← Be Inspired Mama
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:00]
A
Science has very much made it a simple statement that the number one cause of all aging, disease and eventually death, it's inflammation on a cellular level. And the number one cause of inflammation on a cellular level, chronic stress. Stress is actually your best friend and ally. It's staying in a high beta sympathetic fight or flight state for prolonged periods of time. Consistently so, chronic stress that leads to the beginning of the inflammation on a cellular level.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome back my friend. Today we are diving into heart rate variability, or hrv, with Salim Najjar, better known as that HRV guy. HRV is simply the space between our heartbeats, but what it tells us is so profound. I want you to think of HRV like traffic lights in your nervous system, which you know is my favorite topic. When your HRV is healthy, you can smoothly switch between green light taking action, yellow light pausing and red light resting. When our HRV is low, we get stuck in one light, usually green, always pushing and never pausing, heading straight for burnout. The reason this matters in your life is because stress is inevitable. The real question isn't how do we avoid it, but how do we retrain our wiring our nervous system so we can reset and recover? HRV is one of the best ways to measure how our nervous system is responding. And eventually the goal is how to feel those shifts without needing to rely on trackers or a device. My goal isn't just to help you understand and measure hrv. It's to show you how to impact it in real time so that when stress hits, whether it's your child having a meltdown, a packed work schedule, or lying awake at 2am with your mind racing, you will know how to bounce back into regulation quickly and easily without adding more to your already full plate. All right, welcome, Saleem. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I'm so looking forward to this conversation.
- [02:06]
A
The honor and pleasure is all mine, and as am I. Thank you so much for reaching out.
- [02:10]
B
Ah, I mean, just your voice. I'm like so much more relaxed already. And I think, you know, that really is setting the tone for this conversation and my favorite conversations to have my favorite topics and, you know, for all my listeners that take time out of their busy lives to sit and listen to or watch these podcasts, my goal is always for them to walk away with a feeling of, oh, that was easy. Like, I've already got all that in me. You know, in the age of knowledge and information, we're constantly bombarded with all these additional to dos the not only in our lives, but now especially as it comes to our health. And I know this is going to be a really beautiful conversation. More about returning home to what's already within us. It's going to be a conversation about my favorite topic, the nervous system. And essentially, you know, just to kind of simplify and cue this up, we talk a lot about stress in our lives and we know stress in our lives isn't good, which ultimately just makes us feel more stressed. So. So there is a purpose for stress and it's not eliminating it. But what I like to say is having the ability to move from our head into our heart in any moment so that we can not only try to enjoy every moment, because honestly, not every moment of life is enjoyable, but in my mind, the goal is to be able to be fully present in our lives for the moments that matter most. So this is gonna be about getting back into our heart, which we always have access to. And we're going to talk about it through the lens of heart rate variability. So, Salim, I would. I just love your energy. So good. It's so good. You know, when someone is fully present with you. I talk about how, you know, we as mamas, we co regulate with our children. Our children co regulate based on us. And so this is some of the most important work that we do for every person, but especially for mamas, because our kids literally like adopt their hard wiring from us. And so you see how sitting in the presence of someone like Salim just regulates your nervous system. My husband has very similar energy to you. You guys are the people that I need. I have the ability to regulate, but I'm a very high energy woman. So thank you so much for being here again. And let's dive into this. So let's start with what is hrv? And then how did you really get into this being your shtick? Because I know it's not where you started. You started in the beverage company business.
- [04:45]
A
Yeah, it's been quite a, quite a while journey to get here. But let's start with hrv. HRV stands for heart rate variability, which is measuring the gap or the variance between each of your heartbeats, which changes. So that changes 40 to 60 plus times a minute. Because your heart beats 40 to 60 plus times per minute. So it's measuring that gap between each beat which indicate how your heart is perceiving its ever changing environment. So essentially your relationship to your current stress and a direct reflection of the health of your favorite thing. And my favorite thing, your autonomic nervous system and its agility to go from a sympathetic Fight or flight state into a parasympathetic rest and digest state. And I became obsessed with this biomarker about six years ago because at the time I was knee deep five years in the beverage space. But beyond that, obsessed with biohacking, I was the typical type a New York City grind. Go, go, go. Optimizing everything, showing off. I was hacking my way to five hours of sleep. No such thing as an alpha theta time, which you said, which I loved, none of that, just really always going to push. But I had knew from my research because before the beverage face, I was actually an engineer at a nuclear power plant. So I have a very analytical, engineering, curious mind. And my research in biohacking showed me science proved that the number one cause of all aging, disease and eventually death. Unless you die in an accident. If you peel the onion back. It's inflammation on a cellular level, the root cause of everything. And the number one cause of inflammation on a cellular level, chronic stress. And that's what I just wanted to offer a reframe for you because I am so much trying in my stories to share. Stress is actually your best friend and ally. It's staying in a high beta sympathetic fight or flight state for prolonged periods of time, consistently. So chronic stress, that leads to the beginning of the inflammation on a cellular level, right? So being stressed as part of the human experience, we're meant to have these triggers. It's how we respond and react to them. And really how I understood that and realized the difference between stresses and chronic stresses. If you just look at evolution and how our nervous systems adapted to have a sympathetic state, right? It's because most of evolution, humans were living in the jungle. We had real life or death threats. Now most of us are privileged and fortunate to have a house, to have food and water, to not have predators attacking us, right? So the actual life and death threats are not there every day. But back then we had in our bodies, which is the most intelligent, miraculous temples of wisdom developed this sympathetic system to survive those real life or death threats. And, and what is happening physiologically when you're in a sympathetic high beta state is your amygdala fires off saying danger and a bunch of things in all your organs happen. But the most important is that all of the vital oxygen in your blood goes from your visceral organs, which is your, your, your lungs, your liver, your heart, your reproduction. And it sends it to the arms and legs, to the extremities to fight flight or freeze, right? Which is so beautiful if you actually have to fight or fight or freeze.
- [08:17]
B
Right?
- [08:17]
A
And we were meant to stay in that state when the tiger was chasing us for an hour, maybe two, and then drop back into the parasympathetic state. And the reason is because we need all that vital oxygen in our visceral organs for them to maintain homeostasis, for them to continue keeping the body in a healing, regenerative way. However, if you stay in that prolonged stress state, then that vital oxygen isn't going to the organs, which means the organs can't do their job, which means over time, inflammation begins inside. And that is the root cause of all aging, disease and death. So science has very much made it a simple statement that chronic stress is the number one cause for those things. And so when I came across HRV six years ago, I was like, what the heck? You have a biomarker that is showing your relationship to stress, your ability to dance between sympathetic and parasympathetic. I should probably start paying attention to this biomarker and yeah, that's how we ended up here today.
- [09:20]
B
I love it. I feel like that's such a great overview. And here's what I really want to highlight because I think this is at least what I want my listeners to hone in on. So I think we all know, you know, we've got this amazing nervous system that has these built in capacities to help keep us alive. Right. That were great back in the days when we lived in the jungle. And what's supposed to happen is stressful event. Our body reacts like you said, and then we recalibrate. And so when we hear chronic stress has the ability to kill us essentially because it makes ourselves inflamed. Here's the thing that I want the listeners to hear that Salim said, but because you talk about this all the time and this is your background, I just want to make sure that they get the subtitles out of this because this is so important. We are creating the chronic stress in a lot of the cases, right? Yes, we have a lot of stress in our lives, thank God. We've got jobs, we've got families, we've got people that rely on us. But the refractory period of going from high event stress to regulation is in some regard a choice, a skill, a muscle that we can flex. Right. Because we're not having necessarily most of us back to back event, event, event, that's stressful. I mean, in some, in some days it can feel like that, I think. But in for the most part. And I would love to get your, your noodling on this is it, a head game that we're playing with ourself that's keeping us in this loop of stress. For instance, that thing just happened and I'm gonna keep playing it out in my head. I'm gonna get in victim mindset, I'm gonna get upset, I'm gonna get resentment, I'm gonna play a story when the event has long passed. But our thoughts really dictate our physiology. And I imagine we can see that in our hrv.
- [11:08]
A
I will share in the most direct way that I humbly believe I call, I call this, some people call it a matrix. I call it an educational simulation. That's what I call this reality that we're co creating because I truly believe it is here to educate and teach us. And it's actually we're projecting what's inside of us to be felt right? And quantum physics has very much proved this with the double slit experiment with the observer effect, that everything that we see is just energy that we are creating with our attention. So then the question becomes, okay, well what is it that we are putting our attention on? Well, it's always just us. It's what's inside of us. And, and so HRV is measuring how your heart's perceiving its reality. We perceive our reality through our senses, through our touch, through our taste, through our smell, through our eyes, through our ears. But most of all through the thing that you said through our thought, through our emotional and mental state is what materializes this energetic simulation. And so your relationship to your story, your relationship to your reality matters more than anything else. And what happened now versus back when we were living in the jungle, we actually had, you know, in our mind real life or death threats. Now there's no real life or death threats, but it's the email, it's the, the child, it's the whatever the story is that keeps our mind in a perceived stressful state. But the autonomic nervous system knows no difference. So the amygdala fires off and all of that oxygen goes to the extremities and that is going to lead to the inflammation over time. So what I think is super important to double down on what you said is we always have the agency, we always have. I believe if we choose the sovereignty to choose how we want to respond to things. Now that's very difficult when you're in the situation. And the reason why is because of the beautiful nervous system and the protection that it put in place. Because I believe if you were to map out your body anytime you Have a perceived trigger. Anytime you have a perceived challenge, anytime you have a perceived stress. Beneath that, there's always an emotion or multiple emotions associated with the trigger. And directly connected to that emotion is a physical sensation that is stuck in your body. And if you peel the onion one layer deeper. Quantum physics has proven that emotion is just a scalar wave of energy. It's just frequency. There's no such thing as a good or bad emotion. As humans, we're meant to feel every emotion on the spectrum. Joy, love, grief, anger. First we're meant to feel it and feel it for about 90 seconds and then that scalar wave moves through the body. However, if the nervous system could not process the emotion in that moment, or more often than not, we're in our formative years, between the ages of 2 and 7, when our brain is actually still oscillating in that theta state, which means we're a sponge and susceptible to everything around. And we don't have a frontal cortex to discern reality ourselves. We accept as is. So our caregivers, like you said in the beginning, our parents and their energies and how they react and respond to things gets implanted in the foundation of our nervous system. And if an emotion is cannot be fully felt or apparent, yells even though it was not intentionally, that scalar wave of frequency, instead of moving through you, freezes. I like to think of it as a glacier and gets stuck in the fascia in our body. There's an incredible book, the body keeps score, which totally, and I mean a lot of the stuff that I just shared just comes from that book that we're just adults living in this grown up meat suit, projecting all of our stuck frozen emotions and all the emotion ever wants is to be felt. It just wants to be felt and not judged. However, if you're in the moment and whatever the thing is that's triggering you, your limbic system, your back brain is automatically triggered. And it is so it's nearly impossible to actually access your frontal cortex, the front part of your brain, and make a conscious decision that you know you could be making. And that's why people look back. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I did that. I know better. But you need to have compassion for yourself because again, the nervous system operates to protect you. And the analogy I love to give for this is hospitals in Florida, which I know that's where you are now, they have these like fail safes where if there's like a hurricane or tornado, you hit a button, metal shades come down so that the glass doesn't go in and hurt or kill anybody. Absolutely brilliant software program put in place to save people. Right. What happens if there's a shooter in the building and someone hits the button? Not the smartest program, because now nobody could get out and everybody's closed. But the program just knows an on, off, switch. It knows no difference. That's the same thing with our limbic brain. It knows no difference. And so if there is something that triggered you that reminds you of a previous trauma or emotion that's stuck in you, your amygdala fires off, and you don't have access in that moment to your frontal cortex. So you're going to do whatever the reaction that's implanted to protect you is. And the best thing you can do is, after the event, reflect and audit and bring awareness and curiosity to what happened in. And try to shift and reframe it. So I love how you said you have your theta time. Right. And alpha time, my morning practice. Part of it is a somatic activation where I audit and reflect the things from the prior day that triggered me, that stressed me. Even if it's like a flight delay or somebody cutting, like, even the simplest things. Because I truly believe everything that we're projecting is medicine. There's teachings in it, and I bring attention to it. And then I just audit my story to it from a place of calmness. Not when I'm in it. Because, again, it is very challenging when you are triggered, Especially if there's a spouse or a child or a lot like you're in the story. It's like talking to a child. Because, guess what? That's how you're reacting from the child version of the stuck emotion in you.
- [17:35]
B
Yeah. So when you reflect on it later in, you know, I love alpha theta time, the morning sit spot. I call it that. That gateway to our subconscious where we can actually make changes in our impri. Reflecting on the past event. So do you feel that doing that regularly or do you know, based on the science that that stacks so that eventually you can build an awareness in the moment where it's actually happening? Is that what we're. What we're aiming towards here through our practice, not going for perfection because it's not going to happen every time?
- [18:08]
A
Well, because we're all perfectly imperfect. And there's no such thing as perfection except to the mind, which I very much resonate with the. And it's about befriending that. That drive. So, yeah. What I have found in myself, what I have found in any clients. What I actually have just finished recording a course on, and we'll be sharing this activation is that again, I. My. The engineer in me like, looks to problem solve and figure it out. So if you have a frozen emotion that picture it as a glacier in the fascia in your skin, and all the glacier wants is to be felt and not judged. Yet we are sitting here projecting judgment on that person's bad. This person, all things, right? That's not allowing that emotion to move. But if you're in a place of stillness, in a theta state, you bring awareness to this event, and instead of judging it, you just simply feel it. If you could drop into a somatic practice where you physically feel the sensation in your body and you utilize the stress as a opportunity in a doorway to find it, because that's all what we're projecting is a way to find and feel something inside of us. Then over time, with consistency, that glacier starts to melt and the emotion moves. So then when the trigger happens again, you actually have more access to your frontal cortex and discernment to choose how you respond versus going from the past story. Because the protector is not as strong over time, it allows that emotion to move through.
- [19:41]
B
So important. And what I just heard through my lens in this is that we don't have to try to fix it, right? When we say an event happens, I'm gonna use a moment example. Maybe I'm in stress and I go to pick up my kids right after this, and they're doing all the things and I blow up at them, right? And then I feel horrible that that happened. I go to lay my head down at night. I know any mom listening to this can probably relate to some version of this. And I play out that story, and I beat myself up. What's wrong with me? How dare I do that, right? How can I make it better? I think is usually the next question. How can I fix this? And what you're saying is all we have to do in order to continue to do better is to just bring awareness to it, to just sit with it. It's almost like what I'm hearing is again, a moment example when your kids are upset. Like, we don't need to fix their upset. We don't need to pull them out of that or distract them from it. Does quite the opposite over time, actually. We just need to sit with them and be with them, right? And create presence and connection. So we're doing that same thing with ourselves after that refractory period when our. When our subconscious is open and we're just kind of playing it out as, as it was, as it is, right? Having maybe a conversation with ourselves. Like, what do you do in that time? If you're a woman and it feels like your brain has 47 tabs open, you've got the kids asking questions, texts coming in, dinner to make work to finish, and somehow you're still trying to think clearly. This is not a mindset issue. It is not a personality flaw. This is physiology. And your nervous system stuck in urgency mode. I created this urgency reset, a simple 2 minute shift using brainwave based tools to help your nervous system downshift so you can come back into clarity and presence. Because the goal isn't just managing the chaos, it's being present for the moments that you don't want to miss so you don't look back later in life and realize the years with the people you love or just your own life slipped by. Click the links. This is a mini masterclass. It's like 15 minutes and I cannot wait for you guys to check this out. Back to the episode.
- [21:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, so, so I love that I would add a couple of things and offer a couple of, of insights and, and what you just described is actually the, the offering that I'm, I'm launching in a couple weeks and is called the Art of the Heart. And art stands for awareness, regulation, transformation. So it's a three act arc that is not a ladder you climb once, but it is a daily dance of devotion with your nervous system and all your experiences and what you just described is those phases and how I implore anybody to go about their life, especially parents. I have some clients who are moms and it is, or dads. It is your kids are your, I say, the best medicine, the best teachers, right? Because they're very much going to point you for the things you need to feel. So let's look at that example. You yell at your kids that night, you're in bed and you're regretting and having maybe shame or guilt for doing that, right? The reality is it happened. And I mean, we don't need to get into time and a happening and future present. But, but I believe that there only ever is the, the present moment. Anything that's happened was supposed to happen. So that's why I call it an educational simulation. Because then my job at least, and I have a very competitive mind, is to figure out, okay, what is the medicine in the teaching in this happening for me? And so instead of having guilt or shame for yourself, because that's not Going to help you, that's not going to help your kids. Instead, look into and bring curiosity into why you reacted the way you did. What did they do that got you to react like that? And if in that moment you can feel in your body what the sensation is that arises when you put yourself in that position again of whatever they did to elicit that response, then. And that's kind of what I call the HIV reset, which is a somatic activation. That is the last part of the course that I'm offering, that I do with my clients, that I do every morning. That really gives you the ability, I say, to train to be an emotional athlete and step into that arena of intentionally eliciting a perceived stress or a trigger when you're in a safe place, when you're in a theta state and then dropping out of the story and the projection and into a somatic awareness practice where you're just feeling the stuck emotion in your body. And by doing that in the example you gave, then the next time your kids do the same thing, you may not react as much or you may not react at all. And you said this at the beginning of the call. The only thing I believe caregivers need to actually do for their kids is embody the thing that they want their kids to be. Because energy speaks so much louder than words or actions, right? When you say like oh, I could feel your husband's energy. My like nervous systems do co regulate. We our heart is the biggest magnet on the planet and it is always eliciting our baseline emotion, our baseline regulation. And so you can feel that resonance in other people around you. And nobody feels it more than kids. Why? Because their brains are oscillating in theta between 2 and 7 and alpha after that. So everything you do is like encoding in their system. And not everything you do, everything, it's, it's, it's how you feel, it's your energy. And so the best thing you can do is bring awareness and then in that moment, as you're reflecting in better the next day, start to regulate, start to allow feeling and not judgment towards those emotions. And maybe if you want the next day go and apologize to the kids and like take ownership. And the vulnerability is so big for allowing emotions to go and bringing compassion. And then the consistency of awareness and regulation over time leads to the transformation. And that's the three act spiral of the art.
- [25:55]
B
Love that, that's great. Well, we'll link all that below for sure. And you know, I love the saying I can't hear what you wait, what is it? Your actions speak so loud I can't hear what you're saying. Right. It's our energy and it's what we do. So I think that's, that's such an important concept. So thanks for bringing that up. Something else you talked about, you know, the somatic experience piece of this. And, you know, there's so many of us women, and I imagine men too, and you can give the men a voice through your message here. We have forgotten how to feel. Out of protection, perhaps. You know, everybody's busy and distractions are everywhere. And are some of those perhaps created intentionally because we don't want to feel? And so I want to speak to the cycle breakers, because we've got a lot of cycle breakers that listen in here and this is where things can become, I guess I'll use the word fun, because why not? You know, we've got these imprints in us from our mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, our environment that we grew up in. And so those are the things that come to the head when we are, you know, living out of our hearts and in our heads and not being present and reacting. And I can't believe I said that. All those moments, a lot of those times, those are things that we were taught by somebody. And so we can hear this and we, we could, maybe someone could think, this is hard work. It. It can be hard work. And it's the most important work that we get to do because we get to choose to make it different for the people that come after us. And I think that's where it becomes less about the hard and more of a purpose behind it. When we have purpose driven work, it becomes lighter. It feels like a calling. And so I imagine you've supported some people that have maybe shared with you. You know, this is hard. I. I do snap at my kids. I'm trying to do better, but my parents yelled at me or, you know, whatever that is. And so if there's perhaps an extra support foundation on the stool that you give to people like that, what would that be?
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, I was the most guilty of that, Melissa. The most. I could not feel. I was so in my head, I was so that type, a masculine New York.
- [28:12]
B
Like, I hear your New York accent. I was like, I know, I hear some Staten Island.
- [28:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:17]
B
You're an island boy.
- [28:19]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, very much New York boy. And, and hrv I attribute to starting my journey from here to hear because my, my mind was so addicted to optimizing and longevity. And when I Found out what I shared in the beginning because I knew stress is the most important thing and HRV release. I was like, oh shoot, I'm going to do all my energy, all my mind focused on this. In the first year I tried hacking it and it did not budge at all. And it wasn't until I started feeling and listening to my body that the needle started to move. Because HRV is a reflection of how much are you listening and feeling your body versus thinking in your mind. Because I like to think of it as the language of your nervous system. That gap between each heartbeat is your nervous system telling you how it's feeling if it is resonant with whatever you're experiencing or dissonant with whatever you're experiencing. And I use resonant and dissonant very intentionally because I do not believe in good or bad or right or wrong. Because if you actually prescribe to all this just being energy, there's no such thing as bad energy. And yes, that doesn't mean challenging things happen. That doesn't mean, you know, we can't grieve when we lose people. All these things happen. But truly, if you believe it's an educational simulation, it's always happening for you. And so to learn to not box things as bad and good, but rather dissonant or resonant then allows the opportunity for a future moment to change perspective and not create a box and a judgment around it. Just because something is dissonant for me now, it could be resonant tomorrow. And if it's dissonant to me it actually could be very resonant for you and your body. And that's okay. Like we're all very uniquely different. And so yeah, I think just super important to, to know and understand that.
- [30:20]
B
I've heard you share a story about when you really learned that when you really embrace that something about an injury. Can you, can you share that story?
- [30:30]
A
Oh yeah, yeah, that's, it's a, it's, it's a beautiful one. So I give a high level of kind of my journey in the beverage space. So I. No idea what I was doing getting in the beverage space. Left nuclear power plant engineering job, very cushy job to launch this beverage company because of the passion I had and my co founder had for health and wellness and really wanting to bring transparency into the beverage space because there is none. It is a very, yeah, sad, sad industry. And so launched it 12 years ago now. And at the same time biohacking emerging just became obsessed with biohacking, moved to New York City, as mentioned, showed off. I was hacking my way to five hours of sleep, running 10 miles every other day, listening to three audiobooks a week minimum, raising money from 170 people. Never like shutting off, doing.
- [31:19]
B
Doing all the right things, which I think a lot of people, especially in our biohacking community, are doing all the right things.
- [31:28]
A
Yep, yep.
- [31:30]
B
Very familiar to a lot of people.
- [31:32]
A
Yeah, I was doing, and then my. My knee gave out from just pushing too much. And it was the first time it forced me to be in stillness. I found bikram yoga because I was still so obsessed with sweating. It was the first time my mind was forced to shut the up for 90 minutes. Wild. And that's when I actually came across HRV six years ago through Dr. Joe Dispenza's book Becoming Supernatural, describing it as relating to stress. And so that was really the beginning of the inward journey while running the beverage company. And so I kind of would be training to improve my hrv. Because how you improve your hrv? I say I have five pathways for HIV growth that I talk about. The first is sleep, which is the foundation. Right. And that's because when you're sleeping, you're in your deepest parasympathetic state. It's the only thing evolution has not gotten rid of in any species. And evolution does not make mistakes. Sole jobs, survival. And sleep is a necessity. So me trying to hack my way to five hours to sleep. Nope, that was. That was not supporting the hrv. My second pathway for HIV growth is hormetic stress. You're familiar with hermetic stress?
- [32:42]
B
I am, but I think it's important to break that down here.
- [32:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. So it's essentially intentionally putting a mild stress or a mild challenge on your body and then consciously dropping out and into a parasympathetic state. The best analogy I give for that is if you go to the gym to work out your bicep, you're like training. You're actually. If you're lifting your max, you're tearing the muscles. You're going past the 100% in your bicep. Right. But then the next day, you don't go and lift the bicep again. You let it recover so that those muscles heal, so that the next time you go to the gym, you actually can lift more weight. So you're increasing the malleability, the capacity, the resilience of your bicep to handle more. Same thing with your nervous system. If you put yourself in perceived stressful situations, a cold plunge, a SAUNA stuff like that or even just the normal stresses of job. But the most of us have no problem doing that. No problem putting ourselves in a stressful state. I was the most guilty of in society and culture as you pointed out have us so conditioned to thinking we need to be doing, doing, doing all the time that I never prioritize the recovery. I never prioritized the parasympathetic. I lit up when you said theta alpha state like never ever did that and the importance for your nervous system's growth to handle more, to be more productive. It's not that you won't be productive, you'll be sust.
- [34:07]
B
It's peak performance. Five minutes of alpha. You hit peak performance all day, baby.
- [34:10]
A
Exactly. Exactly. And so I I found myself in some would argue the most challenging industry beverage space, raising money from 170 people. But throughout the day I would use the biohacks to get myself through binaural beats into parasympathetic state or a cold plunge or hyperbarics, all these things so that I'd be on stress, then out and athlete. It was literally training to be an emotional athlete which was able to take my HRV from 30 to above 100 consistently because of the amount of stress I was getting myself into and then getting out of. But I want to caveat it for you and the listeners like there is no HRV range in terms of a good or bad range published. Heartmath Institute is the longest institute studied. There's still nothing out there because there is no range because it is so unique to you. It is a language. And when you think of languages, you don't think English is better than French is better than Spanish. The intent of a language is for an ecosystem within a community to communicate. The sole intent of your HRV is for your nervous system and body to communicate with you and only you. The second you compare your score with mine or think you need to be a better score, you're actually leading to your next bad score. Because what's the thing that impacts your HRV more than anything?
- [35:31]
B
Stress. Your head.
- [35:32]
A
Your thoughts. Your thoughts. And so super important to just clarify that piece as I share a number because truly my hundred could be not as good as someone's 30. Actually. Like actually, yeah. So I continued running the beverage company for the next five years training my hrv, all the things. But I was still, still primarily up here and not as, not as fully in here, not really listening to my body. And I started doing more H heavy things. I launched my social media, I started coaching People and it was my birthday two years ago, a little over two years ago. And the beverage was, like, blowing up amazingly on the outside. 2000 retailers number two in Whole Foods on the East Coast. And with that, you need a lot of capital to continue keeping up with the demand and the inventory. And I was struggling to raise more capital. I was getting myself in so much debt. And on my birthday, I declared a statement often echoed in entrepreneurs who are approaching burnout. Less doing, more being. I wanted to step into less doing, more being. After a decade of doing, doing, doing, my body, I could feel internally was. Was ready. And you got to be careful what you ask for. I got gifted from my. My friends in the community, a Super 73 electronic bike. This Burning man bike that I had wanted. I was living in California at the time. And I take said bike for its first spin on the Venice Boardwalk. Sun is setting. I'm everything's going to be fine. It always works out fine. The money will come in. And I get in the silliest accident that anteriorly dislocates my right shoulder, pairs my labrum, and fractures 30% of my socket off.
- [37:14]
B
Oh, my God.
- [37:15]
A
Ridiculous. Ridiculous. I had to go to the ER for them to dislocate to relocate it. I wake up the next morning, my HRV is about 37 compared to. It was like 150 the day before, rightfully so. My body is screaming, what are you doing? And my mind is like, how can I raise money without a right arm? And all the time, like, the story dumb. And luckily, 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 is so funny. And he goes, let's break down the body spiritually. The arms represent the doing. The torso, the body represents the being. The shoulder connects the doing to the being. What did you ask for on your birthday? Less doing, more being. What did you get? Exactly what you asked from the gift in front of everybody. And you asked for it. How can you not laugh at the cosmic joke of a simulation? And the second he said that, I laughed. And I was like, oh, wow. I wasn't listening. My body wants me to let go of the business. I need to. Ten years, I've given it everything. But I'm not meant to continue running a beverage company. And what was so wild. And this leads to the third pathway, which is, in my opinion, one of the most important. It's reframing the shift, right? Reframing. And I realized that, wow, this accident didn't happen. To me, it happened for me. And 24 hours later, same dislocated shoulder, same pain, all the things. But because of that reframe, my HRV jumped to 97. It tripled simply from changing my relationship to the incident happening for me. That's the power of thought and reframe. Yeah.
- [39:04]
B
So powerful. And you think about, you know, we can go a certain amount of time without food, less without water. We can't go seconds without thoughts, without. When you can embrace how powerful that is and that we have the ability to start to play with and work with it a little bit through creating awareness of our feelings. Massively changes. I mean, you can't. Data doesn't lie, right? I always love for people to be able to just know how they're doing from the inside. But this is where trackers are really cool because data doesn't lie.
- [39:34]
A
And this is where I believe hrv. In my opinion, I call it a Trojan horse. And it's, I think, a technology to support bridging east and west. Because you're right, you want to feel it yourself. And usually feminine are much more attuned to their bodies and feeling. I could speak for myself, I could not do that. It was very challenging. But this is a biomarker that's actually telling you how you're feeling. Right. And so if you want the data, this does not lie. It tells you the truth, what you choose to do with the data. I laugh with clients all the time. That's totally up to you. But. But it is telling you what is resonant and dissonant with your body. So it's a tool, it's a compass pointing you to feel more.
- [40:16]
B
Yeah, well, we've gotta go to number four and five. I think there's five things. But before we do that, let's talk about your favorite ways to measure hrv. All right, I'll get right back to the episode, but first I want to talk about that voice in your head. The one telling you to keep going, keep pushing, but also second guessing you with every step of the way, stressing you out and making you feel like you're never quite doing enough or you're not doing it good enough. There's a reason it feels so loud. And it's not just you. This is your nervous system. It's shaped by everything and everyone you've been raised around. This isn't even your voice. It comes from your mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers. But somewhere along the way, we made it our own. This means that a lot of the lives the Patterns that you're living aren't actually who you are. And that's why you can look around at your life and think, why doesn't this fully feel like mine? In my upcoming Live one hour webinar, I'm going to walk you through all of this and you get access to this when you order my book. The connection code, which is out now, we're going to take what you read in the book and expand on it so you can actually see how this voice has been shaping your decisions, your reactions, and your life. So that you can leave the live webinar with clarity on what's actually keeping you stuck, why you react the way that you do, even when you know better, and how to start shifting it in real time, not by fixing yourself, not by doing more, but by finally understanding what's happening inside of you. Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And this is where everything starts to change. Order your book in the links below. I'll send you a ticket to this webinar and I'll see you there.
- [41:50]
A
Yeah, so my favorite way to measure HRV is the way that is most resonant with you and that you will do consistently. Because the reality is that the number, the day to day number, is not as important as a consistency in your baseline, right? So I talked about not comparing scores, but to me, what I look at and I think is most important, I call it your HRV baseline, which is your average nightly HRV score over the last 30 days. And all you do is when you wake up and you look at your morning HRV score, you compare it to that baseline and it's data. If you have a lower morning score than your baseline, then your nervous system is saying whatever you did the day before is more of a load than I've been used to the last 30 days. That's not a bad thing. It's just simply asking you to honor it, to do something that's more nourishing. Maybe a leisurely walk, maybe another theta nap, something to fill it up versus if you wake up and you have a score higher than your baseline, that's your nervous system giving you permission to push it, maybe have a little more intense workout or half the conversation you've been holding off, right? And so if you utilize it as a language, then there is no right or wrong and it's all that. And over time, if you consistently listen to it, you see the baseline go up. Right? In terms of how I measure, I currently have an OURA ring because it's the Most minimal, simplest, but whoop. Is a little more, I would say, for athletes and gives a little more like, you know, data for training. Apple Watch is convenient. So many people have. There are chest straps that take your real time HRV if you're very deep in the training. But honestly, what I tell clients, what I talk about in my course is like, whatever is most convenient for you is the best way to measure it.
- [43:37]
B
Awesome. Love that. Okay, do you want to go into the next of your five path?
- [43:43]
A
Yeah, it goes along with. With the rest of my. My story. That kind of weaves in. So after that incident, after I fully accepted, okay, I need to, like, step away from the beverage company. I didn't just want to, like, forget about it because I had 170 investors, most of which were my family and friends. And so after about six months, we were able to find an. An acquiring company that put together an apa, an Asset Purchase Agreement. They acquired distressed beverages, so they purchased our brand. They purchased our asset. I convinced them to take our cap table. So all of our investors own some of the new company. And the beverage is still out, which I'm so grateful for. You could get it on Amazon, drink sound.com. but the debt that was on the company stayed with the old company, which we dissolved. And I was the guarantor. So all fell on me and I had most of my debt. So I had to lose the last part of my identity and ego and file for personal bankruptcy. And so it was just a total humbling dissolution of everything that my extreme mind was attached to. The beverage, finances, my physical identity. All the things need to be melted away to remember the only thing that actually matters, right, is. Is. Is my nervous system. My. My truth. What am I here for versus what my mind is projecting and thinking? And so I traveled to Bali, which was on my list for so long. And every morning in Bali, I contemplated this beautiful gift that I gave myself. Less doing, more being. I contemplated that statement. And every morning, my mind, it'd be like, why are we gonna. What are we gonna do if we're not doing like this makes it just this. This constant chit chatter of like, no, we're here to do. And then finally one morning, I had this epiphany. And it dawned on me that that statement, less doing, more being, is mind made and dualistic in nature. And it 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 always doing Even if we're sitting or breathing or sleeping. So it's not about doing less and being more. What matters is the intention in the doing, the why behind the doing. And that's what the fourth pathway is, intentionality, the alignment. Because what I found in my experience, what I find so much with my high performing clients, is that we are usually running a program based on a prior conditioning or belief or pattern. And for entrepreneurs, because that's who I deal with a lot. That's what I was. That drive, that insatiable push is needed to build. But once you get to the point where you build, it's no longer needed. But you are still running the same program. And unless you pause to audit what is the thing that I am running and doing? What is my purpose? What is my why? Then you're going to burn yourself into the ground or dislocate your shoulder and go through bankruptcy or whatever the story is, right? And so my. I'm a big fan of the Bhagavad Gita. Have you read?
- [46:51]
B
Yeah, I haven't read the full thing, but I'm aware of it.
- [46:53]
A
Yeah man, so much, so much wisdom in it. But my favorite quote in it ties to this and it says you have a right to your actions, but never your actions fruit, act solely for the action's sake and don't be attached to inaction. Meaning we all came here with a right to do, which my mind I was. So yes, I can do, I can do. We do not have a right to the outcome of our doing, to the fruit of our doing. That's where most suffering happens in expectation. All we need to do is simply act for the action sake, act for our why, act for our intention and don't be attached to not doing. We came here to do, to create, to art. So, so that's the fourth pathway is really intentionality, alignment, you know, knowing your purpose, knowing your why. And then the fifth pathway, which you've touched on so much already, community, the amplifier, co regulation. Right. Because again, we are the five nervous systems we surround ourselves with. Just like we're the five people we surround ourselves and so really nothing. One of the biggest things to move the needle is when you're seen, when you're so vulnerable in front of someone and you can be fully seen. And the longest study in human history, the Harvard 75 Year Study. Incredible TED Talk if you've never seen it. I cry every time watching it. But they spent over 75 years, three generations of scientists, I think over 80 boys they followed from age 18 plus every aspect of their lives, medical, spouses, job, like interview, everything, everything. Like countless amounts of data to find what led to a longer, healthier, happier life. And after 75 years and the most insane amount of data, they came back with one thing. And it was relationships. And not quantity, but quality relationships, right? And so community is so, so, so important. So those are the five pathways for HIV growth. It's sleep, hermetic stress, reframing and intentionality. Community. And the thing with all five of them is that it's not like you go in order or you just do one. It is a constant weaving and it's all based on your relationship to each of them. The biggest thing that I love that you shared in the beginning. We're so inundated with data nowadays, right? There's so much possibilities, so many technologies, so many things, which is, it's great. It's great to have access to this diet, this thing, and it's overwhelming, right? And so what is the answer? That the reality is just because it works for someone, it can have the opposite effect of you. But to simplify it, your body knows your body is the most intelligent thing. If you just listen to your body and explore and try something and see how it responds to it, you'll have your answer. And that's what HRV is, and that's what really listening and regulating your nervous system allows you to do, to listen to it.
- [50:01]
B
This is really cool. You know, I say this thing and I have this theory that our nervous system is our intuition. You know, we're all told, especially as women, that we are naturally intuitive. And I think it's another thing we've lost touch with in today's world. I think it's in us, right? It's passed down through wisdom from generations before. But I really believe that our nervous system is our intuition. And she speaks to us in signals and symptoms. And so what I'm hearing from this conversation is our HRV is the way to amplify her voice and to objectify her voice as we're warming up to listen to her and lean in her and trust her again. Whether it's, I sat at this table today that I don't want to sit at anymore. And you know, if we stop to pay attention, we feel that, right? This doesn't feel good anymore. But we've taught ourselves to distract ourselves out of it. But your HIV will not lie. I didn't like today, but I'm going to pretend I did. And I'm going to just immerse in Emails and work and my to dos. And I'm going to hit the workout and do all the things. HRV doesn't lie. So it's going to show us what's going on underneath the hood. And what I love about measuring is what we measure, we manage. And so although I would love for today's women to just go straight from how we've been living to how we were intended to live, whatever that means. Right. But I guess from being disconnected to more connected in our own lives, I think the reality is, is that we need an anchor and we need a tool and we need a bridge. And HRV sounds like way to do that.
- [51:48]
A
I love what you said. It really is. It objectifies it so much so. And I so resonate with intuition being. I say the nervous system in the body, our body is the most intuitive thing and if we listen to it, it knows that kinesiology has proven that. Like actually science is very much proven muscle testing, which I do daily. I have a pendulum and ask my body all the time things. So it's, it's super important to, to listen and. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful.
- [52:19]
B
So as someone is getting started, what would you say maybe are the roadblocks that hit people that you're working with that we can help, you know, the listeners get through without having experience? Or if someone's just like, okay, great, I want to have a fresh start tomorrow. I'm going to start looking at my hrv. I'm going to measure. We are doers, right. Even though we're beings. So to the listener, what's one of the first couple things that you would recommend they do? Or maybe it's what they don't do.
- [52:44]
A
The first thing would be if it is something you're interested in, figure out how you want to measure it. Right. And what's going to be a wearable that potentially could support measuring it. But even maybe before that, actually, if you wanted, I just published on my website a quiz. It's an HRV archetype quiz.
- [53:00]
B
I did that this morning. It's great.
- [53:02]
A
What were you.
- [53:03]
B
I was the. It started with an.
- [53:05]
A
Oh, optimizer.
- [53:07]
B
I'm an optimizer.
- [53:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then with that, after you take that, you just get a free guide that's about 18 pages that actually answers the question better than I can on this in terms of like, first it gives everything we talked about, but then even more detail, practical tools, other technologies, stuff like that to really start to build a relationship with this metric. And the one thing that just came to me that I wanted to share to your story around how much like HRV can't lie even if we, you know, aren't fully feeling. In a workshop that I gave in Australia once I it was a four week long workshop and a woman who was in it when she heard me say hrv, you know, is impacted by everything you watch, everything you eat, everything you do, everyone you're with, right? Who you're with impacts your hrv. And she went home and she broke up with her partner and literally the next week her HIV jumped 50 points and she's like this is a fluke. And it stayed up that way and is still to this day up that way. And she is so in shock but she doesn't realize the fear her nervous system had the constriction from being in that relationship and she maybe knew it but it took to your point, some data for her to actually really see that. And so I can speak for myself that again, I needed the data to know. Now I HR like obviously I talk about it all the time, but it also in my mind is just a number. And actually when I'm with clients they're always shocked. But after three weeks we don't even talk about HRV because the work isn't hrv. The work is feeling, the work is somatic, the work is getting back to all the things you talked about in hrv, like you said, is just a beautiful bridge to support the analytical mind, the conditioned mind. That, that isn't our fault. It's just a product of where we are in the current society, but a way to support feeling which is what human beings are meant to do.
- [54:59]
B
For real. We'll link that guide below. It's really fun. I started to look at mine. I didn't get through the whole thing. Like you said, it's 18 pages. It's an incredible resource. I'm going to print mine. It's going to be in my sit spot behind me tomorrow for my Alpha Theta. Do you feel that HRV finding you was one of your greatest gifts? You know, looking back in hindsight, of course you were trying to optimize everything until the one thing needed to find you that taught you optimizing is not about any of the ways that you were looking at it previously. It's like your greatest lesson was packaged in this shoulder injury and experience that helped you find your purpose and your path.
- [55:40]
A
I so resonate with that and my best friend Ali who was responsible for curating the bike gift the neck year. I went to her and on my birthday. And I was like, I just. I was reflected on the last year and all the changes because I went from running beverage company this. That to like nomadic and not having anything and. And that HRV guy. And I. I looked her in the face, I was like, I wanted to just let you know, thank you for giving me the best gift I've ever received in my entire life. And she's like, oh my God. I still feel so bad about that because the irony I didn't say this. I got in the accident. That was the only time I rid the bike because someone stole it from my Venice garage like four months later. So literally, the bike was what? That was it?
- [56:22]
B
That was all you needed? Yeah. You learned quickly.
- [56:26]
A
I learned very quickly. And so, yeah, to your point, I feel very grateful, I feel very humbled. And I just am a continued student of what the educational simulation keeps presenting me. And I say this all the time with clients like they are my biggest teachers because they would not be in front of me if I didn't need them as much as they need me. And I end up laughing as I share things out of my mouth because I realize, oh, that's for me.
- [56:58]
B
Right?
- [56:59]
A
There's a flavor of that for me.
- [57:01]
B
Always really fun when we can look at life like this and anyone can do this. You know, a friend and mentor of mine very much sees the world this way and she's taught me so much. You know, something as simple as when you're having that day and everyone's cutting in front of you and slowing down and traffic is in your way, she'd be like, well, obviously you're supposed to slow down. Why are you moving so quickly? Everything is an opportunity to see it through the lens of what is the lesson here for me? And we're going through life anyway. Why not make it?
- [57:35]
A
It's.
- [57:36]
B
It's gamifying our day. And this is how we can choose to sit in stress over what's happening to us or choose to see the beauty in what's happening for us.
- [57:47]
A
Amen to that. And I love games. I'm competitive. So this is how I got my mind to literally get in the educational simulation, the game of life.
- [57:58]
B
Yeah, I love it. Okay, there's one really important question I don't want to forget to ask you because I've heard you say this. Tell me what you mean as we start to wrap up. Tell me what you mean when you say so many people are doing self care instead of receiving self care.
- [58:15]
A
Yeah, this is spoken from my own experience. But when I was in my optimizing I was very much like, okay, I know I need to go do an NSDR non sleep, deep rest. I know I need to do, you know I need to sit in the morning for some sort of like practice in meditation. So I would do it to check the box. So I'm doing it to do it. And again this goes to pathway four. What's the intention behind the doom if I'm just doing it to do it? I'm not actually getting the receiving, the self care in it. And the whole point of going the full circle in sympathetic parasympathetic is actually allowing the body to receive, to be in a theta state, to be in an alpha state, to drop into that parasympathetic state so that all of that vital oxygen can go back to the visceral organs and away from the extremities. But if you're doing it because you know you need to do it to get the next thing, your mind is still in the oh, okay. Next thing, next thing. And so the doing versus the receiving for me, even when I'd like go get a massage, like I was just so always on that I, I even my scheduling of being off I was on and I see that so much with, with my clients like hey, no, I'm doing it, I'm checking the box. And and it's not about checking the
- [59:36]
B
box because you miss. Yeah, yeah. Self care needs a reframe. It is not another to do item on our list. It's who we be and how we show up in the world based on how we are caring for ourselves in the moment.
- [59:47]
A
Amen to that sister. Yes, thank you for asking that question.
- [59:52]
B
Yes. Love it. All right Salim, I know we have to wrap up is I'm going to link everything below. We'll link your upcoming courses. I'm definitely going to link that free qu and guide. Literally took me I think all of two minutes this morning. Highly recommend people check that out. Is there anything we missed before I wrap up here? Anything that I haven't asked you before? I ask you one final last question.
- [60:18]
A
I would just leave your audience with two of my favorite allies and tools on my journey I say of feeling and inward and weaving through the art, awareness, regulation, transformation and and, and that example you gave up if you yell at the kid and and then you feel bad after. And the first ally is curiosity. So just really bring curiosity to everything. Have an open mind and as you're reflecting on things that are happening, just, just ask. Don't Be so stuck on, oh, I did that. Obviously just bring up, bring curiosity to that. And then with the curiosity, bring levity, laughter. You need to just not take yourself so seriously because doing so will just lead to that emotion sticking. And the reality is, I believe it really is one big cosmic joke of a simulation that we live in. And the more you can just bring the levity, it just, it lightens up the situation, it lightens up the limbic response and it just, it makes the game that you talked about that I'm very much in the game of life educational simulation just that much more enjoyable to maneuver. And that's what we came here to do, I believe.
- [61:36]
B
Absolutely. All right, well, last question. You know, let's fast forward five years from now. I know you like to be in present time consciousness, so this might be a little bit of a interesting flex for you with all the work you've done five years from now. Every person who's listened to this episode incorporates more feeling and more awareness and self compassion. What do you think that translates into? Not just in their relationship, but in the community and everyone that they touch
- [62:05]
A
and interact with just an increase in consciousness in society. I really believe the only work, you know, when people ask me what do I do, my response to that is, my only job is to regulate my nervous system. And I truly believe it's everybody's only job because I believe we're all mirrors walking each other home. And all any of us need to do is be the mirror, be the frequency, be the thing we want the world to be, we want to fix in the person. And by doing so, we emit that frequency to everyone around. So if everybody takes one thing from this, if everybody just starts to bring awareness to their patterns, starts to try to regulate and then bring some tools, then that will ripple to everybody that they touch around them. And that's how I believe we get to the new earth or the new fractal dimension of why we're seeing the perceived chaos in the world. Because there's a lot here that's a whole nother thing.
- [63:01]
B
But yeah, no, I love that it starts with us, right? We can't control everything outside of us, but we can control this. It starts with us. Salim, thank you so much. You've shared so many incredible tools. It's been a pleasure having you and I will make sure everyone knows exactly how to find you in all the links in the descriptions.
- [63:21]
A
Thank you so much for reaching out. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for your work and what you're doing. It is. It is so needed. So appreciate you, of course.
- [63:28]
B
Thank you. All right, guys. I hope you loved that one as much as I did. If you enjoyed, go ahead and throw a like as always, send this to someone that you know and love and can benefit from this information. Thank you for helping spread the word and these important messages that we share. And I will see you next time.