, and there's sleep and rest and nourishment, right?Mo- and movement, like, like, moving your body, right?That's only, like, 6 or 7 things that we can control in any moment.So when you realize what those things are, then anything that is not those things we can't control in any moment.They're outside of our control.If we focus on those things or we focus on the past or the future, then we will feel outFor 50% of the time, we'll feel out of control 50% of the time.Mm-hmm.And then our anxiety will go up that much more.That size of that anxiety wave goes up that much more.So what we teach people is effectively that you, if you have control over your attention, which many people were not taught they have control over, then you can redirect your attention at any moment to things you have control over, like your breath, like flinging your body around, like s- you know, choosing to smell and notice the, you know, scents in the air.Whatever it is that is a sensory experience in the body, we have control over that, and when we do that 50% more of the time, then we've just cut the amount of uncertainty thoughts and the anxiety in half.And then you do it a little more, and you cut it even more.So the amount of time you spend thinking about things you have control over increases your sense of certainty, which turns down the amygdala that's blasting off when we're paying attention to the size of the anxiety wave and what we don't have control over.Does that make sense?Yeah.No, absolutely.Well, I think up until this, the last 5 years, we've treated a lot of this stress, anxiety, sleep issues with medications.Mm-hmm.And for a very long time, a lot of psychedelics and nootropics have been demonized in a way.You know, I love any type of L-theanine, you know, uh, lion's mane, anything that could stimulate brain activity.Uh, I think caffeine and nicotine have been demonized for a very long time, and I, I'm not gonna lie, I like a mushroom every once in a while.I think a lot of this stuff helps me calm down and relax, but I think the prescription for a lot of people still is to take all these medications.You know, where do you see that whole world, because you're, you're in the thick of this.You're, you're studying this.Where do you see this all shifting?Like, you, I know you studied MDMA for a while.Yeah so, I mean, so the medications that we use in Western medicine, like SSRI antidepressants and many other types of psychiatric medication or pain medication, are really great for stabilizing people when they're in crisis.That's what they're designed for.Mm-hmm.And they're clinically proven and really fantastic at that specific thing, stabilizing people in crisis.The problem is that once people achieve stabilization- We don't have a lot of tools that are helping people to transition back to normal, self-sufficient li- life where they're doing it on their own, they're not reliant on medications.So we end up continuing the medications.A lot of doctors end up continuing the medications and not teaching the, the s- the self-care skills and s- the adaptation skills, and then people never end up stopping taking them.They just take them for life.That doesn't solve the problem, it just perpetuates it, and it's like having a Band-Aid on a broken leg.Yeah.The leg is still broken.So we have to go back in and look at, well, what, where's the actual injury?And trauma, when we experience trauma, trauma's not what we f- are often taught it is, like some horrific thing that happened to you.It doesn't have to be that.Trauma's having an experience like experiences we've all had where we change, it changes the way we see ourselves from being an agent of where our decisions matter and create an outcome of des- that we desire to being a victim of circumstance.It changes us from being, going, from being asking, "What can I learn from this experience?"to, "What's wrong with me that this happened to me?"Mm.That shift is what trauma does to the body, and it decreases vagus nerve activity.So there's a neurological memory of traumatic experiences that increases our stress response across the board.And so, um, by training our bodies to be ex- to exposed to stress, like, uh, learning new things that might be challenging for us or sauna, cold plunge, or, um, any kind of, like, working out, exercise, um, the mental exercises I was talking about earlier, you're training yourself to have more discomfort tolerance and to be better at bouncing back from stress, which increases resilience and then increases your overall happiness and outlook on the world.So a lot of it has, is, a lot of it's like a chain reaction that comes from rebalancing the nervous system, regulating the nervous system.All of a sudden, you turn learning on.Learning starts to get easier because the body feels safe enough to give resources to learning systems in the brain.Mm-hmm.Then, all of a sudden, we soak in more information, and our sponge-like effect becomes better, and then we're able to start doing more stuff on our own.Yeah.Then people don't rely on the medication as much.We can taper them off of it, and that's the goal.Psychedelic medicines take that as pr- into a totally different paradigm where they're m- functioning more like antibiotics for mental illness.So people are taking between one and 12 doses of a psychedelic medicine over one to 12 weeks, and the same patients that were not responding to regular medicines and being called treatment-resistant, even after throwing the kitchen sink at them, and, um, they're sick for decades, they're experiencing one to 12 doses of psychedelic, and they're no longer meeting diagnostic criteria for their mental illness in 12 weeks, the majority of them.Wow.And that gets better over time without additional treatment, which is like an antibiotic-like effect.We've never seen that with mental illness in the history of psychia- psychiatric drugs.So who's really pumping the brakes on having this become a actual treatment for people?Because I hear about it all the time, the, um, you know, I know there's a couple other, not just, uh, MDMA, but there's also, um, ibogaine and a lot of these other drugs that are out there that we're just a little hesitant on giving to people, and we're not asYou know, I know a lot of people who go down to, like, Mexico to go get this or, um, you know, Argentina.They're, you're, they're trying a lot of these other drugs.It's, it's never here.Um- Why are we so hesitant on this?Well, the, the reason why is, and you probably heard because of the recent presidential announcement, right, about accelerating psychedelic therapy and access for patients with serious mental, mental illness, which was, like, 2 months ago- Mm-hmmum, thanks to Joe Rogan pushing the president to do that.Yeah, yeah, I saw that, actually, yeah.Um, the reason why we're in the situation we're in in the States is because of the Controlled Substances Act in the ni- in 1970 that was passed by Richard Nixon that was to prosecute, um, uh, f- minorities and people who ran anti- anti-Vietnam War, uh, organizations, who often tended to be people who were using medi- like psychedelics- Mmor be associated with psychedelics.And it was a racist policy that is now well known and admitted to have been a racist, racially motivated policy.And so that was mentioned on public TV, right?In, in front of the nation.I think that's like a really, really big deal that for cannabis and psychedelic medicines like MDMA and psilocybin and ibogaine, thank- like the data's finally being critically evaluated and the federal government is now actively talking about ways to fast-track it.So, um, and I, I think it helps that Tania De Jong i- uh, in Australia has moti- has used the same study data that we have collected here and presented it to the Australian government and it has now a fully functional training and treatment program for psychedelics like MDMA and psilocybin running there successfully, right?So we're now behind, even though most of the research came out of the United States.So, um, it's very racially and politically motivated, the laws and, you know, we can only be hopeful that those will change now that the executive branch is, um, behind it and starting to understand that we actually do have the potential to cure mental illness by 20- in the, you know, by 2030, at least the first mental illness and, um, really driving more resources toward that.And again, it's, it makes this easily the most exciting time in the history of mental health research to have those options available.But to anybody who's, who's struggling with, uh, in this mental illness area, ketamine is currently a legal psychedelic medicine that can be accessed.It's legal?Yeah, ketamine is legal.Yeah.Yeah, it's the only legal psychedelic.And like we provide ketamine therapy in our clinic.There are lots of accredited clinics that people can look to.Um, especially if you go to like psychedelic.support, they have a great list of clinics that are, you know, accredited, vetted and cl- vetted clinics for that, accessing that work.I had a gentleman speak at our event last year who was a, um, kind of research, uh, kind of researched a lot of psychedelics and how to use them the right way.He had actually sent me a, a ketamine spray.So I'll do like a little spray of that.You know, I think that, and that's a good way to microdose it.You know, I get a li- and I'm like, "Okay, I'm in a better mood."You know, I, for a, for a very long time, I feel like we've, we've, uh, we've demonized a lot of these drugs and in reality I think they help more people.I'veNow obviously I say the same thing about peptides.I don't know your thoughts about peptides itself, but any abuse of any drug is gonna give you a negative effect.For sure.Given the right dosage, it's, it's pretty helpful.Yeah.A- and part of the problem is we just don't teach or use a lot of the drugs properly, and when they are legal then the proper regulation doesn't get, uh, put into place and clinicians aren't trained properly on how to do it because it's federally illegal, and so it's outside of our licensure.Sure.Right?So now we're starting to, to go back and, and, you know, revamp Western medical education.My medical board, the Board of Medicine, is a leader in this, providing, you know, evidence-based sta- gold standard best practices for how to deliver different psychiatric treatments, l- new psychiatric treatments like ketamine therapy properly and safely.Um, and it's not microdosed, by the way.It's macrodose ketamine.Wow.Is one of, is one of the most miraculous medicines we have ever discovered because it has anesthetic properties, so it's very safe and it's been used for over 70 years to evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield and to put, uh, children and pregnant women under anesthesia, and people who are very poor candidates for general anesthesia, um, they use ketamine in the OR.And so it's very, very safe, and we use much, much less, uh, than that, much lower doses, like one10th of the dose, to induce a gentle psychedelic state of quiet observ- what we call quiet observer mind, where your mind just completely quiets down and you can kind of observe yourself, almost like a lucid dream- Mm-hmmin therapy for depression and PTSD, but it's a macrodose level still.You're not just taking a spritz and going to a party.Like you have an eye mask on, you're listening to music, and you're having one of the most meaningful experience of your l- of your life with your doctor, right?Like, or your therapist.It's a very real sacred healing experience.And, um, and, and it's in an hour, right?It's just an hour that people have these experiences.And ketamine is so cool because it's one of the only antidepressant medications that's acutely effective, meaning it works in- almost immediately to give antidepressant effects, and it's acutely anti-suicidal.So most depressant- antidepressant medicines, some of them increase suicidality in certain populations like SSRIs.Other ones don't have an effect for 4 to 12 weeks in people who have depression.Ketamine has almost no side effects when used in one to 3 doses and in the dose range we use it at, much less side effects than SSRIs, and it's immediately effective and immediately anti-suicidal in terms of how it leaves people.Think about the power of a tool like that.Yeah.Right?Well, you're hearing about a lot of these drugs, like I know I have clients who started doing, um, you know, GLPs and they don't wanna drink as much anymore.They don't crave food as much anymore.So I think a lot of- GoodI think a lot of the issues that we've dealt with in the past, we're now ha- we now have the answers to a lot of these things.Mm.We, we thought these were chronic diseases that we can never get rid of You know, I think even thingsI, my grandmother suffered from osteoporosis, and I remember, like, oh, as soon as she gets it, she's never gonna be able to cure this.But we're seeing a decline in osteoporosis because people are exercising more- Yepand people are moving more.So we just understand- And supplementing calcium and vitamin D.Yeah.I mean, there'sWe now have answers to these things that we thought were like- Mm-hmmokay, you get this, you're done.Yep.You know?Um, even a lot of, you know, the, theI find neuroscience to be fascinating because we understand so much more.There was actually a young lady we had speak at our event a couple, couple of years ago.Um, her Instagram handle's Emma on the Brain, and she basically talks about, like, just simple, really effective ways to, like, hey, if you're feeling this way, here's a way out of it.Mm-hmm.You know, I think there's so many simple ways around it, and like I said, I mean, I just feel like sometimes you walk around the city, you're in the subway, people are upset, they're mad.I'm like, there are so many easy ways to get yourself feeling better.What are 3 things that, like, somebody out there who's listening could implement right away, you know, today, tomorrow, to improve their mental state and, you know, how they live their life on a daily basis?Yeah, so I'll give you, I'll give you a couple gems.So the firstSo not onlyThe best part about these is not on- not only will it improve your mental state and your quality of life, you'll improve your happiness with these techniques, you'll improve your sense of empowerment, your sense of power that you have within yourself, and you will improve your sense of, of autonomy and mastery.So the sense of being an agent of your own decisions and showing yourself that your decisions matter, which is really starting to cultivate this sense of having a emotional gym that you take with you everywhere you go.So the first technique is breathe by choice.You don't need to count.You don't need to think about it.You just need to breathe by choice.So through your mouth or nose, doesn't matter, just say, "I'm going to breathe right now" and just and just feel the air coming in through your mouth or nose and filling your lungs and just feel it, and then feel it leaving.And you do that whenever you want, and it instantly restores your sense of power and control back to your body and centers your mind back in your body.So that is a fantastic technique that we often get lost in the counting and the numbers and how long am I supposed to breathe for this or that.Doesn't matter where you start.Does it downregulate the nervous system as well?Well, t- it downregulates the stress response system- Mm-hmmbut upregulates the vagus nerve- Okayand the parasympathetic system.So that's the goal state we wanna be in, 'cause right now, in our baseline state, fight or flight stress response is up here and vagus nerve is down here.Mm-hmm.We want it to be like this, bare minimum.Yeah, yeah.Ideally like this.Yeah, yeah.Ideally, we want recovery nervous systems to be online at all times to the max when we're not running from a lion.Mm-hmm.When we're in flow, we want them to be even.Sure.Right?When we're running from a lion, we want the sympathetic fight or flight to take over, but that should be just once in a while, right?Mm-hmm.So we wanna be in flow for performance here, and then we wanna be in recovery and sleep.We want vagus nerve activity to be a h- much higher than fight or flight.Mm-hmm.So when you feel out of control, again, feeling uncertainty is the same as feeling out of control, right?These are all related.And when you feel out of control or you pay attention to things you have less control over, you feel more uncertain, and uncertainty triggers your amygdala to fire off as if you're under, potentially under threat, 'cause 10,000 years ago in the prairies or the jungle, uncertainty by default means there could be a bunch of food coming my way, or I could die at any moment, right?Yeah.It could be anything like that or anything in between.Yeah.So evol- so we evolved to respond to uncertainty immediately.Mm-hmm.That response is anxiety communicating, "Hey, pay attention to this."Sure.Does that make sense?Yep.So as soon as you say, "I'm gonna take a breath right now," you're sending an automatic lightning fast signal to your amygdala that says, if I'm- I'm in controlI'm in control.If I have time to take a breath right now, I'm 0 I have timeI can't possibly be running from a lion.I can override that stress response system.I can't possibly be running from a lion.My body can reset and reallocate resources back to recovery.Sure.Okay?So that's number one.Number 2 is express gratitude as often as you can.Like, thisAnd this, and the, the, this does exactly the same thing that this, the breath technique does, that I just told you, breathing by choice.Express gratitude by choice, right?So we live in the most abundant age of humankind ever.We are in the age of comfort and convenience.We have never been able to, in the history of humankind, be able to have access to the entire universe of knowledge in your pocket.We have never had the ability to have 2day delivery for anything you want-nearly anywhere in the world.Yeah, yeah.Right?Like, if you're missing a piece of equipment and you have somebody famous coming in in 2 days, you could literally ca- like, go on your phone and have it delivered- Sureimmediately.Yeah.Right?That has never been the case before.We are literally living in the most convenient, most comfortable time in all of human history.Mm-hmm.There is so much to be grateful for, and yet how much time do we spend thinking about how much- That you don't havemore we want- Yeah.and how much more we don't have, right?I don't have a Ferrari.Right.Shit.And it's not about that.Yeah.All of those good things can come to us, and they will when we spend our time focusing on what we have and how good what we have is, and how blessed we are to be alive in the time where we don't have to rely on dial-up and, and horse-drawn carriages-and the Dewey Decimal System.Like, you're my age.You remember the Dewey Decimal System, right?Yeah.That was horrible.Every time you wanted to learn something, you have- Yeahto go look at a giant catalog box of cards, and you have to understand through a class with a librarian how to use it?Well- Like, give me a break.He's, he's 19, 20 years old.He goes to school in Tampa, and it's like he now has ChatGPT write his papers.I said, I go, "If I had to write a paper, I had to go to the, the library.You had to pull up 14 different books, and then go through the whole book."Right, and figure out all- You're like, "Where's the answer?"until you find the information that you need.Yeah.Yeah, there was no simple way to do it.Yeah, yeah.Yeah, it tookIt was incredibly time-consuming.Yeah.It's, it's im- And-impressive that we ever got anything done then.Right.No, it just required a shit ton of work- Yeahto do anything.Yeah.And now, look at how much convenience and comfort- Surewe have, right?Like, that is soThere is soTo my point, there is so much to be grateful for.Sure.The more we know- So what does that gratitude look like?It just looks like thank you.Yeah.It's just saying thank you to yourself, to start, for taking a breath, for, by choice.Mm-hmm.For waking up, for getting here today, for taking time to shower and self-care, to- What about, like, manifestation-give yourself good foodYeah, you can do that, too.I mean- Yeahthere's so many things that you can do- Yeahright?But I'm trying to think of the things that, and that when you express, when you direct your human energy into anything- Mm-hmmby choosing to breathe, by choosing to express gratitude, by choosing to focus on any one thing, you are driving your energy towards manifesting an outcome.When we're distracted, distraction is the enemy to manifestation.Mm-hmm.Does that make sense?Yes, totally.Because when you're distracted, your attention is diverted in lots of different directions.We need to focus our attention like a laser.Mm-hmm.And when we focus our intention like a la- our attention like a laser, we can drive our atten- if attention is our spotlight, right?That's what we allow to come into our conscious awareness.Intention is the human energy we put into doing anything.And so if our intention is focused, then that, over time, leads to manifestation, which is also something that I break down in the book for people, of how that works.But it starts with feeling safe in your own body and recognizing the God-given grace we all have of being alive today, and then that gets back to the meaning of life and purpose you were talking about earlier, that people are so confused about, and it's not that complicated.Your purpose is to discover what you're capable of in this life.Does that make sense?Mm-hmm.It's not more complicated than that.Like, if we spend all this time worrying about what our purpose is, then we're actually not spending time creating the safe space to discover what it is freely.Fear impairs curiosity and opportun- and shuts down opportunities for discovery.Discovery requires curiosity.It requires open-mindedness.It requires feeling safe enough to ask dumb questions, right?That's curiosity.That's learning.Mm-hmm.So the meaning of life for all, for all of us is really about, how do we disc- discover through choice what we are capable of in this life?And for those who are so stressed out and overwhelmed, and they can't even take in what I'm saying right now, that's why we created the Apollo Neuro app, and you can literally go on your iPhone and download it for free.And you can upgrade your iPhone to a free, but for free, to a device that uses neuroscience to heal your body and extend your longevity and extend your health by boosting HRV with these vibes that we created, and that will help you learn all these other things that I'm talking about.Doc, it's so impressive.Um, I'd love to dive more into this.How mu- Mm.Do we have a lot of time left?What timeNo, but you didn't do 3.Wasn't that the third one?Uh.Yeah, that was the third one.Yeah, yeah.Um, but so where could everybody, uh, where could everybody find you?Obviously, w- we want everybody out there to download the Apollo app 'cause I think we wanna hand out as many good vibes as we can.Right.And then we're gonna check out the book, Simple Guide to, uh, Being Alive- Yeahbecause I think that's just a, a incredible title for a book.And- Thank youyou know, I think we've overcomplicated living life, but where else can everybody find you?You can find me at, um- drdave.io, which is my personal professional website.Um, you can find Apollo at apolloneuro.com or wearablehugs.com, which is what the kids call it.Uh, and you can find the book at asimpleguidetobeingalive.com, or you can go to asimple.guide.Uh, and you can also find me on s- at- on socials @drdavidrabin on most social platforms.Uh, and my podcast on psychedelics and how the brain works is called theOne of them's called The Psychedelic Report, the other one's called Your Brain Explained- Mm-hmmon all popular podcast platforms.What's yourBefore I let you go, what's your thoughts on, you know, nicotine, caffeine, nootropics, kind of all that, like, brain stimulants as a neuroscientist?I, I mean, nootropics is a broad category, so I can't inI, I don't, I can't endorse all of them- Surein that category.But, um, you know, caffeine and nicotine are some of the oldest substances that we've used for neurostimulation and cognitive enhancement.Like, we're talking thousands of years.Mm-hmm.Right?Um, I think that they, wh- when used, they, they come from plants.They are plant medicines.Sure.And we need to think about them the way that indigenous people think about interacting with plants and the natural world.You know, these are notPart of what I talk about in the book that I think is really missed in Western education is, is the indigenous knowledge that is thousands of years older than Western education, which is that we live in relationship with nature, not as nature, nature being an object for our consumption.Mm-hmm.This is notThat's, uh, that's a fabrication of capitalist thinking.The way we actually live in relationship with ear- the earth is that we are all alive together, and when you, w- when you study with indigenous cultures like I have, and you learn from the way that they see the world, e- even though some of them are from California, and some of them are from the Midwest or New York or, or, or, you know, Australia or South America, they never communicated with each other, and yet they all somehow figured out the exact same understanding of how we relate to the earth.Mm-hmm.Which is that we interact in relationship.So caffeine and nicotine are powerful, like, master plan molecules that are capable of inducing profound states of change in our bodies, like improved focus and energy and, and cognitive, uh, tension control and these different things.They need to be used respectfully in that relationship, and we need to treat them as subjects, fellow subjects that we are interacting with.Nicotine being from the tobacco plant, caffeine being from coffee and from other tea, herbs and plants.These all come from plants.So starting to rethink the way that we consume product to one of, I am not using thisThis is not an object for my consumption.I'm interacting with another living thing.These are molecules.These came from plants.They have plant essence in them.They are interacting with my spirit and my energy when I consume them, and we're, and we're in relationship together.That starts to change the way we think about the frequency and the intensity with which we decide to abuse or misuse a plant.Yeah.Because you don't abuse a subject, another person.You don't a- abuse or misuse, and, and we accept that, right?A- another human being or, or a person or, uh, something that's alive with us, we treat it with respect.So changing the way we see other plants and other medicines in our relationship, they all have use.They all have purpose, right?They're notLike, cocaine is a fantastic use for, has uses for anesthesia.It's also one of the most frequently abused drugs, right?It's highly addictive when misused.And so all of these tools are just tools.They can be used respectfully and facilitate tremendous healing and increases in productivity, focus, et cetera.And they can also be abused and hurt us and cause harm.Yeah.I think we're starting to see the, uh, kind of the collision here between this kind of psychedelic old, I don't wanna call it hippie understanding, but, like, neuroscience as well.Like, how much we, we kind ofC- yeah, just the way you put that.Plants aren't there just for us to consume, 'cause we need them to live.Mm-hmm.Like, like, the, the more we cut down trees and don't have that, the, the harder it is for us to breathe.So we need to respect these things and, you know, appreciate that they're here and not just abuse it.So- Y- yeahI like that.Yeah.We're starting to see all this start to bleed together.Well, Dr. Dave, thank you so much for coming by.Thanks for having me, Kenny.Uh, I appreciate you guys all for watching and listening, as always.Check out, uh, Dr. Dave's page.Check out the Apollo.Um, I have one at home.I gotta put that on because-I sleep like shit.Um, and also check out A Simple Guide to Being Alive.Uh, thank you all.Like, share, subscribe, and I'll see you guys soon.Good s-