Float Tank Benefits, Sensory Deprivation, Neurofeedback & Microdosing

Float Tank Benefits, Sensory Deprivation, Neurofeedback & Microdosing



Sean McCormick has floated over 600 times and started Float Seattle, one of earliest commercial float centers (Sensory Deprivation) in the country.

In todays show we talk all things brain, mood and mental health.

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Connect with Sean! http://seanmccormick.com

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————————————Show Notes————————————–

03:25 Float is a peak/transcendent experience. It is safe and reliable. Five senses are restricted, as is gravity.
07:22 Your sympathetic state shifts into a parasympathetic state when senses and gravity is restricted.
11:37 When you are in that sensory deprived state, your brainwaves change from alpha to theta.
12:00 Floatation therapy is used in treating PTSD in veterans, quickening learning of languages and improving athletic performance from visualization while in the tank.
17:38 A Passive Float Experience: For the highly stressed, just letting go has huge benefits, including magnesium absorption and traction of your spine.
18:30 An Active Float Experience can involve visualization, focus and manifestation.
24:54 The most effective use of floatation therapy with the least amount of application was 9 floats in 27 days at certain intervals.
25:43 For massive life changes, float 3 or 4 times in a week.
26:35 For a major change this year, float 6 times in 2 weeks. You will be different at the end of it.
32:09 Breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, creating an anti-inflammatory interleukin 10 cytokine. Experiment to find the breathing practice that works for you.
43:18 Neurofeedback is simple..
48:25 Neurofeedback can be effective for insomnia and PTSD.
49:44 Neurofeedback and float tank usage can bring brain hemispheric integration, helping your brain communicate more effectively.
57:51 Microdosing LSD and mushrooms helps business professionals see problems from a new perspective and helps them focus in a new way.
58:53 Strategic applications of psilocybin mushroom can help with depression and anxiety.
01:11:55 Sean’s morning routine begins with a few deep breaths.
01:14:35 Sean’s Desert Island Nutrient is CILTEP by Natural Stacks. It promotes better memory, better recall, better focus and longer focus/mental endurance.
01:15:51 Sean’s Elevator Speech: Drastically regulate chemicals, plastics and synthetic fragrance.
01:20:32 Intuition is teachable. Sean includes this in his coaching practice for his clients.

it is so unique that feeling when you're inside a flow tank where it's quiet and warm and you're weightless and you're naked and you're breathing and everything is okay most people have never experienced that level of of lowering their stress and adrenaline to to that baseline and so yeah I've said in the past when you're beginning to redline when you're beginning to just like knee-jerk by a cheeseburger or knee jerk you know drinking a bunch of drinking a bunch of alcohol if you can picture and have a reference point for that level of relaxation you know your your subconscious mind remembers that they know your your brain knows what that feels like and if you can just close your eyes hopefully now you're driving just close your eyes for a quick second and just like put yourself back into the float tank for a second and feel what that feels like you can think more clearly you can make better decisions for yourself you can be actually a better person [Music] today's episode is brought to you by your friends over at juve calm leaders in light therapy also known as photo bio modulation which is a big fancy way of talking about how light impacts your own biology in the comfort of your own home so listen this is an amazing strategy that you can do every single day to optimize your hormone levels stimulate collagen production enhance recovery if you have soft tissue injuries if you have mitochondrial related issues this photobiomodulation and the specific wavelengths that the juve light Garner's to your body has a lot of health promoting effects a lot of science back this up it's another way to support those mitochondria those intracellular organs that help you generate energy so it's something that I always recommend to clients I do this when I travel I do this at home my wife does it every morning we recommend it to everyone it's a really cool tool so YouTube can optimize your own biology using light in the comfort of your own hotel room or your own home depending upon which unit you get by going to juve comm for Jess Mike that's Jo ovv dot-com for Jess Mike if you forget that if you're listening to this links will be low in the description check that out and also be sure to use the coupon code HRH at checkout where you can get some free schwag over at juvie comm so let's cut back to it with Sean McCormack and talk all things float tanks sensory deprivation mindset photobiomodulation we talked about that as well in this episode psychedelics and a bunch of cool stuff it's a really fun show here we go Sean thanks for coming out because I met with you yeah this is exciting for sure so you got into floating in float ank's long before that became popular I think you said when you started your business there was 35 tanks in the country that's remarkable so back in 2012 I mean now I think like in pretty much every major city even in Canada and so forth there's tanks everywhere but maybe let's kind of talk about like sensory deprivation the default mode Network the brain may be like rewind the clock a little bit like how'd you get so fascinated with the brain yeah so I I've been a lifelong meditator my hippie parents taught me Transcendental Meditation when I was 12 because I could not sit still and they were looking for solutions for me to like regulate myself and so I had a an ongoing meditation practice for awhile spotty my teens and then into college and I was my meditation practice sort of like sputtered a little bit and as I was reading more and more into sort of the effects on the brain of mindfulness meditation I kept coming across these references to sensory deprivation because just to back up sensory deprivation flotation tanks isolation tanks it's all the same thing so I kept coming up over and over and over and I had seen the movie altered states from 1984 or something when I was a little tiny guy it's based on John Lily's work this guy like goes into a float tank and eats a bunch of weird stuff and like turns into this like murderous proto-human thing so like my frame of reference culturally for the float tanks kind of went way back but I was really curious about deepening my meditation experience you know that that's sort of blissful depth of practice and during that time I was kind of you know sty had some sort of turmoil in my life in your early 20s and finally found a float tank in Seattle I was shocked that there wasn't one a float center and so I found a guy on Craigslist this guy in Bellevue and went to his house and took my lunch break in my suit and tie back when I was in sales and went over and floated at this guy's house and had an out-of-body experience my first time and it was the second time that I had ever had an involuntary OBE but I projected out-of-body and had this like mind-blowing experience and it was actually so big for me that it took years for me to sort of process everything so five years later as my wife and I were exploring like what we wanted to be when we grew up you know in our mid-20s it's like well what do we want to do like is this it do we want to open a juice shop in Hawaii or you know go teach English in Thailand I one day and I remember it like it was yesterday I said to her you know remember that one thing I did that float tank thing in that guy's house and she said yeah and I said why don't we open a floats on her and she said okay and she never says okay it's really any any of my harebrained ideas and then from there I just threw myself into the research the origins of sensory deprivation and then put together a bootstrapped plan to break away from my sort of corporate gig and open a Wellness Center and at the time there were 35 float centers in the country there was a place in Chicago that had been open since like the 80s there was a place in Manhattan these were both like in-home float centers this was like somebody lived and had a float tank in their basement they let you come use it and yeah exactly so you found this guy in Craigslist you went to his house yeah yeah this was like in 2010 this was in like this was in like 2008 wow yeah I I wanted it so bad you know is I you know I'd knock on the door and he comes up and you know he was a massage therapist and yoga instructor so he's got like a top bun and he's like hey thanks for coming and I was like thanks for having me you're not gonna kill me right right he's like I get that joke all the time you stinker come on in and then like we went downstairs and he had this float tank set up in his basement and it was it's the type of thing and I always go back to this it's the type of practice that you can do that that is sort of a peak experience you know Abraham Maslow talks about like peak experiences transcendent experiences this is something that's safe and reliable that is you don't have to eat a bunch of weird drugs you don't have to fast for a hundred days you don't have to go be under a Bodhi tree in Tibet like you can go into a float tank and know yourself better and so it was so important for me to have that experience that I was willing to go to Brian's basement yes he's still in business do you know I think the last I checked he's still there he I don't know if he has flue tanks anymore but I see his Facebook post occasionally interesting and it's the same kind of unit you probably have where you're enclosed you feel safe and so once you're in there you felt totally comfortable probably yeah it was just yeah well it's super interesting so is it a way to kind of accelerate this feeling of being present and we're in our bodies that kind of what it shortens that path a little bit is that kind of yeah the the acronym that the industry uses is rest which is an restricted environmental stimuli therapy so when you restrict environmental stimuli so there's no sound there's no taste there's no touch because you're floating in a thousand pounds of Epsom salt water and not only that are you are you have you restricted your five senses but also gravity and what we don't think about is how tied to the earth that we are gravity is a real thing and our central nervous system is having to deal with that all the time so when we don't have our five senses of input coming into our brain that makes us in a sympathetic state then and gravity what it does is it changes your sympathetic state into a parasympathetic state so that means like rest digestion blood flow these things that we just do involuntarily it kicks those things online there's a cascade there's a there's a there's a bunch of great research that we can you know I'm happy to share any anything and everything and I know but there is a there is a physiological explanation for why this is good for you and then there is a meditative sort of psychosomatic experience too of being isolated from the world by yourself it's sort of you know the way that joke about is like the the float take kind of the float tank kind of meditates you you know it's like a meditation device it's super Festing so this sensory yet the let the deprivation of that right of senses I mean just to kind deviate slightly from the conversation but it's related I went on a hunting trip right days and food tasted so much better out there but it was the same food that I've eaten here and it was almost meditative eating it and part of it was like the environment the circumstances were rough it was super cold it was like the end of October in Idaho so I was thinking about that like why does food taste so good out here so part but part of that was like there was not I didn't have any screens there was no EMF Wi-Fi like there was not a lot of other sensory things besides moving and seeing stuff so would that be part of it because it kind of relates to what you were talking about that rest acronym like when you kind of remove some of these inputs if we're all knowingly kind of being bombarded by seems that our sensory systems are almost on an overload standpoint totally I mean we cannot avoid media we can't avoid EMF we can't avoid just sort of the the environment that all of us live in unless you're out in the woods I mean and there's there's lots of good research that you know that God talks about grounding and forest bathing and being in nature and and grounding into the the the sort of frequencies of the planet and when you're stripping things down when you're reducing your input when you're reducing your stimuli yeah you're gonna maybe notice your breath a little bit more you know you're gonna appreciate your company a little bit more the food is gonna taste a little bit better because you're simplifying you know you're you're really harkening back to earlier earlier humanity earlier human and so yeah like whatever whatever you're doing is going to be that much more enriched because you're not buzzed around by push notifications and EMFs yeah so it was so fascinating to me and I was wondering physiologically why that was when I was out there so but yeah the the floating experience is pretty remarkable I had seen signs around and I wasn't quite sure like what it was all about and tell Steven Kotler books stealing fire came out and I guess evidently in correct me if I'm wrong navy seals and other you know like infantry in individuals when they wanted to learn a foreign language very quickly they would learn it in a fluent take because I guess it would accelerate some of the learning so I used to listen to audiobooks at like 2x and I could breathe it because you could really pay attention and so the downside like I got this little Bluetooth speaker and I would bring it to the Kirkland you know which is no longer business their float Center and listen to audiobooks and it was amazing like I can remember can't remember what books exactly like thinking fast thinking slow a few other books but it was like that's that information really stuck it was pretty interesting so it seems like the military has been using this technology to circumvent learning is that yeah that's actually the origin of the of sensory deprivation it goes back to the inventor that creator John C Lilly who was commissioned as part of the Navy to research what it was sort of they were sort of associating it with like being in deep deep sea and what they used to think was if you were if you were cut off from sensory input you would just like fall asleep I mean if you didn't if you didn't if you weren't processing things environmental stimuli you would just like not off and the opposite is true when you're in that state your your brainwaves change from Alpha to theta so the the frequency of the theta brainwave state which is a meditative state of consciousness though you have longer durations of this theta brainwave state and they're more frequent and so the application for the origin of the sensory deprivation tank with John Lilly yeah has been expanded now there's there's float centers dedicated just to veteran populations for treating PTSD there's stories in literature about people learning languages at like 4 X the speed of normal there one of my old staff members learned Swedish in like six months like she was fluent in Swedish cuz she would go into the float tank she closed the shop down and then just listened to like I don't remember what it was maybe it was a rosetta stone but she was practicing her Swedish in the flow tank and she got good quick well there's other research that applies to like athletic performance free-throw shooting and the way that they set that up was through visualization so you go into the flow tank and you visualize every shot perfect backspin swish every time and they showed that the people that that were in there visualizing that practice were actually better when they had to apply that in real life and so I mean we still know so little about how the brain works and how we learn and what is consciousness but we do know that when we're not distracted by really anything like you learning books remembering those times where you were able to really focus in just imagine the applications for for PTSD for for language learning and sports performance I mean it's it can apply to anybody that's that's remarkable so those athletes that we're visualizing did they have a control group whether they were having say that the people still visualize but they didn't do that in a flown tank yes okay yeah there's another one with darts you know cuz darts is like a highly focused you know I mean all sports is but there was darts free-throw shooting and then I think there was but maybe bowling was another one but yeah seems like our tree I mean there could be a lot of applications for that Wow and so getting back to the to the neurophysiology if you will you were saying that that the brainwaves are changed so alpha theta maybe if we can because like if someone has ever done breath work or gone to yoga what are some of the this characteristic or ascribed that changes within brainwaves and there are those similar parallels that you see when you do floating is it yeah the the connection the connection is so theta brainwave states are more more frequent with in meditation states the way that I like to describe it for people who have never either had that moments in a meditation where they're like oh my gosh that's it for people that never experienced that or floating you know when you wake up first thing in the morning naturally without an alarm or a six year old or seven year old waking you up that moment where you're awake you know you're awake but you're not you don't really hear anything you're hearing hasn't come on yet you haven't started to move you haven't opened your eyes but you know that you're awake that snippet which may last 3 seconds or 10 seconds or whatever before you like okay here the CRO outside your house that that sort of you're not really awake and you're not really asleep is what the theta brainwave state feels like and what we know from the brain research is the theta state is tightly correlated with our subconscious mind you know so the work of like dr. Joe Dispenza and Bruce Lipton points to this theta brainwave state as like super intuitive learning so in meditation when you're having these dip deep in to yourself in a floatation tank where you have nowhere to go and nothing do you're not gonna look at Twitter talk to your friends or eat a cheeseburger you're just there you're just being you're breathing that that state you're you're your brain knows what it wants to do in there and will shift from thinking about cheeseburgers to the relationship with your wife to death to this non thought you know which is the goal not non thought but but you know sort of mindfulness is what happens naturally within the floatation tank and so an hour float for some people feels like 10 minutes because they got into that state and that theta brainwave state the same way that when you're not really awake not really asleep or or meditating is punctuated by these feelings of time loss you don't know how long you've been in there punctuated by feeling you know sort of Jungian connection with everything you know sort of global consciousness this interconnectedness of things and it happens it's inside of us it's part of us and we it's so hard for us to access those states of consciousness because we're so busy because a lot of people aren't first at meditation or they don't take the time to do it and so forth yeah yeah now getting into the the subconscious mind I think that's pretty fascinating especially now in January right where a lot of people are making they're making lofty goals for what they want to accomplish this year whether it's weight loss finances relationships whatever would this be a way to sort of more solidify the subconscious mind where maybe you could think about you know why people we all know that we should eat better food and not binge watch Netflix and drink alcohol right but we still do it for whatever reason or a lot of people do they know they shouldn't go to fast food restaurants but they do so how so how could they potentially maybe use something like a float tank or getting into that high fadeaway state right yeah how could they what are some best practices like what would you recommend like listening to an audio book we're doing that or thinking about your new self like visualizing what your future self should be doing instead of like doing these same old patterns like yeah you can do all those things yeah the way I like to think about it is that there's sort of two ways to float one is passive and one is active so if you are overly stressed your adrenals are out of control you're in you have inflammation you're unorganized mentally you're stressed out and tired and everybody sucks and you want to go eat worms like you just need a break from everything just going into the flow tank having a shower getting into the tank laying back feeling what that feels like on your body getting that deep sense of calm and just letting your mind go just to be just a capital B capital e for an hour has immense immense benefits I mean just innumerable benefits including magnesium absorption including traction on your spine because of the weightlessness so that would be sort of like a passive passive flow to experience well you're kind of talking about is more like an active float experience so if you want to go in and go through visualization practice if you've got a test tomorrow and you want to kind of review some of the content from the test perfect place to do it if you have a job interview if you are gonna go on a first date if you want to manifest in your life if you want to bring things toward you you have to go there mentally first like your YouTube channel your products your brand you are fully intentional you thought of all this stuff it all came from inside your brain first and the float tank is the perfect place to be undistracted and to go into those states of consciousness where you can actually decide what you want out of your life what you want out of your future you know it's the Seahawks are in the playoffs you know we had a couple of running back injuries and they brought back two running backs this year Marshawn Lynch and Robert turbine and Robert turbine came in and floated on Saturday before the game and when I met with them I said hey you know you you should do two things in here one is breathe and the other is rely is is visualize tomorrow and he's like I visualize all the time and I said okay do it in here he's okay so giving him a referential breath that could go to when he got extracted when he got distracted I mean he imagine the pressure of coma – thanks so much the that level of performance needs an equal amount of recovery like when you're the operating that high of a level you need a level of proof of recovery and rest and recuperation that will match that level performance and for him I gave him this basically one very simple breathing and visualization technique that afterward he came out he goes he goes I cannot believe that I'm just hearing about this breath work now he goes I my mind goes a thousand miles an hour I'm visualizing scoring touchdowns every day like this is my life football is my life it was so much easier for me to get focused on my visualization by having this breath work and so the application if you're trying to be a better person if you're trying to live a more healthier life if you have intentions and goals go into a flow tank in a structured organized way and repeat some affirmations to yourself I am whole perfect strong powerful harmonious loving and happy you do that for an hour just repeat that mantra over and over and over that's actually taken from the master key system which is something that's I just am super hot on right now but just going into a mantra that's self affirmation and we have the power to heal ourselves we just don't know how to do it or we have self-critical thoughts and we say negative self-talk so it seems that and I'm just as you're explaining this I'm inferring from that that maybe that self-critical well yeah maybe you know you can't do this you're not good enough you've always been poor you've always been fat maybe it seems like that's kind of diminished or attenuated a little bit by this sensory deprivation is that kind of wait what works yeah well and we were talking before we turn the mics on about the default mode Network and there is a lot of research on coming out of the laureate Institute of brain research in Tulsa Oklahoma that's the acronym is LiBr library what libraries looking at is the effect on the default mode Network and the default mode Network the way that I like to think about it is this it's sort of our ego it's it's when when no one else is around and you're not doing anything else where does your mind go and for some of us our minds go into you're so stupid you're so lazy why can't you find someone to love why can't you make more money it's really like diminished right that's that's a that's an expression of of an unhealthy relationship with the self that lives in the default mode Network some of us are much more intentional when the lights are out and it's quiet and your self-talk comes online that default mode of thinking it's an actual network inside of the brain trying to figure what else connects to that probably the amygdala maybe or I don't I'm just guessing I'm trying there's like a there's like a it might actually go into the HPA axis the hippocampus pituitary and adrenal systems that that helps quiet that that helps quiet that mode helps quiet that ego that whether it's whether you're an egotist maniac or you're a self-loathing he'll like it equalizes that default know mode network so that you can just be you can actually reach levels of consciousness that are that are balanced and present and that I mean that in of itself is something that is so needed we all need to do that more often Oh hundred percent yes that's really amazing that's cool that I mean athletes are seeking you out and you get to have conversations with these people and I always assume that if you're getting paid maybe five hundred thousand dollars a game or whatever that you would have access to every the latest Gidget and gadget I mean everyone would but but there's seemingly these guys are eating junk food and stuff and you know Rashad Penny who and firstly got hurt which is why Robert urban is in was saying huse eat McDonald's and he finally got off McDonald's and then now this get him after the Seahawks I mean he was he had some amazing breakout game so it's like how could someone that's getting paid six seven figures a game one afternoon is eating food like that and doesn't have access to these things so it's pretty amazing so it just brings us back to and that's why we have these podcasts in these conversations because we all need to sort of hear these things so what would be and I want to talk more about alpha waves and psychedelics we're going to get into all that but let's say someone's listening in they're like all right I want to make sure this year really is my best year ever okay how many days a week would in an ideal world considering finances and eating healthy food and all this were stuff like what would be kind of the minimum effective dose of sensory deprivation to help to really make make that self-talk stick yeah great question the this science there's there was a study conducted in Sweden this was specifically about workplace burnout and when I say workplace burnout there are thousands of people going yep me that's me we replace burnt-out for sure there was a study conducted out of Sweden that looked at what that minimum effective dose was and it used a control group in the way that they found was the most effective with the least amount of application was nine floats in 27 days so that's a float a day off a float a day off a float three days off and then the same rhythm twice more so it equals to nine floats in 27 days and so there's packages that we offer that float Seattle offers that sort of cater to that because that's sort of the baseline now that said if you are ready for a massive change in your life if it's like this is my decade I am going to go for this I have a lot of goals I've got a lot of strong intentions I feel really motivated for change what I would suggest is that you go float like three or four times in a week because what that will do is it will get you in touch with yourself it will reduce your cortisol levels because that's what the studies show it does anyway lowers your cortisol it lowers your epinephrine and your adrenaline and increases your serotonin and so by hitting it hard upfront you're actually resetting some of some of the like deleterious brain wave effects that you just deal with every day and often deal with with four glasses of wine and six hours of Netflix right like we all we all have the same we all have the same things that that we have to deal with so what I would suggest is if you are ready if you are really primed and ready to make a major major change this year I would suggest that you go float like six times in two weeks and really get into a groove at the end of that two weeks you're gonna be different you're gonna think differently you're your portion are gonna be more relaxed you're absolutely undeniably gonna have more magnesium in your body which fuels mitochondria which lubricates the synovial fluid in our joints helps with digestion and because you absorb it through your skin it's more bioavailable than then consumed you still should take a magnesium supplement orally but this is a this in its magnesium sulfate so it's not three and eight and glycinate and the other night museums but yeah if you're committed you should hit it hard upfront – just like reset like tabula rasa just clear everything out just go back to baselines and then operate from there well you set baseline and that's interesting right because most people's baseline is elevated right like I noticed like when I came back from not to talk all about this hunting trip but like my baseline was produced like my level of stress things and then I got back into this rut like we fall into this I used to race motorcycles and you would always try to avoid the ruts because you would get stuck in them and we all have this rut that we get into and you notice it like when you transition from a vacation back to home you're like I can feel that stress again like I'm always on edge or whatever and so I think what I heard you say is like maybe we can take that thermostat for this default mode Network and kind of dimmer down so that we reduce our baseline a little bit so overly and our way of thinking and and I didn't want to interrupt you there but I think it's really interesting like I used to be really nervous about public speaking and and I found that if I have these safe places so if I do get nervous if I get up there I'm like I think oh my gosh I'm gonna forget what I'm gonna say or whatever I just have this safe place where I can go and I know that everything's gonna be okay everything passes right like I wiggle my toes or I do there's to that in it so it doesn't happen to me anymore and so I think that if people have like this thing maybe they they drive by McDonald's and they think I'm gonna have a weak moment like cuz I hit McDonald's I hit fast food I go to 7-eleven every day after work how am I gonna break that habit if you could maybe visualize yourself in the flow tank passing by McDonald's by not having a glass of wine whatever then it would like really kind of make that rut maybe go away and so I think that can be super helpful because a lot of people want fat burning supplements a lot of people wanting saw just ketones these things have their roles right but if you can really I'm all about like root cause resolution like get at the problem yeah so I think it's fascinating yeah I mean even most most folks don't have a reference point for that level of relaxation I mean you it is it is so unique that feeling when you're inside a flow tank where it's quiet and warm and you're weightless and you're naked and you're breathing and everything is okay most people have never experienced that level of of lowering their stress and adrenaline to a to that baseline and so yeah I've said in the past just like that same example like when when you're beginning to redline when you're beginning to just like knee-jerk buy a cheeseburger or knee jerk you know drinking a bunch of for drinking a bunch of alcohol if you can picture and have a reference point for that level of relaxation you know your your subconscious mind remembers that they know your your brain knows what that feels like and if you can just close your eyes hopefully know you're driving just close your eyes for a quick second and just like put yourself back into the float tank for a second and feel what that feels like you can think more clearly you can make better decisions for yourself you can be actually a better person so I absolutely yeah because it gets easier I think going both ways like if you're get quit get really irritated in the car like traffic in Seattle you know you grew up around here like it can be and especially drivers like they don't they're at a green light and they're just sitting there I used to get really upset honked the horn in this and so that was my that was my rut I wouldn't naturally get so it was so easy to get irritated and then once I started learning meditation through the Insight Meditation Society the vapp asana technique then like I move that baseline down right so I think it's yeah I mean for a lot of people like you said I mean the way that they get into that calm state is through substances right which is not really sustainable I mean yeah that's that's one way to do it but it's like are you really going to have five glasses of wine before that work presentation or before you that webinar probably not is probably going to compromise your performance so if you could figure out a more natural sustainable way to really attenuate that anxiety yeah it's cool it starts with I mean for me and my coaching clients and you yourself to like the possum starts breath like it's the closest thing it's the most accessible thing for you so on your way and your commute home instead of turning right to go into a fast-food place you can first and foremost just breathe like take with it whether you want to do a box breath or a four seven eight breath like there's lots of different ways to just bring yourself back down when you're in that that crux moment like I'm about to make a bad decision am I gonna do it or am I not gonna do it we need that reminder constantly it's funny I mean any time you find yourself uptight and you remember to breathe you're like oh I have control in this situation it's a super fasting and a lot of people have you doman into the cholinergic anti inflammatory reflex access it's kind of a complex system but a lot of people don't realize that that they're inflamed so they're stressed and they don't realize why they're inflamed and so there's this intricate kind of network with our stress response in our this anti inflammatory reflex arc that's connected to your spleen it has to do with Chinese medicine and all this but it's really kind of characterized through Western allopathic medicine but just breathing stimulates that vagal nerve and and kind of creates an anti-inflammatory interleukin 10 cytokine throughout the body so it's really kind of fascinating that breath is not like just this whoo whoo thing that it used to be like we have a lot of Western science now that is kind of characterizing how the neuropharmacology in the physiology and the endocrine response to breath work which i think is really fascinating and in Herbert Benson's book me he talked about this I think in 2007 so you mentioned like box breathing and all that a lot of people are buying you know wim Hof's course and in this there's a lot what do you recommend like for resources for breath work for people yeah when I love the wim HOF method I did it for awhile and I and I did that in tandem with the float tank for a minute and there was some other customers that were actually experimenting with it too you know biohacker types that were down to experiment you know even getting out of the flow tank and taking a cold shower and then getting back in III like there's a guy named Niraj nyuk he runs the soma breathwork Institute it's in Bali and he you he has been wim Hof's right-hand man for a long time he's got a lot of different like variable breaths but I think in my opinion I think that we all have different tastes and flavors and repent cities for breaths you know like we one breath might work really well for you and not for me and maybe it's physiological maybe it's the size of my lungs or maybe it's the just my my mentality but I think that you have to experiment with lots of different types and whether it takes you know in a box breath it's it'll take 16 seconds to get through one set you know if if you practice doing a box breath and you do 3 sets 3 times a day you're gonna feel different like it will be noticeable if you start if you if you don't have any other experience breathing in with any specific structured way you know I've been I've been really liking the 478 breath it's an Andrew Weil so it's it's four seconds in its seven seconds hold and then a forcible exhale for eight and you do I think you do two sets of that and you do it twice a day in the morning in the evening time and what it does it's sort of like clears out the filaments of your lungs it's like this exhales like I was wondering it yeah eight seconds but for suppose so you're constricting your lips so that you're providing pressure right and it helps get like the lower lobes of the lung clears out it clears out the stuff that's in your lungs interesting yeah I remember what podcast I listened to you but I heard Andrew Weil talked about it and started to work with it doing in the morning in the evening time and it's really relaxing and it takes no time at all but yeah yeah I think I think for a lot of people wim HOF is accessible and some of the things that he doing just defy science I mean injecting yourself with toxins and just breathing through it is pretty amazing amazing yeah and that was a well controlled study too I've read that cover to cover a couple of times and I was like this is incredible I mean they just randomized people to these two different groups and it's like only ten weeks of training that's fascinating yeah it's really cool I just love these free tools that we have because the barrier to entry to some of these things gets expensive right I mean Juve lights flow tanks and this and we all have to breathe regardless right and so things like fasting things like exercise breath work and I think it has a lot of carryover to many different applications so um yeah I try to work on it with my kid all the time because she gets frustrated she want to throw things or break a crayon or whatever and it's like nez we had two our ten breasts she's like oh yeah and yeah so you know we weren't taught to stuff maybe you were you you said he learned TM early yeah yeah I my folks my folks taught me TM very early and I hated it I mean I hate like what are we doing what is the last thing on earth I want to do when I'm when I have a lot of energy is sit quietly and breathe and you know put my eyes up at an angle and repeat my mantra like I do not have any interest in that I'm 12 years old my hormones are raging all I want to do is just go like tackle my friend outside right like this but that that introduction the same way that you're introducing your daughter to breathwork the fact that this is accessible to us you know and I do the same thing and we have we have a sort of relaxation technique of that's that's sort of like EFT is sort of like tapping but it's like touching it with your body and and tapping with your hand on your limbs up towards your heart just to like link the body with the breath but it's it's it's the most accessible lowest hanging fruit for you be able to for you to be able to regulate yourself and it's going to be increasingly important for our children to do that there is going to be more pressure things are going to move quicker there's going to be more information and push notifications and automation like it's a superpower I mean we learned it later in my meditation practice and the in the in in in my childhood went through all sorts of peaks and valleys and different changes and frustrations and stuff like that but having having some awareness of the fact that we can regulate ourself with our breath it is it is a super power and it is the first thing that you should do if you want to get better 100% what's frustrating about someone that's a new meditator is they don't talk about some like like we we talk about silos in traditional medicine like the you know the Vanacore knowledge is doesn't speak to the to the you know you name the specialty right gastroenterologist but you when I went through of a pasta technique and it was great and all that but like I and not that I want to be careful here because like linking achievement to some sort of meditative state like I like to get into that calm state but then I've heard Dan Harrison other people say well that's not the goal the goal is just to be that moment a moment awareness right but anyhow you know first someone like yourself like you just grabbed you in when you were 12 and you just want to run outside if you could do some rest before hand and then meditate it's so much more enjoyable and better and you feel like you can actually you know be more present right and so I feel like we have different silos in the so called integrative medicine space right where it's like the left hand sometimes doesn't talk to the right hand so integrating all these techniques it can be seemingly like there's so much to learn right but once you take the pieces that work for you like you just said like F box breathing is it gets you there faster than great and so that's what I do now is like a retention breath before I do my meditation it's like now I can make this a habit before he was like how am I ever gonna make this a habit right because it was just so hard so I'd rely upon things like the muse and heart math and feedback but if I can do my breath work beforehand meditation is like so easy it's like I can sit there for 15-20 minutes and not be like constantly thinking when is this over when is this over right yeah so it's just fun – so tell me about the breath that you actually do before you sit down yeah so but do you mind ross trent who's been on the podcast before wellness force radio is his podcast he's a great individual so you just taught me this it was just a wim hof pretension technique so it's just 30 it's basically hyperventilation hold and then repeat and so you it's some form of hyperventilation retention and so you do I usually do about 30 now I can work up to 30 really rapid breaths trying to hyperventilate and then just retention and hold and really focus on just pressing in that diaphragm and holding there to the point that it's uncomfortable and then going another seven seconds then taking like eight box breaths after that and then repeating so I do that twice a day and man it's really been a game-changer and so you do that so it's like okay it's time to meditate do you go and sit and get into the breath and then as soon as that breath cycle is done then you sit and then you breathe again afterward after the meditation you're upset I'm done and I'll just use the Insight Meditation timer app I like it it has an element of social proof and you can track and everything like that but that's yeah that's been my routine and I would go in and out of that routine for a long time and like stick with it for 10 days two weeks and then like I'd miss a week and I was like what is wrong with me why can't I do this like I had the best of intentions but it was because I wasn't the I don't want to say breathwork circumvented anything but it just helped me get calm beforehand and enabled me my brain to just be like okay I'm president I'm here now I'm I'm good and so it's been just yeah maybe I'm maybe I'm messed up I don't know but it's like I I think other people like I'm trying to think like if I could get my dad to meditate like how could I convince him to do that getting into the doing the breath work beforehand you know it's like it's always easier to meditate after yoga because you're already there right you know you're already you're already there so it's like but I don't want it who has time to do an hour of yoga and then meditate after anyway a lot of people are trying they have 20 minutes to allocate towards these things right anyway so it's just cool to like it like you just said like you got to figure out what works for you yeah constantly experiment you know you gotta test it and you know tracking making a list of ten different breaths that you want to try just I mean it takes up just a little bit of intention and tracking to experiment with the thing that works one of them will stick one of them will make you feel really good one of them will help you relax and then it's just sticking with it yeah that the creating habit takes a little time yeah I found if I go outside it's better to cuz I'm breathing fresh air I'm outside I my eyes open during it but anyway so just giving people insights and reminders and so forth but you know sort of getting back to to some of the things that they were talking about earlier the the default mode Network and integrating all that there's also neurofeedback and people are doing neurofeedback and there's this device here the V light evidently these Sean these probes and people what's in the video can see this how these LED lights were how they're situated is to intentionally affect the default mode Network the Lu limb who found on this company that's what so they've done some interesting research on different disease states like Alzheimer's and post concussive syndrome and PTSD which is similar to what you're talking about but neurofeedback you've been experimenting with that recently and you've had some great results you want to talk about that yeah yeah so um I had Sierra gewd who is the owner operator of Seattle neurofeedback reached out to me she's a podcast listener of my the optimal performance podcast and she said you know hey I you haven't done a neurofeedback episode yet you know you should come try it you should check it out and and I think for guys like guys and gals like us who are [ __ ] tracking you know you're maybe a maybe full canary and you're sensitive to like you know something that's a little bit off but you're at least really aware of like how you feel you know you know when you're inflamed you know either through quantification or through just sort of an intuitive sense of where your body is so going into neurofeedback I didn't have massive expectations I also wasn't having to treat a traumatic brain injury or insomnia or a autoimmune disease like a lot of people do that turn to neurofeedback but what neurofeedback does the part of the most fascinating aspect of neurofeedback is how simple it is to do a session so you go into the office you know the intakes the intake session is okay what do you want to improve she's asking questions about your birth because that sort of trauma from childbirth is actually stored in in our body and in our brain so if you had a really traumatic birth or if your you know mother was a smoker or drinker like that affects you and so you do this intake form like I want to quit smoking or I want to quit eating fast food I want to I've got a Jimmy leg or I've got you know some sort of trauma that I want to confront and after that process you start and it's you put a similarly looking headset on your head 19 points of connection on the on the brain actually the that's the Wafi which is a brain mapping the neurofeedback device is it just has you know sensors on your head and then you watch TV and as you're watching TV the the machine is tracking your brainwaves and as you're watching television your brain knows you're watching TV duh but your brain also sees itself as the screen begins to flicker so as your what did I watch the first couple of the first couple of neurofeedback sessions I was watching peaky blinders which is this like old-school gangster like British gangster show a lot of violence and I was like does it matter that I'm watching something that's violent and intense she's like just watch something that you like okay so as I'm watching this with these sensors on my head the the screen is flickering it's getting smaller and then getting bigger the sound is getting quieter and then louder and you're also adding the sensory element and holding this bear this teddy bear that vibrates so as your brain is going through it's doing what brain does it's seeing that the it's making the screen go dim and light it's it's making the volume go up and down the brain knows that that's what it's looking at the same way that it does in like really expensive brain technology that they have it like at hospitals and brain centers and then as it's doing that it's actually it's actually correcting itself and so what they can do is they can adjust the try cocking so that they can adjust the hurts up or down for different effects and so I have to date done 16 neurofeedback sessions and the first two were sort of like yeah I feel relaxed I feel good similar to like what I would feel like after a meditation session the third session that I had she was tinkering around with the controls a little bit and at the end of the session I felt like I needed to sleep like I was wiped out I was really really super tired and I was like I don't know what you did but I am wiped out and she's like okay well I was I was I was I was trying something here's a glass of water you may want to give it something to eat before you jump in the car go home and so throughout this process there's these adjustments that are made to the technology that your brain is watching on the screen and making adjustments to itself and my goals was I what I found was that I was thinking more longitudinally than I had in a long time I was thinking into the future about my business I was thinking into the future about my family in a way that I hadn't been able to do for a while and suddenly all these cool creative ideas came through suddenly I had the idea for an online course suddenly I like got my finances my personal finances in order because I was thinking longer-term and as I was talking with her I was like you know I don't know if this is a if this is a result that you see a lot or not and she's like that's not that common I've heard of it before but I think it's because you've spent 600 hours in a float tank Shawn I think it's because you you know eat keto I think it's probably because you meditate these are factors make your brain pretty happy pretty high-functioning and then we're tweaking these little tiny things and what it did it just sort of opened up my perspective so what a couple of cool stories that she shared with me with neurofeedback is she heard from a colleague of hers that a teenage boy with like 80% of his body was covered in eczema eczema is tied to a lot of can be tied to a lot of different things the gut autoimmune issues after one session of neurofeedback it went from 80 sent across his body to like 15% like his eczema literally like diminished in like three days he went back did another session and it was gone so he kept with it kept going kept going and there's another example so it also helps for insomnia I think they're using it really a lot for post-traumatic stress disorder and the way that we talk about it is like this idea of resilience right like we were born with a bucket of resilience when we're born and if our moms or smokers or drinkers we have a little bit less if we experienced trauma in our childhood we have a little bit less resilience and so what she was talking about in terms of the patients that she works with who are dealing with PTSD is that for some people who fight side by side on the battlefield experience massive atrocities see them see it selves doing things that they never thought that they would one one soldier can come back and be fine another soldier who has way less resilience way less resiliency because of X Y Z factors earlier in their life they had almost zero so when they come back those experiences really really mess with them and so what neurofeedback can do is it can it can fill your bucket back up with resiliency through your brain knowing what it wants to do and correcting mistakes and sinking itself in a way that like makes you whole again hemispheric integration which just also happens in a float tank you're the hemispheres of your brain talk to each other and communicate more effectively so for me it was it was a it was a it was a it was a way to like even up level even more than all of the other wacky things that I do in nootropics and psychedelics and meditation all these things that I love what this was was was it was helping me see my life you know in a longer-term way which I think I think a lot of us could probably that's amazing so you were able to further manifest and kind of make these thoughts and intentions more cohesive and sticky a little bit yeah I saw the path where I have these goals and I've had them for a while you know and I didn't see the route I didn't see the path toward it and after after some neurofeedback I also had the honor of being a part of Stephen kotler's zero two dangerous which is a flow cultivation course to find your ways into flow states so I was doing that also I actually did that beforehand but I didn't have the vision I had the discipline to do my work but I didn't have the vision for what my goals would be and how to get there and it opened me up and helped me focus and a huge was cool yeah do you know Yann Venter he's in British Columbia Vancouver yeah he's been on the podcast a friend of mine but he's really into Steven collar's work and he was creating this flow dojo in Vancouver BC I don't know the status of where it's at but wow that's really fascinating so I did neurofeedback back in 2011 like six sessions and I found it very frustrating because it was back when I was 24 it was a TV that was the movie that I was watching and it kept stopping like you were saying and I was like dude I'm never gonna get this man this was before I learned how to meditate and everything like that so I think now would be much more inclined and probably wouldn't maybe get a little bit of a better better outcome you know I wasn't eating Kido back then I mean I still kind of paleo grain-free but was I was in my late 20s and and you know having wine at night and not sleeping that well and all that so it'd be interesting I would like to go back and just kind of see were early on the neurofeedback yeah I was a buddy of mine Fred Grover and he had an assistant in his office Laurie and so he can't remember what machine he had but he worked with a lot of the Denver Broncos at that time who had post concussive syndrome and and early you know CTE and so he found that that was really effective for their impulsivity and so yeah in Denver I think they still do it quite a bit but I don't there was a few different machines and I was considering maybe getting one there was only like I say only but it was $900 and I thought because the session was it got expensive yeah pretty quick and anyhow so that's it's uh it's cool we have all these tools and technologies and what I like about them in what I've heard from Fred is these things are sticky like they you do a few sessions and it can transform your brain you know and you don't need to maybe you always do it as often right maybe you do like you said 16 you did 20 and maybe do it once a month or once a quarter or whatever just have to sharpen the saw yeah I think the technology that that is available to us is it's just a matter of deciding what you want what do you want do you want to be able to think more clearly do you want to reduce your stress there's all of these techniques that we have all of this tech all this wisdom that we can access and and yeah it's expensive a lot of it is I mean if you want to float every single day you can do it but you're gonna pay you're gonna pay a couple hundred bucks a month you will be a different person you will be vastly improved but it is an investment and the way that I think about it is how much is your life worth how much is your quality of life worth if you are just a walking ball of stress 24/7 and you're lousy to the people around you and maybe your hashtag crushing it and work but you're miserable and you can't sleep and you got an ulcer it's probably worth taking a little bit of time to research how different modalities that will help you improve and and you never know which thing is going to just like totally change your life yeah I I think a lot of people what I'm noticing is a lot of people have like a subclinical brain disorder and I see that through I want to be cautious about how I frame this but but I see a lot of like forgetfulness out there and people are really seemingly distracted and could really benefit from this like like I'll meet people at conferences that I met maybe once in my 2007 and I can remember the face maybe not their name but say hey how you doing you work you live in you know whatever Philadelphia they're like well how'd you know that I'm not saying I'm I'm not this highly intelligent person but they have no recollection of ever even coming in contact with me right so I I see and that's just like one example we get customer service people lose our emails all the time and passwords and and I just see a lot of this same thing and I feel like is it diet related is it early onset mild cognitive impairments is it what is it are those hemispheres like you're talking about not communicating because I I'm seeing a lot of this and yeah so I think that these strategies are super helpful one thing we haven't really do – but you've kind of you know tacitly kind of talked about is psychedelics something that that I feel like if we were to talk about psychedelics five years ago people just like stop listening but now there's a lot of interest I did a video just saying like because I did ayahuasca a few years ago and then a micro dose LSD and mushrooms used to grow mushrooms I haven't done anything for like six or eight months just took a little break but this is a passion of yours and and maybe what experiences have you noticed and then what who are psychedelics for like who can benefit yeah well I'll say is sort of like give the disclaimer like we always should do is like I'm not advocating necessarily for this I'm not saying you should go out and try these like this is just my experience but the one of the best things about the float tank is that it can get you into an altered state of consciousness and that's something that cavemen did I mean that's something that you know lions are climbing up trees and eating fermented fruit and Wow and out in the grass you know elephants are eating weird seeds and and having these altered states and that goes back to Steven collars work like we seek altered states of consciousness or novel forms of consciousness and the way that we see the world like this is your seven-year-old spinning around on a tire swing to get dizzy and go whoa yeah right right like I was that kid – it felt good it felt weird it felt funny like the my perception of reality changed even hanging upside down it was a trippy thing and it still is for kids and so we our bodies and our brains we seek out these altered states of consciousness whether they're in the forms of meditation or caffeine or float tanks or whatever it's I believe that they're really important for us because if we don't do them then we forget about the importance of consciousness we're more aware of what our brains can do we're more aware of how we see the world on how we see ourselves and our places in the world when we step out of our normal again default mode Network look got a good work gotta pay the bills got a you know wag my finger and get mad at the guy in traffic like we just go to the motions so my experience my experience with psychedelics kind of go back into college and started with a you know an LSD trip at a festival I mean it was it was a it was like a 10 hour ordeal where I felt closer to my friends and I had ever felt before I felt loved everywhere I got to see you know the sort of matrix and matrices of the bark on trees in a way that I've never seen seeing a Sun Rise on on LSD is I mean an incredible thing now it is bonafide I mean the the work of Rick Doblin Maps which is the multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies who has been an advocate for psychedelic research for decades finally people are coming around their understanding that well perhaps psilocybin cubensis mushrooms can help someone deal with the stress of the end of their life this person just found out that they're gonna die and they do they are scared they are petrified they don't know what to do a moderate dose of psilocybin mushrooms might actually help them die with more grace and more peace of mind like that is a profound application of a simple little fungi right you know the the micro dosing protocols that have been served you know in our world we're really really aware of it I don't know that many people are but in the tech world and in Seattle in San Francisco people are micro dosing LSD and mushrooms to not only see problems and from a new perspective but also focus in a new way so not only see the bigger picture the macro but also activate on the micro to affect the bigger picture so now you know they're decriminalized in Denver now or gonna think is trending that direction right Yeah right like now we know what it does you know depression is the number one mental illness on the planet it is it cripples people it is it is and if you've ever if you've ever experienced depression or if you've ever known someone who is depressed it is it is the most helpless feeling because you don't know what to do and you and if it's someone that you know you don't know how to help them you can't tell them to cheer up that's the worst thing you can do so what now we're finding that applications of psilocybin mushrooms monitored in a way applied in a strategic way can actually help lift that cloud a little bit the the research is showing that it also works for anxiety and the way that I think about depression and anxiety of course is in and there this is beautiful because there's a direct parallel I believe with floatation therapy with float tanks and with meditation when you think when you're depressed you're thinking about the past why am I like this why is this going on why why why why why what's happened in the past that's screwing with me man I feel depressed about that when you're anxious you're worrying about the future what's to come what are we have to look at what look out for am I gonna make am I gonna pay my bills this week what that does is it keeps us out of the present moment we are no longer we are no longer present in this moment in this you know you and I are in flow States right now having a really awesome conversation like we're in this present moment what what psychedelics meditation floatation therapy do is it allows us to become more present in the moment and so now that we know that that mushrooms may help people with depression it may help people with anxiety and PTSD and the fact that they're gonna die in soon is a profound technology that you know if you have to go too far over the deep end but if you think about like the stone tape theory from Terence Mckenna that said like the reason that we developed language so quickly at this pivotal moment is because cavemen were walking around eating mushrooms out of cow dung on the African savannah so then suddenly they become better hunters suddenly they are able to grow their their their verbal abilities and so both personally in my experience and people that I've talked to sort of in this arena and I've gone to trainings through maps there's a thing called the zendo project which helps to reduce psychedelic harm so if you're sitting with someone and they're having quote-unquote bad trip what do you do right so this is like for Burning Man specific especially right and they have camps set up where if people are really having a hard time they can go so I went through a training and we talked a lot about sort of these effects and when you are when you're having that moment where you are no longer thinking the way that you normally do when you don't see the world the way that you normally see it you see another layer you see through sort of the BS of culture culture is such an oppressive thing I mean we we it's why people you know shoot each other over chicken sandwiches I mean culture is is it's just tricky and so when we can transcend that even for a moment for an hour for two hours for three hours with a clinical technician or with a clinician meditating in a flow tank we are outside of all of this stuff that doesn't matter at all and you can see yourself in a brand new way and maybe that lifts your depression maybe that eases your anxiety maybe that brings you closer to yourself maybe that makes you a better dad you want to go home and hug your family you know you don't want that glass of wine at night anymore you don't want that cheese burn anymore you want to eat clean because you you know yourself in a brand new way so for me you know the shaman have known it for thousands and thousands of years that this is this is an important and and in useful technology to help people transcend themselves and live better lives and we're just now catching up to it all right it's amazing well I mean even you know Steve Jobs talked a lot about you know mushrooms and psychedelics and tripping on acid and and all that so I think but yeah it takes culture like you talk about culture like it takes us a long time to kind of rethink how we because growing up where drugs are bad day or damn all this sort of thing but yeah I think the biggest hurdle for some people is like I I know a lot of people want to get into this but they're like who do i buy acid from who do I buy mushrooms from right so my my my recommendations is get a book and learn how to forage mushrooms and yeah you know watch youtube videos and things like that there's a lot of good videos out there seek out new friends that they may be able to help you I think there's a lot more people that are interested in this than you would imagine I personally prefer micro dosing LSD converting mushrooms I just I find now when I'm with people I find that acid is much better with people with when I'm doing mushrooms I like to be outside more working there's a little bit more of like how do you say like a body type hi like you feel it more like a little bit like you could take a nap almost and slow down whereas you know with micro dosing and I haven't done a full acid trip ever I'd be open to it but I haven't but it was funny a buddy of mine in Toronto was like hey do you want to micro dice LSD I was like why just lunch meeting in like two hours he's like you'll do you'll be way better yeah let's do it and accidentally took a lot more than I probably should have and so that because I could there was more visuals I went for a walk for an hour around Toronto and just saw like the trees were like alive like you could just the colors were like so vibrant right but during that meeting was really interesting I think for people that kind of lack and I'm not saying that I'm a pro with this but lack a little bit of like empathy or the ability of like emotional intelligence like I could immediately write when we sat down I could immediately feel their energy and like their objections and so I was able to like navigate the conversation in ways that I normally would just kind of push through you know and just like push my agenda where I was really kind of like okay they want to do business but like what are the hurdles what are they really looking for I was able to just like get there really quick and it was like a really good meeting that I go you should come back like this is great we'll do business together and all this and I called my buddy afterwards I was like oh my gosh you're not never gonna believe this you know him he was laughing his butt off but yeah so I think and since then I I was thinking about this like I haven't ever I used to really like wine like I would drink sometimes a bottle a night or bottle and a half when I was writing this book belly if I defect in 2013 like that was my routine is I would just stay up all night research read and get into this weird flow state like 2:00 in the morning whatever but I have like I still enjoy wine but I never I don't find myself getting drunk like or seeking that getting into that state anymore and I was trying to think was it I've been taking CBD I've been meditating I've been doing a lot of things right but it's it's kind of interesting to now to have this anchor and ball to some thing whether it's fast food or whatever for people so I think it there's a lot of applications right and so what caused that I'm not really sure but yeah yeah there's there's the the applications are immense and and the it's interesting the distinction between acid which is you know a chemical substance is manufactured versus a natural thing that's just growing out of you know dung there you find underneath you know cedar trees that it makes sense that you would want to be outside it makes sense that you would want to be around the trees you know there's another terence mckenna quote that is the plants are talking to us this is not a euphemism like it is a different type of intelligence it is a different type of sentience that we coincide with that we are in connection with and i'm with you there the the the acid the experience and in in micro dosing acid is more like prefrontal for me it's more it's more focused it's more navigational it's maybe less grounded yeah i it the the i think about how people can how people can see this out and that's what you said was really great advice like if you're interested in these sorts of things if you are interested in expanding your mind and expanding your consciousness and growing as a person outside of the prescription drugs or crossfit not to knock either of those i mean it is what it is but if if you you should go to a book reading you should go to a float center you should go to a dance hall you know you should go to a festival and just be around these sorts of people that that are that are that are way ahead of it and that have been trying for a while you know like the the everything that were that's sort of coming into popularity in the western world around you know psychedelics and stuff like that they've been applied for thousands of years you know shaman eating almani tomas Karia mushrooms in Mongolia you know the red and white mushroom that's synonymous with like Santa Claus and Christmas like they would they knew that they knew that thousand years ago you know you mentioned ayahuasca you know that that plant intelligence that's used in a ceremonial setting to get you into an altered state of consciousness where you can learn something where you can actually like improve a little bit it's it's a it's available it's out there and you have to ask yourself why am I after this what about this is interesting to me what do I want to get out of it being intentional about where you're going and what you hope to learn about yourself and your life and your trajectory should be first and foremost what am i doing because it is it is a cognitive enhancer I mean micro dosing psilocybin for an extended period of time is going to help you focus in a new way you know helps you write a book that that that is that's a cool I think that's a cool story I think that's awesome yeah I mean it's I've noticed that I I speak a lot slower in a more deliberate way like if you go back to my you know I first started podcasting I would talk really fast like this and I felt like I had to get everything out and and now it's like I don't feel like I need to do that you know maybe I was trying to prove something or whatever it but it just comes across as this frenetic energy yeah so what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of carryover here and I used to get a lot up not to talk about me the whole time but it's just one real kind of practical application you know as we film this in January it's really dark especially in Seattle right I used to be scared in the winter I was like oh my gosh like and this is I moved to Colorado after college we both went to Western Washington and Bellingham you know it gets dark and billingham and all that and I used to be really scared of the winter I would have this anticipatory anxiety about how I could get depressed where I could get this or that and since micro dosing is like winter summer whatever like I just have to be present and it doesn't scare me right so I think there's so many benefits and I don't know they're prescription SSRI is gonna have that long lasting restorative resolution debt something like this that inherently kind of builds more presence and makes more present since your brain or more awareness right so if you're already fasting you know intermittent fasting and you're getting all the nutrients that you need and I mean take care that's done first right like you know fill your body with the nutrients that it needs to perform get the right amount of sleep like go outside and stand outside barefoot go on walks after dinner like you do you know like that stuff is fundamental and then once that stuff is sort of organized then look into these new these these these other alternatives that can that that I mean it can happen so quickly it can literally change your life and bring you into the sort of person that you want to be in a pretty short period of time totally yeah and one last little anecdotal kind of sidebar a comment my wife has done if just a little bit of micro dosing mushrooms but we would do this on a Sunday and she was like well I think I should eat because it's like when I normally eat but I'm not hungry and now and she's that really like helped to reconnect the cephalic phase of digestion for her and like connect with true hunger because she was like she realized like wow is one of these people that like I felt like you know two o'clock or whatever where her feeding window was at that time this was a few years ago but I think a lot of people they're not really hungry but they think they should eat because it's gonna rev up their metabolic flame or do whatever it is they have these ideas around it and so just becoming more aware has a lot of carryover with that well Sean we could talk all day I'm sure there's topics but we have a few final questions we have to ask every guest that comes on the podcast and you're a big person about routines I know you're pretty probably intentional about how you structure your day can you kind of walk us through like the first couple hours of like how you start your day yeah so I wake up to a six year old and a three year old every single morning at either 6:10 or 6:15 I get up I well what I do to start the morning is I take a couple of deep breaths I think of one thing that I'm grateful for I change it up every single day sometimes it's family sometimes it's a home sometimes it's a healthy body sometimes it's you know a gift I got for Christmas I think of one thing that I'm grateful for I asked my kids for one thing that they're grateful for and then we go downstairs I make coffee I haven't been doing the fati coffee for a while okay um actually so I've been eating keto for you know I guess four years now intermittent fasting for two or three and I was in an ayahuasca ceremony and the shaman came up and said there's something going on with your stomach there's something down here that's like it's heavy it's heavy and I was like well I don't really know what that is and I think about it and and she goes it's you've got a you've got to get this figured out like you're you're kind of bogged down down there and so I sort of decided to switch it up and tinker around a still a keto I've sort of gravitated more towards like kind of carnivore based now so I basically just eat meat and vegetables I don't I don't double down on the fat so I don't I don't do the butter coffee I just do a really high-quality coffee I'm drinking this coffee called purity coffee it's really well tested it's got low mycotoxins it's a really high quality coffee so I'll drink that I'll make breakfast for the kids everything every single morning every morning no cereal no waffles like I make breakfast right like bacon and eggs most days and feed the kids I get them ready for school and then we sit and read a book take them to school we come back and then that's when my workday starts so like 8:45 is when I sit down and and then I work really hard focused from 8:45 until 12:30 we have to go back and get my daughter and then as a coach my schedule is really highly variable you know I'm as a coaching podcaster like I kind of gotta pick and choose but that's how I that's that's my morning routine that's awesome yeah yes you jump right into dad mode right away and got it yeah tackle that yeah yeah West my kid likes to sleep well you're big into nootropics and different supplements you know if you were just like oh man I can oh I'm going on this long trip I can only have a room for one thing what are you bringing with you still tap for sure natural Stax is the company that I work with through the podcast still tap it's all natural it's open source its third party lab tested and I have and it is you know I I went through rasa Tam's and provigil z– and alpha brains before I found silt up and it's it acts quickly it lasts a long time and isn't habit-forming so silt up for me is is is my favorite all-time all-time nootropic that's better memory better recall higher focus and longer term focus more in der mental endurance hmm I'll to read yeah what's in it like a seal or quarantine it's for ulis school Eolas forskohlii artichoke extract i think there's alpha GPC in it and then there's there's only four ingredients so it's there's something and it's all it's all disclosed so yeah everyone can see it's not like a bundled into a proprietary blend yeah when I see that I'm frustrated come on right yeah I mean because there is no real intellectual property on dietary supplements so a lot of people could just knock off so I understand why companies do that right yeah it is kind of interesting so kind of fun a question here I mean we have a big health care epidemic you know in the US and now abroad if you could influence or had ideas to influence us from top down obviously I think it'll be probably a grassroots effort that will change how people eat and move and all that what would you want to say to a politician as a way to maybe influence healthcare policy or government spending what do you think yeah after my episode with dr. Anthony J about estrogenic chemicals I think to have the greatest impact it would be to drastically regulate plastics and aromas this is this is I think a major major issue for people and they don't really think about it so many people drink water out of a disposable water bottle and not only is that terrible for the environment but the the estrogenic effect that that has in your body is is something that's not really widely talked about and it's something that we have to take really seriously it's screwing with people's hormones it's screwing with sperm count like the sperm count now of men in their 30s is half of what it was of their grandfathers there's infertility there's early puberty in boys and girls there's gynecomastia which is basically man boobs from guys and from guys eating the impossible burger and spraying Cologne and washing their hair with Herbal Essence shampoo and just just bathing in chemicals all day long and it's really screwing with people so I think that when it comes to the regulation – from the top down I think that it would have it would have to be to take a really hard look at the chemicals Monsanto included that are that are affecting our food and affecting the other consumables that we that we consume every day mm-hmm and unfortunately I mean they're just ubiquitous I mean they're everywhere I travel a lot and in every hotel or Airbnb that I've ever been an outside of maybe one air baby there's the parabens and the the different scents that you were talking about and the other persistent organic pollutants that are in just common everyday products I mean hand soaps shampoos you name it cleaning products and I think a lot of people did they haven't unfortunately gotten this message I mean for you and I were like yeah we don't buy soaps with this stuff but I think a lot of people do they go to Target Walmart Costco just get whatever is there they don't think about it because these are major brands you're like how could a big soap company like Dial be putting in something that's gonna cause me to be infertile right yeah it seems like in fathomable you like but for sure these companies would test this stuff I mean come on yeah I mean that's like the common thinking but it's not really the case but now yeah it's crazy Sean what are we gonna do man I think we gotta keep talking about it yeah we got I mean it's it is it is you're right it has to come from the bottom up it has to be from people like yourself and let me shine a little light on you your content is so great and it's so consistent and it's so clear that you live it every day I mean walking into like a modified log cabin with a wood [ __ ] wood burning fire behind me I mean this you're you're living it you know talking about headlamps for night walks after dinner and getting your steps in your ensue parens buying and so that is what it's going to take I believe is more and more conversations like this like we have to take it upon ourselves to keep talking about this because we are going to be the change makers in this thing so I'm honored to be here I'm super excited to to have this conversation and and go float for sure man let's go do it so folks want to connect with you what's the best online resource the best place to find me is Sean McCormack calm as EAN my Cormac all around my youtube channel Sean McCormack and Instagram it's real Sean McCormack and the podcast that I host is the optimal performance podcast which you have appeared on so yeah your your audience is gonna like that episode that was fun and let's give a shout to Nancy carpenter who introduced us and met at a conference was we did yeah we met at a we met at a conference a workshop by the spiritual Channel Paul Selig Paul Selig is a is a spiritual medium who channels entities and has written seven books about it he's one of the four for one of the four most intuitive practitioners on the planet and I just happened to run into Nancy so funny that's so cool yeah so it is intuition teachable yes hmm yes it is cool we are we all have that ability in it's it's something that I don't talk about very much because it freaks people out but it's an important part of my life and it's something that I've cultivated and that I've helped other people cultivate as well like sort of an intuitive ability you know you talked about having that sense of reading energy in a room when your micro dosing acid we we all can do that we all can pick up on those subtle cues and there's practices and approaches to be able to do that but yeah we've all we've all got it mm-hmm yeah I think there's that part of our subconscious or whatever that says like oh you're gonna be wrong this time or or whatever like it like we we tune it down like we turn the knob down when we should be paying attention to it yeah yeah you gotta trust your gut right you're it's almost always right mm-hmm yeah I can't remember what study was but there was there was a group of individuals where they randomized people to meet a roommate for the first time it was a college students and they knew right away with within 15 seconds whether or not they would be compatible all right I can't remember how they structured or set it up but it was a really interesting study I can't member what book it was I think it was yet one of these you know social science books that I read often times and I thought that was pretty interesting because we meet someone right and we can kind of pick up on some things and yeah we ignore it but but I think that's that's pretty cool they they you help teach people that yeah Minh and I may not be no surprise but that ability to develop you're literally you're sort of spidey sense comes from a place of stillness you have to cultivate that quietly by yourself and you can't do it watch and Dancing with the Stars you have to do it meditating or in a flow tank walking outside like there are ways to do it but it's not gonna be done when you're distracted scrolling through Instagram yeah cool let's go flow Sean thanks for coming on thanks for having me cool

#Float #Tank #Benefits #Sensory #Deprivation #Neurofeedback #Microdosing

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