Stop Biohacking, Try This Instead with Salim Najjar

Transcript

00:00
The root cause of all ageing, disease, and eventually death is cellular inflammation. Science has also proven

00:07
that the number one leading cause of cellular inflammation, chronic stress.

00:12
And when I read HIV relates to stress, I was like, why is nobody talking about this if I care about longevity, this is the only biomarker I'm going to pay

00:19
attention into? And I was able to improve mine by [music] this art of the heart framework, right? And art stands

00:26
for awareness, regulation, transformation.

00:31
I'm Veronica Larisovva and today I'm joined by Salim Najar, a nervous system coach known as [music] that HRV guy. In

00:39
this episode we explore why HRV is about far more than athletic recovery and why Salem believes we should move away from

00:47
biohacking [music] and towards bioharmonising.

00:52
You are listening to the Chief Life podcast. Salin Najar, welcome to the cheap life.

00:59
Oh, thank you so much for having me.

01:01
I'm so glad to have you here. And I invited you because of your unique approach to HRV. 

01:08
as a matter of fact we actually had a guest on this podcast before who has a PhD in HRV

01:15
but all we spoke about was physical performance recovery and that part of

01:23
HRV which is a big part of it but it's only one part as you say that's the second half to it and I really love how you speak about

01:31
nervous system sovereignity out of heart about being an emotional athlete it just really reates with me and I would like

01:39
to share it with everyone which is why I invited you here. But before we get to it, I want to know how did you become

01:46
from being a nuclear power plant engineer the HRV guy that big business people go to when their nervous system is broken.

01:56
Yeah. Um one, thank you for having me on the show and for resonating with um with my work and really wanting to share that

02:04
aspect. That means a lot. And how I got here was uh from not listening to my body for so long. And then it started to

02:13
really slap me silly and scream at me and had to do it a couple times because I have a very strong mind and and then I

02:20
started listening and now I say I share stories about my own journey and my framework. The art of the heart very much is my last six-year journey through

02:28
HRV. So we could get into the framework and and and my background which essentially brought me here. Yeah.

02:35
Yeah. I would love you to tell us about it because that's basically the foundation of your work and how you came up with all this and I would like to know also how why did you choose HRV?

02:46
How did you come up with all this?

02:48
Yeah. So I guess um HRV right first let's just say what my definition of it is or how I interpret I would love that because I listened to

02:57
your talk yesterday and it was actually really good explanation and I was about to ask you that so please tell me and thank you for coming to my talk yesterday. It was great to have you

03:05
there. So HRV stands for heart rate variability and it's measuring the gap or the variance between each of your heartbeats which indicates how your

03:14
heart and nervous system is perceiving its everchanging environment. So essentially your relationship with your

03:21
stress in a direct reflection of the health of your nervous system and its ability to go from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state, right? Which is

03:29
why for the most part it's known as recovery for athletes and it's it's an incredible biomarker for that because then you could show you could train real hard and then recover real hard, right?

03:39
But as you said there's so many layers to it and I became obsessed with it because I became obsessed with biohacking, right? My background as you

03:47
mentioned I was an engineer. I worked at a nuclear power plant. I started and I became obsessed with health and wellness and this is actually why we uh connected

03:54
and geeked out. Um I became so obsessed with health and wellness that I cut out sugar from my life because I came across ketosis maybe like 15 16 years ago before our industry ruined it.

04:05
Um and I cut out sugar and I fell in love with the clarity and the energy of that. Right. And all I would drink is water and unsweetened tea. And um a

04:14
colleague of mine at the nuclear power plant uh was healthconscious and we drink tea every day and we decided to brew up the tea, cool it and carbonate it in a soda stream and we came up with

04:22
the first unsweetened sparkling tea. We launched it about 13 years ago called sound similar to your mission to really bring transparency and education into

04:31
the consumer package good space because as you know more than most there is none no natural flavours this it's just it's it's so sad and this is what we're putting in

04:40
our bodies right and so I quit the power plant job to launch this and get into the entrepreneurial journey and it was around that time that the biohacking

04:48
movement emerged with Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield and so my engineering curious mind went all in on biohacking

04:55
to the point where I was showing off. I was hacking my way to 5 hours of sleep a night, running 10 miles every other day, listening to a minimum of three audio

05:03
books a week, raising money from 170 people, thinking I'm winning this game of life.

05:08
I did that for 5 years very consistently in New York City and then my body broke down with a knee injury and that was the beginning of my inward journey. And

05:15
that's the first time I read in literature that HRV is relating to stress. And because of my deep work in

05:23
biohacking, I knew that science has very much proven that the root cause of all ageing, disease, and eventually death is cellular inflammation.

05:34
Yeah.

05:34
Period. End of story. Unless you die in an accident, the underlying cause of your mortality, cellular inflammation. Yeah. Plain and simple.

05:42
Science has also proven that the number one leading cause of cellular inflammation is stress.

05:47
Chronic stress. Right. stress actually if you learn to listen and dance with it is your best friend. But prolonged sympathetic activation known as chronic

05:56
stress is the number one lead cause of that cellular inflammation. And so I knew that equation and when I read HIV relates to stress. I was like why is

06:05
nobody talking about this? If I care about longevity, this is the only biomarker I'm going to pay attention into. And so that was 6 years ago. And the past six years has been a humbling

06:14
journey of learning to understand this bioharker. And I was able to improve mine from my baseline of 30 to above 170 by this art of the heart framework.

06:25
Right? And art stands for awareness, regulation, transformation. This is a threeact arc that isn't a ladder. We

06:33
climb once and we made it to the top and we're regulated forever and we don't need to do anything. That's not how life works, right? Yeah. It's a daily act of

06:40
devotion towards listening to your nervous system, towards listening to your body, right? And HRV is the

06:49
language of your body. And so within this framework, I have five pathways towards HRV growth and those follow my

06:57
journey. So pathway number one is sleep as the foundation. I know you noticed, I'm sure you've talked about it on the podcast, but sleep is so fundamental.

07:05
And from a nervous system perspective, the reason is because it's when you're in your deepest parasympathetic state of delta, when your brain waves are

07:12
oscillating between 0.5 and four hertz and your nervous system is getting a reset. And if HRV is measuring your ability to go from sympathetic to

07:20
parasympathetic and you're not honouring your deepest parasympathetic, it's going to be very hard to see that HRV grow.

07:26
So, I was showing off I was hacking my way to 5 hours of sleep. It wasn't until I started honouring and revering my sleep that I started to see that baseline

07:35
begin to go up. Right? So, sleep foundation and in terms of ways to support sleep, it's so many things out there, so much information, but for me,

07:42
one of the most important is just your circadian rhythm and honouring your internal 24-hour clock and a routine as much as possible and blue light exposure

07:50
and and all the things that people, you know, can look into. So, sleep first pathway. Second pathway, hormetic

07:57
stress, the catalyst. And hormetic stress is the phenomena or philosophy of intentionally eliciting a stress on the body and then consciously dropping out.

08:08
Right? It's a full equation. Um, most people aren't guilty of completing that equation, right? I was the most guilty

08:15
of it. We wake up from our deepest parasympathetic deepest parasympathetic state of sleep and we look at our phone, we read an email, we get in an argument

08:23
and we stay in this mind-made stressful state until we go back to sleep. That's not how we evolved as humans, right? So the importance of dropping into a

08:31
parasympathetic state throughout the day crucial. That's why in biohacking they say NSDR, non-sleep, deep rest. That's all that is. Dropping the body into a

08:39
parasympathetic state. [snorts] So I continued running the beverage company.

08:43
this high stress job investor calls this that but throughout the day multiple times I would do different technologies modalities breath work contrast therapy

08:51
binaural beats to drop my body into a parasympathetic state so training training for more capacity and resilience and that's what took my HRV

09:00
over the next two and a half three years from the 30 baseline to above 170 because I was putting myself in the most

09:07
stressful situation but then consciously taking out and I know you know about the stressful situation cuz you're in the consumer package good It is a

09:15
cutthroat. So, it's super important to ensure throughout the day you take care of yourself, not just at night.

09:21
100%. I do that too. I do like like little one minute breath work even in front of my computer in the office or just go for a walk around the block. I

09:29
do all those things. I actually watch it on on my aura ring in the stress section and when I see the stress is high, I just walk away and do something

09:37
different until it's low. So my stress thing on auraing is usually very up and down during the day. But yeah, I do do that and it does work. It makes a big difference.

09:46
So beautiful and it makes sense why you are who you are and how you are. So kudos to you for that. Um so sleep horic stress pathway number three, reframing the shift.

09:57
Back to my story. I thought I was winning the game of life again. HRV 170 beverage company on the outside crushing it. Number two beverage in Whole Foods

10:05
on the East Coast. over 3,000 retailers in America doing really good but with that as you know you need a lot of capital to keep up with the demand

10:14
and I was struggling raising a big enough check at the time and um internally I was very stressed holding a lot of weight and so on my birthday

10:22
about three years ago in front of all of my friends and community I declared I wanted to step into less doing more being

10:30
common statement echoed amongst entrepreneurs approaching burnout and I got gifted from all of my friends, this Super 73 electronic bike, this Burning

10:39
Man bike. And I take said bike for its first spin on the Venice boardwalk, my backyard in California. The sun was setting and I'm like, everything's going

10:47
to work out. It always works out. The money's going to come in. It's going to be okay. And I get in the sillious accident that anterly dislocates my right shoulder, tears my labum, and fractures 30% of my shoulder socket off.

10:58
I had to rush to the ER for dislocate to relocate it. Excruciating pain. I wake up the next morning. How did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? How am

11:06
I going to raise money without a right shoulder? All of that story. And my HRV, which at the time the baseline was 170, plummeted to 30.

11:14
Rightfully so, my nervous system was not happy.

11:17
Thankfully, I had a call with my coach that day and I tell him the story and he breaks out laughing and I go, "What the heck is so funny?" And he goes, "Let's

11:26
break down the body spiritually. The arms represent the doing. The torso body represents the being. The shoulder

11:34
connects the doing to the being. What did you ask for on your birthday? Less doing, more being. What did you get?

11:42
Exactly what you asked for from the gift in front of everybody.

11:46
That is really funny that you ask for it. You I broke out laughing. How can you not laugh at the cosmic joke?

11:50
That's what they say. You should be careful what you wish for. You have to be more specific.

11:54
Very specific [laughter] for what you wish for. Yeah. Uh and and so the second he said that, I broke out laughing. I was like, "Oh my god, my body is

12:02
screaming at me to let go of this beverage." Even though I had nine years running it, but I had a program running that I can't let people down, right? And

12:11
I had so much family and friends I'd invested. And I was like, you know what?

12:15
It is clearly time to let it go. And I kid you not, 24 hours later, same pain, same dislocated shoulder, same tear,

12:22
but my HRV score the next morning, 97, tripled simply from changing my relationship to the injury happening for

12:31
me. That is the power of reframing and your relationship to your story. Because again, if HIV is measuring how we

12:39
perceive our reality, we perceive our reality through our senses, right?

12:43
through our touch, through our taste, through our smell, through our eyes, through our ears, but most of all through our thoughts, right? Through how we're relating.

12:53
So, that's pathway three. Pathway four is intentionality, the alignment. So,

13:00
back to my story, I uh I wasn't going to just let the beverage go because I still wanted to see if I could salvage for all

13:07
my investors. And it took about six months, but we found a holding company that acquires distressed beverages. They put an APA, an asset purchase agreement together. So they purchased our brand

13:16
and asset, started a new company. We convinced them to take our cap table. So our 170 shareholders have some of the new company, but the rest of the debt

13:24
fell on the company's shoulder, which we dissolved, and I was the guarantor. So literally fell on my shoulder. So I had to go through personal bankruptcy and

13:32
really the final dissolution of everything that my mind was attached to around worth, money, all of that, right?

13:39
And so I did what most people do in that situation. I went to Bali.

13:45
I eat, pray, loved, right? And uh every morning in Bali, I would wake up and I would contemplate my beautiful wish.

13:53
Less doing, more being.

13:54
And every morning my mind would be like, but we love doing. We're so good at doing. What are we going to do if we're not doing? Until finally one morning, I

14:02
had an epiphany. And I realise that that statement less doing and more being is mind-made and dualistic in nature. It

14:09
implies that doing and being are mutually exclusive when the reality is we're always being even though we're unaware of it 99% of the time. And we're

14:18
always doing even if we're sitting or sleeping or breathing.

14:23
So it's not about doing less and being more. It's about the intentionality in your doing. The why behind your doing.

14:31
And what I've come to find is HRV is a compass showing you how aligned you are with your purpose, with your intention,

14:38
with your highest self, with what's most resonant for your body. And a compass needs three points to triangulate. So for HRV, point number one, what you're

14:47
perceiving. Point number two, how you respond to what you're perceiving. Point number three, something to compare those

14:55
two. Your why, your intention. And most people, especially highdriven entrepreneurs, are running on a program that was needed to build the thing, but

15:04
the body is no longer resonant with that. And if you do not constantly listen and audit and reflect on your intention, it's going to be very

15:11
challenging to see your HRV increase because you're running on an old story.

15:15
Yeah, that's the power of intentionality for nervous system sovereignty and HRV growth. So, sleep, hormetic stress,

15:23
reframing, intentionality, pathway number five, community, the amplifier. Very important.

15:29
Oh, yeah. And this is not new. Science has proven this. Every blue zone in the world, it's a pillar, the longest study in human history, to

15:36
80year Harvard case study on happiness and and health. What led to a longer, healthier, happier life. And they studied 72 youth from Boston for 80

15:45
years following every medical record, interviews with spouses, colleagues, children to find what led to the longest, healthiest, happiest life. And

15:52
they came back with one thing, and that was relationships. And not quantity, but quality.

16:00
And from a nervous system perspective, that's because all a nervous system ever wants is safety. That's its sole job.

16:06
And one of the things that makes us feel most safe is being authentically seen in a mirror, right? To just be able to be us, not need to put on a mask with

16:15
someone that we resonate with. [snorts] And so those are the five pathways. And if you weave that art framework, awareness, regulation, transformation in

16:23
those pathways for yourself to see what resonates with you, what supports regulation with you, I promise you in time you will see your HIV baseline increase.

16:32
That's a great system. I love it. But I have one question to ask. So you speak about HRV being your relationship to

16:39
stress, but you never say if this just includes the mental stress in your head or if it also includes the physical

16:47
stress or environmental stress from toxins, food, exercise, other things.

16:52
1,000% all of that. All of that. And mental is just one aspect of it. It's a big aspect, the reframing. But, you

17:01
know, most of the people I end up working with, the clients, they're already dialed in in the biohacking world on, you know, eating good and working out and all the things, but they come to me because they're like, I'm

17:09
doing all these things and it's not moving the needle, right? 100% the basics of eating clean food, of drinking good water, of being all that stuff

17:17
absolutely supports HRV. 100%. Yeah. I just wanted to point it out because there are a lot of people even at this

17:25
conference this week that don't eat well, [snorts] do all sorts of stuff and then they think they're going to buy

17:32
$20,000 red light bed and it's going to save them. So, I just wanted to point that out because you you always talk about stress but you never said that it

17:40
includes all the stress and I just wanted to make it a point. Excellent. Excellent point. Yeah.

17:45
Yeah. Because I just believe that people need to first address their food movement, their mindset, community and

17:53
all these things before purchasing very expensive biohacking gadgets.

17:58
I could not agree. And and then they need to understand the intention behind why they're purchasing them and using them.

18:04
I think a lot of those gadgets work and they're very scientific and they are amazing, but not everyone needs them. Mhm.

18:10
So yeah, I think that's uh that's what I loved about your talk because you are at the biohacking event, but you really are telling people to do less.

18:19
I'm telling people to listen to the best biohacking technology we have. Yeah. Our body. Exactly.

18:26
That is literally better than any 20,000 $200,000.

18:30
Our body can heal itself if we properly maintain it, which includes food, lifestyle, movement, all of those

18:39
things. Yeah, 100%. And I love that. And that also leads to another question. Do you think that we have to measure our HRV? Because

18:48
a lot of people get actually stressed and obsessed about measuring their HRV. Could we just uh feel it in the body?

18:55
And how would we feel it if you didn't want to have any gadgets? How would you feel your HRV is good?

19:00
Yeah, great question. So, first off, um you don't need to measure your HRV, especially if you have judgment or shame because that's just going to lead to a

19:08
lower HRV because the mental aspect is keeping you there, right? And so, it's funny when I work with clients, a lot of them come with me for HRV optimisation

19:17
and after two or three weeks, we don't talk about HRV because it's not about HRV, it's about how you feel. Right? Now,

19:24
fun fact, women generally have higher HRV than men. really because women are more attuned to feeling versus men were usually more up

19:32
in here, right? In general and so um if you don't have HRV or it's going to cause more stress to utilise it, you're

19:39
just attuned to what is resonant with your body, how you're feeling, right?

19:42
And and only you know the answer to that, but you need to just listen. So for me, I was very much up in here, very much extreme biohacking, blah blah blah.

19:50
HRV supported me learning to listen to my body and now like my HRV got to 170, right? It's now my baseline's like 90

19:58
100 and everyone's like, "Don't you want to be back at 170?" No, because I was at 170 while I was training in arguably the most challenging arena, the consumer package

20:06
good space, right? And I don't need that anymore. That's not in my highest self and not in my highest good. And I don't care if my HRV isn't that high. It

20:15
matters how you feel more than the number. Now, this number objectively for me and most people have always correlated with how you feel, but you can't look at the score of it.

20:25
Yeah. It's very hard in our world to comprehend that because we're so conditioned to think number range. But

20:33
science has yet to publish a range for HRV. There's no published range. The only thing they've proven is it is so uniquely individualised to the person.

20:45
Just like there's no two fingerprints in the world that are the same, there's no two heartbeats in the world that are the same.

20:51
So comparing is not what you want to be doing.

20:54
Yeah. Comparing is never good with anything in life. I think it's always causes a lot of stress. So, okay. So, if we don't use any HRV devices for people

21:02
who don't really understand this concept, how do you feel when you have good HRV as opposing to not having good HRV?

21:09
Yeah. So, and that's why I I like to I use the word now nervous system sovereignty over HRV more like that's what I call my workshop. Um the let's

21:18
say good HRV is when you have more awareness or agency of your internal state once you once you're feeling more

21:27
attuned once you're feeling more alive when things are in flow. If you are rigid and tight and anxious and stressed that usually is a sympathetic activation which means a lower HRV.

21:38
Okay, that makes sense. And um I heard you speaking about being an emotional athlete.

21:44
What is that man? That is one of my favourite things because I believe you know we have no control over what is happening out here.

21:53
The the chaos that is happening out here. We the mind thinks we do but but we don't. We only have control over how we react to what's happening out here.

22:02
And being an emotional athlete means having the sovereignty, having the agency to choose how we want to respond to what is happening out here versus

22:11
automatically responding from our limbic brain based on a prior trauma, trigger, story, pattern, right? Which most of us are walking around doing.

22:20
So that's what I say in emotionality is training the capacity and your resilience of your nervous system to choose how you want to respond from this

22:29
version of you, not a younger version of you. That's great. And how long? So I know that you work with some big business people. I

22:37
know some of them I will not name anyone for privacy reasons because I want to ask what do you do with them and how long does the transformation take and

22:46
how do they feel initially? Why they come to you?

22:49
Yeah. So so most um of the high achieving performers that come to me come to me because they've cracked the

22:56
code on all the biomarkers on all the things. They have all the gadgets to them and everything, but they can't move their HRV. And they

23:03
know because of what I shared in the beginning that it is the most or one of the most important biomarkers in longevity. So, they come to me seeking

23:11
that because I'm that HRV guy. And um the containers are are the one-on- ones are, you know, minimum of three months

23:20
to really build a foundation. And it's a once a week um call. And what we do is first, you know, we map out what they're

23:28
doing and their relationship with everything they're doing. And then we start to see and introduce different modalities and technologies and tools

23:35
that can potentially support them bringing regulation to the different pathways in their life. And because of

23:42
my extremely curious engineering analytical mind, I have gone down the rabbit hole in biohacking. I've had all the gadgets. I've tried all the things.

23:50
And then more recently in the last three four years I've you know been nomadic travelling the world staying with different spiritual healers and masters and gurus all around learning the

24:00
ancient ways which in my opinion usually are are more sophisticated than some of the new ones although we need both. And

24:07
all I do is I listen to what I am hearing their body saying they need and then offer up the tools and bring the

24:14
accountability and support to consistently implement them so that they can just listen to their body because I cannot heal anybody. I cannot change

24:22
anybody. That needs to happen from within. So it's about understanding the framework and learning the language of your body and I end up supporting the

24:31
client to understand what their body is telling them so that they can have access to the ultimate biohacking technology the body.

24:39
Great. And so usually you say they have results after 3 months. usually before that, but three months is the is is the minimum. And then they end up usually

24:47
staying for about a year or so just to just to keep up that ramp because it is once you once you understand you want

24:54
okay what else can I do? How else can I Yeah.

24:57
Yeah. Interesting. Um you just said that you travel a lot and before that you

25:03
said that your circadian rhythm is very important for HRV and that's where I find it very difficult. My HRV is great

25:13
for me when I'm at home and I have my routine and you know I go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time.

25:20
When I'm constantly flying around the world like last four months and have to always adjust to eating different foods, [snorts] it's not always so good,

25:28
obviously going through different time zones, sleeping in different beds. That really affects my HIV. How do you deal with it?

25:35
Great question and the answer is so unique to you. and I will share some of my tools and tricks um that I have

25:43
learned from the travel. So um first off for me fasting during travel days has

25:50
been so so so supportive because first off plain food and in general food a day.

25:57
Second off when you're in a plane inflammation happens right and when you eat food your body has to digest it which takes away from it working on the

26:05
other things. So that's like something I I ensure I'm properly hydrated with electrolytes. But um the biggest thing

26:13
for the jet leg and the travelling and the sleep is my favourite technology that I use almost daily that every one of my clients has and it's called newcome nu.

26:23
It's one of the only patented technologies guaranteed to get your body in a parasympathetic state through binaural beats. Are you familiar with binaural beats?

26:31
Yeah, I am. So you just listen to it.

26:32
So you just listen to it eyes closed or blindfolded. Right. Now you could Google and look in YouTube for binaural beats.

26:38
Do you know how the phenomena binaural beats work? No.

26:41
Okay. So binaural like I use binaural beats but I actually don't know how it works. So I would love to know.

26:46
Okay. So binaural beats is essentially taking two different frequencies putting for example 16 hertz in one ear 10 herz in the other ear. Your brain gets confused and it chases the delta.

26:55
So it goes to six herz which is that theta meditative state. So, it's a way to guide the brain into a desired state

27:03
when it's very hard in the middle of the day to do. Now, most binary beats that you just look up or the one you're listening to does 16 herz, 10 herz and

27:10
it stays. And maybe it works the first time, maybe it works the second time, maybe it works a couple times, but our brains are so sophisticated that it starts to pick up the pattern and then

27:18
it doesn't work as good. What Newcom has done over the past almost three decades, millions of dollars, the best sound engineers in neuroscience, they spend

27:27
the first 12 minutes of the track slowly guiding your brain from the beta 14 hertz through alpha into theta

27:35
and then they oscillate. So they don't even just keep it at six, they oscillate it and then they guide you back up. So Tony Robbins calls it the best powernap out there. And it's because of that

27:44
technology, gamechanging. So on flights, I listen to it. If I'm travelling and it's going to be jetlagged, when I land, I play it to reset my circadian rhythm, right? Such a game changer for sleep.

27:54
Again, one of my favourites. I have discount code that HRV guy for it and I cannot I still use it if not daily, five times a week.

28:03
I'll definitely include it in the show notes. That's fascinating. Link. So, the two things you do is the food like the fasting, not eating airplane food and that neuro machine.

28:12
The new car machine. I mean, I do have other other technologies. Yeah. What are the other technologies?

28:15
[laughter] I don't know. I want to know everything. Do you know Apollo? Apollo neuro? No.

28:19
Dr. David is here, dear dear friend. And it's um you could wear it on your wrist or on your ankle or on your belt. And

28:26
it's um a patented technology that uses vibration to support shifting your nervous system straight because touch is one of the things that we perceive our

28:34
reality. And so they have like um a setting called recover where it literally it's vibrating in the background. You don't even feel it. and

28:42
it is slowly allowing the body to calm down in a parasympathetic state. You could sleep. They have a sleep setting.

28:48
So, while you're sleeping, you have it on and it slowly supports sleep. So, that's another tech that because I'm not home or grounded or in nature and I'm travelling

28:56
so much, it just supports. Again, that's why I love these technologies if you're utilising it with the intention for nervous system sovereignty.

29:03
Exactly. Yeah.

29:04
Yeah. That's great. So, those are the two user. Anything else? I want to know it all. So it's I just said we don't need biohacking but

29:12
we're talking about certain situations if if we're doing what we're doing which is trying to have an impact in the world and go around. We're not in a jungle.

29:19
We're not in home like these these things to support all the other stress are definitely definitely needed.

29:25
Um so what else do I do? Um do you do time shifting?

29:30
You know I've never really gotten into time. I know people love that app.

29:33
It really works. It really works for me. Newcome it's just I I love newcome. There's actually a homeopathic um it's called uh no jet lag. An

29:42
incredible homeopathic pill that I take for jet lag too. It always does the job. You take it while you're on the plane.

29:48
Incredible. It's just called literally no jet lag.

29:50
Yeah. Because I also had someone who's got PhD in jet lag on the podcast and he said that jetlag is only because of the

29:58
circadian disruption. He said everything else is just called a travel fatigue.

30:03
Totally. So all the other supplements and stuff, they help the travel fatigue, like caffeine helps travel fatigue. But he says that if you really want to not

30:11
have jet lag, you have to time shift and expose your eyes to, you know, sunlight and and so the other thing, um, blue light

30:19
blocking, I travel with my raw optics, you know, my favourite brand, and then I try to immediately get sunlight in the place that I'm at and like really, um, support that circadian rhythm. Yeah.

30:30
Yeah. Yeah.

30:31
That's really interesting. I must try that. I'm going to have a look at all those things. I wrote down some more question and I don't even remember them all.

30:38
I was making notes when you were talking in my notes in my head. Oh yeah, that's what I need to ask. You say we have frozen emotions in our fascia from our

30:46
traumas when we were seven years old and that causes low HRV. Tell me about that.

30:52
Yes. Okay. So, um, if you were to map out the body, anytime you have a challenge or a stress or

31:01
something's going on, there's always an emotion associated with that or multiple emotions. And directly connected to that

31:08
emotion is a physical sensation that's stuck in the body. And if you peel the onion one layer deeper, an emotion on a

31:15
quantum level is just a scalar wave of energy. It's frequency. There's no such thing as a good or bad emotion. And as

31:22
humans, we're meant to feel every emotion on the spectrum. Anger, joy, grief, love. Feel it for 90 seconds and then that wave moves through us.

31:33
However, most of all of us, if we're in a human body, have these, I call them stuck, frozen emotions because our formative years between the ages of two and seven.

31:43
Our brain baseline state is theta. Theta is when you are a sponge susceptible to all the energies around and we don't

31:50
have a prefrontal cortex developed to discern reality ourself. So we accept it as is. So if a caregiver yells or there's a traumatic experience, the

31:59
little kid does not know how to handle it. The nervous system doesn't know how to process it. So that scalar wave of an emotion that's supposed to move through us freezes. I think of it as forming a

32:07
glacier in the fascia in our body because it wasn't felt. It was judged as oh my god this is bad. This isn't good because the nervous system is trying to

32:16
protect you, right? There's a book, The Body Keeps Score. Have you read this book? Yeah, I've heard of this book. Yeah. Have you read it? I haven't.

32:22
I think you would love it. And it talks about how we literally are an aashic record of all of our stuck, frozen emotions in past life, if you believe in

32:30
that. And we're just projecting it out to everything around us.

32:33
Okay. So, let's say you are 50 years old and you have emotions stuck from when you were seven and then you keep developing more and more throughout your

32:41
life. Let's say you very angry person, you have a lot of resentment, guilt, whatever. How do you get rid of it when you're 50 after 50 years?

32:49
Yeah. The same way you get rid of it at 20 or at 80, feel it. And we are not taught as humans how to feel. Even

32:58
though as humans that we that's what we came here to do, to feel, right? So all this stuck frozen emotion that's a glacier ever wants is to be felt and not judged and put in a story as it is that.

33:10
Right? Yeah, I'll give you an analogy. There's um a YouTube video of a deer eating grass on the side of the road, right?

33:18
And all of a sudden it gets clipped by a car and the deer falls and you think it's dead for like a minute and then all of a sudden it gets up and you think the deer would run for its life cuz it just got hit.

33:28
What does it do? It does this kind of like tremor shake. Mhm.

33:32
And then it goes right back to eating grass like nothing ever happened. Really? Why?

33:38
Yeah. I don't know why. Okay, so it get hit, the nervous system freezes, it gets this emotion stuck, the tremor and shake. Was it moving the

33:47
emotion? And now that there's no more emotion stuck, there's no more story.

33:50
There's no more memory of that. There's no more automatic response and it's just the moment of eating grass.

33:56
Yeah, humans, we love story. So the thing happens, we create a whole story, a whole narrative until it's projected in

34:04
every flavour, business, friendship, relationship in our life. And it's all just this stuck frozen emotion.

34:10
Yeah. So what's then the technique to get rid of it? Is it a meditation? Is it breath work? Like what what what do you do to help people get rid of this?

34:19
Yeah. So my initial answer which it always is with everything is it's so unique to the person the technique so many techniques breath work meditation

34:28
dancing running singing crying. I love and I have and I guided you guys through it yesterday. I call it the HRV reset which is a somatic practice to

34:36
intentionally elicit these challenges and these stuck frozen emotions and then drop into the body through a somatic

34:43
activation to feel it in that moment right and so to train to be that emotional athlete. That's a lot of the work that I do with clients more

34:51
personally to to support their individual cases.

34:53
So it's a lot about visualisation as well.

34:56
It's one way to do it because there's so many different ways to skin that cat. Yeah.

35:00
Yeah. I'm asking all these questions because all of you say it sounds good but it's very abstract. So I just want to paint the picture of what it exactly looks like. Yeah.

35:08
You also like we all been talking about biohacking because obviously we are at a biohacking event but you talk about bioharmonising. What's that?

35:16
Yeah. Um so I was you know the most guilty of the biohacking and um the

35:24
intentionality behind the words we use very important. That's what creates our reality. And hacking has the frequency

35:31
of masculine and trying to change versus harmonising, which is what our body

35:38
naturally wants to do, is to me a lot more resonant. So if we use these technologies to bioharmonise, we will

35:45
have a much different result than the result I had my first five years, which was showing off I was sleeping 5 hours a day, boom, boom, which eventually led to

35:53
the decay of my body. Right? So if we bring the intention to bioharmonise our body with these technologies.

36:00
Incredible.

36:02
Yeah. Amazing. So pretty much the advice for everyone is to chill the out. Put things in perspective.

36:09
Yeah. [laughter] We want to peel it back. Yeah.

36:11
Yeah. That is that's true though. But that is true. It's amazing.

36:15
Yeah. I think it's um and I know that sounds, you know, simple. Um it isn't necessarily simple. It's not simple for a lot of people.

36:24
Yeah, it's not simple for me either. And and you know um I say nervous system sovereignty is a daily

36:32
act of devotion because again it doesn't just happen and you made it. And the whole reason I'm here as that HIV guy

36:39
talking about I need to remind myself every single day multiple times a day otherwise my beautiful incessant mind

36:46
goes down the rabbit hole and I go right back the other way. Right. Yeah.

36:50
So, it's it's about the devotion to listening and partnering daily that will eventually lead to it being much more useful.

36:59
Yeah. And 100%. And I love everything you say because so many times you speak to experts, even psychologists, and they'll tell you, "Oh, just reduce your

37:08
stress." I'm like, "Okay, but how do I do it? What exactly?" You know, no one really speaks about it in depth like you do. Not many people do. And not not

37:16
everyone has good system for it. And I really like it. And I like the exercise you did yesterday with the visualisation and the breath work. That was really good. And it didn't take that long.

37:26
Yeah. No, it doesn't take that long. And the one thing I just want to you say so many people talk about reducing stress.

37:31
Like I think stress is your best friend actually. Like it is your ally. Why?

37:36
Because the stress that you are seeing is pointing you towards the stuck emotion in your body. It's actually the biggest gift. That's why I call it an

37:44
educational simulation because it's happening so that you could feel the thing. So if you could reframe it to saying oh thank you this bankruptcy you

37:53
are asking me to feel so and it was a big feeling of selfworth and and perception and all the things and it took me you know three four months of

38:01
deep work to feel all that but if you change and reframe that relationship with your stress it becomes your best

38:09
friend right it's the chronic stress it's the staying in the story in the loop over and over again that leads to the disease and the cellular

38:17
inflammation Yeah. And you said you work with clients oneonone. Do you have any workshops,

38:26
books, courses, or anything that's more accessible for just anyone?

38:31
100%. So, my website www\.hrvguide tatrvgu.com has uh first off a quiz that if you take

38:39
it, you get a free guide and 18 pages of great stuff. And then I have my course which is two hours of content split into

38:47
five modules and like two to five minute clips with integration assignments. And the last module is the reset that I took us through and an audio version of that

38:55
that you could have and that's $88 anybody could do. And then there's another tier um that you can pay which is the course and then a one call with

39:04
me for an integration after. So, there's so many different stuff and I'm about to launch a mastermind that will be um a six-w week cohort of 12 people um taking

39:12
them through, you know, a version of what I do with a one-on-one client.

39:15
Okay, that's great. And um being the HRV guy, have you used many different devices to measure your HRV?

39:22
I've tried almost all of them.

39:24
Okay. Do they all measure the same or did you see big differences?

39:28
They don't all measure the same. So, um, you know, the wearables, the Aura and the Whoop, use RMSSD versus the Apple

39:35
Watch, which uses SMID, I think. And so, they'll they'll be slightly different scales. But when someone says, "What's the best

39:43
device?" My answer is the one you will most consistently use because it's not about the real time score.

39:50
It's about the baseline and your overall trend. Right? So, you want to see the overall trend. ideally maintain at a

39:58
minimum or go up because science has proven that as we age HIV goes down. Yeah. Right. Why do you think that is?

40:06
Because as we age we are susceptible and we see so much more stress. Right. The body takes on more physical stress.

40:12
Right. And that environmental stress. So that's going to but I've seen it myself in every client that actually reverse which means you're doing great.

40:21
Yeah. I guess the body also becomes more sensitive to stress as you age because become more fragile, right? Even like detoxification, it gets harder. So that

40:30
makes completely sense. Okay. So any device that you wear all the time. Yeah. All right. What else did I want to ask?

40:39
Every high performer I speak to has the same problem. They think if they slow down, they will lose the game. What do you think about that?

40:47
That I was the most guilty of that. You know, you notice saying plenty of time to sleep when you're dead. Yeah.

40:52
That I lived off that. I was New York City.

40:55
I did at times as well. And now I'm constantly torn. I'm like, "Oh, I usually choose to chill." Like today in the morning, I had some meeting and then

41:03
I didn't go and went for a jog. So I always try to choose the, you know, more chilled option, but then I sometimes I feel guilty for it and I think, oh,

41:11
maybe I should work harder. So what's the response to this?

41:15
Well, first off, maybe I should. should has the frequency of guilt and shame.

41:19
Yeah, one thing that anytime I catch myself or someone I care about say should I point it out and just bring contemplation to you could

41:27
right cuz again our relationship to the thing is the most important thing now in terms of the I'll just I'll speak

41:35
for myself um the program that I was running around my belief that I couldn't slow down was so

41:43
that I could provide support and not let other people down, right? which was a program that a little boy got put in place after my father passed away. And

41:51
so it was a program that no longer was resonant with my body. So anytime someone says that like you for example,

41:58
I'll be like, why do you think you need to run that fast? Why can't you slow down? What are you running so fast for?

42:06
What's your end goal for the work? Like why do I work so much? Um so for example here, I give you

42:13
example here. I feel like it's such a short amount of time and I don't live in America and I have the opportunity to meet so many people and do so many

42:21
things so I'm just trying to do it all in once but then I'm like okay I'm overwhelmed I need to get out of here so I was just sitting in the sun for half

42:28
an hour just before but then I have this feeling like but I'm here only for 3 days maybe I should and that's the wrong thing. Yeah, but that's my

42:36
So my question is though, I understand you feel like you have a short amount of time, you got to get all these things done. Why are you trying to get all these things done and what's the end goal of what you're trying to do?

42:45
Well, my end goal is growing my business and I have responsibility to my business partners as well, so I don't want to disappoint them and have certain goals

42:53
while I'm here in the United States. So there there's like all the things that play in my head.

42:57
Totally. Can we can we go on this a little more? Yeah. Yeah, go.

43:01
So your your end goal is to grow to business. Why do you want to go to business?

43:06
Because I really well one thing is I really believe that I can make difference because Australia as well as America has got a lot of sick people and

43:15
a lot of it is to do with ultrarocessed foods and I'm a nutritionist by trade and in ideal world I would love everyone to go

43:22
to the farmers markets and cook their own meal and sit down with their community and eat. But western culture it's snacking culture. Everyone just

43:31
wants to grab and go. So, I see it as we're giving people a better option for shitty snacks and it's making them

43:39
healthier in return because, you know, doing some kind of expensive biohacking gadget once a month, it's probably not going to make as big

43:47
difference as the food you put into your mouth several times a day. So, that's the reason for the business.

43:54
And then the other driver drivers are I've been in the business already for 11 years. I really want to make it work. We have business partners, we have

44:02
investors as you would know. So these are all the things there that's combination of many different things which is so beautiful and I love the intention behind it's why you have the

44:10
success but after the business right you're doing the business so that I'm assuming uh one you could provide and be

44:18
of service and that you could live the life that you want to live right but if you um don't listen to your body

44:25
right you end up running the business and burning out while doing it and then you don't get the end goal if you don't

44:33
audit the intent. So the intention of wanting to provide and be of service, incredible intention, but then and I heard as someone who knows the investors

44:41
and all these other things. And when those come in, and I'm not saying not to honour investors and all that, but if you put that above honouring your body, what

44:49
happens? You end up not honouring the investors because the business is just a reflection of you. The reality is

44:56
quantum physics has proven this is a simulation. Everything that we're seeing is actually a reflection of us, right?

45:04
Have you heard of the double slit experiment or the observer effect? No.

45:07
Oh man. 1804, Thomas Young and countless scientists since have proven fundamentally that our observation

45:17
materialises matter.

45:20
Right? They shot an electron into a wall with two slits, a single electron. What they saw on the other side was what's called a wave pattern, meaning a strong

45:29
slit and then lighter slits on each side. Which means that the electron was either splitting and hitting each other or something was happening. They did not know what. So they put a camera to see

45:38
what slit the electron was running through. The second they put the camera, all of a sudden you saw two slits,

45:45
meaning the act of observation transformed the electron from the light wave into a particle.

45:53
Oh, okay. And that's what all of this is. And so it's beautiful. You have this intention to make a change into the

46:00
world. The best way you can do it is embody it.

46:04
Be the change you want to see. And then that frequency that you emit by doing that, everybody else sees and feels it. And

46:12
then it happens naturally. It happens effortlessly, which is very challenging for high achieving entrepreneurs to remember that. But

46:21
in my experience as someone who um very much pushed until everything was gone, now I'm like, "Oh, nervous system sovereignty. That's what

46:30
I want to bring to the world. How do I bring that to the world? I can't make or tell anybody. I need to be it." Yeah. I need to embody it.

46:38
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And also it makes sense without being aligned with the purpose of your business, I guess. Yeah, because if I was right now in a banking

46:47
business and I really hated it, it probably doesn't matter how much I tried to chill. Totally.

46:52
Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah.

46:56
Well, thank you so much. It was great to listen to all these. I'm pretty sure that everyone will take a lot out of it and I'm definitely checking out that what was it? Newcom.

47:04
Newcom and you see a um Do they have it here at the conference?

47:07
They don't have it here at the conference. Um but it's an app and and we could share with your uh with your share in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. there in the show notes. And what was the book you mentioned?

47:17
Ah, a couple books. So, um, uh, The Body Keeps Score. Yeah. Is a great one. Yeah. Dr. Van Russell. I can't remember.

47:25
That's okay. And you said couple of books. So, which one?

47:27
Dr. Joe Despensza's Becoming Supernatural. That's where I read HRV for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Have you done his retreat?

47:34
I've done virtually. I have not been to an inerson one. One day. Yeah.

47:37
I want to go to the personal one as well. I've done the virtual. I'm keen to go to the personal one as well.

47:42
Yeah, it sounds interesting. Well, maybe I see you there. Yeah.

47:46
Okay. Thank you so much. Have a good day.

47:47
Thank you so much for having me and for all your work and your passion. Thank you. Yeah.

47:51
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Achieve Life podcast for more conversations on performance, nutrition,

47:59
and mindset. [music] And we'll see you in the next