EFR 748: A.I. to Train Your Brain At Home, Improve Mental Health, Increase Neuroplasticity and Overall Wellbeing with Paola Telfer

0:01:24 - Speaker 2 It's amazing to see how far we have come with wearables and health technology and access to not only care but access to optimization, access to healing all things we're gonna get into. First and foremost, I want if you can join me as well, I wanna really get the audience tuned into what we're here to talk about. I want you to really think about at least my understanding of this technology and application is to really think about the connection between brain health and mental health, between health and daily productivity, between memory, cognition, because I think for a lot of people maybe someone watching right now, listening right now we're under the assumption that this is just how I am. I am either capable or not capable, I am either a happy person or not so happy person and whatever maybe my physical and mental, even emotional state is, that's it, and I've been there I'm like, oh, this is my capacity.

But the more I have really explored health technologies, wearables, even just tapping into different ways of thinking you know meditation, but even a device like Sensei you're really proving that that's not the case and that, I think, is giving a lot of hope to a lot of people that I don't have to accept my circumstances. With a little bit of work. I can train just like I would my body. I can train my brain to not only perform better but really give me a better mental state, which how many of us would appreciate? That Am I hitting the nail on?

0:03:00 - Speaker 1 the head. Here Are you pretty close? Yeah for sure. Neuroplasticity right is the superpower right, and so we know that the brain has the ability to be changed and to train. The fact is, we're always training the brain, so, whatever we are consuming. So whether it's binging Netflix or the friends we choose to hang out, with.

0:03:22 - Speaker 2 It's the choice.

0:03:24 - Speaker 1 You know, it's also what we eat, it's all the habits that we have that we think, yeah, that's just the way I am, that's just the way my family raised me, that's what I learned from my father, all these things. But all of it's changeable. We have a choice, and so people can change the way that they are, their habits, their choices. With meditation and that's the way, the traditional way, we've done it for millennia, and now, with practices like with neurofeedback, with technology assistance, we can just get there faster and we can have that much more maneuverability, more control.

0:04:01 - Speaker 2 Getting there faster. I wanna kinda pick up right there. It really is the through line for what I say here on the show to live a life ever forward. We're all about, through these conversations, to be able to learn how to move forward in life and if we can get there faster or if we can, I used to say, skip the front of the line. But there's a lot of value and necessity to be had in all the steps necessary. But if we don't have to suffer, maybe for as long as our parents did, or maybe even we did 10 years ago in terms of the learning curve or just again having to accept these circumstances, how can this concept, this technology, help someone move forward today? What does that mean? How can it help them move ever forward?

0:04:44 - Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, so it's interesting. There's a couple things there. So moving forward really to me is about engaging with life more fully, right? So it's really about being more present, more in touch with our true selves, and what we tend to do is we tend to live life sort of at the surface of our I like to think of it like an ocean that we were talking about. So we tend to live life at the surface of the ocean and what might be more of a beta-dominant state from a brainwave perspective. So beta-dominant state is my attention is really externally focused. I am really being driven by what I need to do right now. It's almost like I'm like a paper bag, sort of being driven by the wind.

0:05:34 - Speaker 2 I'm just kind of going where, right. Yeah, not really of my full volition or direction.

0:05:38 - Speaker 1 Right, I mean, and that's really very headfirst, head-focused, you're, kind of your consciousness is coming from the front of the head and then we go to sleep. That's sort of bottom of the ocean right. That's like delta-dominant waves and in between that is alpha states, theta states and, I'll say, gamma states. Even though gamma is a faster wavelength, it does feel like it's in the depths of the ocean but just has a lot of light, okay. And so all those nuanced brainwave states are really about. Those are really where the joy of life is, and so how we can help navigate that is, with the tech assistants is actually helping people to navigate that consciousness with inner safety, with a development of attention, control, and very consciously really come in contact with what they're feeling in a way that feels safe and they can actually navigate and control. Typically, what happens is that life throws things your way right, Like we know right.

And so when that happens and you have unexpected loss, you know all kinds of things that don't manifest the way you would like. When that happens, that's usually when you kind of crash into the ocean and now your feelings are out of control and To say the least, yeah, what we're offering here, what we're trying to do, what I wanted for myself was really a way to navigate that with more control, more consciously choosing to do so right.

0:07:22 - Speaker 2 You have a very powerful backstory, which we're gonna get to for everybody a little bit later on, because I think, beyond the technology, it makes it so much more humanized, because what you have experience is not that uncommon and I think it really drives home the fact of life is gonna happen, suffering is inevitable, loss is inevitable, but ultimately, how well we get through it is really up to us what we're willing to accept and what we wanna change. And, to your point, not spill the beans, but you chose yourself, chose your life and then have now put yourself on a path to help so many other people do the same thing. You didn't keep it to yourself, which is another amazing attribute of you and things that I look for when I bring people on the show. Thanks for saying that Of course, of course.

So we've been kind of talking about technology and saying the brain waves and, you know, theta gamma, all these things that maybe people aren't fully familiar with yet. Can you kind of give us a breakdown of what is going on in the brain? What are these frequencies, these wavelengths, how are they operating, when are they operating and why should they matter to people? Why is it important for us to understand this concept of how this thing is working?

0:08:33 - Speaker 1 up here, right? Yeah, so really the brain has electrical properties and it has chemical properties. Every time that we're thinking, signals are being sent from the brain to the body, the body to the brain Are these neurons, and they're neurons firing Exactly and so we can detect that as electrical activity at the scalp, and so that's really what we're talking about.

And so they're at different frequencies, and these frequency bands have been named, and so when we talk about beta which again I'll use the ocean analogy because I think it helps helps you feel the depth of them. Beta is the externally focused mind and it's where there's a lot of analytical thought. When you go deeper into alpha, alpha is really much more relaxation, so that that is we call it calm in our training. And so alpha feels like like you're in a hot, cold plunge sort of hydrotherapy for me.

0:09:33 - Speaker 2 I think everybody's there nowadays. We're in a plunge, in a sauna, doing all the things at the same time.

0:09:38 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and you're just. It's embodied right and you're relaxed. It's where you want to be at the end of your workday, before you start engaging with your kids, right.

0:09:47 - Speaker 2 You want to transition period?

0:09:48 - Speaker 1 Yes, yes, alpha is really like I like to do, like an alpha boost at the end of the day before I go and have fun with my son, right that's. That's a good example.

0:09:58 - Speaker 2 It sounds like what I do. I wonder if this is the case Fridays for me. I take a really long walk in the afternoon. I usually start working around noon or 2pm and I'll go on a hour or two walk intentionally to separate my, my life, my mind, from the work week so that I can really rest and recover on the weekend.

0:10:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%, and nature, nature can definitely do that to you, absolutely yeah, and it's some. It's really and again back to like the tech assisted versus the natural way of doing things right. So so, the natural way of doing things, absolutely. I live in the woods, I, you know, have a deep appreciation for nature and I definitely leverage, like the walks in between the workday to kind of help, you know, things integrate. But we have to allow nature to fill us with awe and flow through us in order to really get out of that beta state.

0:10:51 - Speaker 2 I love what you just said. It just kind of blew my mind. Oftentimes, when we're looking for this escape, you know we go out into nature for us to plug into nature, but it's actually nature plugging into us, Wow. And we need to allow it.

0:11:03 - Speaker 1 So, for example, if I go out to nature and I will do this, go for a hike with a girlfriend, but we're chatting the whole time, I'm not really dropping in right, right.

0:11:12 - Speaker 2 So this is back to you. Get some proximity value for sure, yeah, yeah.

0:11:16 - Speaker 1 So that's, that's the alpha, sort of relaxed state as you go deeper into theta. Theta is very much probably what you'd associate with a deep meditation, a float tank, if we're going back to the water analogy. Yeah, so that that's very deep, it's very still. As you're going deeper it's more spacious and it's more still.

Okay, and then what we talk about. Gamma states and gamma states are somewhat enigmatic. You know, in studies they show that monks that have meditated for many decades have a lot of gamma power and it's in synchrony, right. And so gamma is actually. These are each. They were all getting slower and they like, in terms of wavelength they were all getting a little slower, but gamma is actually the fastest, but it feels like the bottom of the ocean, and so we think about gamma like you're at the bottom of the ocean but you've got light. You've got like a spotlight, flashlight with you.

0:12:14 - Speaker 2 You're not lost in the darkness, no, no, but you're deep, but you're yeah.

0:12:17 - Speaker 1 So gamma feels like awareness. It's actually very brightening. So those are, those are the brain waves that we train, and at the bottom of the ocean is delta, and that's usually associated with sleep.

0:12:28 - Speaker 2 Amazing. Yeah, okay, got our groundwork late. Thank you so much.

0:12:32 - Speaker 1 And so so you were saying you know why? Why would it matter? The states that we are inhabiting in our, in our day to day? They are actually their signatures. There are signatures associated with these various states. So, whether they're meditative states, their creative states, their mindful states, they're there, they have signatures. And so, in the Sensei app, that's what we've done, was we've mapped them to various planets for fun. It's an interstellar game and and so then you can train each of these, these states, and what you'll find is they're all happening at the same time, but with these various signatures, maybe theta is more dominant, or maybe it's a theta, theta, gamma dominance, and so we mix the frequencies for these various training patterns.

0:13:18 - Speaker 2 Now being one brain wave dominant. Is that air court here a bad thing? Or is that just, to your point, a signature of maybe what's going on where we need to redirect brain waves or focus, or what we just need to work on? Is having one higher or lower a bad thing?

0:13:34 - Speaker 1 No, none of us. It's good or bad. It's actually, in this, a really good question, because sometimes people let's say, if you're been meditating for decades and you have one particular style of meditation, you might actually have created a very dominant let's say it is, it is gamma theta, gamma theta dominant brain. But now let's say I were to ask you to write a book about your experiences, you might actually have a very hard time getting into beta like go mode. I got to sit and do something. I might have a hard time.

So part of the objective of Sensei is to help people to create mental flexibility. So you know, ultimately you know we were talking before about part of our objective is to help people live more fully really, and to live more fully is about knowing what the mom the moment calls for in life and being able to bring that forward. So do I need to be in this more analytical state? Do I need to be more in a mindful state? Do I need to be more in a compassionate state? And so I've learned how to shift those gears. That's the objective.

0:14:38 - Speaker 2 I want the listener to go back to the last like 30 seconds of what you just said. I think so far, what a powerful takeaway If we can get better at understanding what the situation demands, instead of us always going into a situation and argument relationship, work, friends, family, pets, whatever the same, just that same approach that would solve so many problems for so many people and, to your point, have greater appreciation for life, because I'm sure you're going to be way less frustrated across the board.

0:15:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, no, absolutely, and that's part of the self awareness and it's really part of tuning into our depths, our feelings, and being able to to be at peace with them, like sometimes we're going to feel sadness and we have to be okay, that's okay.

We have to be able to be present, have a present awareness for our sadness and hold it like it's a child and say it's okay and be kind with that, let it, let it flow right. And I'm really. I mean that that was part of my learning. You mentioned my motor vehicle accident. That was, that was how I came across the, the neural technology in my healing journey, and what I learned in that process was that my previous spiritual practices had really been centered on suppression. You know, I realized that as much as I was practicing compassion and I was practicing love, I needed to actually be at peace with sadness and grief and let them flow through me, because otherwise it was a disconnection. I was living disconnected.

0:16:27 - Speaker 2 You're forcing all of those down as much as you're trying to force other things up inadvertently. Keep that up forever Inadvertently.

0:16:35 - Speaker 1 I had no idea that that was what was happening, and so part of that journey for me was actually looking at those emotions in in a state that was Australia's Alpha, alpha Theta, which is, like it's called, introspection in our, in our planets. And being able to do that inner work of sitting with those emotions. For me was PTSD around the, the car accident, and letting that flow through me, letting that be okay and it was what was needed for healing. Healing can't happen otherwise.

0:17:07 - Speaker 2 So true. So it cannot happen, unless, I believe, we choose to let it happen.

Because, otherwise, I think we're just keeping it at bay. We're doing little things here and there that are going to maybe initially give us some winds about healing physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever. Maybe that big T or little T trauma was for you. But until you allow and make the space for all of that, to sit and be present with you to properly navigate it and address it. Speaking from personal experience, raising my hand here, I was able to do that dance for about 1012 years Until what I was suppressing came shooting up and in many ways I say damn near kind of like wrecked my life. But if I, if I, kept on that path, I don't know what kind of life I would have had. Truly, I want to pause real quick because Oscar the mic stand. I think she's dropping down a little bit more. Yeah, it's like ever so subtle, ever so subtle, it's just like, it's like so slow, ok, cool, that's a good idea.

Yeah, it's yes. If people crank down on these too much and then only move the arm, it gets kind of locked in, Except separated from the hand. I'm actually going to pull this weight back. Yeah, it doesn't go it doesn't cling onto your face. Oh, that's better Stop this. Yeah, Can you loosen the handle at all? I can give it a whirl.

0:18:42 - Speaker 1 This guy. Yeah, that needs to be loosened up. You can use your gamma power to get it in here. Yeah, it's a funny angle.

0:18:56 - Speaker 2 I remember just trying to do it, it's like once it locks, it's like done.

0:19:05 - Speaker 1 Bring up a little bit higher, in case we drop a little bit more. Also, if you put it here, that way, you can get it in here.

0:19:22 - Speaker 2 No, I like it over here more. Thank you, yeah, keep this symmetry going.

0:19:30 - Speaker 1 Should.

0:19:30 - Speaker 2 I turn this off, Paola.

0:19:32 - Speaker 1 Oh, it should it probably times out.

0:19:33 - Speaker 2 I see a little light.

0:19:34 - Speaker 1 Oh, ok, yeah go ahead With this button.

0:19:38 - Speaker 2 It went purple. Let me show.

0:19:39 - Speaker 1 Hold it no you don't have to hold it, it'll go purple, and then it'll turn off Gotcha.

0:19:45 - Speaker 2 I'm just going to put it in here. Thanks, oscar. Yeah, no big deal when we pick up. I'd like to kind of go into what I understand three kind of main or three of the main components that this works. I think, that's what I would like to kind of unpack a little bit. Neurofeedback, photo biomodulation and heart coherence technology yeah, ok, I think for my audience somewhat familiar concepts, but these terms are pretty unique and I would love to kind of hear them applied or defined and applied to what we're talking about here.

0:20:28 - Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure.

0:20:30 - Speaker 2 And then just grab the bottom guy and bring it down. Angliette yeah.

0:20:34 - Speaker 1 Is that comfortable for you? Yeah, that's good. There we go. It's better actually.

0:20:36 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I was just watching every facility.

0:20:39 - Speaker 1 I was going to ask you because you said something really interesting there at the end which was about your personal.

0:20:45 - Speaker 2 Suppression.

0:20:46 - Speaker 1 I was going to ask you to share it more about that Sure, yeah OK, you can pick up there.

0:20:50 - Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yeah OK, we good, oscar, yeah, all right, cool, ok. So with me. The suppression took me so far and I think for a lot of people you can relate you experience. For me it was a death in the family my father, I see.

And I'm not the only one. People suffer loss all the time. You have a breakup, a family member dies, whatever happens, and I think we run from it thinking that we are doing something for our benefit. Maybe so a distraction. You need to not stay sad all the time. Give yourself a new goal, get out of a certain environment. You need to kind of stimulate yourself to be able to move forward. But what I realized was I was so focused on moving forward that I was just not. I wasn't moving forward in a free sense, I wasn't freeing myself and I didn't have a true understanding of what I was taking with me. I was just adding links on a chain.

By adding links on a chain. It seemed like I was getting far, far away from that problem, that pain, but I was still tethered to it. And there would be certain cases where I'm still running and I would just like a dog on a leash, just completely have my world shattered and I would be an emotional wreck. I would have panic attacks, I would not be able to watch certain movies or certain types of TV. I would you know, I've had certain circumstances where I would black out and have a seizure my girlfriend at the time, my now wife one time I just got so bad I was triggered. I know now is undiagnosed PTSD. I was watching this death scene on a movie and I was just transported back in time to that same scenario with my father and next thing I know it's I don't know several minutes later it seemed like forever and I'm like being resuscitated. Oh my goodness.

And my girlfriend is like Chase.

0:22:45 - Speaker 1 I'm so sorry, chase, that sounds awful yeah.

0:22:47 - Speaker 2 It was but the greatest wake up call I ever could have hoped for.

Is what that experience showed me and what she told me, you know as this trusted, loving advisor, to just like hey, chase, you're doing all these other things, but you're not doing this one thing. And look how it's showing up in your life still. And that is what put me on the path to all right, cool, chase, you can go to the gym, you can dial in your nutrition, you can do all these personal development things, listen to all the podcasts, but what are you doing for your head and your heart? And it wasn't until that happened that I then began to acknowledge it and prioritize it and, to your point, you know, train it.

0:23:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah, because it doesn't. It doesn't feel safe to feel so deeply like you were. You needed to feel deeply and that emotion had to shout to get your attention. So an analogy I like is these various emotions that we're feeling at any time. They're like our children, right, and they're knocking on the door and we open the door but we say, you know, yeah, I'll take anxiety, but no, no, no, I'm not going to take sadness. Sadness is not allowed in, right, and when we we let the children in and you know, I don't know if you have kids.

0:24:06 - Speaker 2 Not yet, no okay.

0:24:08 - Speaker 1 But if they're crying, they're having a tantrum, you can just hold them and you can hold them with kindness and you can just allow it and then the energy just dissipates. Right, it doesn't persist forever, but that it's an internal, it's an interiority work. It's not about expressing, you know, finding blame outside, it's not about any other person. It's a self-awareness and it's a self-allowing right and self-kindness. Really it's all allowed and that really helps us to be present. People talk about being present in the moment, but we have to be present in the moment, fully self-aware and allowing life to be all those things. Sadness and grief are part of it.

0:24:54 - Speaker 2 Right, I love this concept. I'm just kind of soaking that in self awareness does not always mean self allowance.

0:25:01 - Speaker 1 How many times do?

0:25:01 - Speaker 2 we, we become more aware of things in our life, but, yeah, we don't allow them, we don't allow ourselves to be fully present with them. Just because you're aware of something doesn't mean you're actually going to do anything to change it. There's this court I heard years ago on another show I forget who it's from but knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing. So what good is awareness If you don't allow yourself to fully be present with it, so you then can allow yourself to take the proper steps necessary to heal or to take your life back, to generate joy again in your day.

0:25:36 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, and I mean, and the first step is that consciousness of the emotions, so we become aware of the emotions, um, the next step is really about intelligently engaging with them. Right, so can I regulate them? And that, that emotional intelligence is where a lot of us stop, really, right, we it's like yeah, I can, I can actually be present with my own emotions, with someone else's emotions, and I know how to regulate them enough to. I can function in regular society. I can have, I can have meetings and not yell at people.

I go through the motions yeah, but then there's another level, which is what we're talking about, and that's the emotional intimacy with self, in that allowing and that flowing through um, and that is where the freedom is.

0:26:19 - Speaker 2 That's the truth. That's the truth. I would love to bring it back a little bit to how this technology works and we're understanding how to train our brain, because you all have some familiar concepts but the way that you kind of nuanced them, in my opinion, makes it so much more interesting. You're working through neurofeedback, photovoltaic and photo bio modulation and heart coherence technology. Can you kind of unpack those three, four?

0:26:44 - Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. Um well, when we, when we started um I, I really wanted to be able to do neurofeedback because it has long-term trade changes.

0:26:56 - Speaker 2 What exactly is neurofeedback?

0:26:57 - Speaker 1 Okay, neurofeedback is reading the brain waves that we mentioned. The neurons are firing, we're looking at the scalp, we have sensors at the scalp. We're reading brain waves and um, and then we're able to feed those back to you as audio and as visual. So think of it. It's almost like it's art, right, but it's your brain in real time and real time, like we're talking 250 milliseconds right, so faster than the speed of thought. It's coming at you in real time. So you're engaged with your brain.

0:27:26 - Speaker 2 That's neurofeedback Faster than the speed of thought.

0:27:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah.

0:27:30 - Speaker 2 What is that? What is that? What is that that's? I'm trying to just fathom that, yeah.

0:27:36 - Speaker 1 I mean it's, it's referred to as operant conditioning. Wow, right, but you're right. So feedback, life is feedback, right? So, whether you're you know, you know getting coaching on your golf swing or whatever um, someone's giving you feedback, right, and you're learning, you know what to do and what not to do. So now, when we we tighten that time for the feedback and we have near real time feedback, um, so the speed of processing is usually about 400 milliseconds. Let's say, uh, 500 milliseconds maybe. And now, if we're at 250 milliseconds, that's why I'm saying it's, it's faster than speed of thought.

0:28:09 - Speaker 2 So to your example, the analogy of the golf swing. Instead of someone going through the golf swing motion, having a coach there watch them, and then, after they swung and hit the ball going, okay, all right, left shoulder back, right shoulder down, keep your hips planted, it would be exactly as that swing is happening and making those adjustments, that's right.

0:28:28 - Speaker 1 So imagine, let's say, we're doing gamma. Gamma is um, gamma sort of feels like, uh, it's very heart centered and it feels like compassion, right, it feels like oneness, um, and now, if you are in state, then the volume of your brainwave sound will increase. This is the way our system works, Uh, and there's a background sound. So maybe it's like, um, it's a chant or something, just very, a bit droney, but it kind of picks up in volume. And now, in addition to that, gamma, as a frequency, has a instrument, and so by default, we have the piano. It's very nice high note, and that piano will come in with discrete sounds that will come in as quick as 250 milliseconds, as long as it's audibly pleasant, interesting, and it will tell you when you're especially good at picking up that power.

So we're letting you know how you are in state. But because it's because it's sub thought in terms of timing, it's a feeling. That's why the sound is important. The visuals have to be important. It's not you thinking something. If you go into analytical thought, you're already behind. Wow, you see, you have to be feeling it.

0:29:39 - Speaker 2 This is um. Are you familiar with to go on for a slight tangent here but are you familiar with ketamine assisted psychotherapy? Yes, so I've gone through quite a few sessions the last couple of years, navigating through the PTSD.

0:29:50 - Speaker 1 Through PTSD. It's very good for that, yeah.

0:29:52 - Speaker 2 It literally saved my life. Amazing, and I've noticed on some of these journeys pretty much all of them there's music involved to kind of help guide and navigate their journey. And for me anytime there's piano it disrupts my journey. Or I remember, even though I'm in the journey consciously, I didn't really like that. You don't like it and I'm wondering if it's due to what you're talking about here with this, the gamma introduction or disruption. Is that correct? That keystroke of the piano is actually stimulating or is the sound of a brainwave?

0:30:24 - Speaker 1 Well, in our case, but I think more so what you're getting at is that there's a subjectivity there, so you have to like the piano for it to work.

0:30:32 - Speaker 2 I do enjoy piano.

0:30:33 - Speaker 1 But for us, you can change it. Interesting, so you can actually say I prefer gamma to be flute, that's fine, oh, fascinating. As long as you like it and when you're in state it keeps you in state, then it's working fine, oh, okay, okay.

0:30:44 - Speaker 2 Tangent over Amazing. No, no, Interesting Music is very powerful.

0:30:48 - Speaker 1 Music is very powerful, for sure, for changes of state, and so, in this case, what we're doing is it's actually your biosignals that are the music which is kind of trippy, you know, when you first do it.

0:31:00 - Speaker 2 So then there's another component photo biomodulation. Is that correct?

0:31:04 - Speaker 1 Right, yeah, and so actually I'll finish the training part.

That was the brain, training with the brainwaves, and then there's also training with the heart rate variability. So we have a sensor on the ear, the left ear, and it's reading the heart rate. We convert that, you know, mathematically, to heart rate variability, hrv. And a lot of us track HRV right, whether it's with the aura, with the whoop, absolutely, and so we know you want high HRV, you want that flexibility, and so we train heart rate variability. You can train it up, and what we're doing is we're looking for heart coherence, which is the HRV essentially becoming a sinusoidal wave.

0:31:40 - Speaker 2 So coherence was the word that caught my attention here. Hrv familiar coherence was a little nuance here.

0:31:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and so coherence is actually mathematically defined as that sort of smoothness that you see in a sinusoidal wave, and so we look at that and you can regulate in real time. We give you a breathing pattern that is built, that is keeping that coherence, so it's actually changing it throughout that session, which can be as short as seven minutes, 20 minutes, I like to do 20. And when you do that for 20 minutes, for me I it's an immediate like alpha shift, so the heart actually changes the brain into like an alpha state which is 8 to 12 hertz.

0:32:23 - Speaker 2 And alpha. Correct me if I'm wrong. That is where people can probably relate to when you're in a very focused flow state, like sitting down, I'm just like I just zoned out, or two hours later I did my most important work, kind of thing.

0:32:34 - Speaker 1 Well, alpha is more of a relaxed state, but when we think about flow it's a bit of a beta alpha. So there is, there is an SMR, it's a beta. Smr is a special type of beta sensory motor rhythm and and you do have that actually peaking when you're doing let's say the.

let's say, go back to golf just because we started there. So you're doing the perfect swing, but there would be, like this, burst of alpha at the end of it. So they work hand in hand and it's very important for you to be absorbed in the, in the activity.

0:33:09 - Speaker 2 Makes sense, cause, like then, the task is over, the focus is over and you're in a you're in a steady state.

0:33:15 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and you're not in that hyper beta, which is very analytical, right, so you're actually in a more of a relaxed beta. The SMR beta in particular is referred to or described as being like a cat ready to pounce. It's super relaxed, right. It looks super still.

0:33:32 - Speaker 2 Truly yeah.

0:33:33 - Speaker 1 But it's ready to move and so that it's that very sweet spot of try to mess up your world with one post right.

0:33:40 - Speaker 2 What a great analogy. Absolutely.

0:33:42 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so that's okay.

So that's the the training the photo bio modulation that you've asked for, so that one is the light pieces. So we have seven lights on on the headset. They're really small, so it's. It's really kind of amazing what they can do they're. They're LEDs, specialized LEDs in the infrared spectrum, and we're 810 nanometers and we were. We can also stimulate from one Hertz the frequency, from one Hertz to a 1024 Hertz, and what we're doing is that light penetrates the skull, usually about five, six centimeters, and it stimulates the mitochondria. And so when it stimulates the mitochondria, it stimulates the ATP cycle, so that's a cellular energy that's generated, and so that's really powerful and it's really, it's really good for you, and so there's a blood oxygenation aspect as well. So so that that's why we chose this particular type of stimulation. We knew we needed stimulation in the system because we wanted people to have a way to get a boost to have an immediate effect.

So I need to, you know, go go on stage and do something, and maybe I'm feeling tired, I can get a boost, okay. So we we added boost for that reason, because we felt like if we were going to go to consumers and go to home, which is what we wanted to do, we wanted to empower individuals. We need to give them not just training, which might take some weeks to start seeing the effects, but something right for that minute that might have an effect that lasts six to eight hours, and so that's that's the way we do that, yeah.

0:35:14 - Speaker 2 It was familiar to me. For a couple of months now, I've been using photo of photo, biomodulation.

0:35:21 - Speaker 1 That's right yeah.

0:35:22 - Speaker 2 Tontwister device. Have you heard of Kineon?

0:35:24 - Speaker 1 No.

0:35:25 - Speaker 2 It's basically kind of similar thing.

You, my understanding is, you know this UV focal light device that I've been using for kind of a shoulder injury, arm injury I kind of just wrap it around my arm and, you know, for five, 15 minutes a day kind of thing, for exactly what you're talking, is it working? It is one of those things when you're done I'm like, oh, wow, okay, cool, like I got that, I got that win. I'm feeling just reduction in kind of just the chronic pain and I also know, looking at the science, that what it's doing for the light penetrating, stimulating mitochondria and ATP production, increasing blood flow, oxygenation.

0:35:56 - Speaker 1 Reducing inflammation Exactly. I know that it's contributing to helpful recovery.

0:36:01 - Speaker 2 Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it's very powerful.

0:36:04 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and the neuro feedback. Look, it's been around for like maybe 60 years now. The photo biomodulation is considered new and that's like 20 years right, Like from a science perspective, and so there are there are a lot of a lot of studies that are ongoing. It's especially interesting in cognitive decline arena, for that's where the research is really focused, showing a lot of promise with the aging people.

0:36:26 - Speaker 2 Yeah, okay, yeah.

0:36:27 - Speaker 1 So, so, so we just thought that that's like the perfect mix for us, for the consumer market. And then the the last piece. We always talk about it being like five in one technologies. So I think we've covered three. So the fourth one is assess mode, and so when we started looking at this as a system for home, we I thought why, why would we do something like this if we couldn't actually show people that they were having results?

0:36:54 - Speaker 2 Right and how can we objectively?

0:36:55 - Speaker 1 people are going to want results they're going to want results, and it and I've never found it to be very satisfying to say to look at, you know, my brain waves got stronger or didn't get stronger. I want to know that my life is changing, and so that's what we wanted to do. Does this look like, what does this feel like? Yeah, and so the there is a measurement that's known as event related potentials, which you know, let's say, erps now for short, is. It's something that measures the speed of brain function, and that is the best sort of objective test that we can do of any sort of brain intervention.

0:37:30 - Speaker 2 I think anybody would agree. Hire the brain function, hire the everything that's right, that's right.

0:37:36 - Speaker 1 So we thought we'll incorporate that and and then people can have that at their, at their fingertips. So we we use a methodology that's used in labs and that's the mathematics of it. We you know it's so. It's very precise, it's down to one millisecond precision in the timing that we're reporting. But we've actually we're not presenting it as medical information. It's not ERP components. It's actually made to be practical for people who are into meditation, into peak performance, right into just regular consumer personal wellness.

0:38:07 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I want to go. Next, I want to ask you because we've kind of talked about ways that this technology and these applications can be used for somebody who really needs that change. We've suffered a traumatic event. We really need to work on mental health, brain health. But for the person maybe who is looking for, what is this going to do? For my everyday life? I feel like I'm pretty optimized. I feel like I'm in tune with my mental health. I've gotten baseline testing. For all intents and purposes, I'm a healthy person, I'm good. What would this technology do for somebody who is at a quote here baseline, good level. What would they notice? What would be optimized? How could they really use it to their advantage to even just get 1% better?

0:38:51 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's really tricky If somebody really feels like, like they're good mentally. I've never felt that way, Like I'm just like. Oh there's no room to grow. I've never felt that way, but that's okay. Well, not to say that.

0:39:02 - Speaker 2 but just, you know overall, let's say you know me, for example, I feel like, for, in a lot of ways now, I've been doing, you know this, health and wellness, taking care of my body, mind, for 17, 18 years now. So not to say that I'm just popped up like this, but someone like myself who kind of already does a lot of things and checks in on himself. You know what? What would be realistic for me to notice?

0:39:26 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean we have this. We have a really nice study on our main page, which I like, which is from Joel Lubar, and it uses just the calm, just alpha training and the SMR training that I mentioned. Right, and and they do that for like it might be like four weeks, and on a healthy population. So all the studies we post we always do on a healthy population and and they what they're measuring on the ERPs is they measure the reaction time improvement and it's, you know, it's, it's definitely like 15%. There's something improvement.

0:40:02 - Speaker 2 That's pretty yeah.

0:40:04 - Speaker 1 I mean the numbers are between 12 and 18 on all of these and it's like reaction time, speed of processing, like the actual brain speed of processing. And there's a third one which might be impulse control. So all we can see interesting, we can see improvements on that with the assess mode.

0:40:23 - Speaker 2 So you're saying I could potentially increase my reaction time by 15% and have more impulse control?

0:40:32 - Speaker 1 This. This is definitely the goal. I mean, every brain starts differently. Sure, you know we're not making claims or promising that, but that that is what the studies have shown, and that is what we would expect, that's what we would hope, that's amazing.

0:40:44 - Speaker 2 I'm thinking how many of us could benefit from being able to have faster reaction times and faster impulse control times, or there I'd even say, slower impulse response times.

0:40:55 - Speaker 1 So all the, all the sort of benefits that you would get from meditation, the reason you would do meditation, those are the same things that we're looking at giving you, but we're just looking at doing it in a way that's very efficient and, hopefully, in a way that people can stick to. We're trying to make it fun.

0:41:10 - Speaker 2 We're trying to make it easy? Is this bypassing meditation? Is this meditation in a headpiece?

0:41:18 - Speaker 1 Um, oh, I don't know, I don't like the word bypassing, but I um, definitely like I, I have really started doing it, uh, instead of meditation. But having having said that, um, like you know, I said we're five in one. The fifth one is meditations. So we have meditations embedded in the sensei system, but they are paired with the boosts, so the light stimulation is paired with meditations. So if you're getting a gamma stimulation, which we call expand, um, then we would pair that with a heart centered meditation.

0:41:48 - Speaker 2 So, active compassion gratitude, this sort of thing. Oh, I love that. I love that yeah.

0:41:53 - Speaker 1 So we've we've selected some just very powerful transformative meditations that cross dogmas, that we think would pair properly with these various signatures.

0:42:03 - Speaker 2 Okay, what is so important about the brain? I know we've been talking about a lot of important topics as it relates to the brain, but what is so important now? Do you think about focusing on brain health, focusing on training the brain? That maybe hasn't been top of mind for people for a while now, or just now, is the best time for us, objectively all of us, you know the collective, we here to go all right, brain health matters and here's why you need to be training your brain daily.

0:42:33 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think that if we are not in command of our attention and in touch with our emotions, um, we are going to be subject to other people's command of them, and so social media is very dominant in our lives. I think it's pretty hard to get away from it and, um, and the news cycle is, is fairly fear based, and and so are we going to be reactive, you know, um, and really be more uh at, more at a victim level with what's, what's going on around us, or are we going to be more fully alive, in touch with the depths of our emotions, in command of our attention and really determining our own destiny, right, and how we're showing up for our, for our friends, for our family?

0:43:26 - Speaker 2 Where do you think most people would benefit from this? Where, and maybe a particular population, a particular you're presenting with maybe similar past experiences, I guess what would give a group of people the most noticeable benefit?

0:43:46 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's interesting. I um, we've, we've been interviewing, I've personally been interviewing, like the people who started using it, the device.

Oh great, really having amazing conversations Like it's been so gratifying. And what I find is a lot of them are meditators for a long time or they're peak performers and without a doubt, there's kind of two main benefits. I see in it's because it's early stage that the the way the game starts it focuses on, you know, the brain fog and the stress, and what I find is everyone's talking about sleep. Everyone's like I didn't expect my sleep to get so much better.

0:44:21 - Speaker 2 Oh, sleep is hot right now. Everybody wants better sleep yeah.

0:44:24 - Speaker 1 So so that's been, uh, one of the initial sort of wins for us. I'm like this is amazing, Like people are. He's like I'm a peak performer and I didn't realize I actually really haven't slept that well for like 10 years.

0:44:35 - Speaker 2 Why do you think that is what is going on when we train our brain? That is contributing to, maybe, not not so much longer sleep, but more quality sleep. Yeah, I'm gonna be getting both definitively.

0:44:47 - Speaker 1 Um, one of our early missions is a sleep it's called sleep nirvana, Right, and so it is actually the SMR training and it is the deep alpha there's like a really nice low alpha that we train in that mission, which is very I don't know what to say. It's um, it's quite exquisite. Like it's just so lovely, quite exquisite.

And people just really, really settle into that. They're like, oh, I love that deep alpha. Um, so people yeah, people are just seeing the benefit. We also have a snooze stimulation, so there's like a one hurts, like really low stimulation we do that kind of knocks you out, and so people do like that as well.

0:45:27 - Speaker 2 Okay. So I mean, I'm hearing a lot of applications for a range of people. That is everything from. I need to improve my brain health. I'm hoping that it can also then improve my mental health, my, my daily cognition flow, focus, energy, joy. But even for people that seem to be pretty dialed in, it can show you and I've been there you think you, you think you covered everything, but then you do one thing and it shows you. Oh wait, actually that's not as good as you think it is. Yeah, especially with sleep.

0:46:03 - Speaker 1 And we're going right to the source, right. So, um, so yeah, I mean, we, we can look after our bodies and we. There's a but a lot of our life is spent in beta and when we start looking in deeper, we realize that not everything's solved with analytical thought. So let's say, for entrepreneur population, I'm an entrepreneur, you know, and I've been, you know, a high performer on my life and I, I think really now I'm much more dialed into my intuition. My decision making capacity has increased, my ability to actually really perceive life from a broader lens and actually see more opportunities, see more, uh, synchronicities is really expanded, and that's because I've I've allowed myself to explore those depths of mind.

0:46:50 - Speaker 2 Do you think the way the world is progressing now it's really just a matter of time, as we all learn more, see more, hear more, suffer more, um become exposed to more through the real world and social media, phones, devices, that something like this, or just even just the concept of being more aware of you know what I do need to be more conservative around my brain. I should treat it as a more precious item. I should prioritize it and train it because, whether I realize it or not, I am opening up the floodgates and it is just a matter of time before there's going to be a problem.

0:47:27 - Speaker 1 Mm hmm, absolutely, and I think it should be just as common as going to the gym. Right, we put a lot of time into a physical exercise. It's just brain exercise. We have to do it and you know, olympians and athletes have been doing this for a really long time. This is just getting it smaller and more accessible to more people.

0:47:47 - Speaker 2 I'm so glad you bring up that word because it brings me to another area I wanted to get to. Anytime I look at a hack, a device, a service, a product, and especially when talking about it on the show here, it really is important to me. When we look at access to cost affordability accessibility because I've also been on the other side of it, you know, running a health coach clinic for many years I could really know the best thing for this person that would really solve their problem more rapidly or at least just be a way more beneficial tool than anything they have right now. But it's I can't get to it in time, I can't afford it, I can't do all these things. So I was doing some research, looking at how I believe focusing on brain health, training your brain, can get you to a better mental and emotional state, and try to compare it to something that I think a lot of people might already be doing.

We're looking at and I just googled the current average cost per session without health insurance for therapy. So we're looking at alright, I choose myself, I want to take care of my mental health. I want to get more connected up here the weekly if you're going once a week, the national average. Annually, you're going to be spending about $7,200. Here in America, online therapy, the range is about 40 to $70 per session. So on the lower end here, annually you're spending about $2,000. What is the current cost of this device?

0:49:05 - Speaker 1 I think it's 1,500 or so, maybe a little bit less.

0:49:09 - Speaker 2 MSRP.

0:49:09 - Speaker 1 we'll say there might be some fluctuation there.

0:49:12 - Speaker 2 So is it safe to say that something like this, when we equate it to investing in our brain health and mental health across the span of a year, is this going to get us the same place? Is this better than? Is this something that we can just use now and come back to it later, so we don't have to have that constant cost? How would you relate it to somebody currently taking care of themselves in a similar manner?

0:49:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, for sure it's not clinical, it's not a medical device, right? But what we've done is we've taken great care, put a lot of love into putting five devices in one really.

So we're trying to create the optimal brain training stack that will get you the most out of your time, but also made it as cost-effective as we could. There's a lot of custom electronics, there's a lot of team effort and R&D behind it, so we think it's great value. Right? We certainly want people to share devices as well, so each device will support five users. We're hoping families will use it together.

0:50:15 - Speaker 2 Yeah, good luck going into a therapy session, but hey, I brought my whole family. You're already here anyway. Can you fit us in, kind of thing? That's a good point. I want to also ask do we really need another? This might be an exaggeration here. Do we really need another wearable? There are so many. I'm wearing two right now my Apple Watch, my WOOP. Got smart beds, got all these things that we can use to track things. I think for a certain type of person, this is going to be very appealing, like me. But is there such thing as too much information? Are we maybe reaching a point of diminishing returns, or are we going to stress ourselves out too much by getting too much more information when we could maybe just do something like meditation or go for a walk in nature?

0:51:01 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think really we have to make a choice Right now, in this time in history.

We have to make a choice towards simplicity and I think in my mind, in my mind, this is towards simplicity because of the five stack. So I could meditate I have meditated for decades, but it's really a matter of what's important. So for me it is important to optimize my brain, not just for my mental health I mean, that's very important but also for my performance. I have a lot of demands on my time and my attention and my creativity and I need to be optimized. And so I need to be able to accomplish what I need to accomplish in my work, also show up for my son and for my husband, and to do that I need to be in top mental form. And so if I can do what I need to do in 15 minutes in the morning, maybe 45 minutes some other days, for me that's nice and simple Because, like you're saying, like we can go for walks in nature, which I do but do I always get into those various states? Can I really do the deep exploration? It's a choice if that's important to you or not.

0:52:29 - Speaker 2 Where do you think we can go next with this, quite literally, with this technology, because I found whenever, usually when I adopt a new habit, try a new supplement, change my diet, introduce any kind of new thing in my lifestyle in pursuit of optimization, it tends to do that, but also kind of step stone into something else, because I'm now at a new baseline, a better baseline, a higher baseline. I realize what else is possible, what else is possible once we increase our baseline with our brain health.

0:53:02 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean what's next for us on our roadmap, and we had a very big vision for what sense it would become, what it could do in the world For us to have a real ripple effect. The next thing we're going to is groups, and so group.

0:53:18 - Speaker 2 Like a group brain training experience Group synchrony.

0:53:21 - Speaker 1 yeah, so it's heart synchrony it's brain synchrony.

0:53:27 - Speaker 2 Well, it's group flow.

0:53:28 - Speaker 1 It is group flow, right. It's different than yeah, it's different than thinking the same thing. Yeah, it's really more about the timing of our brain patterns. There's been studies done on this. In terms of group flow, it's very important for teams. You can see when a team on the field is in flow and when they're not in flow, absolutely.

And flow feels like I can anticipate your movements, I can anticipate your intention when you speak. There's less misunderstandings, there's more just knowing, and so that is an area that we're really interested in exploring next, and that's something that we hope to start doing trials on and hopefully release in the next year or so.

0:54:14 - Speaker 2 I'm immediately thinking about applications amongst couples 100%. That's where it starts. Imagine I'm all about relationship health, yeah, and I mean, if you can, that's also a difficult area, because how many times has there been someone that raises their consciousness in a relationship or begins to prioritize taking care of themselves and the other person doesn't? It can be very difficult because I feel like you have to grow together. You might be growing apart. You have to grow together.

0:54:46 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I've been married for a really long time with my husband and we're still very happily married, and so I completely agree when there's Especially when you We've seen that, we've seen each other start growing, and then right away we know the cue we have to come in and grow together.

0:55:05 - Speaker 2 And we've done that multiple times, yeah, and we're fully transparent about this.

0:55:09 - Speaker 1 Like whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm coming with you to that. That looks like a big growth opportunity and we want to sink. Oh it's the best.

0:55:17 - Speaker 2 It's the best when you can sink together. If you have any information now, I'd be curious to know. It might be too soon. Are you seeing any other correlation, at least to when someone is training their brain through this modality? Are we seeing anything like reduced diabetes, reduced all-cause mortality? Maybe their A1C gets better, maybe their cortisol drops? Are you seeing any other biomarkers perhaps, or any other biological data improve because of or since using something like this?

0:55:49 - Speaker 1 I don't have that data yet, but that really brings up the whole like sort of vision of Sensei, which is we want to be able to contribute to the science, right, so very mindful of privacy and security and this sort of thing. It is biological information, but we have principles based on how can we further this field, given that there's so much we don't know. There's a lot we know we're standing on the shoulders of giants. We're not starting from nothing, but now could we start looking at medical research and with partners over time. That is a possibility for sure. That would be the dream.

0:56:28 - Speaker 2 That would be amazing, and I'm not saying this is the same thing, but when I just go back to examples that I've read of things happening in the world but also in clinical studies, when we begin to focus on the brain and improving its integrity, its efficiency, its neural crosstalk, neuroplasticity, I mean, look what happens. So many cases of doing that and people who maybe have been paralyzed begin to get sensations back in their body. A lot of this stuff, even just using something like lion's mane, these new tropics, these things that cross blood brain barriers, that there's a lot of debate out there that humans don't actually have neurogenesis, you don't stimulate and create new neural cells, neurons, but you can enhance the talkiness basically of them. But just think about it. If you can do that, what isn't possible? I think?

when we have a brain that's more efficient, that is contributing to not only it being as efficient as possible, but I mean that goes everywhere in every system that we have and every process that we have, and also, I think, opens up the possibility for if my brain is operating better, I can think better. Then there's a whole dynamic of the brain and the mind. If the brain is more efficient, how much more efficient and creative and imaginative can the mind be as well?

0:57:44 - Speaker 1 Definitely, definitely, and that's what we're about for sure. Actually, the neurofeedback, for example, is mostly in the medical and clinical space, so we are very much wellness and meditation and creativity in that, but there are a lot of people doing work in the medical space with neurofeedback.

0:58:04 - Speaker 2 Well, I'm super excited about this device and technology. I got to go through a great little intro experience before we recorded the podcast and this is something that I can't wait to dive into more fully, because I think, especially for the biohacker right, I think for the optimizer, for a lot of my audience, I think that's kind of the next frontier. I think my people here, myself included it's the natural progression. I started by taking care. I always say fitness is the gateway drug, right? Ok, I started running, started with yoga, weight lifting, whatever. Ok, then I'm feeling better. Let me improve my nutrition. Ok, let me dial in my sleep. Let me work on my mindset. I never really started focusing on brain health until just a couple of years ago, getting EEG scans and doing things like wave neuro and now sensei, it's like, ok, I've never thought about focusing on this area of my wellness, but it absolutely makes sense and should be a priority.

0:59:02 - Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure, especially so if people are looking for improvement in sleep and brain fog or performance. Then the side effect that will come with time, if they continue, will be a deeper sense of connection with themselves and with others and more creativity. That'll be sort of the bonus I hope that people will come to.

0:59:24 - Speaker 2 Imagine a world where we can talk about side effects include improved cognition, improved memory instead of what we typically hear on TV with pharmaceutical is of yeah, we'll get rid of your heartburn but might also call sudden death.

0:59:36 - Speaker 1 Yeah, Like come on.

0:59:37 - Speaker 2 I'm much more on board for these positive side effects than ever. So, paola, thank you so much for your time today.

0:59:43 - Speaker 1 Thank you, chase, that was really great.

0:59:45 - Speaker 2 I enjoyed it a lot. We're going to have all of your information, the sensei's information, the show notes. You guys have some incredible science and a lot of technology to share and to the listener to dive more into, so I'll make sure to take care of that. But where can they go to maybe connect with you or sensei more, right here, right now?

1:00:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so our website is senseai scnsai and our Instagram is senseaiinc.

1:00:09 - Speaker 2 Too easy, too easy. Ok Well, thank you very much.

1:00:12 - Speaker 1 Thanks, Chase.