One more second. Okay, here we go. Have a good one. Thanks. Thank you. Hey, everybody.
Welcome. Welcome. I know it's not Andrew but believe make believe he's here wave say hello, turn on your videos. It's great to see live people, even if you're feeling under the weather like we are. Hey, thank you. Great to see people out there. Hey Barry. Okay, I'll take the cat faces assign you're alive on the other side, in the heart. Alright, everybody. So thanks for joining in. So Andy reminded me there was a note that I put on there to talk about heart math variability, because I have a whole presentation on that. So I thought, that's what I would focus on today. So you guys will get a special treat on heart rate variability, what it is, how it works, how to use it. And then I'll entertain any questions that come in. Tim, I know you put one in today. So I'm going to address that with your friend who's having some sleep issues. And I'm going to encourage everyone and also tell all your friends. I'm not quite on the on the community side and typing in and tell you what, and maybe I should go back on and I'll do better this time. But I was just getting lost in all the threads and the emails and responses. So but I would like anyone who's already, you know, come on and had some issues and tried to work with them. I've made suggestions. You tried some suggestions that I've made? Or, you know, and come back on, let me know how it's going. How are you doing? as anything changing? Do you need more? Do you want to tell me everything you told me doesn't work? Why am I even trying. So whatever it is, it will be a great discussion, both for us and for everyone on the call. So I welcome you to come back with your your results, the outcomes of my suggestions, and maybe I need to make some different ones. Okay. So, without further ado, I am going to share my screen. And he has given me all the control here. So I'm in charge, you can't blame anybody else but me right now. So, um, I like to call this technology in service of spirit. And so no one gets their religious knickers in a twist. It's basically that sense of all that we have that we talked about rigpa all the different names Andrew uses for it. But that space that we open to this is what this technology can serve as not that old technology does, but when used in certain ways. absolutely can. Okay, so I have a question for everyone. So here's a quote and I want you to think about who may have said this. And then you can raise your hand or type it in the chat box, okay. 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. Okay, who said that? Anybody have a good idea? If you want to raise your hand and Come on, you can say that Statue of Liberty. Now that was the you're tired. You're you know, Andy Kay has has his hand up. Yes. And this is Steve Jobs. Way to go. This was not a setup. Really? It was not. This is my presentation. So yes. Oops. Where is it? What happened? Sorry, I'm having trouble Andy Here it is. Yeah. Steve Jobs, okay. Which is, you know, it's a surprise to some people, but a lot of people have already heard that, you know, the only book he had on his iPhone was The Autobiography of a Yogi Yogananda apartment Hunter. You know, he knew a lot about this stuff, even though he was heavy into technology, right? All right, let's see if we can get further here. So Rumi, you also knew this. the very center of your heart is where life begins the most beautiful place on Earth. So he says a little more poetically.
But it's one of those one of those views. And we know even that, the the, the word for heart is heart mind in Tibetan, right Cheetah, heart mind. So already the heart is viewed as really important. We know it's important, but we don't always know why or how, and how can we actually connect with this. So heart deals with feeling and emotions, or head deals with mind, maybe the technology. 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 unhelpful. So how do we move from head to our heart without losing the power of each?
Or how do we use technology in the service of spirit? And I give to you heartmath. Now I've mentioned it before. And it is a form of biofeedback. So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, people when I ask people do you know what biofeedback is? People have heard about it, people know something about it. Not everyone does. So let's, let's get into it a little bit. So biofeedback is becoming aware of some bio logical signal that we are typically unaware of, for example, heart rate, muscle tension, you can't give me those numbers right off, right. But by linking, or feeding back that information, that biological signal, via some other way, some sound or light, that changes when the signal changes goes up or down, for example, high tone, from high muscle tension and low tone for low muscle tension. So we did this a lot in the lab, especially in the insomnia lab, where we're trying to get people to relax. And you know, you tell someone just sit there and relax. And the first thing they say is, if I could do that, I wouldn't be here. Right? So so that connection doesn't always work. So can we do something more indirectly, but directly connecting that internal signal. And so we could put sensors on this frontalis muscle here, this really tight one, when we're tense when we're stressed, and it gets really loose and fires less when we're relaxed, then we could hook it up such that a high tone tells us, there's a lot of activity here. And a low tone tells us there's a lower level of activity. And when we just say why don't you just sit there quietly for a few minutes, maybe breathe a little slower, just notice your breathing, or all the things we do for meditation, but we don't say that. And just allow the tone to change. And as soon as we have them sit quietly for 30 seconds, the tone begins to come down. And they go oh, oh, well, what do you do to get the tone, I don't know, I said we'll do more of it. And they learn to lower the tone, lower the tension, and thereby becoming relaxed. Okay, so that's a direct way in which you can work. Now, heart rate variability is a different, but similar activity happening. So the signal we use is heart rate variability, that is the variation in beat to be timing, okay. And in general, the greater the variability, the healthier the physiological state to appoint too much variability. And we go into a fib and that's not really good for the cardiovascular system, the atria beat so fast, the and so variable that the ventricles can catch up and they can't they miss align and that that's not good for the heart. So but the better the physiological state and in a sense, the better we feel, and vice versa. So this was a really cool, so I love this slide. And I want to take a few minutes with it. Okay, and raise your hands wave at the screen. And he will let me know if I miss you. If you have questions, okay. So generally, we think when I asked someone, okay, what's your heart rate or the nurse puts the hand on the pulse and starts on the wrist and, you know, counts for generally 10 seconds, or 15 and then multiplies by six or four, to get how many beats, she's picking up, or he's picking up from your wrist in a minute, right, and that's our heart rate. But our heart rate isn't one beat per second for 60, a heart rate of 60, a heart rate of 70, it's like a little over that we're getting one little bit less than average, one in under a second. So what we actually see when we're looking at heart rate is and these are EKG from an EKG machine, we're looking at the peak to peak variability across this same timeframe. So we're looking at how this variability changes. And here's it plotted across, like 20 seconds here, okay. And you can see the variation in this curve is the variation in our beat to beat heart rate happening in the moment. So here, you can see, look, it's a really long beat, here, fairly short distances, very rapid beats. So in general, it's this heart rhythm that varies that heart rate variability measures, everybody got that.
Because it is directly linked, actually, let me back up second forget that he fought, it's directly linked to the balance between our sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, or our parasympathetic system, Zen meditation. Okay, those systems are always in some kind of balance, we would really like the balance to be always in the favor of parasympathetic, until, and if we need to activate, we need to do something. But unfortunately, what happens in Western society in the 21st century, as you've heard me say, over and over, it's really hard to do that. Because we are staying in this this stressful state, this sympathetic activation state 24, seven, we don't learn how to come down. This is what meditation is really good for, I'm really good at, okay, as well as any other types of relaxation activities we can do for any kind of sustained period of time. So we really want to shift it, we want to get out of that sympathetic state and want to shift into the parasympathetic state. Now, in this particular type of feedback, there's what's called coherence. And coherence reflects the aligning the balancing of all the systems that exist within our bodies. So when our parasympathetic is activated more than our sympathetic, what happens is, we begin seeing the other systems come into rhythm with our cardiovascular system. So and this is general stuff for chaos theory, and all that kind of stuff. But if you put together a system that reasonably well contained, chaos, it will pull the other systems into synchronization with it. So if you focus on getting your heart into a high heart, HRV state, which you can do with this biofeedback device, or many other types of devices, then you can also bring your respiratory state into into balance your hormonal state, your immune systems, your entire physiologic state will then be one of balance and coherence, okay. And that's when we feel like we're in the flow state, which is a really high functioning state, that's when we can get more accomplished, everything is very efficient, and we don't do it to get more accomplished, but we're just that much more efficient, that much more functional that much more. Using our energy in a very productive way. Now, that's a great way to balance these systems, okay. We want to balance is sympathetic with the parasympathetic, essentially moving into the parasympathetic and turning off the stress response. It centers the brain into the alpha state. The Alpha state, right? When we see a lot of alpha activity, the brain is ready, it's open, it's ready to go and do whatever needs doing. And as I put here or not doing, okay, we don't overdo ourselves when we're in this state. And it's basically when we feel the most safe, the most secure, and we feel connected, we feel connected to the world. This I have in there for my, my spiritual groups. That is, okay. Because it's all the same. When we get into this state, we are connected with everyone, we recognize that, that makes compassion so much easier in that state. So emotions are reflected also, in this state of coherence. Okay, if we look at someone, I'm not going to name any names. But let's just say somebody who's really frustrated at one point or other, or anger looks pretty similar. And if we look at their heart rate, and start measuring their variability, it looks just completely different than someone who's in almost a sinus rhythm here. It looks like a sine wave just about. So this is really good heart rate variability, it's in a nice state, and it's in,
it's in a state of coherence, that's going to bring the rest of the body into the same place. Okay? This one is not. Now what's really cool. Or I should actually have these two, right, this is cortical inhibition. So our brains are gonna have a hard time doing anything you ever notice, when you get really angry at something, you're kind of like, your thoughts get all jumbled up, and your words come out and in like little pieces, you know, like I want, you know, that anger, it really binds the brain, and it makes it very narrow. And it can only do one thing, which is generally yell scream, or, or fight with someone. Whereas when we're in a great coherence state, we're in this flow, state cortical facilitation, our thoughts are well controlled, and are all over the place. And we're able to do all the things that come with a flow state, think outside the box hold many different trains of thought at the same time. And the nice thing is that there are techniques that can actually put us into these states. Now we know meditation can do that. What I like about the technology is as follows. We can spend a lot of time, and Andrew has mentioned this, we can spend a lot of time doing the practices, and think we're doing what were what meditation is supposed to be doing for ourselves. But if our lives aren't changing, if we're not becoming more kind, more compassionate, less angry, less reactive, than whatever we're doing isn't working. And so what I like about these tools, is that it can give you immediate feedback, if you think you're in your meditative state. Okay, you know, you're in your state, you know, you're like, but the device is saying, Oh, hey, you're thinking about yesterday's breakfast, you know, are you thinking about this morning's news. So this is what the difference looks like. And you can get this information, either displayed on your device, you can have it displayed very, via a sound. So you don't have to be looking at anything, you can close your eyes and do this. But the idea is that you want to be able to shift into this state here, which is the flow state, and it's quick coherence technique brings all these rhythms into a balance, okay. Now, I mentioned the rhythm before, I mean, the coherence, what the coherence does is it brings this is our cardiovascular system. This is blood flow. This is respiration. And once we get into this, we can actually measure it and spectral display here. And a very fine tuned point of activation. If we get into this state, which our heart rate variability measure could actually tell us. We poured all these guys back in the same way, in the same way as what we just saw on this screen. Okay, So this is a single measure of it. And this is another way of looking at it, we can get any of these displays using this type of feedback.
And this is the really cool thing I don't remember if I in handy, you'll probably remember if I told you about this experiment where they. So this coherence, you know, your heart can travel up to I forget how many feet but your heart creates an environment, your heart rhythm, it's such a huge electrical signal, way more than your brain activity. And it actually extends out into your environment, something like 15 feet. So you can tell when somebody is angry coming towards you, you can tell when somebody's in a very good state of mind, you start feeling the vibe, right? This is a way to measure the vibe, actually. And what's really cool is that this experiment was done with Heart, heart math, what they did was, they had four people sitting at a table, they had different tables in the room. And they were going to play a little card game, nothing big no high stakes poker, just you know, a little bit of Go Fish, maybe there's something simple. And three of the people at the table were Confederates, okay, they will all heartmath people who knew how to get into the coherence state. The fourth person was the experimental subjects, so to say. And they came and sat at a table and you will have to pick any tables, while the tables had three heartmath people. And there was one open seat. And so the people came in for the experiment took the open seat. And after being in that seat, and I forget the actual time, we can look up the experiment. But it took about I don't know, I think it was about three minutes. Being in this environment, of coherence being set by the people who were doing their heart rate variability, and knew they were in this state, the fourth person who was not doing any heart math, didn't have any sense of what this was all about. Just thought he was sitting down to play a card game. He was being measured, they were all being measured. His heart rate variability quickly came into rhythm into coherence with the others. And, you know, all right, it's pretty cool. It was published and all that, but you know, me being a scientist, I wanted to, I wanted to try this out. And not only that, I want to try it out. But I wanted to show it to the spiritual people. I was I was teaching, you know, and I said, you know, we know about this ability to affect others in our environment, we know that this happens, you know, or at least we believe it does. You know, what, if I could show you electronically, this was happening while it's happening while it's happening. And what I did was I took it into the into spiritual counseling program at the seminary. And I, of course, asked for volunteers. And I told them, we weren't going to hurt them, even though it's a spiritual class, you never know. And they came up and they sat in the front of the room, when they sat with their back to the rest of the class, I handed out a bunch of these devices, so they could all get themselves into. And as a way, you can see that you're in the green versus the red mode. When you're in the green. When you're in a red, you're not in sync, you're not in coherence. When you're in the blue, you're on your way there. When you're in the green, you're there. So you get that immediate feedback. And so I had the person sit up front with headphones. So the sitting at home with headphones, I can't hear what's going on in the room. And I had her here earlobe, clipped with the device to measure her. Her heart rate, heart rate variability, and I displayed it up on the big screen for the room. Okay. And now, just to throw in a little more, I don't know wildcard, the class is being taught over zoom around the world, around the world. So I had everybody on the class around the world, doing the same thing, the ones that had their own device, and the ones that didn't, they were just following the same instructions. Okay, so they were going to get close to it. We couldn't tell whether they weren't. But at least the ones around the world who had devices were able to see but everyone could see the person the
the guinea pig up front could see her data on the big screen. Okay, and went ahead, everyone But before we, you know, we started on her, we had everybody practice and see if they can get in and get out. And, and they started getting pretty good. I said, I would tell them just go to your happy place, or you know, do your internal prayer, or meditate or whatever you do for self care. Do that practice now. And I'd watch, and eventually everyone would get into the green. Okay. And when I was confident that people could do that, then I said, Okay, now I know you guys are, you know, your hearts are huge, and your ability to be compassionate is huge. But just for a moment or two, okay, I just want you to think about somebody who just wronged you in the past week, you know, somebody, you know, the guy who cuts you off on the highway, the person who, like made you wait, you know, half an hour on hold, the one who, and just starting to talk about all the possibilities of how we any one of us could have been stressed in the last week, I still I was looking around the room watching all the greens start changing back to blues and going into the Red Sea. Okay. And so people were able to do that, I can see them being able to do that. All right. And we're watching on the screen at the same time, what's going on up front. And so she wasn't you know, it was just kind of hanging out. But she wasn't in any blue or green, she was just kind of mostly, and in the red to maybe tapping into the blue every so often. To have a little video on this, by the way, but it's too much for for trying to show it all. So you have to trust me on this. And then of course, I said, Okay, alright, let's let go that, you know, we're supposed to be really kind and compassionate. Look, what we're doing to her poor heart rate variability. She's just you know, she's struggling up there, even though she can't hear what you're what I'm saying or what you're all reporting about the experiences you had. She can feel fierce coherent field environment, she can feel this. Look at Look at her. Now I want you all to go back to that happy place, to that meditative space to open place where you feel connected with the divine or in any way you feel connected with the world connected with your with everyone in relationship. And we watched her go from into coherence, we watched her on screen go from this to this. And she had no instruction, she was just sitting in the field. So it's powerful stuff. It's really powerful stuff. And it allows us to do these kinds of things and measure them. So here's the quick coherence technique. It's taught by the heart math people. I have no relationship with heart math, except I love their devices in their technology, I get no feedback from them. And there are other devices out there, they're starting to make them so last time I gave this talk somebody pulls it up, I think was may have been here even and said you can use an app on a phone and you know, have camera pointed your finger and read your heart rate from there and converted to heart rate variability. So however you can do this is fine by me just get some feedback to know what state you're in and see if you can sense when you're shifting your emotional state from being connected to maybe being a little angry or out of it. Okay, so the quick coherence technique, okay. Everyone game for giving us a quick shot. Give it a try. Okay, so if you can just sit quietly for the moment, you don't have to get into any particular position, which is somewhere you're comfortable. You can allow your eyes to close or just gaze, soften your gaze. You know, we do a lot of meditating with our eyes open. That's fine. Just soften your gaze and start started deep in your breath.
Kind of like Laura's screen, you know, she's got the she's got the northern lights on, you know. So stop breathing at that rate or just kind of noticing that slowing down Then your breath gets a little deeper. And then bring your attention to the center of your chest really where the heart chakra is not necessarily where your heart beats and all of that, but where your heart center is. And as you're breathing, imagine on the in breath, your heart center expands on the outbreath. contracts, it expands, contracts, fill your heart expand with each inhale. And then as in that practice, as in the practice of tongue Lin. You don't necessarily you can take in some suffering with that expansion. But I really wanted just to exhale love into the world. So you're breathing in and exhale, love into the world. breathing. Feeling your heart expand, it has so much to give, and you exhale that into the world world is such a better place for and then bring to mind a time when you felt really good about something, something you really appreciated, somebody did a kind act for you. somebody bought you a gift, somebody came to visit, somebody did more for you, than you expected. And feel that appreciation, the gratitude you offer to that person, to that animal to that plant that tree to the clouds, whatever it is for you. Whatever it is for you. Then notice how you're feeling now. Notice how you're feeling now. Okay. anyone notice a change in how they're feeling? Just wave mind your head? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a great way. It's like a mini meditation, right? Maybe a little bit more than one breath meditation. But it's a way to allow not only your heart, to your heart rate variability to come into coherence, but to bring the rest of your physiology into coherence to okay. There's another technique. So those of you who got here today are getting an extra special, you get two ways to do this. Okay. So in my semantic teaching, there's this decoupling technique. It's really funny because it's like, we have all these esoteric words and our Shimano practices, and they come up with this decoupling technique. But the idea is, it's very self explanatory. Okay. And we'll talk about it after let's keep you kind of in this, you know, nice juicy state here in this late, airy, very state. And if you can kick back a little bit, and if not, that's fine. Wherever you are positions fine. But you've noticed where your heart is the heart center, right? We're going to put your left hand on the heart center, we know a lot about the left is the receiving side, the feminine side in many traditions, okay? And even though it's in the center, you can feel your heart beating in your chest.
Just kind of notice. You can actually feel your heart rate your heartbeat. If you need to cheat a little bit, move your hand a little bit over towards your heart to make sure you get a good signal. Feel bad Then deepen your breath. And notice your heart rate slowing as your breath does. Now, you may also notice, when you breathe in, there's an increase in heart rate briefly and when you exhale, that slows down again. So there are a couple of things that are going on as we breathe. But just kind of get a general sense of what your heart rhythm is. And then again, with your eyes closed, or soft, softened gaze, looking down a bit more if you're gazing into nature, wonderful.
Allow your awareness traveled down into the earth into Pachamama into mother.
And if you can, and if you can, and if you can't just imagine feeling for the rhythm of mother. And one of the first things you may notice is her rhythm is generally slower than ours. Paris, this deep rhythm that's regular, continuous, consistent, deeply beading. then allow your rib to match hers to come into sync to Kota synchrony to come into coherence with Mother Earth.
And when you can find that or imagine that connection, then place your right hand on your Sacral Chakra just below the belly button, a few. A few finger words below. Just generally placed that there. And notice if you feel anything there.
Generally I find when I do this Sacral Chakra is beating twice as fast as my heart chakra which is now slowed down considerably.
And the sacral chakra is where is connected to our adrenal glands, which release all that cortisol or that fight or flight stuff. And so we want this rhythm to come into sync with our heart rhythm, which is in sync with Dr. Turner. Just see if you can notice this connection.
Notice how the beats synchronize
and when we experienced that as best you can come back to the room. You can release your hands. You can today Inc Mother Earth for her assistance in this practice.
Notice how you feel now.
I'd love to have some feedback right now. So this would be a great time to raise your hand to let me know if you felt anything. To what was interesting. What you're curious about. What are you wondering about? Are you still asleep? Because I did see a few yarns, which I am so used to which I consider that a badge of honor when I see people yawning in my talks. Because these are great techniques to use at night, if you're having some difficulty falling asleep. Karen, are you on? Oh, no, I just I just unmuted Barry. Oh, Barry. Okay. Hey, Barry. I had Yes, there. Sorry. You're looking a little stiff there. Yeah, I'm some stiff guy. What's up? I'm using the heart math machine now. Okay, and
I'm looking, it's mostly green. Yeah, a couple of rate in there. Nice and blue, some blue. But, um, so I was really wondering about the, the using this consistently for heart rate variability. And it seems like the idea is to keep monitoring myself to make sure that it stays in the green, or at least the blue in the green. And I guess the breathing techniques relate to that as well. How you breathe, would also affect how how you would maintain that advantages variability? What's a good variability score? In other words, what should I be looking for in terms of how the score goes?
Okay, great questions. Start with the last first. So when you're essentially 80%. So most of the time, and I mean, like every session, you're getting 80% or higher, combined between the blue and the red, then you're doing well enough to move to the next level, there are four levels in heart math, and everybody starts on the first level, because you just kind of have to figure out the relationship, the the communication, the conversation between your body and the device, okay. But 80% of the time, I mean, 80% of the numbers in the blue or the green, it means you're pretty well got this down, you know how to get yourself into that state. And so when you move to level two, then it becomes a more refined, it's looking for a more refined heart rate, a more refined power, or more emphasis on the parasympathetic activation that requires you to do before you get to 80%. Again, okay, and so on level three, level four. So you're, it's almost like becoming more deeply meditative. As you move to the higher levels. Okay. But there are a couple of different ways to look at what it's doing. Okay. So we know that the trying isn't going to work, right? It's just like a meditation that trying to not focus on the thoughts, keeps us focused on the thoughts. So I first liken it to learning how I'm shifting, without being aware of that I'm shifting. I'm shifting my state, I'm shifting my emotions. And I'm not noticing because next thing I know, I'm in blue, I popped out of the green, I'm in the blue, I'm in the red. So those are indications to you that you've just drifted off. And so your goal is to maintain the green so that you are aware of where you are and you're not drifting off. That makes some sense. Yeah, okay. That's, that's a great slide pin. How can I do a spotlight for everyone?
That's not my thing. But I'll tell you what the numbers are like the low was 9%. The high was 78%. And the average coherence is like 1.8.
It's just your whole, this is your whole three minutes when it was two and a half minutes. Yeah. So I say, here's the quick coherence technique. I mean,
are you seeing my let me? Let me try. Just Barry, if you want to share your screen, I actually gave you the ability. If you feel comfortable doing that,
yeah, play again. Yeah, let me get get this up here. I can make this the whole screen. Second here. So I'll share my screen.
Oops, can you see it? Yep. Yes, well, but it's really small. Now. About now. Personal bigger. That's good enough, though. That's good enough. So, um, so that first so the green is what we're talking about the green, okay. And if you look at the numbers of the green, it says 78%, high. Okay, so 78% of this time of the three minutes, Barry was in high synchrony, high coherence. High heart rate variability in the range we want to be the medium was about 13%. So this is the level you're at at 91%. And which, you know, if you were doing this consistently, day in and day out, you might want to go ahead and shift to level two, you can't do that. That's a secret. That's what you have to pay me for? No, you go into settings, you back out of this, you go, you go to the set session, and then you get to Settings. And it'll allow you to choose your session,
I find it goes automatically, I thought like, No, you do it a bunch of times, then it goes higher. So I have to actually change it, you have
to actually physically change it. Yeah, because that can be really frustrating for people once you get into level two. And you certainly don't want to start level two, and you don't want people messing around with that. Because then they get frustrated and stop doing it. You know, the numbers won't be this high in level two, when you first start, but then you'll get there quickly. But more what I want to show here is in the first what the first minute and change. That would be the quick coherence technique we did first. Okay, so very rapidly got in there. And you can see the majority of that signal is in the green. And then and then I started talking about Okay, we're going to change, we're going to do something else. And you can see his curve comes down a little bit into the blue dips into the red kind of hangs out in the blue. And then as I got into the connection with Mother Earth and connecting your loss, this was the quick coherence technique. So for Barry, it seemed the quick coherence technique was much more productive in this particular session. I think that's why
it's cool, though. I mean, so this is like real live stuff happening now. Yeah, I don't think that I don't think that you actually do. So if you're doing it live, you can actually see the changes occurring. Our barriers. Great. Thank you. Yeah, take you can take that off. Think you have to stop sharing. Okay, good. Yeah. So any questions about that? Any questions about the technology itself? I mean, again, I like this particular company, because they really, they've been looking into this for 30 years now. So we've made the technology user friendly. And you can see it and use it to really assess. I love it, because it gives me that signal when out of sync. When I've just drifted, whether it's three thoughts or one, it's much gets much closer to when, you know, I'm not like down the pike half an hour before I realize I've drifted out of my state that I'm trying to be in. So it's a great tool for meditation as well, to help you know you're in it. And when I would find in general with my insomnia people, and I'm not sure if this translates to everyone, but it I kind of think it does. Is that when they would get ahead On this, actually, they would look kind of like Barry screen up there, because what would happen is for the first few minutes, there would be focused on their breathing and then get it down and they do it really well. And you might remember when I taught the relaxation response of her Benson, in one of the presentations earlier on that herb Benson, when he did this, he found something similar, that as soon as you start getting really good with the process, you know, your, your mind, your ego mind is telling your body what to do. Okay, I got this, once you get it, then the mind needs something to do. Otherwise, it'll start drifting and give you something else to do, right. And so people would get into it, and then they'd fall out of it in a short time. And then I'd find this pretty much with everybody, maybe just shorter times with the insomnia, because they couldn't learn how to maintain a low arousal state how to maintain a high coherent state. And so I would put it up on the screen and have them watch it. And they began to see Oh, once I started to drift, so they would have to figure out what would work for them. Her Benton's relaxation response, he would say, use a mantra of some sort. And you just repeat the mantra over and over, but a brief one on the inhale and the exhale. So you're giving this something to do. So it doesn't come back in and, you know, create grocery lists and you know, to do list for the next day. Okay. Any other comments? or questions? Yep, Karen? T. I was intuitive. I knew you wanted to say something. You need to unmute though. I'll get
off. Again. To see, I don't know what this is, do you put it on your finger? What kind of machine is this? And what a pulse ox be of any use?
a pulse ox?
I have COPD. So I got this.
Yeah, graphs. And, yeah, you you could ask the pulse ox people, if they have a program to analyze the heart rate variability, they have the data, you just need a program to analyze the heart rate to pull out the heart rate variability. So we should be able to like the sleep labs, when we first started doing this, we always collect EKG. And then they started adding software so that we could analyze the HRV. And, and that was really helpful, because we could see how often it was for people with sleep apnea, for instance, and we could see it come back online when when they were using C Pap, you know, so it became another tool for us. Here is to a little ear clip that you get, and a little clip that goes to your like collar, so you don't pull on it, you put it on your ear loan. So it's out of the way, and it just kind of hangs there that it records your stuff. It comes in, they still have these m wave Tuesday cell like this. And you can watch, you can watch what it's doing on screen on on the device itself. Or you get the for the like I showed this once before I have a couple now I got my bluetooth one fixed. So my bluetooth one is this is the whole thing. And it's connected to my phone, my iPhone, just a free download called inner balance. I clipped that on here, or turn this on. And then it starts collecting to my iPhone, wherever that is.
So you just did this a few, like, a few minutes several times a day or whatever. Is there a kind of routine you would do to practice?
Well, you know, if you think about it, you want your ability to stay in meditation for longer than a few minutes, right. But you can start with just a few minutes, usually three minutes is a good starting place. And if you can then maintain the green in the blue for three minutes, you go out to five minutes, and then you go out to 10 minutes, and then somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes. If you're staying pretty steady. That's when I think you can then shift to the higher level. Because the higher levels are the ones that really do it.
What's it what's the quality difference?
Yeah, I mean, you'll notice one of the key feedbacks is, you notice when your state changes, you might not notice now but when You can put a or just mine is going to go in a minute, you can put the sound on. So the sound will tone. When you shift out, you can set it to just on state changes. So when you shift from green to blue, it'll come on, he'll go boo, you know, and you'll go Oh, and that links to what was I just thinking? Where was I just then, you know? So it gives you that feedback when you get a good sense of what's going on inside of me that I'm not aware of. Let me become aware of it. That tells me I'm staying present. I'm staying focused, I'm here. Okay. Okay, here you go. I got mine going here. Talking to you. I'm in blue right now. I'm in red, because I had to show this to you. And you can see it became red. I have my sound off. I always do this quietly.
You shift to the next level, does that mean you're more present? Or what is a qualitative difference to where
there's a qualitative difference? because now you're noticing your unperturbed bubble. Okay, that's what happens. That's what that feedback is telling you. You're in a more refined place. Okay. You know, it's To me, it's the same stages you go through when you're learning meditation, and you're trying to deepen your meditation, okay? Or you're, you're extending the period and meditation. When do you start shifting out? When are you not there? This is a great tool for that. And that's what it supports. And then the better you're staying in there, the more that feedback will tell you, you're staying in there, and then you keep refining.
Okay, cool.
All right, I'm not gonna Yeah, but again, it's a, to me, it's the best I've found to support technologically meditative states meditative states. So for what it's worth, but I use it, the reason I got into it was for my insomnia therapy for people to learn what to notice when they were getting anxious to notice that, and so they could interrupt it and bring themselves back. And they could do deep breathing, or good thoughts are heart reading whatever they needed to do, to calm themselves back down. And then ultimately, to put it on, to use it at bedtime. I always recommend, if you've not done these practices before, to not do them, when you really need them at bedtime, because they ain't gonna work. Because you're too you know, you got to get comfortable in your body, your mind knows, once you're comfortable doing this and you've done the repetitions enough, your body knows when it starts breathing like that it associates it with dropping your arousal level. And after he won. Alright, just a couple of more slides to complete this presentation. I gotta shrink everybody back down again. So I can see my screen Alright. So and this is being recorded. So you guys are welcome to practice this and anytime you want to. So, all the same, said the Scarecrow I shall ask for brains instead of a heart for a fool would not know what to do with the heart if he had I shall take the heart return the Tin Man, for brains to not make one happy. And happiness is the best thing in the world. Okay, direct from the Wizard of Oz say Sage words of advice. And not only the Wizard of Oz, but the Wizard of Tibetan Buddhism would probably agree. So that's what we've actually offered. Yeah. heartmath comm heartmath.org I think Barry listed something in the couple things from Yeah, good. Barry listed some links in the chat box. So I'm going to stop the share. And again, I can't emphasize enough I don't get anything from these guys. But I've just found it really helpful. Patients have found that helpful. And so I like talking about it. But there are other ways to get heart rate variability. So you know, you might look around the internet is for every one thing that we think is good. There's probably another 10 or 15 or 20, cheaper, easier, whatever, you know, they're out there. So just make sure your It's fairly reputable before you decide to fork over your dollars. Okay, so we had the one question right, Andy, let me see. Real quick. And any other questions I'm willing to entertain while we're here from Ted. So Ted asked. Hi, Dr. Wright, a woman I know is dealing with some pretty extreme insomnia. I told her to try to take naps, but she said the doctor she went to, to want to see told her not to take naps because they want her to sleep at night. She falls asleep for the first few hours then wakes up and is often unable to get back to sleep again. She was trying some sleep medications, which helps a little but a little bit. But she said she has almost no dreams. And his dream deprive she thought she may be averaging three to five hours of sleep per night. What suggestions might you have for her? Any ideas? Much appreciated. Oops. So so the first thing is,
is she seeing asleep dot? Okay, if she's seeing a sleep doctor in the sleep doctor made that recommendation that absolutely follow it. If she's seeing a primary care physician who doesn't know much about sleep, then he might just be doing what he thinks is you know, what most people think is you don't want to nap because you wouldn't be able to sleep at night. But if you're really low on Sleep, sleep, napping to make up for lost sleep is one of the best things you can do. Because it helps the brain was store itself so that it can better deal with not getting the sleep that didn't get and then get to sleep The following night. So this doesn't continue. Okay. So it depends on the reasoning for the recommendation of not napping. But anytime you're making up for lost sleep. napping is a good thing. It helps you function during the day, it clears out some of the cobwebs clears out some of the junk that your nocturnal sleep did not do and can make you feel better when you tackle sleep again The following night. You don't want to do it too late in the evening. Okay, regular counselor told me that Yeah, so that's a standard, you know, and really depends on her case. So midafternoon circadian dip time. You guys remember that? from prior talks and Katie and dip time? If she hasn't slept? Well at night? She could take 45 minutes to an hour and a half nap at that time. Perfect time for naps. and not have it affect her ability to sleep at night. Six hours before sleep time was the recommendation. If it's it depends on when she goes to bed. You know, if she's going to bed at 11 then six hours before is fine. Not a problem. You want to have your nap out of the way by that. Okay, so it sounds like it was a little nuanced. As long as it wasn't six hours this time. And again, you know, what about if it was 605? What about if it was 555? Would that be okay, you know, so they're the jet there are these general rules. The second thing is what is she doing once she awakens at night? Okay, and is she trying to sleep too early in the night if she's going to bed at 10 o'clock, and she's waking up at three? Well, maybe she needs to go to bed later. So she wakes up closer to morning, that five hours may be what she needs for right now. Three hours generally isn't going to work for anyone. But getting five hours might make her functional until she can do some other benefits for sleep that may get her. Yeah. And that's what people do. They try to go to sleep earlier they lay there to you know, they're like, maybe if I go to bed earlier, I'll sleep longer and no, no, it just doesn't work that way. So for her better to plan to go to bed at like midnight. Know that she's staying up later and her day just got longer. Not sit around at 10 o'clock and twiddle our thumbs wondering what am I going to be able to go to bed and really get her anxiety up and get her physiological arousal up, and then not be able to fall asleep. So I plan on doing things for that extra couple hours to her bedtime routine and all that stuff later. And that will help push her sleep closer to morning. Okay, so that's another thing. And then if she's not sleeping, and she's and she knows, you know, how does she know it's time to get up in the morning. She's only sleeping three hours and she awakens and must be pretty dark. She's sleeping five hours, she may notice the light coming in around the edges. But if she's waking up and it's not actually had She should set an alarm, so that she awakens to the alarm. If the alarm hasn't gone off, her only job is to go back to sleep. And then you can refer back to some of the earlier presentations, there's a whole bunch of stuffs you can do, I think was my third presentation. You know, set up three levels of reading or three levels of video watching blue blocker glasses. There are a lot of recommendations around what to do if you're not sleeping. But the first thing you always do is try to go back to sleep. And if you have a clot telling you, it's 3am, again, hearing him wide awake, that's no help, that's actually going to make it worse. So you don't want the clock to remind you, you're awake in the middle of the night, even though you think it's going to tell you hey, I've slept three hours, and I'm really doing you know, now, she wanted to go the other way. So, set an alarm, hide the clock, have some reading materials with low lamp low and no low water, you know, brightness, lights, blue blocker glasses, if she needs to. She's not a reader, and she's watching her videos.
And make sure she doesn't know what time it is. Go to bed later, have things set up in case she wakes up. And it's not time to get wake up because the alarm hasn't gone off. And then use her use those tools to help her return to sleep. Okay. So hopefully that's helpful. You're welcome to Yeah. I bring Barry back on it looks like his hand came back up. Sure.
Yeah, just a couple of things right now this week, participating in a study of Charlie Morley, and the ions Institute with lucid dreaming and PTSD. Worse, a lot of lot of the folks veterans had PTSD have trouble sleeping. And so the, that's a very, very big part of what's going on this week. Interesting. Charlie's got a book is coming out, it's called wake up to sleep. I put the link in there hasn't come out yet. But he really is a lot. And one of the things that he taught this week was the coherent breathing, the five, you know, five in five, out five in five out. And that seemed to help a lot of the folks just by doing a consistent actually even as tones that go for five in and five out. And that really does seem to help people just like you when we were doing before regulate, become coherent to breathing. So for the person who asked a question that might be something to recommend to the friend also is something that you've talked about those as well, the breathing techniques, maybe you might want to, you know, go over that again, or just reiterate that.
Sure. Thanks, Barry. Excuse me. Yeah, coherent breathing is a really helpful tool. I hesitate to pick a particular number because I think everyone's different. You know, in general, women have smaller lung volumes, then then man. And so whether it's five in or six in or foreign, whatever seems to work for you, but you want to match whatever you come in, with whatever you go out. So that's the coherent part. you're breathing in and breathing out, and you're very regulating, very regular breathing. And that does that can feed back on heart rate variability, and bring that down, as well as the rest of your system. So that's a good one. Again, do what you know what feels comfortable for you. There are a couple of other techniques, which I'm not going to get into now. There is one called the punch. I wonder if he is going to mention this. It's from Levine, what's his first name? I can't think of his name, who does a lot of trauma research, a lot of stress and trauma in the field. And he has this one technique that he uses. Instead of all I can do is give you one technique. I teach you to do Voodoo.
The word Voodoo, which is first name is Mark Levine. And Alicia typed in the chat. Could it be Noah? No.
It's another it's another ravine. He does a lot of research. A lot of trauma work. Anyway, the view is you basically just breathe in and Steven Levine Yes. Thank you, Tim. Yeah, so you look up the view tech, the whoo technique, and it's somehow it does or no, no, he said, Peter. We might be Peter Levine is a psychiatrist has done a lot of this work. Yeah. Is that is that berries from a Peter, you have flourishing counseling? Yeah. Whoo, breathing anyway, just look it up, it's a pretty good you can lower your blood pressure. By doing this for five minutes. You can do and I've done that. So it's pretty cool. It's another technique. So that you can do a lot with your breath. And and it's like, finally, we're beginning to move towards the behavioral ways we can work to embody some of these activities that allow the body to do what it would do naturally if we had messed it up. Okay, so yeah, well, good. Something else you said about that, too? It's not. Oh, oh, there was another question. Right. Okay. Anisha says, do we do meditators need less sleep? I'm increasingly seeing that deep spiritual practitioners need less sleep. Any comment on this? To me, this is the most increasingly wild idea that is absolutely true. And I just, I'm just working on getting my head around that as well. I just took a course with tensile Longo repor, Shea, and you know, and we did some of the clear like yoga, deep sleep. Let me just, yeah. Okay.
And what he was saying, and I'm beginning to really do some research on this myself, is that the reason we need sleep, the reason especially we need deep sleep is to deal with, it's almost like dealing with karma. It's dealing with all the crap we build up during the day. By not being, you know, deep meditators and being fully open, and being able to take in whatever comes and not holding on to it, and recognizing, you know, that it's all a virtual world, you know, all the physical stuff we still need to deal with. I'm not saying that. But it's when you can really embody the states and embody these states 24, seven, there is much less need for sleep, there is much less need for sleep. We don't have to encode 90% of what comes through us or at us during the day. So, you know, you know, Andrew is working with a bunch out of Wisconsin trying to figure out how do we study awareness during deep sleep. And that's what, you know, tension propitiate just was teaching practices for staying aware in deep sleep. Now, certainly, in lucid dreaming, we're processing the emotional stuff. And so since working with Andrew, I've been noticing a lot, you know, whatever, whatever my emotional triggers are during the day, I'm dealing with that during my non lucid dreams. And so what if we can only have lucid dreams? What if we can only be lucid during our dream states, we can do all whatever needs doing, and not have these wild and crazy dreams where we're trying to fix this, or be chased by that. And then we would have much less of a need for the rest of sleep. Because there again, there wouldn't be a lot that needed to be processed out. So great question, and I'm really yeah, I'm really working on this. Now, you know, the one caveat for all this is, make sure you're sleeping relatively well, first. Okay, if you're an insomnia, you don't want to start trying to be aware of Tory, that little bit of sleep you're getting, okay? Because it's gonna make it harder for you to get any sleep. So, first, build up your sleep, make sure you're getting sleep. And oh, by the way, that was the one last question Tim I had for your your friend. And that is how much sleep does she need on a nightly basis? Remember, I made the comment somewhere I've made it a couple times. If you're, you tend towards insomnia, you most likely and I would say 99 point 99% of the people I've ever seen No one who came in with insomnia needed eight hours of sleep, no zeros yet, they all need like seven or less, maybe six and a half to seven is a closer range of close to normal, maybe six to seven is a close to normal. If we're going to be saying seven and a half, eight and a half for normal adults, I would say it's closer to six to seven for people with insomnia. Okay, so but you still need a significant amount of sleep to deal with, you know, whatever you need to offload during the night. So make sure you're getting that whatever it whatever that is that you need. And as your sleep normalizes, then first, explore lucid dreaming, I think it's really important to just contain your lucidity to that portion of sleep. Because that's an indication that you're purifying your life, that you're clearing up your thoughts during the day, that you're clearing up what binds you during the day. And as you get better at that, and a lot of your dreams become lucid, then you can work on the other stuff. And then you can definitely work on your own stuff. Yeah, I see a comment from Tim saying your whole family sleeps less than normal. Uh, you know, a lot of insomnia is people trying to get eight when they only need six.
And the way to know that is get that minimal amount, but every single night, and then see how you feeling after the end of a week or two. If you're functional, you're staying alert, you're not irritable, and cranky, and all the things I've said before, then that's all you need. Okay, the vast majority of people need eight and a half, seven and a half to half, seven and a half to eight, you know, but there are plenty of people who need less than there are people who need more. I've had a couple of patients who needed really nine, nine and a half. And a world that demand you only get eight, you know, like so they had a hard time living their lives, for different reasons. So yeah, you know, this is I'm loving this world. Now. I'm loving being in the sleep field at a time, when we're beginning to understand the whole thing. You know, the whole piece? Yeah, let's let's, if we don't live well, we won't sleep well. And vice versa. There's just no way around it. So you can't escape at night, which you didn't do in the daytime, it does come back to to require your attention. So Oh, and that. And then the last thing I will say is your devices. Remember I said they were pretty good for telling you how much sleep you're getting. But then forget about the stages. Well, you can use them. Once you're up to that staying aware during deep sleep. Because that's what I did. During the two weeks with him. I was noticing these guys were telling me I was I was deeply asleep. And I was like, I swear I was I was aware. I was it was some level where and I'm like getting up in the morning and I'm saying I can't believe you know, I felt like I was awake half the night. And I go and I look at my data, my data saying you think you may and both devices I'm wearing? They both concurred, saying no. You were asleep. So Interesting. Interesting. world coming, we're coming into last question. Do you recommend sensory deprivation tanks for resting? I recommend separating some sensory deprivation tanks for anything. You know, like they're a great experience. Not everybody can tolerate them. But they can be deeply restorative. Sure, absolutely. For resting. Absolutely. meditating. Yeah. Yeah. I've been there bury the ones in North Hampton. What's it called? You got the name for me? Give them a plug. I can pick their name offhand. Yeah, we bought a tenner. My wife and I would go to you can do them and ecstasy cloud. That's not the one I go to. But that's okay. Yeah, cool stuff. Cool stuff. Yeah, so I'm all good. Are we good? Hey, we're good.
Thanks for thanks for coming and teaching us and can't wait for next month.
Yeah. Maybe I won't be sleeping by then I'll let you know. I'll give everyone the chance on mute so we can all say goodbye. Sounds great. Thanks, doctor. All right. You're welcome. Hey, bye. Thanks. Bye bye. Thanks very much. Thank you by turn guard