[30] Exploring the Intersection of Technology, Meditation, and Consciousness
12:05AM Nov 15, 2023
Speakers:
Andrew Holecek
Ed O'Malley
Pamela Siliato
Keywords:
coherence
heart
dream
meditation
heart rate variability
great
heart rate
twitches
biofeedback
state
rinpoche
brain
technology
light
variability
talk
connects
question
andrew
global coherence
Do sleep science thing Alyssa and I are hosting and we both decided that we're in the wildlife theme today. This is the elephant in the room literally came from a safari in Africa. Oh, this has got a cow. And I guess that he'll plant so planted. So what we do during the sessions is Dr. This is Ed's opportunity. I just kind of fill in some blanks and add whatever but we talked about the science and medicine of sleep and but I do want to share that that Dr. Ed and I spent the better part of a week together just a couple of weeks ago, which was so much fun with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche at his retreat center in Virginia. I know him but I'd never been to the center and I've never had the opportunity to kind of co teach with him so it was a super rich week, where we had, I was a co presenter, then we had a union. Who was there, Tim, he was really great. We had neuroscientists from the Campello sleep lab, in northwestern who I know and then a Tibetan doctor who was really great. So it was so fun. Rinpoche would do his dream yoga. Teachings in the morning. Then one of us would engage with other panelists and Rinpoche in the afternoon, and then anyway, it was a really rich event and I had a chance he was like our, our go to guy whenever we had a question. I'd say oh, there's Dr. Ed, no turns. So he came to the rescue. A number of times to help us with some science and medicine stuff. But anyway, I turn it over to him. I'm here just in the background. And he's going to talk about something that I tried with him, which I hadn't experienced with the experience before. In Virginia, the HeartMath situation so run with it, my friend and I'll be hanging out learning with everybody else.
Okie dokie. Um, let me have one introductory comment about plants. You know, I just got a new newsletter from the bio nears who allow nature work a lot of ecology. And they have an article by Susan Samad who's you may know her from discovering the mother trees and all the the fungal networks that connect the mother trees and how the mother trees nurture the young trees. They can tell each other apart. And it's like they're raising their children just like we do. And the last line so this is why the green plan is still really important. After a lifetime as a forest detective, my perception of the Woods has been turned upside down. With each new revelation I am more deeply embedded in the forest. Scientific evidence is impossible. To ignore. The forest is wired for wisdom, sentience and healing. So that plant goes right up there with the animals.
Okay, let me just say real quick, that there's a I've mentioned this. That's a beautiful, beautiful statement. I mentioned this video several times if people haven't watched it, check it out. Maybe Alyssa can find a link to it. I found it on Amazon. It's a beautiful video documentary. I think it's called either aware, or awareness, colon glimpses of consciousness. I can't remember the subtitle, but they they interview I'm spacing her name, but they're interviewing this this. Scientist is kind of plant ecologist person and I can't remember her name Margaret's brother. And she actually her research is actually showing how plants learn how plants can actually be taught. And it's it's a beautiful film The images are really spectacular. highly highly recommended, but one of the highlights for me was learning the stuff about the our sentient life forms in the not just the plant kingdom but the flora kingdom. phonic and so so cool. Anyway, I'll disappear. Great.
Thank you. All right. Well, welcome everyone. We have a lot of actual sleep information to go over tonight. Let's just see if I have any quick no quick questions just yet. Great. I'm going to share my screen as per usual, we are going to I think I can put on I put it in big big mode. There we go. All right. And so um, type something in the chat or raise your hand make a lot of noise. If something is up for you around this. So we have a number of questions, but we're going to then talk a lot about HeartMath because that seems to be kind of interesting, and people had some questions about it. And so we'll start with this though. So a few questions came in. I had I sometimes hear different sounds and voices right before I fall asleep. And it's something that I learned is okay. So it sounds to me like hypnagogic you know, sounds and voices, which they seem to be fine with but then they recently found the new quality and that the sound whatever sound is present in the room will intensify and get louder as I nod off, like a fan noise for example. Is that something I should be worried about? Or is it okay? And so, you know, I have a couple of questions. Always have a few more questions than what they provide. So the voice is intensifying getting louder to what voices were amplified. Is that something just within his head as well or just the sounds that are external? In the room? Is it impacting his ability to sleep, anything else change in his physical condition, and he ended his hearing loss. So those are things I would think about as a potential problem since there is a change, but I will check in with each of these and make sure there isn't a change. And if the answer to note all of this is probably just fine, keep an eye on it and see if anything else changes. But if there are some other physical outcomes or other issues that might be changing, especially if it's impacting sleep, or falling asleep, then I would explore a little bit further. Okay, so that's the answer to that if you're here and want to come on and extend that a little bit. Happy to talk further. And then maybe we'll get back to this at the end. But I did want to have it just sort of in this order, just because it's kind of the way these things came in. Someone forwarded a New Yorker article to Andrew and it's called What are dreams for really interesting paper. And so I summarize the main points here, that the muscle twitches that we see in REM sleep are signals to the brain about the activity and Endor position of the body. So it's not the brain talking to the body and telling it to twitch. It's the body twitching for some information that the brain needs and that's what this this current, or this latest research seems to be suggesting. These occur with greater frequency during fetal development and across numerous species. And they did some experiments where they actually took the cortex off of rodents and the twitching still occurred to couldn't be coming from the higher brain to the body. It's actually being generated somehow in the body and the fetal development right? There isn't much of a Cortex there's not much experience to be dreaming about. Right? That's what we've always thought about dreaming but there are lots of twitches happening during fetal development, which these researchers have looked at in numerous species. And I wanted to throw in there and you might come in and come in to is that you know, one of the best methods to reenter a dream in the morning. What do we always say? Get back into the same position you were physically and that will help you go back into that dream. In addition, when you first wake up if you want to as you know, as as accurately as you can remember the dream, the suggestion is to not move. Again, the body seems to hold some information that it's related to the dreams that we're having or going back into. So really interesting take on dreaming and what's happening with all these twitches going on. And if you will recall that how lucid dreaming was first ever documented by Steven the birds. But he was signaling through the twitches. He could actually make his muscles twitch in both arms by squeezing his hands in the dream state and that would cause twitches, you know, breakthrough of the paralysis that was happening to signal to the researchers in the room. Yeah, Pamela has a hand raised I'm assuming it's related to this. Want to ask a question? Comment?
Yeah, there we go. I just had to wait until I was unmuted. Hi. Good to see you. Yeah. We met at the at the tension window retreat. So yeah, yeah. I missed the part. You were saying if you're, if you wake up and you want it and you want to go back into that dream, you have to do you what is it that you recommend? And I'm sorry, I missed
it. No, no problem and it's going to be on the present. You know, you'll have it recorded and you'll get a PDF of this in there. But for now, it's to reposition your body into the position, the exact position you were in, when you awake awoke from the dream. Let's say you wake up, you go to the bathroom, you come back and you want to get back into that dream to do a wild or whatever mile you would then get back in that same exact position. And literally the same side or wherever your hands were. Yeah, yeah. And you know, taking something to
Oh, no, no, yeah, that was just going to reinstate that. And the other thing to do, this is what I do. Even more often than that is I'll wake up in the morning because I usually have most of my dreams just before I wake up, and I'll wake up and they'll get like, there'll be like the perfume like the scent. Oh man. I just had a dream. I know I just had a dream but I can't Wow, what was that? I'm just gonna try flopping over to the other side, which is where I was 10 seconds ago. And it's amazing. It's like there's this kind of harmony, your resonance takes place, my body goes over your turn to that position, being drained clicks into gear, then I can reschedule it and then sometimes I can go back in and mild demonic induction or lucid dream approach. So anyway, just putting a little exclamation point of what dark red you said.
I have one other question that if that's okay. Sure. Okay. And it's not about what you're specifically talking about now. So you can delay answering it or you know, not answer it at all. But I'm really right now I'm monitoring all of my dreams. And what do I mean by that? Go to bed when I wake up. I'm writing down the dreams but I'm only writing down the dream content. When I wake up in the morning. I'll wake up in the middle of the night you know to urinate or whatever. But if I try to write it down, then then it's harder to go back to sleep. So I'm just saying okay, I'm only going to write it down you know when I first wake up, and but I read that so I have the dreams that's Hurray. I remember the dreams most of them. Hurray. But I'm not lucid in the dream. And I want to know, how do I get to that next phase of being lucid? I'm taking gal gala tea, egalement teen whatever. That's
Galantamine. Yeah. Galantamine?
Yeah but the jump from actually being lucid knowing Hey, I'm in the dream, I'm dreaming. Let alone being able to manipulate the dream. I'm not there yet. So any comments now later, where you move to the next stage you know,
just briefly, I mean, we have Andrews whole webinars on all of the steps of both the Dream Yoga and next steps, and certainly about the daytime practices as well. Rinpoche gave a number of daytime practices. So you know, the daytime practices are really important for establishing that mindset that you then carry into the dream state, looking for your dream signs. And looking for them during the day, you know, to when you're in situations that are a little ambiguous. Am I dreaming during the day you're repeating it over and over? You're holding things especially when like if you're on a foggy day or in situations where you're just kind of remembering you think back to what was I just doing? And if you remember, you probably are awake. And that's a good state check as well. So there are a number of these. I would go back and look at some of Andrews webinars and recognize that with that intention, there's stuff happening in the background already. You're seeing an increase in three recall. So things are happening and it may just pop one of these days anyway. Okay, but just keep keep up the good work. All right. Let's go on. I think there was a one there is one question that came from let me skip this one. Yeah, that oops. Yeah, from the Dream Yoga Retreat as well. And then I forget who put this in there. But at the recent retreat, Andrew said, quoting you, Andrew that e readers can inhibit lucid dreaming. And he's been reading with a Kindle app on his mini iPad. So the first thing he wants to know is what are the best theories as well. Certainly the iPad is one of the issues you would often read in bed at night until you're ready to knock it out. Now, I don't know Andrew, if you recall any statement about it being specific or blocking lucid dreaming,
if I don't remember specifically, but I bet any money and I was talking more about decent sleep hygiene techniques in that they because as we talked about so many times if you have late, like late night light, it inhibits the release of melatonin that can then interrupt normal sleep patterns can be deleterious to your dreaming that then affects the potentiality for having lucid dreams. So it's basically my guess is what I really was saying was if you backpedal down from that, what I'm talking about is creating the infrastructure platform to have good lucid to have good dreams period, which is having decent sleep. Then from that, and this is precisely this is precisely why we're doing these monthly sessions with you Dr. Ed is precisely for this reason. So that is part of our overall this also connects a little bit to our panelists thing, because this overall, larger Gestalt view this integral view that that I have towards lucidity, which is it's a broad spectrum, multifactorial process. There's all these things coming into play. So like my teacher said, when I was doing a three year retreat, we're doing Dream Yoga. You know, they said point blank, no dreams, no Dream Yoga. So the idea here is no dreams. No lucid dreaming, no lucid dreaming, no Dream Yoga. So it's basically reinstating the centrality the importance of good sleep hygiene. How it is that especially blue light, but in particular, in particular blue light, but any light couple hours before you go to sleep. has been scientifically shown to inhibit really decent good sleep hygiene. So it's great. Yeah,
kind of kind of dark data to alluding to, and basically saying, you know, the effect wears off right away, as long as you're not using that light before but that you you're not going to have an impact. Although if he's been doing it for a long period of time, there might be some develop behavioral association with the reader keeping himself awake, or how long it took him to fall asleep or you know, all of those associations. He asked some recommend appropriate e readers and actually the newer ones the Kindle Paperwhite and Oasis both have a way to do what you can do on your devices now and that's putting a warmer light up. So you're pulling out the blues and you're reducing the impact of the light overall. So those are relatively okay to use the Kobo Clara and when I wasn't aware of also has an adjustable light set of settings and the older ones don't have any backlight so of course, they're they're much better to use, they don't have any light at all. And if you're in a pinch and you know you need this is your behavior and it is what supports you to be able to fall asleep at night having something to read at all you have go to dark mode, because that's going to pull out a lot of the overall light exposure you're getting. Even though there are still some maybe blue light associated with the lettering. That big impact of light should be reduced pretty significantly. Okay. So that's the answer to that one. And that concludes our retreat that we were at a couple of weeks ago. Another question that came in today sugar alcohol, overdoing it gives me restless legs for 26 years now and can prevent sleep and prevent being deeply relaxed. I take iron to prevent anemia as I am a vegetarian. I believe that this is a win problem. Anyone who wants to speak to traditional Chinese medicine or if we had our Tibetan doctor, she was great about stuff about sleep were in communication about doing more work with sleep. Other than shamatha meditation not mediation but meditation. Can you suggest anything else that might help? Well, one thing that you know we've learned and actually I've teach a few dogs this is that if you have Restless Leg Syndrome you need to have your ferritin levels checked ferritin is the carrier of iron from the peripheral nervous system into the brain crossing the blood brain barrier. And if ferritin is even within the normal limits, this is the lower limit. And we've known this for years that is not a high enough level to get your iron into the brain to stop the restless legs or at least to manage them and this level needs to be at least weeks so greater than or equal to 50 nanograms per ml of ferritin really important and most Doc's when they do bloodwork don't necessarily look at this but if you have restless legs, or periodic limb movements, which are the twitches, not really twitches, they're periodic. And they are twitches I guess but they last several seconds, and they're periodic throughout the night and then cause disturbance to sleep. They can create lighter sleep so that you don't get into deep sleep. So lots of reasons to make sure this is under control. But you really want to make sure the ferritin levels are up I mean you can have normal iron, you could have normal iron binding normal hemoglobin all the other stuff is normal. But if your ferritin is low, but even within normal limits, that has to change. And of course cut down on the sugar the alcohol and histamines contribute to that as well as well as chocolate. Okay, so hopefully you've learned about the sugar and the and the alcohol after 26 years, but maybe there's a few other things you need to pay attention to as well. Okay, hopefully it's helpful. Okay, and now we're going to jump in to Heart Math. So this is sort of a question and a response. From the person who asked all the questions last month about all the different frequencies and hypnosis, meditation coherence, and we had a long discussion about that. She was very grateful for that but she's also wants to talk a little bit more about some of the more expansive qualities or effects of HeartMath. So God children a, he was the founder he founded in 1991. So this this has been around now for 30 some odd years. Picture height intelligence as the flow of awareness, understanding and intuitive guidance. We experience when the mind and emotions are brought into coherent alignment with the heart. This intelligence steps down the power of love. I love the way he says this. It steps down the power of love from universal source into our lives, interactions in practical, approachable ways which inform us of a straightforward path to our fulfillment. Some might even say enlightenment. So what So what we're doing is we're taking some of these tools that technology has provided us, connecting them with us, in western Western societies trying to become more aware of our heart and how important that is, and stop focusing so much on the brain. But still looking at how they interact. And really looking at what happens when we focus on our heart. Put focus on gratitude, when we do meditations like Tang Lin, all of these where we bring in the compassion and the love for others, allows us to go into the states which are very, very powerful, very helpful in our meditation support. Maybe something Pamela you consider for increasing the ability to be lucid because all of these bring us in closer touch with what the true nature of consciousness is about. And that's this connection with heart right? It's why the Tibetans say, heart mind, they don't have a separate mind their mind is in their heart needs to come from there. So her question they have to the statement was in meditation and hypnosis, we use our mind to control our EEG, frequencies heart rate, so I stopped right there. First part of the question, and I say, Well, I don't think that we're really doing this with our meditation and hypnosis. Neither state are we trying to control our EEG frequencies, right? The frequencies are a map of what is happening. They're a reflection of what our brains are doing in response to the state were encouraging were generating within the meditation especially we're not controlling but we're allowing our thoughts to pass without attaching to them without being charged by them without having to work on them or use them in any way. We just allow what is to be what is so there's no control happening. Control gets in the way of meditation, as most of us are probably aware and have learned over the years. And again, in hypnosis, we are in a receptive, not actively trying to do anything state, right. Our brains do have a certain EEG frequency. You know, we're locked into a theta state, let's say but we're not creating that data state. It's one that's generated by the the hypnotic trance force, or even in some self hypnosis. We get ourselves into that state but we don't create the state can looking at our EGS and trying to change them but that's not either for meditation or hypnosis. And then so I saw I had mixed that up. Here's the second part of her statement or question. So and for Heart Math, coherence, we need our heart and emotions to open the door to more intuition and synchronicities and to evolve our consciousness so to speak. I get what you're saying. It's a heart focused meditation. Zen monks reached this coherence to according to another crowed. What are your thoughts about that? Well, we all need certainly our hearts and emotions to open the door to more intuition and synchronicities right. We all need to be doing that. And I think the statement by the about the Zen monk show that meditation actually produces high HeartMath coherence. Certain most shamatha meditation does as well and the passion are probably as well and an orient you I mean, you know, there's so many different types of meditation. There are probably varying levels of coherence depending on what we're doing in that meditative state.
And I, I attached here a paper that I just came upon really exciting information. There's this organization called dialogo. It's an international one in which they have a biannual conference online, where presenters who have who write papers about either science or theology, and they put them together on the site and they have discussions about what what's each of these saying, and how do we look at these. And so this guy Steven David Edwards, he's a professor Emeritus of Psychology. Zululand University in South Africa. And he's just wrote some remarkable stuff using Heart Math. So he, he did it doing a variety of meditations and looking at the level of his coherence and each of them and it does vary, but they all essentially increase strongly increased the level of coherence he sees. Oh, Tim, yeah. Hey, Tim, you're good. So yeah, it's it's a pretty remarkable tool. So I wanted to spend some time on court math. And I know, you know, we talked about it. And you and I, and he got to practice it. I was trying to get Rinpoche to do it too. But by the time we conference was over, but he wanted to, so we're gonna make it happen at some other point. But I gave this presentation back. One of my earlier asked asleep dark talks, and I found it I took a lot of it to bring here tonight but I also updated it a bit and put some more information in. So any questions don't hesitate to raise your hand but I really liked this the way it sort of comes out. This is technology in service of spirit and my book. Your time is limited, so don't waste it. Don't be trapped by dogma. Don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become Everything else is secondary. Anybody guess without having knowingness, exactly who possibly could have said this? Wow. It was let's see if I can get the system to do this. Oh, I don't have that slide there. How about that? We usually have oh, yeah, there is Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. So this is like something that somebody who couldn't be much more technological than Steve comes up with Rumi kind of agrees the very center of your heart is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth. love that quote. But what is it about the heart and technology Well, heart deals with feeling and emotions. And our head mainly deals with technology, right? No more of the left brain brain kind of stuff versus the right brain of heart. So a quiet mind without an open heart is a pretty brittle and boring proposition but an open heart that doesn't have the support of a quiet, untamed mind is equally equally unhelpful. So that quotes from Elizabeth lesser the seekers guide she was also one of the co founders of the Omega Institute. How do we move from our head to our hearts without losing really what each offers or how do we use technology and service of spirit? And I think this is what Heart Math is. It's biofeedback. It's biofeedback in the sense that it's taking a biological signal that we are typically unaware of, for example, heart rate, muscle tendency and a lot of stuff going on in our bodies, blood pressure, so on and so forth. And linking that or feeding back the biological signal via some sound or light that changes when the signal changes. So it externalizes some internal process, right and gives us a sense of or a way to view it to see it to understand it, and then to change it.
What is the actual technology of HeartMath I'm on the website. Pamela wants to get going here. What essentially it is, it's a clip. You know, I always have with with me and I probably do I pulled it out at actually retreat slash conference. I'm not sure I put it back but essentially what it's doing is it links to your fear low and is detecting your posts. Actually, I do happen to have it I think I've shown it here before too. So a couple of different ways. It connects to your iPhone or your Android your smartphone in some way. And this particular one, you can get the now come with Bluetooth, so you don't have any wires, Bluetooth to your phone, but essentially this one will go in with the connector, the iPhone connector lightning cable, and then it connects to your ear lobe like so. Okay. And that's all it technology is a little clip to clip it to your shirt or blouse or something so that it's not pulling on you here. And that connects in the download is a free app from Heart Math. And essentially what it does is it connects it collects your pulse, and I'm going to show you in a few minutes, what it looks like. When we talk about what the actual heart rate variability is, okay, which is the verb, surely the variation in peak to be timing. So when we say we have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, there isn't one occurring every second exactly at one second. There's one occurring at 1.2 seconds, 1.8 seconds, 1.87 seconds. And so on throughout that minute, let's say and then we average those out and there'll be 60 in that minute, but it's not exactly one per second. So there's some variation or some variability, the greater the variability that helped you a physiological state to a point okay, too much variability and the atria and ventricles misaligned. The heart no longer can pump blood, if there's too much variability in it, and too little variability that begins to look like V TAC where we're about to have a heart, heart attack. not good either. So there's a certain a certain range of Heart Rate Variability we want that not only supports health, but there's within that variability. There's a certain range we want to be in. That is the best physiologic state we can be in and I want to talk a little bit more about that. So here's heartbreak. Here's a heart beating down here EKG and what you can see is some of these are closer or further apart. See are much closer these few are here, and then further apart. These are and then these are a little bit closer together again, and all of that variation is what's taken into consideration when they calculate heart rate variability. Okay? So it doesn't necessarily mean a fast heart rate. Or low heart rate. You can have great variability within either one of those or anywhere in between. So it's not heart rate that's important here. It's the variability. And interestingly enough, this variability happens. There's a breathing rhythm that changes our heart rate. So when we inhale, the heart rate goes up. When we exhale, the heart rate slows down. So this is almost the same thing that we're looking at here, inhalation, exhalation inhalation, and so there's some variation that is associated with our breathing rates. And that's why constant breathing weights can be helpful towards getting us into this heart rate to best range for heart rate variability. Okay, a little bit more about that as we go forward. Okay, what is the session look like? So this is what Andrew experienced, and I had them looking at this afterwards, but we didn't have all this data just quickly showing that here's like a beginning of a session. So if you look down here, this is one minute, one and a half minutes. This is three minutes in or so okay? So this is somebody sitting down and just starting to, in a sense, get into a quiet could be a meditative state could be just a quiet state. And you can see here's the heart rate, so heart rate is over here. And you can see it's varying both in rate a little bit, not a big deal. There's a range of heart, but there's variability in the number of beats that are being detected all across this period. And there are a couple of different ways of measuring it. One of the things that demonstrates to you if you have had their software for your laptop as well, so you could have a bigger expression on your phone you can only see so much but on the and usually it's just the rhythm. But on a computer you can see all this and I've done this in the lab all the time in the sleep lab and whatnot. But you can see it steps up and there's a zone you want to be in so they seem to be getting into the zone for a bit and then they drop out of it. And that's just part of getting comfortable with where they are. It also gives sort of an output of how much in the green the green is in the best range. For that level. Okay. And this particular case, this challenge is medium. There are four different levels or different challenge levels. We'll get into that in a second. But essentially, they're spending a little more time in the blue which is on the way to the green but not quite there yet. Red is you're not in any coherence and coherence. I'm going to explain in a minute or two but data all measures how are you doing? Now you can see how after they this person is in a really good state on the start. It almost looks like an alpha rhythm. You can see very regular despite the changes in heart rate. There's a regular rhythm in his heart rate variability varying, in a sense much more similarly than the other state. And you can see this person goes right into the zone, same timeframe. One and a half minutes, three minutes. Same Time Zone timeframe, and they are just stepping up and they are getting into it. So this person knows how to meditate. Essentially, this what this is telling you. On the other hand, this is on the low challenge level, so it's easier to get into the state as well. It's another story but you can see here, there are 80% in the really good range and didn't take them long at all. They just spent a very little time not being incoherent at all on the way to being in the green and spending the vast majority of their time in the green. Okay. Just to give you a sense of what it looks like when it now here's someone who's been doing this for 1012 1314 15 minutes, right? And so now even though heart rate doesn't vary much there's one little blip there but essentially they're pretty constant. These the coherence is pretty similar, but what they're doing is they're really focusing in a certain frequency range, which is roughly around. This is roughly the 10 breaths per minute range. And that's what you want to see that when we know someone is induced the relaxation response and is in that sweet spot. And the longer you're in there, the narrower this peak will get. We will get to that in a second here. Okay. And then you can look it over days. Okay. So this is you know, these are, this is October dates through November. There's about a month's worth month and a half's worth of data. And you can see the varying length of time how the average heart rate is going, what their greens look like and so forth and so on. Okay, so how are we feedback how good your heart rate variability is, and that's through coherence. Okay, so we're going to talk about that now people were asking questions about what that is.
I'll say quickly the difference between a high challenge level and a low challenge level is your the higher channel chat. Think of it as beginning meditators and longer term meditators, right. So the higher challenge would be the longer term meditators are able to get into that meditative state right away. The low the the young male meditators or those who have just begun, will take a while and then there'll be going in and out of it. But it's it's easier to meditate it. It's easier to use the lower level to just get someone comfortable with breathing in a regular rate, and being able to start exploring gratitude and breathing into their heart and doing like you wouldn't start with Tomlin for someone just beginning, right? They may not know how to really hold that kind of suffering for the world. It's a but they could sit and just monitor their breathing for a while and as their breathing settles, they'll get more into the green on the low rate, but that won't be enough to get them into the green or the high or even the medium or the intermediate there are four levels Okay. And you know, when we did that with with Andrew, you know, Andrew got right into the low level, go right into it even on the second level and then as we push the third and fourth levels, just sitting there you know, in a short time, being uncomfortable and trying to get in wasn't as easy, and that's because that peak that we're showing you there. This peak here gets narrower and narrower in order to give you green so it's giving you green when this peak is here, and you have to you can't get out of that peak at all. There's a little bit out here. Your excuse me need to be almost almost a pointed straight line going up to be in the green in the high challenge level. Okay. So just ways to continue to refine your practice and to be able to hold it. Okay, so coherence now reflects the aligning or balancing of cardiovascular, nervous, hormonal and immune systems. It's like everything is coming into synchronization. All of your systems are now firing on all cylinders. It's like being in the flow state, very high functioning state. So, to cope, so there's a balance of the activation of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. So we're always in one aspect of that's the autonomic nervous system, right, which we don't control. It's automatic, right? Well, yes, we can actually get into we can hack the system in a sense by inducing greater relaxation in which brings us into parasympathetic. But we want to be more than that when we're relaxed and we are in the fight or flight right. We want to balance more and that side. We want to turn off the stress response. We want to center the brain it centers in the Alpha state, which supports an open readiness for whatever needs doing or not doing. So the challenge really is internal true. It's the fifth cycle physiological state of well being feeling safe and secure, connected to ourselves, our community, our world and beyond. And the HeartMath people really, really recognize this. And so started a number of these global coherence projects. And there's some there are several going on right now. Addressing directly the Mideast. Just say it more generically there. Now, it's not just relaxation, right. If it was just relaxation, we'd be the best meditators in the world. Now, we can't. It's not just relaxation. And so here are some measures to show you the difference. So when we're focused, we have sort of a regular because we're, we're working on something right. We're up and down, we're sideways. When were eight angry when all of our systems are out of whack, or heart rate rises. There's no rhythm to it whatsoever, except it just gets worse and worse and worse. But when we're relaxed, we start having a regular rhythm and our heart rate stays within a range that's on the lower side. But when we get into coherence, you can see the difference here. It's much more regular. It's much more consistent, and much more. There's much more amplitude to the regularity that we have. And this is a power spectral density of the frequencies associated with what our hearts doing. And you can see this is that peak that I was talking about around the point one, and you can see they actually had to break the scale here to show you how much higher all that is happening when we're in a coherent psychophysiological coherent state. Okay, Pamela, another question
can we mute Pamela?
Yeah, I'm always full of questions said
conference. What's that? I remember you from the conference, right?
Yeah, the one who asked too many questions, I think. So, I'm really trying to I'm interested in this very much really trying to understand what the benefit is to practice and I'm sure there's a good reason. But I also have this experience in my life when I was back in college. This is many, many years ago. I suffered from anxiety I've suffered from anxiety quite a bit in my life. And in college, they had this trial around biofeedback. And so I participated in bio in the biofeedback, about lowering your heart rate about all different kinds of things in your body and what I found by going through that biofeedback process was that I was really quite successful and doing all the things that they told me to do, like lower my heart rate, I could do these things upon command just through thought. But frankly, did very little for the anxiety. I was just a high performer. I was able to do it. But I didn't really see any kind of translation into I wasn't, you know, practicing Buddhism or meditation at the time, but I didn't see it translate really into anything kind of worthwhile for me. So it always puts me a little bit on the skeptical side about technology and its true benefit. So I'm sure there is and I'm just that's what my question is, what is the benefit to practitioners? Yeah,
well, so first of all, biofeedback is great for relaxation. Heart rate variability, feedback is great for inducing the relaxation response. The relaxation response is different than just relaxation. So the relaxation response doesn't just reduce your heart rate. All of your systems shift when you shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation, and stay there. If you could have done some biofeedback that was doing that that for you. It probably would have impacted your anxiety, but it would have taken you longer practice. And it's not just for, you know, doing it the length of you know, I don't know how long you were doing before, but it was probably on the order of minutes, not half hours, two hours, right. Yeah, that's true. So, so what even when people start with HeartMath what I what I was finding, especially in the insomnia Lab, which insomnia and anxiety go hand in hand, as you probably already know. And so they were saying, Well, I was doing I'm doing the Heart Math, and I'm getting into the green, but you know, it's not working. And I'm like, Okay, it's working, but it's not having the impact you would like, right? Let's put you in the chair. And let's put it up on the screen and watch you do this. Okay. And for the first five minutes, eautiful waves and then they started deteriorating, and then they'd come back and then they'd stuck deteriorating. And so what was happening was they felt like they were in it until the mind took over again, and the mind would take over and go okay, yeah, we got this Now, where were we? So who's picking up the bread tonight who's getting the kids who's, you know, doing whatever the monkey mind does? And they were not recognizing they were no longer in that state. And so that's really the continuity of doing it and doing it at these various levels. You know, this was only in in the first level and they couldn't maintain that for more than five minutes. So you want to be in you want to be in the green for 80% of the time, for at least a half an hour, you're first doing level one, before you then go to level two.
So the benefit then would be just to inform me in terms of how long let's say I'm maintaining a certain level of stability.
That's the experience you actually have. Okay, okay. So you will notice the difference. It will be like quieting your mind. be like improving your meditation you know, when you've gotten to a certain point and can stay there. Right.
So what I'm saying is the technology though, is not the cause of the improvement. It's the awareness that I have of either my stability or lack thereof, and then responding to that. That's what I the technology's not going to change
technology. No, the technology gives you feedback about if you're in that state or not. So as you drift off, again, the feedback tells you you're drifting out. So their tones they're on a screen you can look at or there are different ways you can get the feedback. Some people like to have the tones or eyes. Yeah, some people in the beginning, I guess. Well, without the sound, some people are sending this to Starling. So yeah, a variety of ways of doing it.
Great. Thank you. And I'm not you know, I'm
not I get nothing from heart map. I just find the technology is powerful. And there are other ways to do heart rate variability. I think these guys are long enough to really get it. user friendly. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you. Sure.
Another hand raised Anita.
Thank you. So I know. Since the beginning of the 90s about Heart Math, I always find it very interesting, but I never tried it. But my question is simple. This cookie runs. Can we have it? On maybe you're taking for example, sometimes I'm meditating. I stopped meditating because I have to prepare my dinner but I still feel that I'm still in a way of those something that's continuous. Yes. After the meditation, which is wonderful, and which I would love to prolong is that the coherence
Well, yeah, I mean, your sounds like you're already getting it from your meditation. So you, I don't know if you need this, in addition to that, but it certainly would support you going deeper and longer. But essentially, that state that you arrive in, that's one of our, you know, that's one of the places we'd love to be able to be all the time Yes, all the time, right. So the longer we can be there, the better off we're going to be the better decisions we're going to make. The more creative we're going to be the less we're going to be knocked off our center, the less we're going to be reactive to the world and the more responsible we'll be in the world. So yeah, this I'm not sure what your original question was, was like would this support what you're saying?
Because it's, it's this feeling that you you came out of meditation, I mean, you stand up and you begin to do things, right. Videos key in us in a state, that is the same state that when you were meditating, and it's something that I can be aware of, and if I do, if I am aware enough, I can make it stay longer. I wondered is that is what you call coherence?
Ah, yes, absolutely. That is coherence. And the that study I appended to one of the first slides that asked about the coherence. He did exactly that. You know, what he did was, he had no feedback from the device for most of the time. He would just leave it recording, and he would do his meditations. And when he looked at the data later, yes, he was in high levels of coherence to hold time, and he can continue to feel that as he moves about his day for any length of time after his meditation sessions. So this does correlate with that feeling that you're experiencing. You know, it's it's a tool for people to be able to experience that and know when they're experiencing that more than maybe someone like you who already has that experience. So yeah, it can be used to get there but it also that's what you're aware of this coherence.
What I'm trying to do the few last few months is I put an alarm like each half an hour, sometimes I am in the computer sometimes. I'm a painter on a computer imaging, so I do both. But it's what I tried to do is 30 minutes it sounds and I tried to get for a second because I have to continue working kind of in this in this same state. So to keep it happening, even if very short during the day. Do you think that that little thing can take you back to coherence? Is that a sea? Do
you have a little tone that goes off every half hour and that reminds you to check your state and see where you are
also to move my body because you can't be still in a computer for more than 30 minutes without moving and that's terrible. So I moved my body but one of the things I do is I try to get into that state. It's only a second or two. But I don't know if maybe I'm just inventing that. I think I tell you what, you know, one of the other
I mean, these aren't that expensive. I mean they are 100 bucks. 100 a quarter or something like that. But I found them very useful for people who weren't in touch with their feelings, weren't aware of going down the garden path into anxiety. And this tool was very helpful in making them aware of that. So that it was helpful for them to know when they were going out of state and in state. So it can be a tool that's useful providing feedback in that manner as well. So if you have questions about being able, you know if are you really getting back into that state or not this tool might be helpful to support you in doing that.
I mean, it's like $100 Yeah,
200 100 a quarter. It depends on what what type what version you get. I don't think any more than 150 but somewhere between 100 and 150 are all the different devices they have. Okay, thank you. All right. You're welcome. And I see Linnea has her hand raised. I know she's
in Hello, fellow Earthlings. I heart man I'm with AEG neuro biofeedback and global coherence, you know, global coherence events. I've done that. But my doctor recommended to me one of the first it may be the only one that not only monitors heart rate variability, it is purported to change heart rate variability, Dr. Ed, and it's called the neuro stem and I wonder if you and Andrew would check it out and give me a recommendation on it. Ah, neuro stem. They're doing some research. So I'm very curious about it. And I really enjoy Heart Math. And I really enjoyed and my dream is to do some AEG neuro biofeedback with you, Dr. Ed. And Andrew is so great. That you got to try the Heart Math.
Great question. Alinea do me a favor and generated as a question for asked asleep doc so it will be recorded and I will have it and work it into. I know I've heard of it before and I may have even checked it out but I can't recall on the moment. But I'm certainly happy to always look at whatever is out there. It can change your HRV for the better because it's probably increasing coherence, which is increasing your parasympathetic activation is what I'm assuming it
makes sense. I have been haven't been around for a while I was in a car accident and I'll do my best to get that out to a question.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and and maybe start using are you using that in your recovery hopefully because I
that's what I'm seeking to see if it's worth me getting the neural stem to use that in my recovery.
Okay, so you have any Okay, gotcha. All right. Well check it out. We'll definitely check it out. Since we're at the witching hour Barry would pop in there. This close to the status twitter.com There's a thing on neuro stem.
Yeah. Stephanie. Yeah. Yes, exactly. That's a to your question. She's asking the device that you use at home to try to train our ability to sustain high coherence, right. Yes. Yeah, you know, and it's it's not just sustaining high coherence. It's improving your ability to meditate and all those things. So it's, you know, it's that state that we were trying to cultivate both when you're meditating and when and when you're doing the feedback. So Barry, let me know what you put that in for. And one last question, Tim. Am I familiar with Hemi sync technology? Absolutely. I've known about those guys since before Heart Math back in the 80s. The difference between I mean that's a great tool. The difference is it's less feedback and more entrainment, and driving your brain in a certain direction. So it's trying to move your brain into the frequencies that you're hearing, which are good frequencies for meditation and sleep. And anxiety reduction and all of that, but it's also pushing your brain and as fat. It's one of those and train and migrate technologies which have their purpose but not necessarily as holistic. Some of the others. That's all I can say to that. Andrew, I see you're back on Did you have a comment or
no just here to recognize we're coming towards the end and listening super interesting stuff.
Yeah, I'm gonna pick it up. You know, there's like I'm probably halfway through what I was going to present on this but there were a lot of questions, good questions. So. So you'll have a month to cogitate on all of this heart math stuff, go to the website. They have a lot of data, a lot of papers. You know, when we talk about their science, you know, they're looking at these new devices. There's usually a couple of papers, maybe somebody's published. Or just written up. HeartMath has three decades worth of published papers on all of this they're doing and I even get a chance to talk about the global coherence, which is what we really need now. So they even have a separate site for global coherence. You can check that out. But yeah, it was great, interesting night and lots of good questions. And we'll be back next month. Yeah.
And let's pick it up and continue further because it's just a wonderful thread about using what is just almost like anti meditative which is technology using it as a way to enhance and bring us greater insights and stability and that sort of thing. So I think it's pretty cool. We're actually going to be testing a VR program from Numa, which is an organization that reached out to me about Clearlight program which is using VR to help remove the fear of death. And so we're going to be demoing it, testing it, and then maybe integrating it in our next preparing to die program that we're going to launch in February. So we'll see so stay tuned on that. So there's it's just yeah, there you go. Awesome.
Over this today, and I was gonna actually start that but I start the program with this. But yeah, you're all part of my virtual reality. Now, right? No cool stuff. Yeah. So great. All right. We will. We will be back next. Week.
I'll pick it up in a month and continue our little tech run on this, I think is pretty awesome. So thanks, Doc, you always learn a ton when you're on I really appreciate it. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. And we'll see you a month basically what is it? Yeah, there'll be a second
