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- [00:00]
A
Salim, who's also known as that HRV guy on Instagram, was somebody I met in January. And his work is really centered around, like his Instagram handle suggests, hrv, which is heart rate variability, truth first, kindness always. And then we talk about nervous system regulation, also nervous system sovereignty and how important nervous system sovereignty is.
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Pathway number one is sleep as the foundation.
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A
And I have thrown every single pharmaceutical, every single protocol trying to get rid of this damn Babesia and and black mold exposure in my body.
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I'm not in that business anymore. I don't need that much stress.
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And one of the most important things you'll learn in life is how to regulate your nervous system and have sovereignty on it.
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And not quantity, but quality.
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A
So I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Salim leaves us with really tangible tips of how to regulate and have sovereignty on your nervous system and things that you can apply from day one. From listening to this episode, your perception
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of me is a reflection of you.
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A
Salim, I can't believe from Dubai you're here in Miami. We're going to talk about something that I'm so passionate about, HRV and nervous system sovereignty. I'm so excited to do this with you.
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B
I'm so grateful to be here. It was such a pleasure to meet you in Dubai and so happy we were able to make this work while I'm in Miami. So thank you.
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A
Exactly. Timing worked out just perfect, literally. And before we started rolling, we were talking about so many different things, but you have a really interesting background. So you were a nuclear engineer, then you started one of the top beverage companies in the US and then you fell into this work. So can we talk through that journey? Like, how did that all happen?
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B
Yeah, people always ask, how did you get into HRV and nervous system sovereignty? It was from not listening to my body for so long, doing the old programming of a belief. My underlying core wound. I say a master program around sacrif and people pleasing and not letting people down. And so that took me from engineering to quitting to launch a beverage company that was, you know, had an underlying mission of transparency and education in this space because there wasn't much. And that was a rather challenging industry to be in, raising money from 170 people and really pushing, pushing, pushing. And fell in love when that launched with the biohacking movement, you know, with Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield, the emergence of that and. And it got to the point where I had moved to New York City after I quit the engineering job and I was showing off that I was hacking my way to five hours of sleep a night, running 10 miles every other day, listening to a minimum of three audiobooks a week, raising money from 170 people, thinking, I'm winning this game of life for five years. And then my body so beautifully broke down with a knee injury. And that's when I say, what was the beginning of my inward journey. And I had an OURA ring at the time and saw hrv. But this was now six years ago. Nobody was talking about it.
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A
Yeah. What is hrv? So we tell the audience, what exactly is it and how does it work?
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B
Yeah. So HRV stands for heart rate variability. And it's measuring the gap or space between each of your heartbeats, which indicates how your nervous system is perceiving its ever changing environment. So essentially your relationship to your stress and a direct reflection of the health of your autonomic nervous system and its ability to shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. And I first read in literature HRV relating to stress in Dr. Joe Dispenza's book Becoming Supernatural. This happened when my knee injury happen. And I had known from all of my research in biohacking for about five years, an equation that science has very much proven that the root cause of all aging disease and eventually death is cellular inflammation. Period, end of story. Unless you die in an accident, the underlying root cause of your mortality is cellular inflammation. Science has also proven that the number one leading cause of cellular inflammation, chronic stress. And so I knew that equation. And when I read HIV is relating to stress, I was like, why is nobody talking about this biomarker? Because if it actually is, then it's arguably the most important biomarker in longevity, which I have come to find. So that was really six years ago. And my passion for HRV emerged when
- [04:13]
A
we were in Dubai, when we were at the talk together, you said something about how everyone's HRV is different, so don't compare yourself to other people and don't be like, well, it has to be a certain market this age or at that time. So can you talk about a little bit about that? The individuality of your hrv? Yeah.
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B
And thank you so much for bringing that up because one of my biggest missions in, you know, that HRV guy in the education that I share about this, is to change the perception of it for, you know, the biohacking and just everybody in general, because we're so used to biomarkers having a range and needing to be at a certain number. Right. And HIV has been researched for decades. You know, heartmath Institute has over three decades researching it. And what science has proven is it is so uniquely individualized to the person. And just like there's no two fingerprints that are the same, there's no two heartbeats that are the same. So science has yet to publish a range for hrv. Yes. Aura and Whoop have done studies, and they say, you know, if you're within this age, you should be at a range around here. But that's based on their participants, right? Yeah. So instead of looking at it as a number to chase, I like to think of it as a language. And when you think of languages, you don't think English is better than Spanish is better than French. The intent of a language is for an equal ecosystem within a community to communicate. The sole intent of your HRV score is only for your body to communicate with you. Right. So if you're comparing it to someone else's, then you're actually potentially keeping yourself at a lower HRV score. Because if it's measuring how your heart is perceiving its reality, how do we perceive our reality? Through our senses, through our touch, through our taste, through our smell, through our sight, through our ears, but most of all through our thoughts, through our relationship to what we are perceiving. That's what materializes our reality. We know, on a quantum level. Right. And so instead of comparing it to anyone else or a score, you think you need, listen to your score. And I like to say, find out what your HRV baseline is, which I define as your average HRV score over the last 30 days. And if you wake up, say your baseline's 40 and your morning score is 20. That's not a bad thing. It's just data. It's your nervous system saying whatever you did the day before is more of a load than it's been used to. The best thing you could do is listen to it, honor it, nurture your body, go for a leisurely walk instead of doing what most of us are so guilty. Pushing more, working harder, staying up later. Right.
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A
When it comes to HRV and the correlation to the nervous system. Because I'm fascinated with that. I just came back from, like, a nervous system reset. We were talking about that. Can we talk about how HRV plays into nervous system regulation and what you like to call nervous system sovereignty?
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B
Yeah, and I think I'd love to define sovereignty because it's kind of a new thing. And I intentionally say nervous system sovereignty over nervous system regulation. I love hearing nervous system regulation. I'm so happy people are so you Know, passionate about getting and aware about it and aware of it. So important. However, I believe as humans, we did not come here to be regulated all the time. And if we're regulated all the time, we actually can't increase the capacity and resilience of our nervous system to go handle more stress or to go have a bigger impact in the world. So what I believe is more important is having sovereignty or agency and awareness over your nervous system. So you could consciously choose how you respond to the ever changing environment versus automatically responding. Based on the prior story, the old program, your limbic back brain triggered response. Right. And HRV is that gap that's happening 40, 50, 60 times a minute. Right. Is basically your nervous system saying what is dissonant and resonant with it.
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A
Well, before we sat down and started recording for the show, we were discussing how your childhood and your trauma and when you're actually conceived plays such a big role in how your nervous system has developed over time. So between the ages and you, we were just discussing this. Between the age of 0 to 9 months is when your brain stem is essentially created. And you were talking me through the different stages and evolutions and ages and how we perceive our environment, and that essentially sets our nervous system. So can we talk about that?
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B
Absolutely. So before diving into that, I think just to understand the autonomic nervous system and talk two seconds on that. Because it is such an intricate system that governs 90% of our voluntary and involuntary functions, meaning our heart rate, our lungs, our breath, our digestion, our reproduction, all of these vital organs are governed by this system that we spend so little time understanding. Right. And it operates in two primary phases. So two primary sympathetic and parasympathetic state. Now, the parasympathetic state has three different brain waves that correlate with our developmental years. So delta, which is our deepest parasympathetic state, when the brain is oscillating between 0.5 and 4 Hz is synonymous with sleep, Right. When we're sleeping, our brain goes to Delta. Also. Between 0 and 18 months, a baby's baseline brainwave state is delta. That is when the foundation of their nervous system is being built. Right. They're not really awake. Maybe their eyes move a little bit, but their brainwave state is delta based. Then between ages 2 and 7, it shifts to a baseline state of theta, which is the next in the parasympathetic side, when our brain is oscillating between 4 and 8 hertz and it is that meditative between conscious and unconscious state. Where we are a sponge, we are hypnotic and susceptible to all energies around. Now, during those ages between 2 and 7, we also don't have a prefrontal cortex developed, meaning we don't have the ability to discern reality ourself. So we call it the formative years because it quite literally forms us if a caregiver yells, even unintentionally, and we don't know how to respond to that situation. Right. We absorb that traumatic experience and it gets stuck in our nervous system. The Body Keeps Score is an incredible book that talks about this.
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A
So it's so funny you're saying that. So when I went to a warehouse, they were basically teaching me. So I'm in my 40s now, and I'm just as an adult woman, teaching myself about nervous system regulation or sovereignty. And it goes back to when my mother was pregnant with me. My parents were fighting all the time. There was a lot of volatility. She developed pneumonia, seven months old, almost lost me. So my first encounter with life, as you would say, the zero to nine months, was not stable. So my environment never felt stable. And then they basically were telling me at a warehouse that when you are born, the second time you encounter. So safety is taught in the womb, the second time you learn. Safety is when you come into the world, and it's based on your mother's nervous system. So children up until the ages from 0 to 7 don't know the difference between themselves and their mother. Their nervous systems are intertwined. Not the father, it's the mother. And when you have an unregulated mother who doesn't know what safety feels like in her body, how are you going to know what safety feels like? So then the child would look at a caregiver, an aunt, an uncle, a teacher, a grandparent, to see if they can regulate from there. And if they don't have that, then you have adults like me who sit there and say, wait, I don't think this feels right. This doesn't feel safe. I need to learn what a safe nervous system feels like. And then we start teaching ourselves, through experts like you, and having these other experiences, how to create that space and safety within us to know what a regulated or sovereign nervous system feels like. That's not running on constant reaction to the world, but it's more often observing your world around you sort of a thing.
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B
Absolutely. And as we were talking about, I think it's so important as we reflect on our caregivers. Right. They were doing the best they could
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A
with the tools that they had 100.
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And the reality is any, any, you know, trauma or dissonance in your experience that now you're processing was probably the fuel that led you to the success that you have right now, right? And so it's not about suppressing, ignoring, or shaming those parts. It's just about that awareness so that you're not consciously reacting the way you used to react and rather choosing how you want to respond.
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A
So funny you say that, because I was listening to this, you know, the guys from all in the podcast, So I was listening to them online, and one of them was saying how successful entrepreneurs are. Kids are people who've had really uncomfortable childhoods and are used to living in trauma and are used to constantly pushing through things because nobody in their right mind would sign up for entrepreneurship with a regulated nervous system, because you are signing up to suffer every damn day. And there's something in you that tells your body it's okay to suffer a little bit. So successful entrepreneurs, you look at people like Elon, you look across the board. These people didn't have normal childhoods. There was something in their environment that made them have to go that extra mile and drive a little bit harder. And I think about that, that if I didn't have that dysregulation or scarcity or fear growing up, I wouldn't have been somebody who pushed myself so hard. I'm constantly trying to do more and be better and do more, but now I'm trying to come to it from a point of like, I also can feel safe in my body, but I can also be a driver at work. But I also know when to calm down and self soothe and self regulate. But it does have a lot to do with how you grew up as a child, about how the outcomes will be on the external side 1000%.
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B
And that's why I think sovereignty is so much more important. Because if you weren't that dysregulated, you wouldn't have had the capacity in your nervous system to go be the incredibly successful entrepreneur you are running all these businesses, Right? In my story, I lost my father in my formative years, right? And so that built all the resilience and capacity for me to be the entrepreneur entrepreneur I was. However, I failed to listen and bring awareness and then went through a whole slew of humbling experiences to now get me in this position.
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A
How did you go through changing your identity from being, okay, you had this other background, then you had started this super successful brand, you injured your knee and you're like, wait, Me as Salim now has to go. I have to go back out in the world and refigure out who I am and come to the new version of me. That must have been very humbling and scary at the same time.
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B
Oh, yeah. And the knee injury wasn't the one. I needed another injury to act, actually. Really slapped me silly. Yeah. So. And that's how I actually developed. You know, the next common question about HRV is always after you understand that it's a language you also understand. And I think it's important to say the higher the hrv, the higher the gap between the heart rate, between the heartbeats, the more malleable and resilient the heart is. Right. So unlike your heart rate, which usually a lower heart rate means a healthier nervous system, a higher HRV indicates a more malleable and resilient nervous system. Right. But again, higher for me may be a different higher than you. Right. So the question then comes, how do you improve your hrv? And this is so unique to you because how each of us perceive the moment is based on our upbringing, our conditioning, our epigenetics, our DNA, our ancestors.
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Right.
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So what works for me may not work for you.
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Yeah.
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And over the last six years, I've been trying to figure out what worked for me. And in those six years, I developed what I call the art of the Heart framework. And, and ART stands for awareness, regulation, transformation. And this is a three act arc that isn't a ladder we climb once and we made it to the top and we regulated forever, but rather a daily act of devotion towards listening and partnering with your nervous system, with HRV as the guiding compass or tool in it. And within this framework, there are five pathways towards HRV growth and nervous system sovereignty that follow my life journey. To answer your question on how did I now change? And so pathway number one is sleep as the foundation, which we were talking about a little before. And if you are not honoring your deepest parasympathetic state of sleep, it's going to be hard to see HRV change. Because if it's measuring your ability to shift states and you're giving out the deepest.
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Yeah.
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And so back to my story. I was showing off. I was hacking my way to five hours of sleep a night, never getting my REM sleep. It wasn't until I started prioritizing and revering my sleep that I started seeing that baseline go up.
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Right.
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We won't get into sleep because I know you've done podcasts on it. Circadian rhythm is the most important Thing to realize why sleep is so important. So pathway one, sleep, pathway two, hormetic stress. The catalyst. You familiar with hermetic stress or mises? A little bit, yeah. I'll explain to the audience. It's essentially the philosophy of intentionally eliciting a stress and then consciously guiding the body back out of it.
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Right.
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The best analogy I have for that is weight training. If you go to the gym to work out your bicep, you're actually lifting more weight than your bicep muscle can handle, tearing the fibers in the bicep. And then what do you do the next day?
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Recover from it.
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Recover so that the next day.
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Same thing with ice cream. Cold plunging.
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Exactly. So that the next day you can go and lift more weight. That's hormetic stress. Right. So back to my story. I continued running the beverage company when I discovered hrv, arguably putting myself in one of the most stressful positions. But I would consciously, throughout the day, drop my body into parasympathetic states, not waiting until nighttime.
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How did you do that, by the way?
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Via biohacking technologies like binaural beats, contrast therapy, breath work, meditate. I would throw the whole kitchen sink at it. And not just once throughout the day. Because most of us don't have a problem getting ourselves in a stressful state.
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But it's getting yourself unstressed.
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We don't complete the equation until we go to sleep. Right. And again, if chronic stress is the number one leading cause of cellular inflammation, being aware of your internal state so that you don't stay in a prolonged stressful state. Super, super important. So two to three years of, I say, training to be an emotional athlete, taking my nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic to sympathetic multiple times, took my baseline HRV from 30 to above 170. Right.
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A
That's insane.
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From training it. Again, don't compare scores. And one side note that I'll just say to solidify to not comparing scores. Right now my baseline is between 90 and 110. And people are like, don't you want to be at 170? No, because I was at 170 because I was actually training in one of the most stressful businesses. I'm not in that business anymore. I don't need that much stress. So I don't need a nervous system that could handle that much. Just to really double down on the fact that it's not the number, it's how you feel more than anything.
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Right.
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Pathway number three. So one is sleep, two, hormetic stress, three, reframing the shift, right? And so back to my story. I continued running the beverage company for another four years. It was number two in Whole Foods on the east coast, opening up in over 3,000 retailers nationwide. And I thought I was winning the game of life. But to keep up with all the demand from that success of the beverage, I had to raise enough money. And I was struggling doing so because one of the largest sparkling water companies went bankrupt. And no VC or fund wanted to invest in this very risky sector. And so it was my birthday about three years ago, and in front of all of my friends and community, I declared I wanted to step into less doing more being. A common statement echoed amongst entrepreneurs approaching burnout. And I got gifted from all of my friends a Super 73 electronic bike. This Burning man bike that I wanted. I take said bike for its first spin on the Venice Boardwalk. Sun is setting. I'm like, oh, everything's going to work itself out. It always does. The money's going to come in. And I get in the silliest accident that anteriorly dislocates my right shoulder, tears my labrum, and fractures 30% of my shoulder socket off. I had to rush to the ER for them to dislocate to relocate it. I woke up the next morning furious, in pain, saying, how can I raise money without a right shoulder? Why is this happening to me? And my HRV plummeted to 30, a stark contrast from the 170. 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 fuck 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 for from the gift.
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Be careful what you wish for from
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the gift in front of everybody that I asked for it. How can he not laugh at the cosmic joke of the educational simulation? Right the second he said that, I laughed. And I changed my relationship to the entire injury, realizing my body's yelling at me to let go. I had started talking about HIV coaching, but I was so committed to not letting the 170 investors down that I wouldn't allow myself to do anything else. And I woke up the next morning, same pain, same dislocated shoulder. But my HIV tripled to 97 simply from changing my relationship to the injury happening for me. Just like you were so beautifully articulating. Your recent divorce and your relationship like it is so important, your relationship to your story. Right. So that's the power of reframing. So sleep hormetic stress reframing pathway number four, intentionality, the alignment. Right. So back to my story. I said, okay, I'm gonna let go of this beverage, but I'm gonna see if there's a way I could salvage it. And it took about six months, but I found a holding company that acquires distressed beverages. They put together an APA asset purchase agreement, got them to take our cap table to the new company. So our shareholders own some of the new company. They took the debt to the suppliers. However, the remaining debt fell on the company's shoulder, which we dissolved and then fell on my shoulder because I was a guarantor. So I had to go through personal bankruptcy, the final release of every attachment my ego had on success, identity, all the things. And so I did what most people do in that situation. I went to Bali to find myself. Eat, Pray, Love. Right.
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A
I'm going to do that this summer, actually.
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B
I have so many connections there for you.
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Okay.
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B
Have you been?
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No, first time.
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Oh, my God.
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I'm going in July for a month.
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B
Okay, perfect. We'll sidebar on that. So in Bali, every morning, I would contemplate my beautiful, beautiful wish, less doing, more being. And every morning, my mind would come in and be like, but we love doing. We're so good at doing. What are we going to do if we're not doing? Yeah, I know you could relate to that. Until finally one morning, I had an epiphany. That statement, less doing and 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 if we're unaware of it. And we're always doing, even if we're sitting or sleeping or breathing. So it's not about doing less and being more. It's about the intention in your doing, the why behind your doing. And what I've come to find is HRV is a compass pointing you to your highest self, to what resonates most with your body. And a compass needs three points to triangulate. So in HRV's case, point one is what you're perceiving, point two is how you're responding to what you're perceiving. And point three is something to compare it to your why. So if you're not consistently auditing your why, consistently bringing curiosity to your intention behind what you're doing, you're most likely like, I was running on an old program. I can't let people down. I need to do this. I need to sacrifice whatever the story is. And your body is evolved into something else. Right. So until you start to bring that intentionality into your everyday life, that's another thing to support HRV and nervous system
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sovereignty for everybody listening. How can they tap into that? Why? Because so many people are so lost about what their why is or how even to get to that place.
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Yeah. Such a great question. And it's actually one of the first things I do with clients within the first month to really focus in. And it's. It's about inquiring what brings you joy, what are you most passionate about, and really just sitting and listening to what resonates with your body. And if you are utilizing HRV again, it's a compass so you could see what you do, how it impacts your HRV score. And you will know. People are like, oh my God, my HIV is so high. When I'm in this location or when I leave work and go to this place, it's like, well, that's your body telling you that it actually resonates so much more with this activity or this place than what you were doing. Right. And so for someone like me, who is so in my head and not in my body. Right. That's why I loved hiv, because it supported getting me to listen more to my body.
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A
I love what you said, that you were in your head and not in your body. So when I went to a warehouse, the first thing they said to me is, they're like, you operate completely from your mind. You're super smart, you can out think somebody, you can out move somebody. But they're like, you're not experiencing your body. So your body's breaking down saying, you're not using me. Cause you're not in it. Cause you're always in your head. So if you don't need me, then what good am I? I'm gonna be inflamed, I'm gonna be stressed, my hormones are not gonna work correctly because you're saying that you don't really need me. Cause you're living all up here. So you're not really living and you're not really experiencing life because you're also. I disassociate a lot. I have really bad add. And they're like, again, that's top programming to take yourself out of situations. And so your body's basically like, well, what are you using me for?
- [24:32]
B
Totally, totally. And HRV is a reflection of how much are you listening to your body, right? Because the more you listen to it, the more resonant it feels, the more your HRV will go up, Right? Right. So sleep pathway one, hormetic stress two, reframing three, intentionality four. And pathway five is community, the amplifier, which is something you do such a good job of curating. And this is not new. Science has proven this. The one of the pillars in every blue zone in the world community. The longest study in human history to 80 year Harvard case study which took 72 youth from Boston at age 18. Followed every aspect of their lives, medical records, interviewing spouse, colleagues, children, three generations of scientists, all to see what led to a longer, healthier, happier life. And they came back with one thing and it was relationships and not quantity, but quality. Right? And that is just from a nervous system perspective. Everything to do. All our nervous system ever wants safety, right? And one of the things that makes us feel most safe is to be authentically seen by a mirror by who we are. No mask, no just actually be seen in depth with someone that resonates with you.
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A
But in a world that we live in that people are so scared for being seen for who they truly are and they just wanna be liked. I say this thing online and I've said it a bunch of times, that most people just want to be nice, but they don't wanna be kind. And kindness is speaking your truth. Kindness is being honest with somebody. Kindness is being very matter of fact, not just giving them words of like lip service, but what is the real truth? And I think so many people in this world are so focused on wanting to be nice that they don't focus on being kind to themselves, to people around them, to like, I'm a very straight shooter and that makes people very uncomfortable. But I was like, I'd rather speak my truth. And you know exactly where I stand with you and I'm not bullshitting you. Then try to be nice and be like, because I'm not here to be liked. You can like me or not like me. That's not really what I'm here for. But it makes people, Saleem, very uncomfortable. And a lot of people, like I said, like me or they don't like me.
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B
Man, do you said so much gold in there. First, I had, I had a prior mentor share this with me. She said truth first, kindness always, right? So always speak your truth with as much kindness as possible.
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Don't judge somebody totally.
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B
But then the second thing to you being such a truth bomb and direct Person. People's response to that has nothing to do with you. Right? I shared this earlier. Yes.
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Can we talk about that?
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Your perception of me is a reflection of you. My reaction to you is an awareness of me. So you are giving them, whether they want to believe it now or maybe they believe it later, the best medicine they need. Because if it's your truth, right, if it's not coming from your limbic autonomic response, if it's your actual truth, it is the medicine needed in the room, how they respond to it is totally always, 1000% of the time them. Your reaction to how they respond is your medicine. It's your training, because that's the awareness of you.
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A
And so for people listening and they're like, how do we come to this place of being seen authentically so that we can have community, real relationships, authenticity in their life? When you're coaching people, how do you guide them to that place? Yeah.
- [27:43]
B
To me it always comes back to first grounding in your own truth. Right. And getting that clarity in yourself. Because for me, I'll just speak from my experience. I was so busy operating on a belief that like, you know, I needed to do certain things to receive the love, to receive the validation. And until you actually get to your own truth, right, it's very hard to find it externally because the external is always just a reflection of the internal. So the foundation of my practice and what I do with any client is a morning practice. And the morning practice, sole purpose is just to get to a place of resonance with yourself where you aren't in any story of the outside world. Because the second we get into our work or our day to day lives, we just go into a story and the mind loves patterns and we'll just keep looping, right? But if you could just like taste what we are talking about now, then it's so much easier to go about your day bringing in that truth.
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And what is a lot of people's morning practice that you put them up for? Look like, is it the same? Is it different client to client? And what is such a beautiful question?
- [28:43]
B
It is so unique to the individual because for some people it may be meditation, breathwork, dancing, running, singing. You need to feel what's resonant with you. And that's why the art framework, awareness, regulation, transformation, it's about bringing awareness and then learning the things that resonate and regulate your body. Right? So because I have been so extreme in biohacking, I've gone down the spiritual path, I've went to so many different Sacred sites around the world sat with nuts. I have a plethora of Rolodex and tools that I just offer to clients and then they test it out and they see what's resonant with. Because I am not anybody else's guru. Everybody is their own guru. Our bodies are the biggest biohacking technology in the world. They're these incredible vessels that know how to take care of themselves, know how to heal themselves. If you just listen.
- [29:30]
A
What has been the most uncomfortable truth that you've learned about yourself?
- [29:34]
B
Yeah. For me.
- [29:35]
A
And that you had to work through.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah. And still working through. Because it's again, it's a day to day thing and if I don't do my morning practice, I will forget I say my, my core wound or my MAST program, which very much stemmed from losing my father at a young age. Being the oldest male in a Lebanese patriarchal family was this belief that I had to support, I had to provide. I can't let someone down and that I receive love by doing these things. Right. So my validation came from doing, from surv, from, from sacrificing. Right. And so to just continue to bring awareness that that's a story that a little kid has rightfully so. And, and that, that actually it was the beautiful fuel that allowed me to be an entrepreneur that brought me here. But it does not need to be running the show. And it all comes back to self love. Right. Giving that love to myself instead of thinking I need to give it to someone else, which isn't selfish. I say it's self full. And when you are full, then your cup overflows and you can give that to everybody else around you. But if you're coming from a place of oh, I'm doing this because I'm going to receive love. It's like scorekeeping almost. And that frequency will be felt.
- [30:41]
A
I was speaking to a friend yesterday who I had coffee with and me and her were just talking about how, you know, I believe that if you can do something for somebody in this world, it's a gift. It's not because you're looking for something back, but if God has put you in a position to be kind to somebody, to be able to do a favor, to make an introduction, how lucky are you that you even have that thing to give to somebody else? Right. But that doesn't mean you don't fill up your cup. And the more we fill up our cup in life and the more we are full, the more we can give always. And I think that it's so Sad. When you go through life looking at people, they're like, well, I'll give you this. What can you give me in return? That's not living. Because when God puts you in a position to give and give all of you, that's truly living. To be, have the ability to give something to somebody that could help them, make them feel better, change their life. That in itself is such a blessing.
- [31:29]
B
Yeah. To be of service.
- [31:31]
A
To be of service, absolutely. In any way, shape or form. And I feel that what inspires me a lot is the more I fill my cup, the more I'm able to take care of my team, the people around me, the way I'm able to give. Because I want to be able to share in every aspect of my life. And that is one of the biggest motivations for me to be like, I want to be self regulated. I want to feel good. Because when I'm in that place, I can govern from a better place. I can hold space for other people. I can contribute to society in a meaningful way versus being fearful and scarce all the time.
- [32:02]
B
Totally, totally, totally. And I truly believe the best asset that we can offer the world is our presence, is a coming from a regulated place. Because when we are present, then our actual genuine gift comes through. And that's what the world needs. Even if it's being direct with someone, even if it's sharing a truth with someone. That's always what's needed in every moment. However, if we are dysregulated and operating from an old story, that truth isn't gonna come out and it's gonna be an old story that we're projecting, which is what all of us are walking around in a body doing. Projecting our unprocessed, stuck emotions onto everybody around us.
- [32:33]
A
So, so funn the thing about presence. So last year, you know, you and I are both really good friends with Peter Crone. Peter's a very present person. So I remember I was in London in September. Peter was coming onto my podcast and Salim, I will kid you not. Cause I was so unregulated back then. I sat down with Peter and this man has so much presence and he's so like, direct. The way he looks at you, it made me so uncomfortable. Okay. He made me so uncomfortable on this show. And actually the episode did really well. But I was so uncomfortable being seen and having somebody so presence just sitting there with nowhere to escape. I was like, when's the episode gonna end? When am I gonna go? And now when I see Peter and I speak to him, because I Worked so much on myself since then and been doing these deep dives and self regulations. I can hold that space back and feel very comfortable with somebody who's so present and in the there and the now because I've worked on myself. So it's not that the environment around me changed, it's you. I change and learned that I was not here to escape from my body and escape and go here and kind of be on my phone and kind of like run away. I'm here to live this life and really experience it in its full essence. And that requires presence 1,000%. So when Peter looked at me dead in the eyes again, I was like, I'm here for it.
- [33:46]
B
I got it. I will look you right back, you know.
- [33:49]
A
But he. When you don't, when you're not used to that kind of presence, it can make you feel really uncomfortable.
- [33:54]
B
Totally, totally.
- [33:56]
A
And so for people listening, what can they do to embody, like we were discussing earlier, is about this kindness, about really embodying themselves, allowing themselves to be really seen for who they are and, and being okay with maybe what the world sees back is not what's important. But you feel good in your body.
- [34:14]
B
Yeah. Such a great question. So I'll speak from my experience of that. And to do so, I think first just to map out what is actually happening physiologically in our body when we experience a challenge or a stressful situation. Right. If you were to map out the body. Anytime we see a challenge or a stress beneath that, there's always an emotion or multiple emotions associated with what we're seeing. And directly connected to that emotion is a physical sensation that's stuck in the body. And if you peel the onion one layer deeply, an emotion on a quantum level is just a scalar wave of energy. It's just frequency.
- [34:44]
A
Right.
- [34:45]
B
There's no such thing as a good or bad emotion. As humans, we're meant to feel every emotion on the spectrum. Joy, anger, fear, love, sadness, all of it, for about 90 seconds, they say, until that wave of an emotion moves through us. However, if we are in those formative years that we talked about where we can't process the emotion, then that wave that's supposed to move through us freezes and forms a glacier in the fast in our body. Right? And so then all we are doing is walking around projecting that frozen motion in every vertical friendship, business, relationship. So the best way I have found to come back to that presence is. That's why I intentionally use the word educational simulation. What we are perceiving, I believe is Always medicine for us to feel something unprocessed. So if you could come back into the body somatically and get out of the mind thinking, oh my God, this triggered me, this stressed me and be like, wow, this is actually pointing me towards something in me, in me, me. Right then feeling that allows the glacier of an emotion to melt and then it moves through and then you're not reacting based on the old story or program put in place.
- [35:48]
A
You really nailed that. Because recently when I went for my nervous system kind of reset sovereignty experience, one of the biggest things they taught me also was most of us are walking through life, living our 0 to 7 years of age, wear these adult meat suits. But we're experiencing life from that age. Yep, we are. All our reactions, our responses to life, our fears, everything is coming from that age. But if we could teach ourselves, we're not that 7 year old anymore. We're not that 12 year old, we're not that 24 year old. I'm 42 year old, Iman. I don't need to react to life like this. I don't need to be scared of these things because the person I am today, with all the wisdom, the experiences that I have, the same outcome will not happen for me. I'm able to address life in a different way. It will free me from that narrative and the reaction that I was having to things 1000%.
- [36:36]
B
And something I'd love to add to that is to have compassion to yourself because how many times can you say I can't believe I acted like that. I can't believe I did that again. Well, how a nervous system works, it's an on off switch. I liken it to an analogy. Hospitals here in Florida have this fail safe where if a tornado or hurricane's coming, you hit a button and metal shades go on the curtain, right? Brilliant program put in place to save time, people. What happens if a shooter's in that building and you hit that button? Not so brilliant of a program. That's how our nervous system works. So when you're in the situation, it is so hard to do that. That's why I say train to be an emotional athlete before it happens. And I have this HRV reset, it's part of my course. I talk about it in workshops where you intentionally bring up the stress uncomfortable thing and then you drop out of the story, you drop out of the visual, you drop into a somatic practice where you scan and feel the sensation that this stress or this experience actually pointing you towards so that when it happens in real life, you have more agency up here because when that on, off switch goes, when the amygdala fires off that it perceives as stress, you don't have access to your prefrontal cortex. It's actually why athletes, right? I do some work with athletes, and this agency approached me because they said their hall of Fame best athletes had higher HRV scores than the regular athletes and they didn't know why. And I said, oh, that's so simple. When Michael Jordan is approaching a game seven three throw line, when he was, he did not think of it as game seven. He thought of it like just your everyday free throw. So he was operating from his prefrontal cortex, which means he has access to all of his muscle memory from the thousands of free throws he shot versus another athlete who maybe is a little stressed that this is a Game 7 free throw on the line. They go into their limbic response. They don't have access. Even if they took more free throws than Michael Jordan, it doesn't matter. They can't access that because it is that on, off switch.
- [38:26]
A
That's such an interesting analogy, because I wouldn't even realize what a big role that plays, man.
- [38:32]
B
And that's why, again, as an engineer, I just need to understand the mechanics behind the nervous system to learn what we can do to support bringing sovereignty and agency in it. So in the moment situation, very hard to do. But if you train and practice before then, you'll get more agency to access your current highest self.
- [38:52]
A
When's the last time something scared you and you're like, shit?
- [38:56]
B
No, I would say, I mean often. But I did a darkness retreat a month ago.
- [39:02]
A
I saw that, by the way. How was that?
- [39:03]
B
It was so profound, so beautiful in so many ways. I didn't want to leave after day four, but the first day, and just as I got used to it, I had a little like, anxiety, almost panic attack from my. Me just adjusting to. I mean, when I say darkness, you can't even see your hand in there. It is just, how do you feel? But so you, you, they. You're in the space a day and a half before, and they bring food to show you how it's gonna be coming, and you just eat in the dark, which makes it so this, like, such a more pleasurable thing because your senses are more turned on. And it was such a beautiful, beautiful experience.
- [39:37]
A
And what was your biggest takeaway from. From that experience that you had, like, what really, like, left you raw, but also was something that you didn't expect to come up yeah, two.
- [39:47]
B
Two big takeaways. There's a bunch of big takeaways. But the biggest two, one. Darkness is such, it was such a humbling reminder that there is no separation. Because when you're in pitch black and you can't even see your hand or it's like, oh yeah, there is no separation. We believe we live in a dualistic simulation and the reality is we are all the same. So that was one. But the bigger thing for me was when you have nothing else to do and no external stimulation, you really get to hear your beautiful mind. And I have, and I intentionally say beautiful, very beautiful, loud mind. And sort of first probably 36 hours was just unwinding, even with all the work I do, still unwinding. And one. And on day two I was like, oh my God. I named my mind, I said, I called it Sim Saleem's Incessant Mind. Right. And then on the third day I was like, incessant seems a little harsh. I talk about compassion. So I now I call it Sim Saleem's Intellectual Mind. And I literally put Sim out on the table as often as possible throughout the day just to bring awareness to what SIM is actually thinking. Because usually Sim is that zero to seven year old boy. And it's like the beautiful thing you shared that. I also saw that the highest form of intelligence nowadays is known to be metacognition, awareness of your thoughts. And so it was so profound for me, with no other external simulation or anything else, to have an even deeper awareness of SIM and my beautiful intellectual mind. Yeah.
- [41:16]
A
And were there certain patents that came up for you that you're like, wait, these have been running my life. Life. And they continue to run my life even though I've tried to do all of the self work. Like they're so tightly ingrained. I think people who come from Middle Eastern cultures, we have generations of programming that just go through us. There's no other way to be.
- [41:35]
B
Yeah, well it's in our DNA. They say seven generations up. So absolutely. And as a first generation Lebanese, very much so. But the good news is as we work on it, we heal everybody. Seven generations up and seven generations down. But even like for me, even with the bankruptcy and the medicine, bankruptcy bot that I know now, like okay, money is energy. And it was, you know, a mentor of mine called it like a cheat code in the simulation because you have a different like reframe. But I went into it in a place where like, okay, I need to cultivate again with my next chapter, my next business, some Financial stability. And there was fear still around that even after the bankruptcy. And I just got to watch my story about. Wait, no, no, no. This next chapter has nothing to. You don't need to worry about how much money you make. You're doing it for the sake of doing it. To share this story, to bring awareness and education around nervous system sovereignty. So. So again, I share that because that's why the framework isn't. You make it to the top and you're done. It is a daily act to remember to do that. Especially when you have such beautiful minds like ours that are our superpower. We just gotta remind them and keep them in check. And I had an incredible mentor who shared this with me once. He was like, you know, Salim, the human experience is about remembering and forgetting. Remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting. The mastery comes when you shorten the gap between the remembering and forgetting. Right? And that's why to me that morning practice to ground into the remembering so that I could go about creating and bringing the art to the world that I'm here to bring with remembering why I'm doing it.
- [43:03]
A
When you look at your life now versus three years ago, when you're running the beverage company, what made you happy then versus what makes you happy now? What does happiness mean to you now versus then?
- [43:12]
B
Man, such a good question. And happiness then very much was that core program of not wanting to let people down and really showing up as best I can for the beverage, for my friends, for my family. That doesn't mean I still don't do that now. But happiness to me now is my morning practice is that re centering and regrounding. It's something that I have. So it brings me so much joy just to tap into to my actual self and continue cultivating that self. Love is hands down. And then doing that and creating spaces with community, with friends to do that and really feeling so fulfilled and blessed and privileged to have to share your work, to share the work and to. I say I share stories. And my hope is that the story resonates with the flavor of someone else's story in whatever way they want to take it.
- [44:04]
A
Can you look at somebody's oura ring or their whoop score and be like where their nervous system is looking at
- [44:09]
B
their hr, I can, if I. If they have a trend and I could see their baseline, My favorite thing to do is they're like, well, what does this mean? And I immediately don't go to the morning score. I open it up, I look at the month and I go scroll back and it's such a fun exercise if, let's say, you know, look at yours. Yeah, pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.
- [44:25]
A
I haven't had my aura ring for long enough. But where should we go from here?
- [44:28]
B
Okay, so we're gonna go into.
- [44:30]
A
Let's see how stressed I've been, guys, and how much better I've become.
- [44:32]
B
Gonna go into heart rate variability. We're going to go into your month.
- [44:36]
A
Okay, what do we got?
- [44:37]
B
So we're going to. We're going to go into the aura. We're going to go into the readiness. We're going to scroll down and go into HRV. So your morning HRV score today was 24, which is your month average for April is 25. So right on par. But if we scroll back, let's see. O. You were at 30 in December. Let's see if it goes. Okay, 35.
- [44:54]
A
And then I kind of stopped wearing my. My life was very chaotic last year. It's proved a lot this year.
- [44:59]
B
See that? So this is. This is what I like to do. I like to go. Go and see, like, back in December, it was up at 30, and now you're down at 24. 24. So.
- [45:08]
A
But I feel much better then.
- [45:10]
B
But what were you. Something you were doing in December, your body was more happy with then. January, you dropped the 20.
- [45:16]
A
Oh, yeah. Forget about it.
- [45:17]
B
Okay, so. And it's just cool for people to realize, oh, man, I started this job or I moved here, or I broke up with this person.
- [45:22]
A
I got divorced.
- [45:23]
B
Oh, my God. Well, there you go. Yeah, there you go.
- [45:25]
A
And then it's getting back together, and
- [45:26]
B
now it's getting back together. And that's. And that's how it works. So. Yeah. Yeah.
- [45:31]
A
Interesting. So we can basically see that I'm doing better now.
- [45:36]
B
Hundred percent. One hundred percent.
- [45:38]
A
You hear that, David? I just feel like I have a very good. I feel like back in the day, if somebody, like, came at me and they're yelling and screaming or shouting or whatever, even at work, I'd get a bit more reactive. Now I'm able to sit back and be like, absolutely not. Like, this is not my drama to deal with. Like, where are you coming from with this? You know, I'm able to be less reactive and kind of pull back and be like, I don't want to engage in this.
- [46:00]
B
That is. So. That's metacognition.
- [46:01]
A
Thank you, but no, thank you. And I always observe myself. Like, what you said about metacognition, I always think about, you know, David, and I Got on the phone at times, and we're discussing the show and the growth and this and that. And whenever I got off the phone with him, you know, because we're super close, I sit, sit there and ask myself, what is my drive to want to grow this? What is my drive to want to change this? Where is it coming from? And what is the work that I need to do? It's not about, hey, you can fix your edits. You can do this. I always think to myself, what can I do more as a creator? What can I do more as a founder of these companies? What other things can I bring that I'm still holding back, that are keeping me in this place of not fully maybe showing up in my full self?
- [46:39]
B
And my body was lighting up hearing you say that. Because what you just did is how anybody could do that. Pathway for intentionality. Constantly asking, what, why, why? And auditing the why. That's 100% what you just did, which will make your nervous system so, so happy. So kudos to you.
- [46:55]
A
Thank you. And I only learned this through the nervous system work when I started becoming aware that there is this thing called my nervous system. Okay, first, we're talking about that the entire show. I've been in health and wellness for three years, but I had no freaking idea about this thing.
- [47:10]
B
You and most of the world, myself included. Yeah.
- [47:13]
A
Like. And now I'm like, the number one thing everybody needs to do is have awareness, sovereignty, and regulation on this operating system that they have. Because it doesn't matter what pharmaceutical drugs you throw at your health. It doesn't matter what supplements you take. It doesn't matter how. If your body doesn't feel safe and it cannot go from sympathetic to parasympathetic, nothing will be absorbed, Nothing can function, because your body's constantly like this. So if you're constantly like this and you never rest, how are you to heal or recover or embrace or absorb anything?
- [47:48]
B
Totally.
- [47:48]
A
Totally.
- [47:49]
B
So it's about letting things go totally and physiologically. Again, the engineering you needed to understand that equation. When they say that chronic stress. So not stress. Chronic stress is the number one leading cause of inflammation. I want to very much differentiate, because stress, again, if you utilize it and listen to it, it is your partner and ally pointing you towards the stuck emotion. But why is chronic stress the leading indicator of cellular inflammation that has everything to do with that sympathetic state in the nervous system and how we evolved as humans creating it? And evolution does not make mistakes. It's always doing what it needs for us to continue surviving and so for most of human evolution, we were living in the jungle, right? We didn't have the luxury and privilege of homes over our head, of running water and food available, right? So our bodies needed to develop a way to survive for real life or death threats like weather or a tiger. So it created this intricate sympathetic response which if you look and break down what's happening physiologically to all the vital organs, right, if the mind perceives a threat, the amygdala fires off, sending all these signals, right? Your eyes dilate to let in more light, your saliva production slows down, which you may not think is a big deal, but all nutrient absorption comes from that. But most important, all of the vital oxygenated blood that's normally flowing to your visceral organs, right, it gets diverted to your extremities to support running, fighting or freezing, which is brilliant if there's a saber tooth tiger chasing you for an hour, maybe two, and then you calm down so the vital oxygen could go back here. However, we wake up today from our deepest parasympathetic state. We look at our phone, we get in an argument, we read an email, we stay in this mind made stress all day, sending all that vital oxygen to the extreme extremities day over day, week over week, month over month. What happens? Those vital organs can't maintain the homeostasis in the body and cellular inflammation starts to begin to occur, right? And so just to understand what is happening internally was mind boggling. For me to be like, oh shoot, I need to prioritize this sovereignty and awareness so that I could be like, no, I don't actually need to be in a sympathetic state right now because I read this email, it's okay to be in it, but I don't need to be in it for an hour or two hours.
- [49:56]
A
Just let it go.
- [49:56]
B
Let me drink. Exactly.
- [49:58]
A
Yeah, I've discussed it. I process this and now I'm gonna let it go. Cause there's nothing I can do about it right now. And having that awareness to be like, I can come back to this, I don't need to give an answer to this right now. Yeah, I was just really glad that we met in. It was in December, right? In January.
- [50:12]
B
It was in January.
- [50:13]
A
It was in January in Dubai. And I'm so glad that I was able to sit down with you and talk about something that I'm so passionate about. And I'm trying to, because I'm learning it, I'm trying to teach other people about it through voices like yours, through the kind of experiences that we're creating. And I'm just grateful that I was able to do this with you, man. Thank you for. At the same time.
- [50:30]
B
Yeah. And thank you for creating a platform for people to come and share like this. And just for your devotion towards your own nervous system. Sovereignty. I think that's all truly any of us need to do. And the more you do that, then you share that gift with the world.
- [50:42]
A
Thank you, Salim. I appreciate you. We have to do an event together.
- [50:45]
B
I have to plan for that 100%. Yes, that's. That's happening.
- [50:48]
A
We definitely make sure we do it in the fall.
- [50:50]
B
Thank you, Sam.