Loading summary
Ed Mylett
So, hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. Got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward/ed. That's growthday.comed.
Progressive Insurance
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
Ed Mylett
Hey, it's Ed Mylett. Let me share something powerful with you. You know, in uncertain times, the smartest people I know protect what they've built. That's why Advantage Gold is a part of our program now. And what I love about what they're doing is they' giving away a free gold and silver investor kit that walks you through exactly how to get started. Text Wynn to 85545 to get your free kit. That's win to 85545. Don't wait for the next crash. Be the one who's ready. Protect, prepare and Prosper message and data rates may apply. Performance varies. Always consult your financial and tax professional. This is the Ed Milet Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So every time this dude's on, we get a lot of reaction. You don't get quiet reaction from the king of biohacking, and they actually call him the father of biohacking. But I just think he's one of the most interesting people we have on the show. And, you know, to get back in the seat multiple times means I enjoy your time and I learn from you. And every time I'm with this man, I learn a bunch of stuff I didn't know before. In fact, he just gave me a little hack right now. This one's going to be a little bit different, though. He's got a new book out called Heavily meditated. Eight Steps to Remove your triggers and Upgrade your Focus, Energy and inner Peace. Doesn't really need an intro, but I gave him one. Dave Asprey, welcome back to the show, Ed.
Dave Asprey
Thanks for having me on again. You're. You're an interesting guy. I enjoy our conversations every time.
Ed Mylett
So do I. Why'd you write this? I never ask authors that. That's, like, the cheesy opening question. But in your case, you know, you and I have been at a private meditation retreat with a guru dude and some other pretty famous people before, so I'm not completely shocked, but what made you do this?
Dave Asprey
People know me for losing 100 pounds, putting butter in coffee, creating the biohacking movement. But a lot of people don't know why and how that came about. I. I was really sick. Chronic fatigue. I was also really miserable in my early and mid 20s. I. I tried getting married briefly. I tried making $6 million when I was 26. Lost it when I was 28. When I had it, I'm like, I'll be happy when I have 10. I tried being famous when I was 23. I was an entrepreneur magazine in my double extra large T shirt, which was the first product ever sold over the Internet, before E Commerce had a name. And none of those did anything to make me happy. And I was, frankly, miserable. I was just graduating from Wharton Business School. I did that when I was about 30. Like, I'm kind of hitting rock bottom here. I don't know what else to do. And I started doing all the stuff that I thought only stupid, crazy people would do. These are things like traveling to South America to find shamans, going to remote parts of Tibet and doing. Doing advanced meditation retreats. And I just decided I'M going to try all the stuff that I think is dumb, because the stuff that I think is smart isn't working. So along the way of, like, rewiring my body and rewiring my mind, I had to learn all the consciousness stuff. But when I started the biohacking movement, it was very much because all the things I learned running a longevity NonProfit in my twenties, the people who taught me were in their seventies and eighties. My elders taught me this, and I could get no one young to pay attention to longevity. Like, guys, the stuff that makes old people young makes young people powerful. Don't you get it? And they didn't. So I had to rebrand it. And I'm gonna draw breadcrumbs like, guys, the idea for a bulletproof coffee. Now, Danger Coffee is my new coffee company. But the idea came to me on the side of the holiest mountain in the world in a remote part of Western Tibet. So that might be a little clue. And for 10 years now, I have run a very high level, call it a executive brain training thing. That also puts you in advanced spiritual states by removing triggers. So my path has been fix the body, upgrade the body, upgrade the mind, which upgrades the emotional capacity, resilience, and spirit. You can't separate them. But if I'd have come out in 2011 and said, Put butter in your coffee, use red light therapy, do earthing, which I did say those were edgy enough. And I also said, by the way, learn how to meditate, leave your body, and do altered states work. I think it might have been too much to become a movement.
Ed Mylett
Did you have advanced intuition then? Stuff in this book surprised me. This is the guy who's like, here's the peptide, here's the thing, here's this, you know, this hack. And. And yet you talk about, like, big part of the books, like, intuition over your ego. Like, was that an intuition that you had back when you were in your mid-20s? Or do you. You really believe you can develop and tap into your intuition on a deeper level? And that's. Everybody can do that.
Dave Asprey
I am more convinced than anything on Earth that all humans can do that. I am as convinced that we can do that as I'm convinced you can lose weight. When you want to lose weight, it might be hard. You might have to change tactics. Everyone is wired because we are alive to have intuition. It is an innate human ability. It is trainable. And some people do have superpowers that maybe is genetic or I don't know where it comes from. I can theorize I can tell you that most of the lineages I've studied around the world will tell you there's some idea of a past life or something. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it's because your mom was a witch doctor. I have no idea. I don't have to know why. I just have to know if. Is there evidence that some people with trained nervous systems and trained minds will express these abilities? And intuition is one of them. That's easy and is built in, and we've known about it. Even the most hardcore skeptics, if you think about it, they also have intuition. They just use their minds to shut it down. That's what I did. I did not believe in intuition. How did I end up being the first guy to sell anything over the Internet? How did I end up making $6 million when I was 26? Why did I take that job versus another? Because it felt like the right thing to do. That's called intuition. It's not because I did a spreadsheet that told me what to do, and I learned how to be a venture capitalist. And the data shows very strongly, and there are. There are actually studies about this for the most successful investors. Their gut says yes, and the spreadsheet says yes. They make the investment, they're going to make money. If the spreadsheet says yes and the gut says no, they lose money. And if the gut says yes and the spreadsheet says no, they oftentimes make the most money because it's counterintuitive. But they follow their gut because they've trained their intuition and they know it. And it's not just pattern matching, it's something deeper.
Ed Mylett
Well, everything this man does comes with a strategy. That's why if he asks me, how do you decide who's on the show? If it's theoretical, with no application, hack, or strategy, I'm really not that interested in it. It's just like a waste of my hour. There's nothing like that with your work. We could go through everything in the show, you guys, in an hour and a half. And because of Dave and the way he writes, we'd be at like 4% of the book. So I'll ask him pointed stuff. What is a strategy or a way that someone begins to tap into from scratch, okay. And develop their intuition. Build that. We'll call it a muscle.
Dave Asprey
Probably the easiest way to tap into it from scratch is to. To. I'll define what intuition looks like. And then I'd love to, if we have time to talk about where and how it happens in your nervous system because it makes it easy to understand. But whenever something happens in the world around you, there would be a very, very fast and very, very small reaction from your intuitive systems. And we'll talk about where those come from later, okay? And let's say that someone walks in the door, okay? And your intuition, and just right away, before you have a chance to think about it, goes, just talk to that guy, right? And right after that will be a much larger emotional response that says, I shouldn't talk to that guy. There's no reason I should talk to that guy. Actually, the emotional response is, I shouldn't talk to that guy because it might be scary, I might be rejected, nobody will love me. Whatever the hell your emotional stuff does, we don't have much control over that unless it's trained. And then the logical brain steps in and goes, well, there's no reason I should do it. So for most of us, that little, tiny and first blip of intuition is swamped by an emotional squelch. It's like a firewall. Your emotions and your ego make you ignore your intuition, and then your logical brain justifies the ignoring. So the first thing is, okay, that first thing that. That jumps in, that you automatically ignore, that's the intuition. And if you're curious about it instead of rejecting of it, you might find it's helpful. A pattern that's arisen for me so many times in my life. Someone will say, I should read a book. Okay, I have a huge library at the house here. The cool thing about libraries is they can be edited from sensors, but. And I've read a lot of books, so problem is, if I don't have enough time to read everything people say I should read. So then if three people independently tell, tell me I should read the same book. Not that I see ads, but people tell me, dude, there's something in that book that I need to read. And every time I do it, thank God I read it. And so that's a thing that I just picked up on and many others when we talk about, it's like, oh, yeah, that actually happens to me too. I also buy books I'm not planning to read because I know there's something in them. And they sit around and then I just pick it up and I open it to a page and I read those five pages, and the next day I needed to know exactly that. Whoa, that's intuition.
Ed Mylett
I'm very surprised to hear you say this. I'm being honest with you. I'm very surprised to hear this. Keep going and link into it where it comes from we're talking about. But I'm surprised.
Dave Asprey
Well, we have to talk about my track record. I mentioned I'm the first guy that selled anything over the Internet. It's not like there was a double blinded placebo controlled marketing study that said you'll make money selling over the Internet. In fact, the common belief was you can't sell anything over the Internet. And I'm like, I just did. Right. And then while inventing biohacking, the first cloud computing that shipped on the planet, I beat Marc Andreessen by one day at a company called Exodus Communications. Right. And it, it's not that you can think your way into these. You intuit your way into these. The idea that C8MCT oil was better for performance, I intuited that and that made me do some more research and I wrote about it. And five years later a study was published by UC San Diego that showed it's the most ketogenic of all the MCTs. Heck, DNA was intuitive how we discovered it. My grandfather co invented the process for purifying plutonium that we can use in reactors. And he did that in a dream. This is how humans do things. Steve Jobs talked about this kind of thing. It's not like, it's not like it's unusual. It's just that we disrespect our capabilities here. So where this comes from is part of the operating system in the body and it's not coming from your mind. And it goes like this. There's a third of a second between when I speak or when you hear a sound or there's a light that flashes and the body will hold onto that signal and show it to your brain a third of a second later. And during that 1/3 of a second, it gets to decide how you're going to feel about it. So there's a censorship window, just like on live tv. There's an eight second window in case there's a wardrobe malfunction or an F bomb so they can edit that out. You have a delay on reality. And cats are so stupidly fast because they only have a 30 millisecond delay. They're 10 times faster than us before it gets to their brain and they react and it looks like they have superhuman. And by the way, you guys like Bruce Lee, he had a much faster response time on reality than normal people. And 19 year olds have a quarter second, not a third of a second. They're crazy good at sports. Because they literally can see reality before everyone else. So now we know that there's a scientific window. It's called P300D for people into neuroscience. Okay, well, what is happening during that window? The survival algorithm for everything living on the planet, in order is to do these five things, and it does them in order every time without any thinking required. Because a single cell will do this. And our biology is based on single cell mitochondria, ancient bacteria, trillions of them. They decide what to do long before you get to have any knowledge of what they did. And the first thing that your body will do without your brain being involved is fear. Run away from, kill or hide from scary things. And it does this so that if something's hot, you'll pull your hand away. And if it's a tiger, you'll jump out of the way. No one's ever got, oh, I think that's a tiger. Let me jump out of the way. Because if you did that, you'd be food, right? So fear is the first F word. And that's why negative marketing, negative news gets, I used to say 10 times, maybe the data is really 9 times more attention than positive information. Because your body processes that first and it might be scary. So that's fear. Next one is food. Eat everything, right? Cause there might be a famine. And then the third thing is also an F word that life does to be around forever. You read the book, it's what we'll say. Fertility and polite company. Every cell in your body before you can think is, is it scary? Can I eat it? And should I hump it? Ed, what have you ever done that you're ashamed of? That wasn't one of those three things.
Ed Mylett
That's a great point.
Dave Asprey
That's a great point. Literally, your mitochondria are the cause of your shame. It's not you. It's a distributed consciousness, processing reality before you acting like an animal. Because that's what it is and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's trainable like any other animal. So fear, food, fertility. And then the next thing is friend. Support your own species and life around you. We do this without having to think. This is why deer will eat, eat at certain grass and they'll poop somewhere that fertilizes the soil and they'll get eaten by tigers and all that kind of stuff. We, we fulfill our role without having to use our brains. And the final F word, that's the, the real target of heavily meditated. Why I wrote this book. It's the One that creates the most freedom. And it's called forgiveness. And most life after it's, it's served its purpose, if it can, it'll evolve. And for humans, the way we evolve is by going back and practicing forgiveness, which lets us stop putting energy into fear so it can flow into food. We learn how to eat. So the energy flows into having a powerful sacred love life that actually becomes a source of nourishment for adults, not a source of emptiness. And then what's left? I have to serve my community because my bones tell me to. It's in my body. And intuition is because just like your body knows when a tiger is going to jump out, I just apparently have a fetish for tigers today. But if something scary is going to jump out, right, your body just knows and it just does it. And why would the same thing not work for that effort around friend, around serving your community about just knowing what to do, that is how it works. And if you study ancient Buddhism, you study shamanic practice, you study Gnostic, 14th century, whatever, all of the lineages, you look at all of the Hindu things, you get the bone religion, all these things, it's always there because it's part of being human. And I've interviewed Montauk Chia, who's into Daoism, and I've interviewed heads of multiple different lineages like this. And I've trained with some of the top gurus in the world. And this is a common human thing. And if we would just honor our intuition, it'd be great. And one of the things in heavily meditated is I'm going to teach you how to get the emotional response that suppresses intuition, how to edit that out. But there's one other thing I think we should talk about. Ed, do you believe in female intuition? Yeah, it's real. You wanna know why? This is my favorite thing. So let's just assume that I'm right, that mitochondria are the first line receivers for reality. Right. And that they're behind a lot of this stuff. Well, our brain has 15,000 mitochondria per cell in our hearts. And the rest of us have less than that. The rest of the cells in our body. Except in women, ovarian tissue has a hundred thousand mitochondria per cell, so they have denser antenna arrays in their reproductive tract than men do. And male intuition's a thing. We sense different things. But one of the easiest things to do to become more intuitive if you're a man, is ask the woman you trust the most in Your life who's intuitive and she's going to see things you won't. On average, you can develop. Men and women develop our intuition. The practices are actually very similar. But understanding that as a guy you can have great intuition and if you double check it with a woman, she might see things you don't. And that's just biological stuff like that. That's a difference between men and women. And it's one that I think we should honor.
Ed Mylett
You know, the scriptures, Bible talks about discernment, the gift of discernment. And a lot of times, a lot of churches you go to, most believers believe women have more of it. So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future, if you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second. Growthday.com forward/ed. My friend Brenda Burchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability journaling courses. Thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influencers like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there it's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. Hey, it's Ed Mylett. Let me share something powerful with you. You know, in uncertain times, the smartest people I know protect what they've built. That includes my father in law, by the way, who've been buying gold for a number of years up until his passing. And it paid off for him every single time that he did it. And I'm licensed, so I can't tell you where to put your money and I would never do that. But I can tell he bought it because gold is timeless. And that's why most of the smart people I know have bought gold. It's real. It doesn't vanish when the market takes a hit. And right now, many smart people I know are investing their money in gold and silver as part of their retirement plan and their future planning. That's why Advantage Gold is a part of our program now. And what I love about what they're doing is they're giving away a free gold and silver investor kit that walks you through exactly how to get started. Text wind 85545 to get your free kit. That's when to 85545. Don't wait for the next crash. Be the one who's ready. Protect, prepare and prosper. Message and data rates may apply. Performance varies. Always consult your financial and tax professional. Hey guys, like my shirt? Guess where I got it. Quints Yep, Quince is an awesome place to go get first class quality stuff. First class suitcases, clothes, gear, you name it at affordable prices like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30, pants for any occasion, comfortable lounge sets with premium luggage options and durable duffel bags to carry it all. The best part? All Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. What they do is they partner directly with the top factories. Cuts out all the middlemen. You get the discounts and savings. Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So here's what I would tell you to do for your next trip. Treat yourself to the lux upgrades you deserve from quint. Go to quint.comed for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U I n c e.com ed to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com ed I've been wanting to ask you this for a while, for a few weeks and you brought it up already. So we're talking about biology and you know, cells for a second. So in my faith there aren't past lives. Having said that man, I've struggled with that topic because intuitively I have some belief that part of me. Stay with me. Everybody who's a believer has been here before. I watch a war movie and it makes me incredibly emotional. Yet I've never served in war before. Just certain senses and situations in my life. So I've had this conversation with a lot of my what I'd call most smart high IQ friends and my people of different faiths. I've talked about this with Muslim friends of mine. I've talked about this with Hindus Christian friends. And one of the things that keeps coming up is that perhaps we have cellular memory of some type, meaning that it might not have been our past lives, but that through cellular transition these abilities to tap into intuition or memories have been passed to us from a cellular level. I just did a podcast on these alligators that for somehow they live in South Florida. They've never been in the cold before. They know how when it froze recently to stick their snouts out of the water and basically meditate and breathe out of the water. Yet they've never seen it, they've never modeled it, they've never been taught it before. Yet somehow on a cellular level this was given to them. I just want to know your thoughts about that topic. It's not in the book, but it's kind of correlated.
Dave Asprey
There's evidence for DNA based memory and generational trauma that's passed down through DNA. And people will argue, well, you know, what are the specific SNPs? There's a lot we don't understand about DNA and it's probably not just passed down through society. It could be an information field or some kind of weird quantum effect that no one understands yet. But I think DNA is the most likely thing. Now I've had a thousand plus entrepreneurs come through my five day neuroscience program centered around forgiveness. People from all faiths, they're very high performing people and during that time they're running the reset process from heavily meditated. I'm giving away my most precious process for making people free of triggers in the book. But what that's done is that's let me talk to them, let's let me look at their brain waves as they're doing this advanced meditation practice. And what'll happen is people will clear out all the triggers from what happened as an adult and then they realize, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur because I was bullied in fifth grade. And I'm just showing that I'm good enough and well, let me get rid of that so I can be an entrepreneur for a greater good. And it's just easier to be pulled than it is to push right stuff like that. And after people are done with cleaning out all the triggers and all the things that just get under your skin, there's three paths depending on the person, where they'll go next. And it's this is based on intuition. But I've seen this enough time in a thousand plus people and it's not like I'm the first person to see this. You could Interview Stan Grof, who's a hundred years old, who will tell you the same thing. He's a psychiatrist who gave LSD to 3,000 people in the 1950s when it was legal, and is behind the creation of holotropic breathwork that's in the book. And I've actually done a breathwork conference that I co hosted with him. And, you know, so I. I'm not the only one saying this, but here's the three things that people go to after they've gotten rid of their stuff that they. That they're commonly aware of. Number one is they'll go into the way they were born and what happened when they were in the womb. And my belief was, you can't remember that, except you can, and there's plenty of evidence for it. And people, they. They run a forgiveness process, or they reset that, or they do a trauma thing. And all of a sudden, especially people like me who were born with a cord wrapped around their neck or put in an incubator or something, it creates profound peace for them. Okay. I don't have to know why it sounds like, okay, well, let's talk about how angry your mom was when she got pregnant with you and how uncomfortable she was, and that did something to you. It's not that strong of a reach. And if that's not it, then sometimes, well, let's talk about what's been happening in your family for generations. And I was talking with a woman who's just stuck on something, something relationally, and she mentioned that she did a lot of energy work and healing and all that, and she's a powerful executive, too. And I said, well, okay, you're from a culture where women don't get divorced, and you've been divorced. Your mom was divorced, your grandmother was divorced, in a culture where divorce is something that no one would ever do. So to become a pariah that way, like, have you ever thought about healing your grandmother even though she's passed? And the second I said that, she started crying. And that's a lineage problem. It's been stuck. I don't know if it's DNA, but probably. And the third thing is, I've had people say, I cannot tell you why I don't believe in past lives, but now that I'm sitting down and I'm in these altered states from the practices here, with no drugs or anything like that, I'm just feeling like I gotta let go of something that's maybe not mine, that's maybe from some other life. I don't judge any of that. And frankly, if I believe that my past life was as a potato and I'm gonna go mash myself as a healing, I don't care. As long as I am no longer triggered by something, I'll do anything on earth. But I've never had a past life as a potato and neither is anyone I know. And Ed, I have had direct interactions with God with a capital G and it is just, it's an incredibly powerful experience. It's hard to talk about. So in my universe, people can experience all of those things and at the end of the day it's I am that I am depending on which specific form of Christian religion we're talking about. You know, I'm one with Jesus, who is the son of God, it's okay. Does that mean you are one with God? Well, I think that's what they're all saying. Even though there's been wars over interpretation of the words there. So I don't want to start a war. I'm just going to say that if you're one with all this, there's no reason that it couldn't include memories of past lives, whether or not they were real. And, and for people who are maybe not committed to a certain faith, the only logical belief that you can take, and I'm a computer science guy who used to be an atheist, is believe in past lives. The reason for it is it'll make you less fearful in this life, if you're wrong, you'll be dead and you won't know or you'll go to heaven or hell or whatever. Right. But if, if you're right, it's a reset button and you get to play the game again. So if you're playing Pac man and you know at the end of Pac man you're dead, it's going to be a really stressful game and if you know, you can put another quarter in and play it again, it's going to be fun. So I'm going to pretend like I know that there's a past life just so I don't have to worry.
Ed Mylett
The way that I kind of view the book is that there's, you're able to connect with God, your ability to connect with your intuition. But there's these blocks. There could be your triggers, there could be past trauma, there could be your day to day pattern, the patterns that you're running. And I, a lot of my work has to do with triggers as well. And one of them, one of the frustrations I've had is, well, what if some of these triggers you're not even ever going to be aware of because they happen to your great grandfather, for example, Right? Like you're unpacking triggers that you could be unpacking triggers all your life. So I want to ask you about that, but also the forgiveness question. I got to tell you, as I travel, more and more people know about the story that my dad was an alcoholic when I was growing up. So many people ask me, well, you were really fortunate your dad got sober so you could forgive him. And I want to be able to forgive my dad or my. Like, it's. They're a grown adult and the anchor on their life is the lack of forgiveness of another human, whether it be their mom or their dad, their ex wife, their ex husband, whoever it might be, and their block, their trigger is this lack of forgiveness for somebody, I'd say it's the number one thing that comes at me and my work when I travel. What would you say is the role of forgiveness or compassion in this notion?
Dave Asprey
Plugging in forgiveness is a performance enhancing drug. If you do it right, it sounds straightforward. Okay. And here's why I mentioned those F words. Your body will process fear and then hunger and then desire and then community. It does this in order every single time. Well, since fear takes up the most energy and it comes first, forgiveness means that there's a part of you that's still afraid. And it sucks energy from you all of the time, 24 hours a day. Every little thing in your life that you hold a grudge towards is a huge anchor you're dragging behind you. And it looks like it's just part of reality. Reality is supposed to be hard because I'm carrying this grudge and because my dad was mean to me, because I had a bad divorce, because whatever. And the reason that the executives come to 40 years of Zen and spend five days with my neuroscience team in pods with electrodes glued to their head and all this stuff is because they're going through and systematically running a forgiveness process to turn off triggers permanently. And what you and I have learned, what we've all learned, is the same thing that they'll teach you in a monastery. Well, notice the emotion flowing through you. Take a deep breath. Set the emotion aside. Decide how you're going to react. Dude, do you know how much work it is to have an angry thought about your ex wife or somebody come through your head? Okay, I'm an adult. I can set that to the side, but it still costs me. And what I'm doing is I'm saying I'm going to turn off the alert. And if you look in your phone and you know, imagine if you turn the alerts on for every single thing you're trying to use your phone, it's like blah, blah, blah all the time. So you could say, meditate on ignoring the alerts at the top of the screen and just focus on the email. You can do it. It just sucks. Well, they teach you to run life that way. I'm going to tell you. Here's how to go into the system settings in your body, here's how to turn off the alerts you don't want anymore so that you only get good data. And that good data is going to look a lot like intuition and love and forgiveness. And forgiveness is the track to do it. What we think though is that forgiveness is looking someone in the eye and saying, I forgive you. That is not what forgiveness is. And then we think forgiveness is deciding to forgive someone. And that is not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a deeply embodied altered state that you go into that has very little to do with your mind and has everything to do with attenuating your nervous system. So when I run someone through the reset process and it is written out and heavily meditated step by step, there's eight steps in it and it's a structured meditation. I like to do it with electrodes and help people, but I want everyone to be able to do this. And what you're doing is you're activating something in your heart. And when I'm measuring your brainwaves, I can tell whether you did it right or not. Because brainwaves change very predictably and they start to look more and more like advanced Zen meditators. And what forgiveness is, is you stop holding a grudge, you see everyone as a flawed human and you wish them well, no matter what they did bad to you. You don't have to ever tell anyone you forgave them, you don't ever have to talk to them again. And you don't have to say that what they did was okay. Forgiveness is simply becoming non reactive to something that was still causing you pain. And ultimately if you do that, you're free. And if you don't do that, you can be programmed. That person could get under your skin. Anyone else who acts like that person will get under your skin. So if you want to show up in the world for your community, for your family, for your business, for things you care about, for your mission, any trigger in your life that exists, your job is to write down what it is or when it happens, and to relentlessly track it down and turn off the alert so that you won't be triggered by that anymore. And when that happens, maybe someone files a lawsuit that's not fair against your company, which happens to every entrepreneur these days. It doesn't matter what, right? You can lose sleep and be angry, or you can just like, my attorney's going to handle it. This is a cost of doing business. I got to go do things. You get pulled over, you get a ticket. Oh, my God. Like. Or, you know, it would be a lot simpler if they just raised the gas tax by 20 cents, but they didn't do that. So now they're just extracting money on a random basis for. For motorists. Okay, I'm paying my driving tax today. It's all good. You know, maybe I can tip the cop. It doesn't matter, right? It's just, what did your nervous system do and how long did you waste energy on it?
Ed Mylett
Speaking of that, let's talk about the cost of not. So let's assume I did everything I've learned from you over the years. You know, I. I'm getting rid of my zombie cells. I'm doing all the work that Asprey's been telling me all these years, right? But I don't do any of this internal work. So let's assume on a scale of 0 to 100, if I do all the hacks, I follow you work, I've got this particular peptide, this hydration, my zombie cells are gone. I got this oral health thing together. My gut health's cleaned up. So I. I'm at 100. How much does not doing this knock me down? In other words, let's say you think you could live to 100, and you tell me how long you think you can live and how much if you don't do this work, will it cost you?
Dave Asprey
Anyone who starts biohacking, you might come in for any reason, but eventually you're gonna say, I have enough energy, I wanna live a lot longer. So biohacking always means longevity, and now you're saying I have energy, I'm gonna live a lot longer? Do I wanna be miserable and programmed? Do I want to be conscious and aware and in charge of myself? So biohacking is only at the end of the day, when you distill all the stuff out. It's just about having energy, having longevity, and having power over your state, which is consciousness. You have to study it. Otherwise, if you were going to live to 180 and you spent the entire time angry at someone who was mean to you when you were 25 years old. What kind of a life is that? Who wants to live that long? You won't even have the desire to live that long because resentment builds up over time and forgiveness cancels out resentment. So I look at meditation or doing forgiveness work. It's not about retreating, it's not even necessarily about letting go. It's. It's an aggressive way to take control of your state. Like no one else on earth is in charge of my inner state other than me. I'm not going to let anyone who wronged me be in charge. I'm not going to let anyone who's trying to get to my little emotional holes, none of them can be in charge. I'm going to be in charge so I know I'm going to take care of my family, I'm going to take care of my community. And you can't trick me, you can't fool me, my intuition guides me. So if you're saying all the right things, but I know something's wrong, I just know it, that's the state we all want to have and it's possible. And you do that by training yourself to have less fear and you do that through the reset process. That's in heavily meditated.
Ed Mylett
Is 180the number for you by the way, is that what you really believe you live to?
Dave Asprey
Yeah, it's a minimum of 180. And I wrote my big longevity book, New York Times Bestseller called Superhuman and I went through the science in it. And a lot of the most recent longevity books are using the same framework as that book. And it's like look, don't die of the big four things that'll kill you and there's seven or eight things that are systems that need maintaining. 180 is a simple number. Our current best is 120. Ed I want to do 50% better than our current best and I have a hundred years to do it. I have AI big data, PubMed, we can spell DNA, I have antibiotics and the 120 year old didn't have any of that stuff to live to 120 like I'm pretty sure we can do it. Maybe a comment with the planet, you know, maybe they'll invent some new virus worse than the last one they invented, I don't know. But other than those kinds of things, pretty sure that I'm not even being aggressive on it. I, I don't think that immortality is a thing. I don't think that Never dying is a thing. But I do think that living as long as you choose is within our grasp right now, and that you better get on a consciousness bandwagon. Because if you decide to live for centuries and you're an angry, bitter person who doesn't know how to forgive, there's a name for that. It's called hell. Living for hundreds of years being angry at everyone. Like, how many cats would you have to own?
Ed Mylett
You guys? I think. I think that right there is one of the smartest things that's ever been said on the show. You know that a lot of you are doing all the work on extending your duration on the planet, but almost none of the work on your bliss and joy while you're here. And both worlds converging is really what Dave's. You're really talking about here. And I actually kind of think I'm talking to myself too. Sometimes when I. When I'm talking with all of you guys, it makes me really, really think. The reason I like Dave's stuff too is like, there's this side of it, which is, hey, your eight step reset process, heart coherence and your brainwave states and measuring, literally your healing. But then there's also, like, do some hard stuff every single day, too. So there's like both sides of this. There's like high functioning, high performance, too. Tell them.
Dave Asprey
Give them.
Ed Mylett
Give them the hack. The bicep. What?
Dave Asprey
What?
Ed Mylett
Bicep means this because they can remember this. This is easy to remember.
Dave Asprey
Yes. All right. Bicep is not this. And now this is.
Ed Mylett
There you go.
Dave Asprey
It's my guns with a caffeine molecule tattoo. They're not like your guns, you know, first of your shirt there, Ed. But he's really happy with them. So bicep is brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain. And if you think about this, monks back in the 14th century would whip themselves every morning. And I was all pissed off when I was a teenager. I heard about this. I'm like, they thought they were such sinners. Like, what kind of weirdos were they? No, that's not what they were doing yet. And then yogis would lay on a bed of nails and. Oh, that's to show they have superpowers. Oh, that's why they're doing it. And then you look at some of the traditional indigenous things where. Where there's the. The sun dancers, where they're. They're piercing themselves and doing this. Like, what? And then you look at more modern things, like, show me someone who's been an addict who doesn't have tattoos. It's so true. It's because tattoos hurt. And intentionally exposing yourself to pain, not harming yourself, just pain, it re regulates your nervous system so that it takes less dopamine to motivate you. So what do biohackers do? Well, we get in a cold plunge and the title of the chapter in heavily meditated is called Go spank yourself. There's a reason some people need a good spanking and it regulates their nervous system. I interview a somatic therapist who figured this out a long time ago for the book. Bottom line is something that doesn't harm you, that gets your nervous system's attention. It's called pain. And just sitting with it. I used to make these spiky mats that made you go to sleep via this without knowing how it worked. You can buy a yoga spiky mat and stand on that. It just has to hurt a little bit. Eat a really hot pepper. And humans are drawn to these things. Not because we're masochists, not because we hate ourselves. Because when your brain shows the body you can tolerate this and you're still safe, the body's like, oh, now you can be motivated to pray, you can be motivated to meditate, you can be motivated to eat the right foods, motivated to go to work with less energy. That's why brief, intentional conscious exposure to pain is a really important biohack. Because if you want to be motivated to meditate, then in the morning, turn the shower on cold, do that brief uncomfortable thing. It doesn't have to be an hour long miserable grind workout. That's not what I'm talking about about.
Ed Mylett
But do you think you have to switch it up? Here's what I found. I think that you adapt. And so that really difficult thing like a cold plunge, for example, for me, six months later, and there's even studies that show this, my body began to adapt. It just really wasn't as difficult for me anymore. So do you mix? Do you recommend switching the stimulus once it's not so difficult for you anymore?
Dave Asprey
There's no studies that I found about this in particular. There's lots of studies showing about the dopamine effect here. I think the dopamine effect still happens when you get in. And if you want to get this effect, a 37 degree cold plunge, that is a dopamine cold plunge. And a 43 degree is a metabolic cold plunge. It's still uncomfortable, you still get some of the bicep, but we can make it really suck. And if it's still a problem for you. Suck on a habanero and get in there, you'll be fine.
Ed Mylett
You guys may think this is one of these clips that I know someone will take and give Dave a little bit of crap for and I'm going to tell you something, he's actually right. I'm going to tell you right now he's right. Doing a difficult thing every single day. It resets me. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. 26% of Americans who participate in a recent survey say they've avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. When people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them, it impacts families, workplaces and entire communities. This Mental Health Awareness month, let's encourage everyone to take care of their well being and break the stigma. The world is better when people are healthy and happy. Therapy is a great way to take care of your mental health. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it's for everyone. BetterHelp has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapists from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.comedshow to get 10% off your first month. That's Better Help H lp.comedshow hey guys, when's the last time you knew you needed to go to the doctor but you pushed it off? You made an excuse? I'm going to tell you a specific one. With me, for about a year I've had this thing kind of growing on my earlobe and I kept putting it off and putting it off because we had moved and I didn't know what my new doctor was. And then ZOC Doc started sponsoring my show and I'm like now that's a killer idea. And so I use ZOC Doc to find the guy who ended up doing the treatment on my ear and removing this thing that was there that turned out to be pre cancer. ZOC Doc is a free app and a website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click instantly to book an appointment. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care, urgent care and more. So stop putting off doctor appointments and go to Zocdoc.com mylet to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's Z O C-O C.com/mylet Zocdoc.com Mylet started on my journey of trying to empty my mind in different practices maybe five years ago. Very difficult for someone like me. Some of you listening to this. I'm just a high strung mind wound up pattern thinker, thought stacker. You know I can, I can thought stack with the best of them and let me tell you what's happened for me and then I want you to speak to it over time. I found this is a strange term to use, but I was going to be candid with y' all. I got higher than I used to get on life. Meaning physical intimacy started to feel like it felt when I was 25, not 45. My laughter, like how hard I laughed when something was funny was greater and bigger. I used to, I noticed little anecdotal things that over time I'm like, I think I'm getting way more dopamine now or I'm feeling more of it anyway. Is that accurate at what I'm suggesting here? If you become somebody who meditates on a regular basis and does this clearing, do you agree with that?
Dave Asprey
You'll feel more dopamine. And the power of your brain waves increases when you meditate or when you do the neurofeedback stuff that I, I walk people through. When I say power, your mind is making waves, they're electricity waves. And we can measure well how frequent are the waves rolling in. And that's a frequency people have heard of alpha or delta or something like that, theta states. So this is how often are the waves. But what if you had a hundred foot tall wave rolling in every 10 seconds instead of a one foot wave rolling in every 10 seconds. So you've increased the power. And when you meditate or you do the reset process, you're increasing the orderliness of it. And it kind of, kind of bums me out because people are saying, oh, I got into an alpha state, look at me. And alpha is a well known brain state. Well, if you want to get an alpha state, want to triple your alpha? Close your eyes and look towards the middle of your forehead. And most people will triple their alpha. It doesn't mean anything. It's like saying, look, I made a sound using the C note. Well, was it a beautiful sound? Did you sing a song? Was it great? So your mind is becoming more beautiful mathematically when you learn how to meditate. And what it feels like to you is it feels like joy, it feels like presence, it feels like consciousness. And then every time an old Trigger comes in, a grudge pops up. It takes you out of that. It breaks the music, it reduces the height of the waves, and it gets you stuck in, eh? And since you're doing practices that make your dopamine, your receptors more sensitive to the dopamine your body makes, now you've got more motivation, you've got more vibe, and your mind knows to take that and turn it into something that's worth listening to. And this is why a longevity practice without a consciousness practice is almost a painful thing. And it's why, if people come to the biohacking conference in Austin May 28, those will be our 13th year. Joe Dispenza is on stage. One of my shamanic teachers is on stage. Ryan Holiday's on stage. And leaders in longevity, because you can't do longevity.
Ed Mylett
That's an eclectic group right there. All good friends, too. That's awesome. Including you. That's awesome. I need to get to that. I want to talk about parasympathetic sympathetic states. Not in any of my notes. Just wanted to come up with it. I want you to talk about that a little bit, your feelings about it. And do you do anything other than meditation to stimulate a parasympathetic state? Like, do you use any of these devices? I'm thinking of the. The thing you put. You know what I'm talking about? The thing you put on your.
Dave Asprey
A vagal.
Ed Mylett
Yeah. Do you do any of that? Do you believe in any of that?
Dave Asprey
I absolutely do. In fact, heavily Meditated is a book about, here's all the things that either replace meditation or make meditation work better, faster. Because what we used to do is just sit in a monastery or a cave for 20 or so years and you'll get it. But then you kind of had stuff to do, and we're all too busy for that. We have families and careers and reasons for being. So. There's actually a chapter where I talk about vagal stimulation. In the book, there's parts where I talk about training the spacing of your heartbeat. A lot of listeners see their morning readiness score on whatever sleep tracker you have that's based on the spacing of your heartbeats. You can train that consciously. And I actually became an advisor to the first company to make a device to do that in 2008. So before I go on stage, before I go on a podcast, I modulate the field around my heart. Now you can say, dave, that's a bunch of bs, guys. It's a magnetic field. You can pick it up with physics instruments. It's shaped like a torus. It's tilted eight degrees to the left. And all humans make it. Some of us have a bigger one than others. So I structure mine so it's the way it should be so that I am the way I should be. And this is all within our conscious, our conscious abilities. And it just so happens to do that, you have to drop out of sympathetic. So one of the easiest ways to drop out of the fight or flight or fawn or freeze response is just breathing. And I go through about eight different styles of breath work in the book, some of which are for doing that and others aren't. So meditation itself even. There are many altered states we might want to go into. And some of them are for the reset process, for deep healing. Some of them are for journeying and intuiting and dreaming. And some of them are to calm the nervous system. The most famous one to drop you into a parasympathetic state if you're feeling anxious or wound up is a box breath. And the military figure this out. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. Breathe out for four seconds. Hold empty for four seconds. Do it five or 10 times. It turns out that's great. You can step it up 1. If your out breath is twice as long as your in breath. So breathe in for four, breathe out for eight. Breathe. That'll drop you in more quickly than a box breath. Try that before bed. There's another breath called an Ujjay breath that comes from yoga. And if you breathe in through your nose, almost like you're gonna snore. You should run on the edge of a snore and it should sound like a seashell in your ears. It's like you're right on the edge when you're pulling up the back of your palate, right on the edges, feeling like you're gonna go. Like you're snoring. So when you do that, man, that will drop you in even faster. So why would you meditate without knowing the type of breath that matches the meditation you're doing? It means you're wasting time. And there's one other thing, Ed, that I think is really important to note. A lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, high performance people like you and me, there's some shame around meditation. Number one, I should want to meditate, and I don't want to meditate. Something must be wrong with me. Nothing's wrong with you. Your mind is designed to not waste energy. And your mind thinks that meditation is a waste of energy. It's going to make meditation look unattractive, just like going to the gym is unattractive. So don't worry about whether you feel motivated to meditate. To meditate. The other thing is, until about 75, 80 years ago, 98% of the population was involved in agriculture. And it's been that way for thousands of years. Well, the other 2% of people, they're not farmers, they're warriors. And if there's a fire or an explosion, they run towards it and the farmers run away from it. Right. Which one of those are you? I'm the kind of guy that's like, well, people probably need. People probably need help. I'm just going to go there, right? And that means that if I try to do a meditation that's designed for farmers, it's just going to be like Valium. It's not going to be pleasant, it's not going to be a high performance state. And I've had this, some of the devices out there, I have friends who love them. Like, I can't do that. It ruins my day, right? So I write about and heavily meditated. I write about Zazen, which is a type of Japanese samurai meditation. It takes two to five minutes and you sit in a very specific pose and your eyes are open and you're focusing on like a coin or a speck on the carpet in front of you for two minutes with all of your attention. Okay? That's a warrior meditation. So if a meditation doesn't work for you, maybe it's because you suck at meditating and you need a teacher or you need neurofeedback. But once you get the state and you're like, this state sucks, there's a possibility it's just the wrong state for your mind. All right? And that's why looking at a thousand people's brainwaves, these high performance people, they don't all have the same brains, not at all. Right? So it's okay if this isn't the. If it doesn't feel right for you, after you've learned it, switch it up and always use an accelerator. So in the, in the book, I'm like, well, do the bicep thing. There's a chapter on psychedelics and it says straight up, the altered states of high performance. And all high performance is an altered state. All healing is an altered state. All flow states, all stuff you're doing in the bedroom, it's all altered states for different outcomes. You don't need psychedelics to do it. And some people are attracted to them. So in the chapter I'm like, here's what they're doing to your brain, here's the safest ones and here's the ones that have a higher risk. And if you want to go down that path, please don't be the kind of influencer who says, I've done ayahuasca 87 times and you know, maybe it'll work on the 88th time. And I've seen it wreck people. So I think ayahuasca is actually a dangerous substance without proper shamanic intervention. So that's very low on the list of things to do. We're like, if you're going to do it, find the right shaman. It's not the same as doing MDMA with a therapist, which is relatively safe. And I'm not recommending anyone do those things. I'm saying those are a path. The other state that no one talks about. 20% of people report meeting God during sex at least once in their life. Full on transcendent experience. But their partner, unless you have an open communication, they're just laying there twitching. You can't tell, but they're having profound experiences. So why isn't intimacy in a way that's not about just getting, getting some, or porn or lust or any of that, that is an altered state. The Tantric practices, even something called conscious kink, the Taoist practices, these are equally worthy ways to enter states of healing or flow states or transcendence as psychedelics or rapid breath work or fasting in a cave. I don't care how you get there. I care that you do something that works for you, that's safe, that gets you to a state where you are, you are more conscious. Not just then, but permanently afterwards. Like transformative experiences. The world needs these to just let go of the garbage we pick up from being human.
Ed Mylett
You hit two things I wanted to ask you about, but you hit them. So I'll finish with another question. The two things I was going to ask Dave about that isn't talked enough about in these altered states. One is sex and deep intimacy with an, with another person or yourself during that process. And it is one of these states that it's, it's, it's the most under discussed part of sex. That should be something that is more mainstream in talking about getting into these altered states. And I'm glad that we at least touched on. The other one was psychedelics. And just so that you all know, I'm an investor in a couple different companies that promote psychedelics. But at the same time I've had those I've had friends that have had ptsd, particularly some of my military buddies, transformative experiences. I've also had people have really bad trips and really bad experiences. And so I would just second what Dave said. Anything you're going to do like that, it needs to be with somebody that's very experienced if you're going to go up to that level, you know. And by the way, more people have had experiences with some of these substances than you might think that have been on my show. What I want to ask you last about, by the way, is another great conversation. I mean, every time you're on, I just enjoy it. It flies by. We're already over what I told you we were going to do. You know, I've done a lot of work on this stuff, as you know. We've even been in the same place working on this together at one time. Anything you've seen me do online, Shopify has probably been involved in it. I was at a speaking engagement this weekend. There were three other very prominent influencers there and each of them were talking about how they use Shopify in their businesses right now, this day, just like I do, Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And 10% of all E commerce in the US is Shopify. Household names like Mattel, Gymshark to brands that are just getting started with no clients yet. And so I can tell you Shopify is something you need to investigate to help you with your business online. Best yet, Shopify is your e commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your 1 month, $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com mylet go to shopify.com mylet shopify.com mylet my HRV is scary low. My heart rate variability. Just do a little digging. Get Dave's book, but also do some digging. We'll promote the book again at the end. Do some digging on your parasympathetic and sympathetic states. But also HRV to you is that I. I think you're going to tell me that's a really important thing to measure. And when I say low bro, I mean like really bad. So I've been able to reduce my heart rate through meditation and get it to a much healthier place, but my HRV has not moved at all. Is there any. Do you believe that's an important metric? Number one. And if you do anything, you would Share with me or the audience that you think can help raise it or improve it.
Dave Asprey
Heart rate variability measures how different is the spacing between each heartbeat, and it's much more important than your heart rate. So you can have 60 beats per minute, and if they're all in the first 30 seconds and no heartbeats in the second 30 seconds, it's still 60 beats a minute. But you'd probably be dead or dying. So it turns out how they're spaced out determines a huge amount about the state of your nervous system. If your heart rate variability is low, it means your heartbeat is very, very even, which is a sign of a stressed animal. And the number one way to increase heart rate variability is have dinner earlier. Make sure that it is dark in the evening for sometimes an hour or two before bed. I raised mine very meaningfully with the truedar glasses. This is one of my companies. I look like Cyclops right now. I wear these glasses. My heart rate variability goes up sometimes 10, 20 points if I wear these for an hour before bed. It's called TrueDark. It's TrueDark.com and these are glasses I designed, even filed patents on them about 10 years ago. When you see people wearing red glasses, they're copying these, but these are layered filters, and we're the only company ever to publish in a medical journal the effects on brain waves of the TrueDark glasses. And they actually work. So I would look at doing that. Look at lowering the temperature of your room. Um, and earlier bedtime, earlier dinner can have profound effects. And darkness will do it. And then if it's still happening and just nothing will shift it, and you've. You've done your nutrient testing and all, then you look for what's going on under any fillings or root canals. So chronic infections are a major cause when it won't go up. And I don't think you have breast implants, that's another cause sometimes.
Ed Mylett
I had something I wanted to say about that, really, but I won't because just someone close to me would not like it. Anyway, I'm going to work on that. And everybody, you ought to get your HRV measured. It'll. It'll tell you an awful lot about what state you're in. It'll tell you an awful lot about how long you're going to be here if you don't get it improved.
Dave Asprey
You. You also. This is going to sound really annoying for you probably.
Ed Mylett
Ed.
Dave Asprey
One of my companies, Upgrade Labs, it's a franchise that does AI longevity biohacking stuff. We got 30 locations opening. President of the company is the former COO of Orange Theory and Equinox Triathlete. And I challenged him to do 30 days of measuring his morning heart rate variability instead of his time on training a mile, which is really hard for him cause he's been just training his ass off all this time. Complete life transforming thing because he realized over training was keeping his heart rate variability low.
Ed Mylett
Yeah, that could be a deal for me. Yeah, that could be a deal for me. Like 35 years worth of overtraining, dude. Every time Dave's on the time flies and he's so entertaining. And this book is interesting to me because it's the other side of living a long time is living well, living in bliss, living in peace. And by the way, getting into these states will help you become ten times more productive or at least nine times more productive than you currently are. So if you think going this direction is somehow going to slow down your productivity, it'll do the complete opposite. And you'll have more energy and more bliss and more staying power for a longer duration if you do this internal work as well. So the book is heavily meditated, the author is Dave Asprey and you ought to get your hands on it. And this was a great conversation today, brother. Thank you Ed.
Dave Asprey
So much fun. Thanks for having me on. And guys, heavily meditated will pay for itself 10,000 times over if you do two things in there because of the amount of free energy it gives you every day. Like, this is my most important book. I just couldn't have written it first because no one would have believed it.
Ed Mylett
Well, hopefully they believe it now and after this hour they got a desire to go get it. Most of them probably grabbed it when we were halfway through. Thanks Dave, again. It's great to be with you, brother.
Dave Asprey
Thanks Ed.
Ed Mylett
God bless you everyone. This is the Ed Milan show.
Podcast Summary: Dave Asprey Reveals the New Frontier of Biohacking
Title: THE ED MYLETT SHOW
Host: Ed Mylett
Guest: Dave Asprey
Release Date: May 13, 2025
Ed Mylett welcomes Dave Asprey, dubbed the "father of biohacking," highlighting his significant impact on the personal development and biohacking movements. Dave introduces his new book, "Heavily Meditated: Eight Steps to Remove Your Triggers and Upgrade Your Focus, Energy, and Inner Peace," setting the stage for an in-depth discussion on optimizing both body and mind.
Ed probes Dave about the role of intuition in his work, leading Dave to emphasize that intuition is an innate and trainable human ability.
Dave Asprey [06:31]: “I am more convinced than anything on Earth that all humans can do that. I am as convinced that we can do that as I'm convinced you can lose weight.”
Dave explains that intuition operates below conscious awareness, often overridden by emotional responses and logical reasoning. He uses examples like successful investors who balance gut feelings with data to illustrate the power of trained intuition.
Dave shares his transformative journey from chronic fatigue and personal failures to exploring unconventional paths like shamanism and advanced meditation retreats. This quest led him to rebrand longevity principles, making them appealing to younger generations.
Dave Asprey [03:26]: “I was really sick. Chronic fatigue. I was also really miserable in my early and mid-20s... I started doing all the stuff that I thought only stupid, crazy people would do.”
Dave introduces the concept of the "Five F's" that govern human behavior at a cellular level:
Dave Asprey [15:23]: “That's the real target of heavily meditated... forgiveness.”
Ed shares his curiosity about cellular memory, fearing it might relate to past lives, despite his faith's stance against reincarnation. Dave acknowledges the possibility of DNA-based memory and generational trauma, suggesting that certain intuitive abilities might be inherited or influenced by ancestral experiences.
Dave Asprey [23:50]: “There's evidence for DNA based memory and generational trauma that's passed down through DNA.”
Forgiveness is portrayed as a performance-enhancing tool to eliminate emotional triggers. Dave distinguishes forgiveness from merely pardoning someone, describing it as a profound internal state that releases accumulated resentment.
Dave Asprey [30:21]: “Forgiveness is a deeply embodied altered state that you go into that has very little to do with your mind and has everything to do with attenuating your nervous system.”
Dave advocates for not just extending lifespan but enhancing the quality of life through biohacking. He envisions living up to 180 years by maintaining physical health and emotional well-being, emphasizing the importance of managing internal states to enjoy extended longevity.
Dave Asprey [35:45]: “I think you have to study it. Otherwise, if you were going to live to 180 and you spent the entire time angry... Who wants to live that long?”
The conversation delves into various methods to achieve altered states for personal growth, including:
Bicep Technique: Brief, intentional exposure to pain to regulate the nervous system.
Dave Asprey [40:03]: “Bicep is brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain.”
Breathwork: Techniques like box breathing and Ujjayi breath to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Dave Asprey [49:20]: “Meditation itself even. There are many altered states we might want to go into.”
Intimacy and Sexual Practices: Using deep intimacy as a pathway to transcendent experiences.
Dave Asprey [56:36]: “20% of people report meeting God during sex at least once in their life.”
Ed raises concerns about his low heart rate variability (HRV), a vital indicator of nervous system health. Dave explains that high HRV signifies a resilient and adaptable nervous system, crucial for longevity and stress management.
Dave Asprey [59:36]: “Heart rate variability measures how different is the spacing between each heartbeat, and it's much more important than your heart rate.”
Dave recommends practical steps to enhance HRV, such as:
Ed and Dave wrap up the conversation by emphasizing the synergy between physical biohacks and emotional well-being practices. They advocate for a holistic approach to personal development that fosters both longevity and inner peace.
Ed Mylett [62:20]: “This book is interesting to me because it's the other side of living a long time is living well, living in bliss, living in peace.”
This episode of THE ED MYLETT SHOW offers a comprehensive exploration of biohacking, intertwining actionable strategies with profound insights into the human psyche. Dave Asprey provides listeners with a roadmap to not only extend their lifespan but to enrich the quality of their lives through integrated health practices.
For those interested in diving deeper, consider exploring Dave Asprey's book, "Heavily Meditated," and implementing the discussed biohacks to transform both your body and mind.