← Everything Is Energy with Cathy Heller
Everything Is Energy with Cathy Heller
Dave Asprey on How to Upgrade Your Brain, Dissolve Stress & Activate Inner Peace
00:58:59
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- [00:00]
Kathy Heller
Okay, so I'm so excited because guess what? My paperback of Abundant Ever after is coming out on 11 11. How cool is that? Simon and Schuster said that they picked that date without Even realizing that 1111 is kind of that date that's like known for synchronicity and that's what the whole book is about. So I'm really excited. It would mean the world to me if you would pre order a paperback. And there's so many perks. If you pre order one copy of the paperback, you get to come, you get a virtual ticket to a live event we're doing that day. If you order three co, you can have a free in person ticket to the event we're doing in person in Los Angeles. If you order five books, five free order of paperback, you get to come sit in the front row and get some perks. And if you order 22 copies, just the first few that do this, I'm.
- [00:47]
Dave Asprey
Going to do a one on one.
- [00:47]
Kathy Heller
Coaching session with you. So go pre order the paperback. It would mean the world to me. And then you can just email helloathyheller.com and you can let us know if you did any of those things and we will get you all the insights and we'll get you the inside scoop on all those perks. I love you guys so much and thank you for supporting Abundant Ever After. It's been so cool to read your reviews and how well the book is doing and it did hit the USA Today bestseller list, which totally means the world to me. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [01:19]
Hey guys, it's Kathy Heller. Welcome back to Abundant Ever After. I hope you had a beautiful weekend. My daughter graduated from sixth grade and oh my gosh, it was all the feelings. All the feelings. And it's summer and we're heading to Europe soon, taking the kids on their first trip out of the country. So I'll definitely keep you posted on that. And we're starting a book club this week. If you want to get in on that. All you have to do is either buy my book on audio or buy the hard cover and come join us. We're going to be meeting once a month and we're going to just have a good discussion and I'll be teaching you how to implement some of what's in the book and there'll be prizes. If you want to join us, just go to kathyheller.com book party and join us. It's starting this week. Week, June 11th. All right, well, today's episode is great. Dave Asprey is here and he's just so brilliant. He knows everything when it comes to biohacking. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's the founder of Bulletproof Coffee, He's a podcaster, New York Times bestselling author.
- [02:19]
Dave Asprey
And he's really just known as the.
- [02:22]
Kathy Heller
Father of all things health and biohacking. For decades, he's worked with world renowned doctors, researchers, scientists, and global mavericks to uncover the latest, most innovative methods, techniques, and products that enhance mental and physical performance. You might have read one of his past books like the Bulletproof Diet, Superhuman, Fast, this way smarter, not harder. But he's here to talk about his newest book, which is called heavily the fast path to remove your triggers, dissolve stress, and activate inner peace. It's all about how to upgrade your brain and alter your physical and mental states, tap into altered states of consciousness and unlock unlimited energy, happiness, and inner peace. There's so many good insights and actionable steps. So do yourself a favor and go get a copy. Also, go listen to his podcast. He has a podcast called the Human Upgrade, where he talks with experts and innovators who push the boundaries of science, technology, and human performance. And he's been podcasting for almost 15 years, so he has a huge library of episodes that you can listen to. Dave is such a force, and even though he's accomplished so much, he's so down to earth and he's so humble about everything that he's been through in his life. I love that he's using all of his experiences to help people feel at peace in a world that can sometimes feel pretty chaotic. I had so many light bulb moments of my own in this conversation. Like, seriously, I am making some pretty big changes to my own health and I was super surprised.
- [03:45]
Dave Asprey
You'll hear it in this conversation.
- [03:47]
Kathy Heller
What he says is the most important thing if you have to pick one thing to change in biohack. So stay tuned for that. I know that you're gonna get so much out of this, so without further ado, please welcome the phenomenal Dave Asprey. Dave, thank you for coming to the show.
- [04:01]
Dave Asprey
I know that you do shows nonstop and you make time to be here. It means a lot. Thanks for coming.
- [04:07]
It is my pleasure.
- [04:09]
I want to talk about so many things, but you have a book coming out, which I freaking love the title. Heavily meditated. So good. And I just want to dive in and then we can kind of like circle back to other things. But it just, it's so juicy and it's so much about what I think my audience is Longing for. So the subtitle to the book is the fast path to remove your triggers, dissolve stress, and activate inner peace. I mean, come the heck on. I think inner peace is the greatest luxury and eludes so many of us. So tell us a little bit about what does inner peace mean to you and how accessible is inner peace?
- [04:52]
Inner peace is something that every human has available as a birthright, and it's a feeling. And there's multiple parts to the feeling. One part of the feeling is that I have enough energy to handle anything life brings my way and that I am in control of myself. There's another component of it, which is I'm not feeling anxiety right now. Like, what's the opposite of anxiety? It's peace. In fact, if I was to ask you, what's the opposite of fear, what would you say the opposite of fear is?
- [05:34]
Infinite possibility.
- [05:36]
Wow, that's a good answer. It's funny. Many people, when I ask that, will say, oh, it's love. And some people say, it's calm. I've never heard infinite possibility, but I. I love that I'm actually in alignment with you on that. In the work that I've done, which blends a lot of ancient lineages as well as neuroscience. It's peace. When you have a state of inner peace, you can easily manifest love and gratitude, forgiveness and joy. But if you're in a state that is agitated, that is not peaceful, then all of those things are hard to do. Like, how do you be loving when you're afraid? Right? You're actually reactive. And how are you loving if you. In your thoughts? Like, I know everything's fine, but I'm having a panic attack right now. And you're thinking, well, the panic attack, it must be me. Like, no, if you had a sore knee, you'd say, I have a sore knee. So your panic attack is very likely biologically based, or it could be because you're ruminating and you have thought problems. So part of this inner peace thing is, do you have a voice in your head? And if you do, is it kind? And if you have a mean voice in your head the way I did, then you're not going to have inner peace. So there. There's multiple angles to it. And the path of biohacking, the definition, is changing the environment around you and inside of you. So you have full control of your biology, and that means control over your state of happiness. And anyone who starts biohacking, maybe it's like, me, I needed to lose a hundred pounds and I didn't like being in pain a lot or the gut problems or the pre diabetes or the chronic fatigue or all the stuff I dealt with. But the mean voice in my head was a part of it. And feeling that, oh, it's my fault, or believing the voice in my head, I don't have a voice in my head anymore. So this idea, I'm going to change the environment. And if I can calm my body down and put myself at full power, I will have a much easier time of finding inner peace. And that's why this is my ninth book. Multiple New York Times bestsellers, About a million copies sold. It's like, well, what if what you're eating for lunch that you think is healthy is actually causing you to not have that inner peace? That's important. It wasn't about whether you had enough gratitude or whether you meditated. You can meditate your butt off after you have four espressos and six Adderalls. How's it going to go? Like, it doesn't matter, right? So it may not be a lack of effort. It may not be your fault. It may not be your thought forms or your belief systems. It may just be that your body's making too much adrenaline and there's a reason for that. And so understanding a lot of what we think of as stress is actually just core biology and that you're also in charge of that. And if you line that up correctly, when you sit down to meditate or you sit down with your kids and you want to be really present instead of it being work, instead of it being resistance or even worse, I'm about to lose my shit right now, but I'm going to smile and be really friendly, even though my kids or my colleagues or my partner knows very well that there is not congruence between my inner state and my behavior. But at least you're behaving. Good for you. But wouldn't it be more relaxing and authentic to have the tools to make your inner state match your outer state? And if you can do that, you've won the lottery.
- [09:09]
That's so true. I mean, everything you just said, the idea that, like, if you're in a peaceful state, everything works better. If you're not, you know, then all of the things that you would like to access from within you are going to be skewed because at the core you're not peaceful. Right? And you talk about in the book, like, different ancient wisdom practices, and also you talk about the. The different steps that we can take that are based on other kinds of tools. But what were the ancient wisdom practices that you found most helpful? And I know there's a lot of it, but just give us, like, a couple of the different ones that you wove together so beautifully in the book.
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I'm going to start out. I'll do this in a linear order.
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Sure.
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In my 20s, I hit 300 pounds. I had arthritis since I was 14. I had a lot of anxiety I didn't even know that I had because it had always been there. I had PTSD from bullying and a lot of it from the way I was born with a cord wrapped around my neck. So I had a highly reactive part of me that I didn't understand. And my career is taking off and my brain starts to fail because I had chronic fatigue syndrome. I was pre diabetic. They said high risk of stroke and heart attack before I was 30. And then I'm going to Wharton Business School, and I've already had a career where I've made and lost $6 million and I'm failing out of my classes. And I went to one of Dr. Daniel Amen's brain clinics. And the guy, the psychiatrist was, oh, I get this tech bro wants Adderall for business school. I've seen this. He kind of rolls his eyes, but I got the brain scan, came back, and he looked at me and he. And I'll never forget this. He says, dave, inside your brain is total chaos. I don't know how. You're standing here in front of me. You have the best camouflage I've ever seen. And I was like, oh, like, I almost cried. I was like, thank God somebody believes me, because I, you know, I was probably was still 40 pounds overweight or something. But I'm this uber successful tech entrepreneur, and I'm living my life with the accelerator pressed all the way to the floor, and I'm slowing down and I can try and I can push, and there's nothing. It's a feeling of helplessness. And it turns out I'm not alone. Many, many people are like this. But we're wired as a species. We don't show that to others because we'll get ostracized. We might be sick. Like, you know, so you feel lonely and you feel helpless, and that's really stressful. What that scan showed me was I had brain damage from toxic mold. And I. I just relax and thank God I have a hardware problem. I can fix that. It's not a moral failing. It's not. There's something wrong with me. It's that, like, I Got something I can work on. And I'm now on Dr. Amen's board of directors, which is so cool because his work really profoundly helped me 20 something years ago. And since then, I opened a neuroscience clinic in Seattle called 40 Years of Zen. I've also done shamanic training. I've done a lot of transpersonal work. I hosted a holotropic breath workshop with the inventor of holotropic breathing, Stan Grof, when he was 94. At the time when I did that, oh my God. I've traveled to South America in 1999 and I did ayahuasca, which I do not recommend for people as a good path unless you're very, very careful about going down to the jungle. But I did that at a time when it wasn't a word you could spell and it wasn't for tourists. And they said, I went, I asked around and they said, you're white. I'm like, yeah, I noticed it's only for locals. You won't like it. I said, no, I've done my work. And then I spent time in monasteries about three months in remote parts of western Tibet. I went to Mount Kailash, which is the holiest mountain in the world, kind of Mount Olympus, but for the East. And it's where Hindu and Buddhist and bone practitioners, once in your life, you go there and you do a 26 mile walk at 18,000ft elevation around holy Mountain. The idea for bulletproof coffee, which has changed the world of nutrition, that came to me on the side of Mount Kailash. The idea for biohacking came to me on that trip when I'm walking through remote, remote parts of the world. I had run a longevity nonprofit group in Palo Alto. I was the only guy under 30 or even under 60 who would attend this thing. And I had all these, my elders and people in their 70s and 80s reversing their age, teaching me what worked. And the things that make old people young are the things that make young people powerful. And they are the things that make spiritual people more powerful and energetic spiritually. And I've been so blessed that gurus, like world class gurus, have reached out and for some reason through the ether, and they just wanted to talk. And I get to share my biohacking things with them. And one of the things that was really touching is a guy who's in his late 80s, one of Sri Lanka's holiest gurus reached out and I put him on some biohacking things, some supplements to enhance mitochondria. And he actually called Me with tears in his eyes. And he said, you gave me my power back. Like, I feel young again, like I was losing it. And so I've studied many ancient practices, including very esoteric, ancient Chinese energy medicine practices, transpersonal psychology, psychedelic medicine. Alongside, I've studied mitochondrial biology. And I actually understand some things about this that bring together ancient Buddhist practices, things you would hear about if you're studying tree of life or Gnosticism or ancient Kabbalah that unites everything. And what I have done with that is I've built the neuroscience practice called 40 Years of Zen in Seattle. And this is a five day program. @ the end of that, your brain will do the things that people who've meditated for 40 years every day can do. So it's like, how do you accelerate that in my life? I've spent six months of my life doing my own programs for that because I needed to fix my broken brain. And I, like, once I got back to that, like, I don't want to just fix it. Like, what is the upper limit of what we can do energetically and spiritually and how do I teach it?
- [15:53]
Oh my gosh, there's so much in there. And it's. Yeah, it's like, it's like listening to an AI generated version of what a human being could possibly taste and sift through. And it's extraordinary that that's actually your life, not an AI idea of what a person could possibly see through the looking glass.
- [16:13]
Okay, we have to pause for a second there. I, I gotta add on to that before you ask the question you're gonna ask. I, I also have a degree in AI because I'm a tech nerd.
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And I think you're like a thousand. Maybe you're not real, maybe you're like, like there's something.
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Do that. Like, is this a picture of a, of a stairway or a bicycle thing?
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Yeah, find out.
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But so I, my career was in tech and I have set up my AI system so that when it answers any question that I've listed about 20 different ancient lineages. And I said, always answer from the perspective of these and from PubMed and Western medicine. And then I went through and I said, which ancient practice did I miss? And it added two more that I hadn't thought of, including like some old hermetic practices. Oh my God, I totally have, like studied that. I just forgot. So it added that in and then I went through and I said, all right, AI, what are the things that I don't. What are my blind spots? It doesn't matter how enlightened or guru or how studied you are. Blind spots are called blind spots because you can't see them. That's why we have friends, we have tribes, we have spiritual community. Like, hey, Dave, you're acting like an someone has to tell you this because you're not going to see it, because I'm not doing it on purpose. I'm doing it because I can't see that I'm doing it. So it goes through. And I'm like, I've done every single thing except on my list. For 15 years has been. I've been meaning to do a cave dark meditation for, you know, five or ten days or something. And I fasted in caves and wrote books about it and, and all that, but I haven't done it in darkness. So it figured out it was on my list. And then I'm like, all right, let's see how good this system is. So which form of darkness meditation would be most effective for me? Okay. And it came up with four different ones. Two of them were on my list. And then I said, which one would be best for me? And it said, well, based on all your writing and based on what I know about you, you might prefer this one. And I'm like, oh, my God. AI can be a spiritual concierge if you know how to ask the right questions. And this is really important. If you have 10 minutes every day to do something to improve your consciousness, well, are you going to waste it? Are you going to do the thing that doesn't work very well? No. You want the biggest return on that 10 minutes of meditation you can get. So I'm saying, hurry, meditate faster. But that's okay. It's not about the hurriedness. It's that honor every minute of effort you put into improving yourself and have the right tools. You're going to, like, plant a field. Are you going to do it with a shovel or are you going to do it with a tractor? So our meditation can be the same way that's heavily meditated. The book is my most precious learning and I'll. We could walk through that. And I'm giving that away. That's the core of 40 years of Zen. And then what are the other tools that can put you in the States so that you have control of your state and you can choose to be the monk meditating in the middle of a hurricane. And nothing can take you out of your chosen state? Even a three year old saying, no, no, no, no, no, which is one of the hardest things to Stay calm about.
- [19:30]
But you know, you are delightful and your breath of knowledge plus sense of humor and humility makes you really fun to have around. I do want you to talk about this eight step process and like the core of this. And I want to set it up by saying most people I know have at least been somewhat interested in meditation and then also thoroughly judge themselves for thinking they're really bad at it and then been really scared of ever attempting it again because it feels hard and makes you feel more anxious for when your mind is spinning. And there's some awareness, I think in my audience that this amygdala is spitting out brain fog and cortisol and we wake up with these bad thoughts and low self worth and all this stuff. And we want to get into quote unquote flow state and open our hearts and be in quote unquote alignment. And then there's this word that comes along called meditation. And everyone goes, can you give me anything but that? Because I've just never found a way to do it quote unquote, right. So I would love to hear your take on what is the process that you lay out in this book that you've really kind of mastered a step by step that I think is helpful for people, but also maybe like, can you just show us how from your perspective you can unplug from this really gloomy negative narrative in your mind and you can actually spend 10 minutes in your day and is there a light at the end of the tunnel? And if there is, how do you suggest doing it? What is your process for how we can do it and do it quote unquote right and not wrong?
- [21:06]
Well, the idea of right and wrong is full of judgment and shame. Yeah, right. It's sort of like if you go to the gym, did you do it right or wrong? Well, did you go to the gym? If you did, you probably did something right. And maybe you could have picked up weights instead of doing the spin bike or whatever. But bottom line is, what was your goal? And different meditations can do profoundly different things for you. In fact, a while ago, the dalai Lama, maybe 15 years ago, he put out a hundred thousand dollar bounty for a neuroscientist who could help him get into one state of meditation. He said, look, it takes me four hours of meditating to get into this state and I need to get into it more quickly. Can you help? So was that the meditation you're doing wrong or was it a different one? Right? At its core, if you're just getting going, meditation is about not using your brain so much. It's about dropping into your body. And one of the easiest things you can do. And in heavily meditated, I go through all the different sort of technologies or techniques that just get you there faster. So one of them is breath work and another one is just a basic body scan where you put all of your attention, you breathe in, put all of your attention into your toes. So what do your toes be like? And you breathe out and you go to the ball of your foot and then you go slowly up the body and you're progressively relaxing the body. I've done this with my kids when they're five years old just to help them with bodily awareness. And of course they drop into sleep like, like that. And they say, daddy, can we do it again? Can we do it again? And this is profound. And all you're doing is instead of thinking about stuff, you're just becoming like, what do my toes feel like? And the trick for a lot of meditation is becoming aware and noticing feelings instead of thoughts. And if all of your focus is on feelings, the voice in your head will shut the hell up. But it'll only do it temporarily. And it's, it's worth understanding that when a few very high level meditation like, like masters of lineages have, have come through my neuroscience program where a thousand times a second a compute showing you what your brain's doing. I've heard this more than once. They'll say, wow, I've had a practice for many, many years and I missed this one little nuance. And the computer showed it to me. And I've had people come in who've done, say, transcendental meditation for more than 10 years. Well, half of people, and by the way, that is not a scientific number, say a large portion of people who do transcendental meditation, they're not doing it. They're turning off their brainwaves, which is not what meditation is. There's exalted states you can get to there, but it looks the same. So you could say, I have a daily practice. I've been doing this for an hour a day and I'm just flatlining my brainwaves. And then the guy next to you looks the same as you. They're going to this amazing place. So in traditional learning in the monastery, I say, in Copan monastery, I'm sitting there, there's you know, 50 people in the class, and we're there for 10 days and your eyes are closed and we're visualizing the Buddha in extreme detail. And if I did something, right? And the teacher is reading my energy, right? And she notices I did something good. And I open an eye and I see her and she raises an eyebrow and nods at me. I'm like, oh, good, I got my feedback for the day. Now when I have a computer stuck to my head a thousand times a second, I'm getting feedback. So I'm playing now this game of warmer, colder. So as I'm teaching my brain how to enter this certain state, oh, the sounds got louder and more beautiful. And the brain says, I like that. And your consciousness says, I like that. So you move in that direction and then you think about, you know, that time that your mom criticized you or a fight you're having with your spouse and all of a sudden the sounds go down and you oh, look, I was experiencing aversion, right? So what was my goal? So when you say, how do we meditate, right? I'm going to say try breath work and try a body scan exercise. Because both of those will drop you in faster than just sitting there and trying to meditate. But they're vastly different results.
- [25:32]
It's really awesome.
- [25:34]
Kathy Heller
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- [26:54]
Dave Asprey
I'm thinking about how everybody that I know has some version of a dopamine addiction with their phone and how the idea of a body scan, when you said feel your toes like the first question was interesting. And then when you pause and then you said the next question, the balls of your feet, it's like our attention is now gone. We want the dopamine again. Want to go to our phone. So what do people do? Like literally no one's people are talking about it, but no one's really talking about how deeply addicted everybody is to not feeling. So they just keep looking for dopamine on their phone or in their work or whatever. And I think the thing that underlies why people, because you said it's about, about feeling what's happening in your body. And I think it must be that there's some really big fear about feeling. And so not feeling gets substituted with checking phones or whatever it is. And how do we lower that the barrier to entry so that we can lean in and feel what actually needs to be felt.
- [28:00]
I guess I appreciate this so much. And there's two parts of heavily meditated they'll answer that question. One of them is understanding where feelings come from and the other one is understanding how they hide each other. And I want to share the framework of where all of this comes from because it actually is relaxing to understand this. So all life on earth, including humans, follows the same instructions unconsciously before you can think. So this is true if you're an aloe vera plant and if you're a slime mold like a politician or a human zebra, it doesn't matter. That was a nonpartisan comment, by the.
- [28:44]
Way, so I know.
- [28:47]
And our bodies ultimately are mitochondria, these little ancient bacteria that are embedded in most of the cells in the body. They're sensing reality before you do and deciding what they're going to show you. So they're the seat of manifestation in the body and they're the source of energy and willpower in the body. And that means you have to see the world through their eyes. And because bacteria are the basic building blocks of life, well, what do they have to do? And how does it echo into your life? Here's the operating system for life number one. If something is scary, run away from, kill or hide and this works if you don't have a human brain. And it works for everything because getting eaten is kind of a threat. So all life will automatically put all available energy into threats. And that's the first F word. It's called fear. The second F word is eat everything. Right. And you eat everything because famine has killed everything throughout time. So your body, without any permission from your brain, before your brain even gets engaged, has already said, is it scary? And can I eat it? The third F word. Oh, by the way, a third of the average person's thoughts are about tacos or whatever is coming up for the next meal. Like, we spend huge amounts of time thinking about food. I don't. And if you learn fasting, which is a part of almost every meditative practice, it's to shut that part of you up. And as a former obese guy who thought about food obsessively, I don't think about food very much. So fear and food, the third F word is something all life has to do for multiple generations to stay around. Do you know what that one is?
- [30:37]
It's a. It's a curse word.
- [30:40]
What, a potty mouth? Fertility. I can't believe you just go straight to dropping F bombs on your show, Kathy. Yeah, Fear, food, and the other F word. Okay.
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I would have loved to be friends with you in seventh grade. I feel like you would have been way too smart for me, but really fun to have.
- [30:58]
I was a total asshole in seventh grade. I had Asperger's syndrome. I had ODD Oppositional Defiant disorder, ocd. I was probably not a very friendly.
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Seventh grader, but those are the people that become the most successful. It does happen if it's channeled correctly, which you did. Okay, keep going. The third one is fertility. Right, of course. That's what you meant.
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Yep. So those are things that are hindrances in Buddhism and in all meditative practices. Like, okay, what's going on with these? And there's a third of a second. Like, if I clap my hands, you think, well, it takes some time to get through the Internet. Then you hear it. Right? That's what we all see. There's a third of a second where your body decides whether it's going to let you hear that and how you're going to feel about it. And it's measurable that this is a, like a little censorship window for your ego to basically mess with you. And it's to make sure that you don't get in the way of running away, eating and screwing. Okay, now that. That sounds really dark. Except, Kathy, did I just give you an excuse for everything you've ever done that you're ashamed of? Right. It's your mitochondria's fault. It's a separate consciousness from you. They really are. They're very fast, they're very dumb, they're very obsessed with only five things. We've shared three of them. And they will do them before you have a chance to do anything about it. And then we feel immense guilt and shame about the fact that we did that, even though it's this thing trying to keep your meat alive. And what's the saving grace for all of this is the next F word is friend. Fear, food, fertility, and friend. All life supports other life around it, its own species. This is why we build community. This is why we support each other. This is why we help children. That's why we help old ladies across the street. All the goodness of humanity. We're wired in our bones, inside ourselves, to do this. We just won't do it if we're scared, hungry and lonely. And the final F word is forgiveness. And I did that mostly because it's an F word. That's how humans evolve. But all life is wired to evolve. And it's really important to understand that, like, this is what your body will do if you just relax. So our job is to transform, often with meditation and breath work and these other techniques to transform fear into peace, to transform hunger and cravings into nourishment, to transform loneliness or lust into sacred sensual activities that are life force, energy itself, things like tantra. And then to serve our community. And we do that because we're wired in our bones to do it. And when you serve your community, your community serves you. And it actually calms your nervous system. And there's enormous good that can happen when people are aligned spiritually. But eight people in a room who meditate, you can change reality. And there's science that says this. And then finally, if you have enough energy left over, you can evolve yourself. And the reason we meditate is because we feel less fear, because we feel less lack. And it lets us be more conscious of where we choose to put our energy. And the reason we do this, in the context of biohacking, which is this kind of high tech word, and a lot of people saying, what do you mean, biohacking? It's nothing to do with spirituality. No. All of Ayurveda, all of traditional Chinese medicine, most of the ancient practices were about immortality and consciousness. So you may enter the path of biohacking. Saying, I'm going to lose £100. I just want to get my energy back. But it will inevitably give you more energy to evolve yourself and to be of more service to others and to be kind, when in the past you would have been angry and reactive. It also makes you very hard to program. No matter how many cell phones or ad campaigns or political whatever has come your way, it just doesn't matter. The goal is equanimity, which means you get to choose your state and no force on earth can take you out of it. And I believe fundamentally that when you go through the reset process, that's inside heavily meditated, which is what we're doing at 40 years. And more than a thousand people have been through this over the last 10 years with neuroscientists and data and all this stuff. You can remove your triggers because what's happening is you're sitting in a room and someone comes in and they look a certain way and they say something that pisses you off. It triggers you. Now your automated system, those mitochondria, like, you know what? I'm not going to bring up the memory for you right now, but I know this pattern because in third grade, little Bobby pulled your pigtails and it felt like this. So I'm just going to give you the feeling. And you don't have any idea that this is going on because it happened in that third of a second before your conscious brain could do anything. So then your nervous system and your body presents a story to you, an emotion that's like, this person is getting under my skin. They're making me mad. Whatever they're saying, they're criticizing me. So now you've got an emotional charge, and then you say something you wish you hadn't said, or maybe you had enough energy that day, so you did this smile, the fake smile, and then you said the right thing. And everyone in the room knows that you didn't do it, but you're like, ha, ha, right? All of that is just way too much work. I'm too lazy for that. So if you do the reset process, you go in and you turn off the trigger permanently. It's like going into your phone and saying, TikTok, you're not allowed to send me an alert every time someone does something. And oh, my gosh, I have peace because I have no alerts. What if every time you are triggered, it's just an alert from your body trying to keep you safe so nothing will eat you? Because that's really what it is.
- [37:11]
Oh, gosh, Every single thing you said, I want to take a highlighter and just circle it because it's so many truth bombs. And everything you say gives us. Or me. Gives me so much energy because it's just like, it's so clarifying and it's so empowering to sit with each of the things that you just said. And each of them is a full podcast. So it's like, where do I. Which one do I pull on? I want to set all of them. One thing I will ask you is for people like me who have, like, at least 11 books on my shelf that are really well intended to help me be biologically healthier, and it all seems overwhelming, and you are like, let's. Let's say the Olympian of this for someone like me, when there's a lot of things that I don't know. And I want to start with one thing to biohack. Is it cold plunges? Is it organic food? Just give me one place to start, because if I get overwhelmed, I do nothing. So if you're. If we're listening and we want to lean in a little bit, what would be one or two things that you would say? Start with this. To get your body now into a healthier place.
- [38:23]
Sleep. You must learn how to sleep, and that means setting up the environment where you go to sleep so that you actually get good quality sleep. So you want to start out by using whatever tracker you have. There's probably one on your apple watch. You can get a ring like Ultra Human or Aura or a whoop. The reason you want to do this is that when you wake up in the morning and you have a good tracker, it's going to tell you, did you dream? Did you have deep sleep? But more importantly, it's going to give you a morning readiness score. And that is how stressed is my biology. And for most of us, we think that the stress is emotional stress. But if your body is tweaked, you will feel emotional stress, but it's not caused by the emotion. It's your body's trying to say, well, I know I don't feel good, so I'm going to make sure that you don't feel good. And then you're like, well, something just isn't quite right. Well, if you have a score in the morning that tells you, did the meditation I did before I went to sleep last night or maybe didn't do, did it work? Am I getting results from what I'm eating? Did the glass of wine that I thought relaxed me actually help me? Or did it ruin my sleep, which is what it does. So now all of a sudden, you have a feedback to say, am I doing something that worked? And what I find a lot of people do is we have these competing goals. Well, I want to get in shape. I want to exercise. I want to meditate. I want to do all these things. And we have, like, 5,000 things. Pick a goal. And your much better goal is to have a morning readiness score that is high. Says, I'm at high energy in my body. That's more important than a goal of going to the gym. Although doing both is a good idea. Problem is, if you're already blown out and then you go to the gym, what do you think's gonna happen?
- [40:16]
You just, like, probably saved my life because I didn't think you were gonna say that. I didn't know what you were gonna say, but sleep wasn't one of the things I thought you were gonna say. And I have sleep apnea. And I've known I've had it. And I. Before, it was, like, more tech savvy.
- [40:33]
Kathy Heller
I went to take a sleep test.
- [40:34]
Dave Asprey
Like, in a weird place, like in the San Fernando Valley, alone, like two men in a building. It was terrible. And I did it. And then I did it again. And both times they were like, you have sleep apnea. And this is what happens. And I've never done the thing they want me to do, Dave, because what they want me to do is wear one of these masks on my face that is so uncomfortable and painful. So instead, I just know that I have it and I kind of neglect it instead of asking if there's a different answer. But I didn't think that you were going to put it at the top of the. Here's the what I would tell you to do to begin biohacking. And so now I really feel like I need to explore that more.
- [41:13]
Kathy. Tired people are not good meditators. It's true. It doesn't matter how much you try. It's not about effort. It's not about pushing. It's not about desire. It's about capability. It's sort of like saying, well, I'm going to take my Toyota Camry to the nascar and I really want to race. You have the wrong car. Are. It's not going to work. So what you want to do then? If you're not up for wearing one of those masks, and I don't blame you, I would want to do that. There's lots of biohacks that you can do. For instance, this is the Funniest URL of my entire career. If you go to sleepwithdave.com that is like my free guide to everything known about sleep. And hundreds of thousands of people have gone there to learn.
- [42:01]
That is so brilliant, so good.
- [42:07]
I hope your third F word to think about it.
- [42:10]
But we will never forget it.
- [42:12]
No one will forget it. And it's, it's funny because even if you have apnea, there's a bunch of things you can do to improve your sleep quality. And with apnea, I don't know if this is in there. You can get a special bite guard that holds your lower jaw forward. You can get prescription or non prescription that'll help. You can use a laser treatment. You do it three times and it's called Night Lays. And you know they use lasers to tighten the skin on your face. They use the same laser to tighten the skin on your upper palate. It doesn't hurt at all. And there's no downtime. You just go in there, it feels like you drank some warm tea or something and then all of a sudden it shrinks the tissues and you snore less. There are apps you can get on your phone that'll measure the number of minutes of snoring you do per night just using the microphone. And if you run. And there's also something called mouth taping. And I've been doing this, my daughter even does it. You take a something called sleep tape and you put it over your mouth. And with apnea, you may or may not want to do it depending. And you can still breathe around the tape. But normally if you breathe through your nose, all sorts of good things happen. You breathe through your mouth at night and it's not good for you. And most of us when we're asleep and we've all, you know, it's not a good look, but when you put a little bit of tape over it, you breathe through your nose, your brain gets more oxygen and you feel much better in the morning. And you can measure it with this.
- [43:30]
So, oh my God, this is just so helpful. And by the way, my audience is 99% women and we have lots of people listen. So can you imagine tonight there's going to be about 3 million women who go to sleepwithdave.com and it's going to shut down. So that's exciting. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for. No, but that was really, really helpful.
- [43:52]
Kathy Heller
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- [45:11]
Dave Asprey
Was there a second thing you were going to say besides sleep? I feel like there was.
- [45:15]
Well, it's that morning readiness score and understanding, especially for women, we have this desire to do the same thing every day and it's eat less calories and work out more. In my early 20s, when I was 300 pounds, I'm like, I have had enough. I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months straight and I went on a low calorie diet. At the end of that time I still had a 46 inch waist and I still weighed 300 pounds and I was stronger, but I didn't lose. Most of the time. If you do that, what you're going to do is raise your stress hormones. Because telling your body there's a famine and that something's hunting you all the time because you're on the goddamn treadmill all the time. This is not what your body needs to feel peace. And it changes based on where you are in your Monthly cycle. If you're cycling and if you're in perimenopause, that is a time where you've really got to know how blown out am I today. That's why you need to track your sleep. And if you say my goal is to do the spin class, you know, five days a week or whatever, even if you could do that for two months, you're only going to improve your cardiovascular stuff by 2% and you're going to break your hormones. What I do, this is one of my companies called Upgrade Labs. We have an AI bike. It takes 15 minutes a week and you don't sweat. Fifteen minutes of cardio gives you a 12% improvement in cardio, or five hours gives you a 2%. So a lot of women are over training and under eating, and they're under eating animal protein and they're under eating fat and you're having these stupid kale salads. Everyone is hungry after they eat a kale salad. If you think about food in the four hours after you ate, you ate wrong. Like throw away the kale and put the salmon that was on the salad and get some salmon and avocado. You need healthy fats, you need animal protein. And the crazy thing is, if you nourish yourself that way, when you sit down to meditate, your brain won't be going all over the place. And by the way, I've been a vegan. I've been a raw vegan. I've tried every diet on the planet to lose weight. That's why I wrote my big nutrition book, which is how people lose millions of pounds and you don't have to intermittent fast every day. In fact, for women, quite often it's not what you want to do, but maybe three days a week you want to do it because that's where the studies start. And just understand, your presence is a measure of how much energy you can make and then how you direct it. And a lot of us are kind of flopping around, feeling out of control and feeling stress and anxiety and like something's wrong. Well, what's wrong is your body's crying out for nourishment and it needs rest and recovery. And when you give it that, instead of pushing harder, your body transforms and you can lose the weight the way I could never lose the weight. And you realize that recovery is what you do on the days when your body isn't ready for more stress. And when you give it that, you go for a walk or you do a yoga class and not a hot yoga, aggressive whatever class, just like a relaxing restorative yoga class. And you give yourself permission to do that. This is how you nourish yourself. And the difference is profound. And when you're in that state where, wow, I have enough energy today, okay, you pour the energy into the fear bucket. And if you didn't have many triggers left because you did, this reset process from the book is you learn how to let go of things and deeply forgive. Okay, I handled all of the perceived threats, and then I go to the next one, and the next one is food. I ate something that really nourished me, and I didn't feel any guilt or shame about it. I had some beef. I put butter on what I was eating, and I just feel so warm and glowy. And then, oh, wow, maybe my libido is back. Or maybe if it's not back, you chose to take on a practice, and there are some of those in the book as well. Or you sit down with your partner and you're like, let's spend an hour and not just be goal directed and turn intimacy into nourishment. Because it's supposed to be that. It's what powers everything we do when we handle it as a sacred form of spiritual nourishment for adults versus, you know, something else. And if you had enough energy to do those three things, you're glowing, right? And then you're saying, all right, now I want to go exercise. I know I want to push hard. But maybe the. The most recent example of this president of Upgrade Labs, Griffin, He's a triathlete, and he's been COO of Equinox and SoulCycle and all these things, and he just exercises his ass off. And I challenged him this month. I said, I want you to use your health and your fitness tracker, and let's look at your body battery, which is a measure of how recovered are you. And let's make a little bet. This month, instead of your goal being some number of miles of running every day, your goal is to have your body battery above 50%. And he's been texting me every morning, and the difference is profound. He's like, I can't believe how my brain feels. Right? And so on the days when his body's not ready, he's not pushing himself for the first time in his life. And by the way, guys are wired to push ourselves harder than women before we break and just understanding, wow, I matched the stimulus to my state. You're like, oh, I'm menstruating right now. Maybe I should chill. Like that's okay. That's how it's supposed to be. And when you do that, oh my God, your meditation is so much easier because a body that feels like it's starved and hunted is not going to drop in to this, like, deep, juicy love and gratitude and feeling everything. And if we can just teach people that, that's a big deal. And then you go in and say, I have so much energy left over after I handled fear, food, fertility, friends. What am I going to do? And what I'm going to do? I'm going to go and I'm going to turn off two alerts. And the reset process that's in the book is around identifying feelings in the body and going back and re experiencing the feeling in a structured way and then experiencing the opposite of that feeling right after it. And what that does for your body is your body says, oh, I thought I was feeling unsafe, but you just showed me this exalted state right afterwards. They can't coexist, therefore I shouldn't be feeling this kind of trigger. It was a mistake. And then it cancels it out. So instead of managing all these angry feelings, you turn them off so they don't come up anymore, which creates so much more energy and freedom and peace and kindness and I mean, people know cold plunges and red light and all the stuff that I've popularized, collagen, protein, I turn into a billion dollar industry. Yes, they're all good for you. And the why is, when you get your energy back, the only two things that matter are, how do I become more conscious and how can I do this for as long as possible? And that's why longevity and consciousness are at the core of biohack wrecking and always have been. But if you try to do consciousness work and your body's wrecked, it's better than nothing. But I would suggest managing your biology and your consciousness at the same time gives you much better results.
- [53:04]
I can't believe that you're not 1000 years old with the amount of wisdom that you have inside of you, like, you've lived so many lifetimes. And what's really quite amazing about you is that you have such a love for humanity that you can see the enthusiasm and the passion in sharing these things when you've already given so many things to the world and made the money to where you can just go do that. You could just sit in a monastery for the rest of your life, but you're so passionate. You've probably done however many zillions of podcasts, but it's like you're all in. In this moment because it's so mesmerizing to you and you want people to. You know, I. One of my rabbis says that, like, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And it's like you. You see the suffering, that's optional. And you're like, enough, enough, enough. Like, the pain is part of this life thing, but the suffering is not something that you have to keep choosing. And I'm just. I'm really touched, personally. Like, you're just deep, purpose driven passion for what you're doing is so cool. So cool. And so obviously everybody knows about you. But I'm just gonna repeat all the books. Guys. Go get all the books and then get the new book because it comes out May 20th. Correct?
- [54:27]
Correct. It's called heavily meditated. And if consciousness is your thing and you want to know about meditation, this book will save you hundreds or thousands of hours of effort in meditation to help you get where you want to be. And I fundamentally believe that humans are wired to be kind to each other and that we all need to do this now because the world's at a very interesting place. We have more knowledge, more abilities, all kinds of good things going on that we can't even see because we're so tweaked. But it's happening. And all it takes is a few of us to really do the deep work. And everyone around you sees it, and then they do it. And that's how we change the world. We don't do it by protesting. We don't do it by being victims. We don't do it by suffering. We do it by demonstrating how you can be and also forgiving ourselves when you don't meet the bar you set for yourself. Because, hey, I'm not always perfect either, but it's. It's really.
- [55:27]
You're not. Wait a minute. I gotta go. I'm devastated. Also, you have a podcast. Formerly Bulletproof Radio, but it's the human upgrade. It's so good. A lot of my friends have been on your show. I think we have a lot of friends in common. Just really cool conversations. I really could listen to you talk about all of these things. And then I want like 11 more hours on everything that you just said, so that's. Thankfully, you have a podcast. Where do you want to send people to the podcast? Is there a book page? Tell us where to go.
- [55:59]
If you go to daveasprey.com, pretty much everything is there. There's 1200 episodes of the podcast. 3000 blog posts and all the books and all the goodness.
- [56:09]
And that sounds incredible. Amazing that you're putting it all together and putting it all together, like running all these businesses, all the books, all the things. It's like. I'm pretty sure you're not real, but okay, we'll buy it. We're lucky to have you here. Thank you for coming on. This was really stunning. Stunning.
- [56:29]
You are so very welcome. Thank you for having me on. And if. If anyone's saying, is this guy real? I just gotta say I. I have suffered greatly. Like, I. I was not the person I am today. You can transform and create yourself in anyone you want to be. It does take work and time, but there are guides and there are tools that have never been available for humans clearly to do it. So be inspired by that. Then you've got this. And thank you.
- [56:57]
You're so good. You're so good and sweet and kind and freaking. Such a genius. I know I'm like saying what everybody else says, but I want to say it too. Thank you so much.
- [57:08]
Kathy Heller
All right, well, since Maddie is such a fan favorite, she's back to read the takeaways. Dave is so awesome. And Maddie, take it away. What are the takeaways?
- [57:19]
Maddie
Number one, inner peace is something that every human has available as a birthright. Number two, it's much more relaxing and authentic when your inner state matches your outer state. If you can do that, you've won the lottery. Number three, when you serve your community, your community serves you. There's enormous good that can happen when people are aligned spiritually. Number four, tired people are not good meditators. You must learn how to sleep. Number five, it's not about effort. It's not about pushing harder. If you want to transform, you have to give yourself rest and recovery. Number six, all it takes is a few of us to really do the deep work. Everyone around you sees it and then they do it. That's how we change the world. Number seven, you can transform and create yourself in anyone you want to be. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate that you spent time out of your busy day to be here. We have great episodes coming, so make sure to follow the show on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you want to support the show, please leave a review. Here's a sweet review.
- [59:12]
Kathy Heller
We got a frequency shifting gift. Kathy Heller's Abundant Ever after is more than a podcast. It's a sacred transmission that realigns you with the life you are meant to live. Her energy is magnetic. Her insights are grounded, yet expansive and every episode feels like a gentle but powerful invitation to rise into your highest self.
- [59:33]
Maddie
Thank you Tiff for the beautiful review. It's so fun to share these. So if you leave a review I might read it on a future episode.
- [59:45]
Dave Asprey
Finally my book is officially six months.
- [59:46]
Kathy Heller
Old and to celebrate we're doing a live book party. It's going to be a book club but we're starting this week, June 11th at 11:00am Pacific. We're going to be meeting once a month to talk about the book. It's going to be super fun. Join the book club. All you have to do to join is grab a copy of the book, go to kathyheller.com book party and you can sign up. You can just go ahead and get the hardcover of the book or you can get the audio version. Can't wait to see you there. Love you guys so much. I'll talk to you next week.