[35] Integrating Wellness, Sleep, and Meditation Practices for Optimal Health

11:05PM Apr 16, 2024

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Q

Ed O'Malley

Alyssa

Myra

Keywords:

hrv

sleep

practice

night

meditation

great

light

coherence

rinpoche

minutes

measure

question

melatonin

peak

lotus

breathing

drop

day

andrew

work

don't know is with David Yamato Mikoshi from UVA. Yeah, it wasn't about the gaming thing. It was about generative contemplation type things, innovations for new practices and stuff like that. So anyway, hey everybody. Nice to see you. This is our monthly session with Dr. Red which we had bought because last last week around he was busy at a program that he's going to share some of his contributions during this event he did with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche on wellness and then address some questions. And so that's what we do here. I'm just in the background hanging out like everybody else. But there are a couple questions that came in is going to address those and then obviously, those who are inspired to ask questions, make contributions and the like, you know how those roles so welcome back after read and talk to us about what you presented at Serenity ridge.

Why thank you, Andrew. Yeah, great to be back. Yeah, it was really a remarkable retreat. This was one of the first retreat actually first Buddhist retreat I went to, in which the focus was on wellness. You know, we want to be able to not only sit on the cushion, but be able to get up and move and do things and be healthy as we do our practices, which obviously support each other. In fact, I'll give you the conclusion first, which was you need to live well, to sleep well to be well, that was my final slide. And it was really, it was well received. So practitioners and their families were invited to this wellness weekend. A big portion of the weekend was getting out in nature. Meditating down by the river, the head meditations in the morning, Sunrise meditations facing Facing the rising sun and breathing that in while doing the breathing practices. You know, just taking in the birds and down there. It's pretty much springtime right now until the flowers are out the trees and greening up. It was really pretty. And so we did we did some serious trail walking and hiked down to the river and trail walking we spent like, probably six miles a day doing trail walking and having conversations on the way and then being quiet on the way different places we could stop and meditate by the river Topo places by the river really beautiful really helped me too because you could see little fish in the river starting to do their thing. Lots of insects around not not not the bad ones, not the mosquito with no mosquitoes yet. No ticks either. Which was great. And they've started labeling all the native plants along the walks. So that was another nice feature by a naturalist in the area. And so you know we had to they had me talking on sleep obviously. And Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is really big on both health and he's big on trackers. So he he had his ring until he just lost it recently. But he's been you know, on everybody's case to get one. He also has a whoop, I don't know if you guys know the work, but it's really detailed analysis of how much strain you put in during the day. And then they give you a score from your sleep, how well you're doing, and therefore how much strain you're allowed to do this day you want to meet the strain. So a lot of it was really talking about why and how to use these devices so that they really support our health. Our practice, both in the daytime and nighttime practices of the Dream Yoga and sleep yoga. So it really strung together quite well. And I think my main takeaway I think I mentioned this to Andrew was that Rinpoche really emphasized that making this practice of lifestyle practice this is not something you just do from time to time, we're just doing your meditation, but every act that you do, you want to bring awareness to and carry it throughout your day and throughout your night. And I tell you why that really, like we inspired me not only to get back on the cushion, but to do my work and to carry that awareness both when I'm sitting with clients. It's like I had a full you know, I just got back late Sunday night. flights were delayed. We were on the tarmac and all and I'm like Yeah, well, whatever, you know, just reading and doing my thing, and then had a full schedule. Yesterday and today's Tuesday right. Yeah. And today, and you know, followed up by being right here. I just finished my last client of the day at 10 of seven. But it's like, you know, there's another book I came across recently called, we were made for these times. And I really, you know, I really feel like we are made for these times. That's why we have all of these practices available. To us. Why we're discovering each other. You know, why discovered Andrew, why discovered Rinpoche and it's really a way to carry this like, I call it positivity. Ground grounded in reality. You know, we see the world is crazy all around us. But we don't carry that we carry this groundedness that we know the bigger picture we know about the awareness that's necessary. It would be clear that we are all connected, that we're all in the same place. We all want the same things. It's just a few people have a different version of how we should get there. Some of them pretty radically different. But you know, we need to make space for that to a point. So I think those those two ideas about living well to sleep well to be well, and lifestyle, making your practice a lifestyle, not just a practice. was really the major takeaways from from this wellness retreat and it certainly be will be one that repeated and we're gonna get into some more dialogues about sleep and, and light, but one of the important pieces that members share was very interested in was this light, you know, because he he talks about the clear light right, the clear light of of sleep yoga, for instance, and the clear light hours so you can access whenever you can access it but you know, particularly in deep sleep and we were kind of relating that and having this back and forth dialogue about the clear light and its relationship to sunlight. You know, the fact that were that we've evolved in on a planet with day and night so we talked a lot about not only the impact of light setting or melatonin rhythm and our our regularity to sleep which I mentioned I think last, the last sleep doc I talked about regularity. Some great new data that came out that really, really important is the first time I've seen any data that suggests something is is more important than the total amount of sleep and that is sleep regularity and what's regularity but getting up at roughly the same time every day. And why is that important? Because it sets your clock for the next night. Right? And by setting your clock for the next night. You're ready for sleep and you're ready, you know, in a sense healthily to go into your sleep practice that night. If you've gotten up at about the same time every day, including on the weekends. So that's how it becomes a lifestyle. You know, you don't do stuff during your work. And then you change it on the weekends when you have play time. No, it's all part of your expression of yourself in the world. So that was really, really helpful. Yeah, the Blue Ridge Mountains. Damn, yeah, yeah. His place is located right in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Gorgeous, gorgeous area. One of the other features pull this back this one see

well, we'll come back to me but it has to do with you know, the light exposure, that strong light exposure in the morning really important, carrying our process and our awareness through the daytime into the evening. And not getting late in the evening. Oh, yeah. And really important to start your it's like what Rinpoche does now is after five o'clock, there is no more work. No more screens. With me. He does go to bed relatively early. I don't know if we can all meet that but I certainly do. I'm heading to bed now like at nine o'clock. You know, to get my full night of sleep. Get up in the morning when things are sharp and happening but that wine downtime isn't just a wind down time to prepare for sleep. But it has to do with really allowing your day to be complete. And then your mind and the way the way he came to this was that watching his heart rate. You know when you look at anybody who has the ring and you look at your data, right? You see your heart rate go like down right and that's that that's the best curve. When you see it go down and it kind of like almost like a like a just an Arkush half a circle let's say so it starts up here somewhere dropped to its lowest point during the night and then it begins coming up generally like an hour or so before we wake up. That's a really good was stored heart rate and a good marker of restoration during the night. But what you do when you start winding down several hours before you go to bed, instead of your heart rate being up here and having to drop that far. It's down here. And so the drop is it takes you no time at all to get to that lowest rate and then you can spend a lot more time there restoring and then you come up when it's time to get up. So I've noticed that was a huge effect of like shutting the day down at a certain time and having a few hours before bedtime and hours that aren't in front of the screen hours are like not here. You might even see me put on my blue blocker sunglasses, the black this big screen that I'm getting all this nighttime light. But anyway, so yeah, it was really powerful. And of course we did our practices. We had practices, we had teachings, we had time to rest. And the last thing I'll add is what what he's been doing with nutrition. So there are you know, there's a lot of data coming out about both intermittent fasting right eating eating within like a 12 hour somewhere between an eight and a 12 hour 12 hour block of time. Okay, so you don't you don't necessarily eat around up until, you know, couple hours before bedtime. So if you're eating at a 12 hour window that's eight in the morning eight at night or you can cut that down a little bit and it seems to really work well for it allows your digestive system to be really quiet by the time bedtime comes around. Another way of doing it is to have your larger meals during midday, right you have a reasonable breakfast and a larger meal, a good protein good fats at mid afternoon or early afternoon for lunch, and then a light snack if anything at all. Like maybe just two meals depending on how things are going for you what your weight looks like and what you want to do with that or you could shift it the other way around and you know if you're more of a night person then you can skip breakfast, have a big you know, have a reasonably good lunch and another meal later on. So have lunch and dinner versus breakfast and lunch and then have just a snack you know, like either have a snack in the morning or if you're eating dinner last or a snack in the early evening. If you're just having the two meals a day. Then I found that to be really helpful too because you know when you're slowing down in the evening, several hours before bedtime, you don't need a lot of food you don't need a lot of energy, a lot of intake because your activity level is much lower. So lots of ways to get into a more healthy lifestyle along with awareness and practices. But diet and then finally exercise is another great contributor to sleep. So you get up in the morning and you do your exercise earlier in the day if you can. Even the cardiologists were saying that. If you if you have if you do your exercise and then have your big meal, then it's or at least your a higher protein meal that really supports muscle restoration. So you do your exercise, and then you replenish yourself with your big meal. So if you can time it just right you can become more optimal in terms of both health, health health and and sleep. So I didn't think I was going to talk that much about all that but these are all like you know they're really climbing to the climbing to the top of what's important and how we want to really treat our bodies well. So our minds function well our hearts function well, and we get really good sleep so we can use sleep for practice. So we can practice 24/7 Any quick comments anyone wants to make any quick questions? If not, I will go to the question that came in a little bit ago, Andrew Hey, I

have a question about my exercise bike because I'm inspired by your wellness talk.

Right? You're taking it to heart right away like

Can you say more about what Roberto was talking about in terms or what, in fact did he say more about the relationship between light and the clear light did he actually go into that in some depth or was it just more cursory thing?

It was it was more cursory we're going to do a Facebook dialogue. You know how he likes to do these dialogues on his Facebook channel. But we don't have it scope we haven't scheduled at the end of May, in which he will talk about the clear light and I will talk about sunlight and sleep and we'll put them together. So he just basically was talking about how he thinks taking in sunlight during the day, we'll reinforce or foster an easier way of accessing clear line. He thinks there is this relationship. And so I need to know more about that too. I want to hear more about it but I can't say much more right now until we have further dialogue. So

it's gonna be curious to hear that because you know, in the classic sleep yoga practice in my room I noticed from deep yoga nidra one of the recommendations actually is to sleep with a light in the background not not a red light, which by the way, I found that to be quite helpful but he light Oh good. On that to help me. But the general instruction is to have just a white light in the background as you're falling asleep to connect you. You know that inner luminosity connects to the outer luminosity. Exactly,

exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's what's going to be the focus of our discussion after that but yeah, the he lied. We talked a little bit about red light and that possibility I mentioned Denise's he lied and and so people were excited about that a couple of people there and gave them the links to the site so they may be buying some highlights. You know, I offered I said but I didn't announce it when I was there. But I'd said to the organizers that I'd be open to questions about sleep during the whole conference. well beyond my my talk. And I think I spoke to just about every participant in that time, and people would catch me on lunch online and this in the morning and that they didn't have to and including Rinpoche you know, we were so it's like, wow, you know, it's so important. And I think partly because you brought along you know you I mean the way I got to sleep yoga and Dream Yoga was through you. And that's so directly connected the work I do and the work I'm trying to do that now. I'm bringing sleep to the people already know about meditations and we're just sort of mashing together now and figuring out what's optimal. Yeah.

antastic Well, let's see. Yeah, I thought about this after I got the highlight. It never clicked on me before. So this is an original insight that I never really connected the red throat chakra and the red Pearl and the Red Lotus as a possible ancient intuition of releasing endogenous melatonin through entering visualized red light I never thought of that before.

Right in the coolest moment. That's a great idea. Great connection. Wow.

Like what these

guys are onto something you know, I mean hearing or are you visualizing all this red stuff on your throat and all of a sudden, the connection to external red light comes into play, so that's kind of cool. Yeah,

I'm gonna take that thing in my throat tonight. No, no, I'm not gonna go that far. But by the way, I also my wife came across you can now by red light nightlights which you can plug in like and just in there you know you can set the different intensities. So I got those now and I have one in the bedroom just in addition because you know the heat light goes off. But when I get up at night I have one of those near the floor. So dive to the bathroom and have one in the bathroom so you know Don't you know it's like

yeah, why not? Kind of cool.

dreams too. I was there so

yeah, but I had actually had a quite a nice lucid dream the other day. I don't know if I shared this where all kinds of stuff was happening and I wish I was in the dream and it was like something was talking to me and I was like, God, I wish I had my voice recorder. I'm not going to remember this. I wish I could write this down. I'm not gonna remember this. So I tried to I tried so hard to remember what was being downloaded but the only thing I remember at the end was this constant kind of exploitation from whatever was typing in. It was basically less is more, less is more. For me. That's a really important mantra. But anyway, I don't mean to Javier

no good stuff. Yeah, that's almost a great segue to one of the questions that came in. But let me just see what the chat says. Anybody related to that red light device, I believe. What's the light? Yeah, red light device. Yeah, just really quickly. Yeah, you guys can go to the website. Thanks, Barry. He put it in the in the chat. In one of our members here comes on and talks about it. You know, she's the CEO of the company, basically comes on for 14 minutes and then tapers down for another 14 minutes and goes off. And that level of red light has been shown to increase melatonin production and you can turn it on again during the night if you wake up because apparently really is supportive of melatonin so it's going to support sleep. So and now we're just making these other connections. Wow. All right. Well, you know, like these things are just coming together. Myra, your hand is up

you're still muted.

Lisa, you know,

I got it. Great. Thanks. Um, is that talk that you're going to give at the end of May the same ones that he posted on Facebook once in a while when he posts his meditation is going to be a special program.

It will be announced as a special program but it will be just me and him. It should be like that. I mean, have you seen his other dialogues? Yeah. Yeah, I

haven't been Facebook and when I can get him when he's live. I do it. Okay,

okay. Yeah, I mean, and it saved there too. You could always go back to it if you're not there at the right time. In fact, I know the time we've set the time may 29, noon, Eastern Time. They 29 New Eastern

and was the retreat that you were just in a hybrid. The he record sometimes because he I have some of his retreats that I have

this one. It was a hybrid door many people online mostly mostly a you know, European and Russian who couldn't quite make it but not that many. And partly because it was a very experiential one right? We were outdoors for like half the time and cold plunges are kind of hard to do. On zoom. Although you can do it. Well, I you know what I mean, it took me to the like, last day to really do one but it was kind of like we were all inching up to it. And finally, somebody ate this all on and they were like, I don't know, 15 of us in the pool going alright, we're gonna do this, you know, and one by one we're jumping in and, you know, some of us even stayed in for a while. So there's some really good evidence for the cold plunge. Really good evidence. Yeah,

I can run it. Yeah, I've been running in my en classes, which in classes are very passive and mostly on the floor with a very launch of us and at the end, and I've been running my own experiment just introducing some of the techniques. Maybe they're just a read that without mentioning the logos or what it means and made sure I'm trying to get the twist around this. The throat and the heart area without saying much. And as it's just almost like I have like 90% of the students just the first thing that I get is that I had a wonderful night's sleep. I had dreams. And I think that if you don't put the labels of what they expect, sometimes they're so relaxed into it because they thought I just use relaxation, that I find it very effective for people that are just going into a regular yoga class without any other kind of intention. So I just wanted to put that out there.

No, I think that's great. You know what, I think you you tap into something because again, this was a retreat for practitioners and their families. So there are a lot of like newbie people. And so you know, we were trying to not make it specific to the tradition. And I think that's what's really helpful. I think, because for Westerners, you know, we kind of like you know, what are you? What, what's aloneness? You know, I remember saying that it needs a spiritual program on me. You know, without without the mud, you get no Lotus. Now, like, What are you talking about? What do you mean? Mud? What mud wet Lotus. So, yeah, being a little more generic but not losing the essence of it can be really helpful. And actually going back to Angela's question about the clear light and what repor she was saying I just remembered he mentioned that in the module, which is where most of the bun teachings come from, that he teaches from, you know, 1000s and 1000s A year old texts. They talk about the various lights and the colors that we see in when we when we're aware of the clear light and how we can break it down and it's seen in different parts of the body and forgotten that so yeah, so there's a lot a lot becoming let's stay tuned. We all need to stay tuned and share our stories because this powerful stuff happening here. And we know the world needs it now. Now not tomorrow. Now today. Great. Thanks for sharing my let's see and Barry. So Barry, did you want to say something about you said you've been using it to do the Red Lotus has that been more helpful having the light you know when you're trying to visualize the lotus?

I think it is. I think it it's nice because I once once I turned off all my lights I use that as the flashlight and the sleep light when you go into bathroom light and then when I try and sleep and I'm going back to sleep, I'll do the you know the Red Lotus, meditation and visualization that you know Andrew key, you know taught us to do that. It seems to really ease me into that. So I really liked that

the third grade. It's great. Okay, good. Yeah, I'm doing that. Tonight. I'm just going to apply it to the meditation. I just haven't been doing that offhand. But yeah, good stuff. Alright. We have a couple of questions from Francoise. I wonder if he light users experience a reduction in melatonin production if they stop using it. In other words, if their dependence effect. Good question. A, I can't answer that directly. But I doubt that would be the case because we already have our melatonin rhythms that are pretty endemic to us in the first place. Having a little more should be great. Maybe we lose that extra production. You know, I think that's more of a an acute effect. So when we have it on we have a little more melatonin on board when we don't have it on we don't. I doubt that it reduces us from our baseline level though. That would be my my guess. Okay, great. Thanks for the question. I am going to there we go berry red lotus. Let's see if I could bring I think this is the presentation. Oh, did I share my sharing this now? Yeah everybody see is asleep dark. Okay, great. So let me just see who was that question

I forget what it was definitely related to I was going to relate to it anyway. So we'll start at the beginning. So, so, moralise asks, I would like to compare my HRV scores in the heart math app to the HRV measured by the guru, Dr. App. Is it possible and you know, what I was able to find is that both apps use the same measure. This is one of the standard measures most people use. It's the root mean square of successive difference, which is the square root of the mean squared difference is of successive normal intermediate levels. But it's over the entire recording period. Okay. And it's presented as a measure in milliseconds. The aura calculates your nighttime HRV using the same number, but the average you see in your readiness tab is the mean of all five minutes samples measured while you sleep. Now. That's what I was going to show despite that, here's here's the heart rate variability from the Dior aura app. And so even though it's an average of course night what you get is some some one number in the morning, like what was my average HRV for the night? Was it 42? Was it 28 Was it you know, and that's the number that varies quite literally with health issues. So when you're like you know, worn out fatigued, or you're getting ill, those numbers drop, and I'll talk again about how variable it is. And it goes with age and all that I'll show you some curves for that. But the idea is that if those numbers for you, you know, averaging at a certain amount, then if they begin dropping, something's coming you know, you're overdoing it, you're overwhelm you're over activity, or you're getting sick. And so you want to take care of your health. Use that as a warning shot across the bow warning signal that something's not quite right. And what you'd like to do is, as you improve your health as you get on an exercise, bike, and so forth, and you do that regularly, right, you start building this, this, this all these helpful activities into your life. You look at how this changes over time, and it really should go up. Your overall HRV numbers should go up but if you're doing anything in particular, during the night, you might be able to time what was going on when you were doing this and this is what relates to one of more Lisa's questions. Yeah, this question, so she said Could it be could it even be possible to increase the HRV rate when using a coherent breathing technique inside a lucid dream? Okay, so like, you know, Andrew, you might have to add this in as a little addendum to your dream yoga levels. Here's another one that goes in there somewhere. So imagine, you know, to increase your coherence when doing a Heart Math Practice, when you're doing Heart Math, one of the things you know, there are a couple of things I've talked about before the quick coherence technique, it can bring you right into it. gratitude practice can bring you right into it. Any kind of appreciation, any kind of heart centered breathing will bring you into that state. Now, if you can become aware during your lucid dream and remember that you're going to do this practice to increase your coherence. Would you see it here? So we would know from your your earrings. curve across the night, if you were asleep? It'll tell you where your REM periods are. Can you align your REM periods with like, imagine they were doing that technique during a REM period, right around 4am. Right. Like you wouldn't necessarily know the time but you just know you did it. Maybe if you're having a wake back to sleep practice, sort of towards morning and you go into the long run practice. And you see you a peak suddenly go way up. And you were doing that coherent breathing during a lucid state. So you know what, that's a great practice that we can begin trying. Maybe I'll suggest it to the lucidity group that meets monthly for monthly practice to see what people have Peles people will have the ring or have some way of measuring their HRV during sleep can actually use so really interesting we have some interesting possibilities coming up. So So, moralise also asked, I do an almost daily breathing practice at least two times for 10 minutes. That's like 20 minutes right? To enhance her heart math coherence. Scores, right? When you do these practices, and you're doing the gratitude or the heart breathing, you will increase your coherence scores, which are basically a measure of increased HRV that is sustained. Okay, and I'll show you that on another graph. But so I say yes and no, oh, yeah. It will also improve my nighttime HRV rate as measured with your app. And the answer is yes and no, because if you routinely do these daily relaxation response activities, like what she's doing for coherence, but any kind of breathing exercises, meditation, walking meditations, the overall effect will be to improve your HRV scores during sleep, okay? But it may not necessarily show up that particularly not particular night on the one to one basis, unless you're doing it during your lucid dream, but for the most part, doing this as a regular practice over days to weeks, should show some increase in your overnight HRV scores because you are really basically improving your health by offloading your stress by inducing the relaxation response on a regular basis. A couple times a day every day. So one of the reasons is, you know, the HRV during sleep is amenable to or caused by or affected by a multitude of different factors that do vary across the night in between nights, varies with age and health and all these other things. So it's a little harder to see that right. So here's what here's what a typical HRV and coherence score looks like after a session. Here's a 15 minute session. This is on the left here is breakfast beats per minute. Okay, so you can see they vary, but what's happening here is the heart rate variability that is is getting into this rhythm. And that shows you an increase in coherence so you can see across so this is only showing from about nine minutes to 15 minutes of this segment, okay of this 15 minute session and the early part of the session. So down here, you know, they just don't kind of align these well, but that's just the way it goes right. So down here is the entire session. You can see it in just about 15 minutes. So the earlier part of the session up until let's see to start at nine minutes. So up until nine minutes. You can see this is the coherence measure, and these are just relative units. Okay, so the coherence level was lower during those first nine minutes. But as this rhythm becomes very rhythmic, then in the HRV, then the coherence begins to rise. And you can see the average coherence, think about area under the curve here compared with area under these little curves here, which would be greater and it's clearly greater towards this end here. And that reflects this coherence over time. So this, you know, if you're getting these kinds of scores where your coherence is going up, and you're doing it during your practice, and you generally need to do the practice for good, like 10 minutes may not be long enough. I would you know, when I recommend doing relaxation techniques on a regular basis to offload the stressors of the day, I recommend doing it you know, start out with just five minutes right until you're doing that every day, then stretch it to 10 minutes. Are you doing that every day, then if you can go to either 1520 minutes, or add a second time we do it for 510 15 and start building up these two. You know when they did when they did TM meditation, transcendental meditation, the practices were done 20 minutes, twice a day. And when her Benson first studied them to actually come out with this practice, and coined the term relaxation response, he was looking at those meditators because they were reporting these, you know, increases in sleep, decreases in blood pressure, hypertension, their heart rates were dropping, and they were just feeling better, you know, they were getting healthier. And so he went out measure them and sure enough, he confirmed they were exactly doing that. And so he extracted you know without the without the monitor itself, just a simple made up mantra of any sort just give your mind something to do while you're doing the breathing on a regular basis but we know you know much is would just add so much more to that.

So those kinds of practices, I'm not sure that 10 minutes a day, or 10 minutes twice a day. It's certainly a great start. I would either, you know, I would try to extend those two out to 2025 minutes, half an hour. You know, rather than sitting for one hour, although that's all you have, then you do your meditation during that hour. But if you can break it up into a couple of half hours, you may get more bang for the buck, because when you go back out into the world, yeah that one hour will sustain you for a while. But you know, the world has a way of beating up on us as the day goes on. So if you could take a second break during the day, it really does help to drop it. We'll maybe do one in the morning and one in the evening. That would be a great practice to do. If you start instituting this, you know, five or six o'clock, I shut my day down. I turn off my screens and I really put on some you know, meditative music. I get quiet. I do some reading. Maybe I do some mantra practice. Maybe I do some meditation then great way to build that into a full wind down a deep wine down for your asleep night. I want to add one more thing with this slide here. This is a spectral spectral analysis of the frequency of the HRV rhythm. And when you get into a rhythm like this, the spectral analysis usually peaks at around point one. And so this is slightly off but there's a lot of activity in this general range here. It's pretty close to point one, which is about six breaths per minute, right, which is what we come down to being one of the ideal breathing rates, you know, and you can do that a couple of different ways you can do it with

what is it?

Still somewhere around breathe in for out eight, you know, as long as your exhalation is longer than your inhalation and your time it to about six breaths in a minute. Lots of variations on that. You're going to start boosting your HRV and then if you're doing a mantra associated with that you're doing some type of internal meditation, some proportion, so even samatha shamatha you're going to be generating peaks like this. Rhythms like this, and really having nice HRV and you know HRV is a measure to check the time you okay? We do an okay HRV is a measure of moving from the fight or flight right to the rest and digest fight or flight sympathetic activation, high cortisol, high stress stuff into parasympathetic. And it's not just relaxation, but its relaxation response. It drops you a few notches below standard relaxation. And it's like you can even say right relaxation is not the same as meditation. Relaxation, you know will bring you down a little bit. Meditation really deepens your restorative time your parasympathetic activity and gives you peaks like right about here.

Okay, I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Let's first see what else we have here. I think I showed that I think Oh, yeah. So here's some of the other variations that occur with HRV. So this is the measure the root mean square. You know, I'm not going to get into that in milliseconds, which is, again, the standard measure that people use for HRV. Of course, lots of different devices and lots of different research studies. And so here's a 24 hour day six in the morning to six the next morning 24 hours. Sleep, you can see what happens is just in general, the curve drops about midday, and it increases in the evening and it peaks during sleep, right. Why is that? Because you're least active. Okay? Your body is getting a chance to go into a to rhythmic restorative processes, particularly during deep sleep and that's occurring in the first half of the night. And then it begins dropping off still much higher than midday. And then it continues and peaks again. When we first get up and we're really active, right? That's why this is generally a good time for our activity levels. It does peak again in the evening, but we don't want to become too active. This is generally when we're quieting down and the more require down the lower that'll be and then sorry, the higher it will begin earlier than when we're trying to sleep. So heart rates dropping or HRV is going up. Now, these are also age groups. So you can see the highest level is in the 18 to 24 age group. And then each successive age decade, let's say after 25 we drop a little bit lower and a little bit lower. We start approaching where a few of us are right now. So we can get numbers now look at these numbers to you know, look at your ring. And where are you in the middle of the night? It's going to give you an average okay across this whole night period. And look at this and most people have, you know, 60 What is it 60 Let's say on average 60 But 60 To 7055 to 65. The peak is about 35 Sorry, the peak or sorry 25 rather, no 30 So, the peak is around 30. Okay, so the average is somewhere between 25 and 30. For your night of sleep, on average, if you're relatively healthy and not, you know, does don't have a major disorder. Of course, they're all screened out for these kinds of studies. But, you know, if you're starting to get numbers up here, you could own most translate this to wow, Hi, um, you know, my chronological age is here, but my biologic age, My health age may be 10 Years Younger about that. Okay, so it's a great measure. Of how well you're doing overall, and how you can improve your health by what happens when you're not doing any activity during the night. It's a great measure of how the system is working. I have one more thing. Yeah, this one and this is just an example. Of a representative. You know, one of those youngsters, one of those earlier age groups. Of you can see all and this is actually all the different five minute measures across the entire 24 hour period. And you can see so there is a lot of variation, maybe sitting down to eat lunch here. Or rather, maybe he's moving, he's exercising because it's low here. Maybe he's taking a little break taking a siesta that afternoon. So you can just see there's a lot of variation in the measures and every time we're looking at data, we're generally looking at the averages and so here are the smooth averages of the hard data. I think that's what we're gonna we're gonna stop Yeah, yeah, I just I just threw this one in because it shows you again, the difference between relaxation, which gives you some nice peaks out here, but when you're doing appreciation or some this is one of the quick quick coherence techniques you can use. You can see that spectral peak is right here and not only is it right here, they have to break the graph here because the peak of it is so high, okay, because somebody's really can see a rhythmic This is the peak is way higher than even the relaxation gets you to even if you're looking at either of these. All right, I'm gonna stop that for the moment. And

you had a question? come in through the chat from Tim.

We just closed Okay, thanks. Lissoni students, which didn't question Okay, I usually go to bed around midnight. For the first three, four, even five hours I sleep without having to urinate after that. However, I seem to have q&a After every sleep cycle. About every 90 minutes do you think that may be normal or may indicate that I have some kind of prostate issue? Thanks for your thoughts. Well, we're not going to give any medical advice here. But I wouldn't necessarily say that to prostate issue, you know, depends on your age. You can mention this to your doc. But you know, notice what kind of fluid intake you have. What's your activity level don't forget your lighter in sleep for the last half of the night. And that lighter that lighter sleep may be easier to break through the need to get up and urinate. You want to know whether it's a full load or is it just you know, I am awake. I may as well go pee because I just checked it it feels like I might need to. So it can be a lot of causes. But if you have any concern, talk to your healthcare provider about it okay, and just see what their thoughts are because they have so much more experience in this and they're gonna look at your age and the rest of your history and you know, they'll be able to really advise you better 75 Oh, yeah, yeah, well, you know, I would definitely go and talk to him about this then yeah, it might be in your case. You know, you're at the age in which prostate issues do manifest and so the fact that you are now noticing your your this is happening many more times than it used to. If that's the case also then yeah, those are good signs that something may be changing. Go in and have it checked out, you know, these days, and lords prostate can be benign. They come with age, just like you know, the memory loss and all these other things forgetting what you were, what you went into that room for and so forth. But, so it could be perfectly normal in a sense, but you want to have it checked out and make sure that it is normal and you don't have anything to really be concerned about.

All right.

We are at the end as far as I can see. Angie, any comments. What do we have

as usual? Every time I turn into these things I've learned so much I super appreciate it. The PowerPoints the HRV I mean my HRV is actually pretty pathetic. So when I listen to yours, it actually makes me feel worse.

Sorry about that, but Oh, that's so good.

I mean, I basically vary from like 14 to 2430 at the most. And so it's a little bit on the low end, and it's like what can I do to actually improve that so some of your tips today were good.

Yeah. And it's not necessarily that yours is unhealthy. You know, it's just that that may be where you run, you know. So see what happens when you do some of the more you know improvements and see if it goes up and all that

doing like you know coherent breathing in a lucid dream. That'd be interesting thing to study, wouldn't it? I would

love to see that. Yeah. And I think when do they meet they meet on Saturday, the first Saturday your second Saturday, the lucidity group

your second Saturday, second Saturday. Yep. That's right.

So we just missed it today. Just

this last meeting was last weekend. Oh, yeah.

That was a way at the conference. Retreat. Yeah. So I was thinking of proposing it to them just as something because then I think I know when I went to it once or twice and I know that we're talking to anyone, anyone here going to that? Just went to the last one. It is recorded. Okay. Yeah, they

are recorded. Okay, good.

No one online though. Went Yeah, because it'd be great to get the information to them this make that suggestion. I know they were doing one practice for each month, and the whole group would be doing for the month and come back and report. So Oh, Stephanie are okay you went so they still doing that Stephanie they're still doing one. A certain practice for the month and then everybody's trying it out to induce lucidity. Would you mind sharing with us? Put you on the spot? Stephanie, are you here? Hi. Hey there. Hey,

there. Um, let me think that there were a lot of different things they didn't they have different suggestions for the month to practice. I'm trying to think what they were just this last time wait, I have some notes. Let's see. Okay. Yeah, well, they were explaining about a Dream Induced Lucid Dream practices and wake Induced Lucid Dreaming practices, talking about both of those. And but not anything counting down, doing the 21 breaths the the things that we all know from Andrew, basically, yeah, all the basic things they were just kind of talking about those in gym. Those were the methods they were talking about. Yeah. They had us shared a couple. I think a couple times go also about you know, the red, red light and you know what each of their favorite methods work for both daytime reminders of lucidity practices, and then also sleep, you know, trying to become lucid in sleep. So yeah, nothing, nothing. unusual in that in that regard. But, but it was good. It was good.

Great. Okay. So, so, if you're going next time, Barry, if you're going if anybody's going, maybe start suggesting this possibility, anyone who knows Heart Math, you know what they do coherent breathing, to increase their HRV or any practice they do to ease increase HRV you know, it's more of a Dream Yoga technique, I guess. Right, Andrew, but it'd be nice to Yeah, maybe it maybe it might be a bit much for them. I don't know. You know, if they're still just talking about practices, and they don't get too many lucid dreams. Maybe we'll wait till it's a little more advanced and they've and they've gotten pretty good at this stuff. Then we'll throw it in. But yeah, you want to try it and you

know, give it a crack.

Why not? All right. Sounds good. And you know, you know the technique try basically the, you just you just start going into gratitude or heart breathing or appreciation one of those three usually will get you right there. So, I'm gonna give it a shot to if I can get loosen one of these days again. Yeah, great. All right. Ken, I'm gonna wind down.

Thanks, everybody for showing up. Always super informative, really appreciate it. Everybody else do don't happens on campus, so to speak. See you around town and again, deep, deep appreciation and I'd always really appreciate it. Great

man. My pleasure. And hey, I see Dennis there. Dennis has been taking my course. So next time we'll have him talk about how great that was. Right, Dennis? He's still he's still here. So that's a good thing. All right. See y'all next month.

Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.