Transcript of Andrew Huberman: The #1 Reason Why Faith-Based Practices Matter When It Comes To Your Mental Health

We're going to have a fun time. This audience has been learning tools to help them thrive for the last couple of days. People have flown from all over the world. There are a lot of locals here as well. How many from LA here? We got a lot of locals and others who have flown from other countries and all over the world. I wanted to make sure that we created an experience for two full days to give people tools and inspiration to help them improve the quality of their life. You talk a lot about the science and the neuroscience behind health and living a healthier life, how to maximize our brain, our bodies, and ultimately our spirit and our souls to feel more peace and harmony. You talk a lot about sunlight, getting up early and making sure you look towards the sun early on. You talk about getting quality sleep. You talk about eating well, which is a lot of what our parents or grandparents try to tell us to do as well. But sometimes we've forgotten how to do these things. But I have a bunch of questions for you here. But there's one thing we talked about backstage beforehand, which we were taking some photos backstage and before, you said you were meditating and you were praying before you came up here.

I wanted to ask you, this is not in my questions, but I wanted to ask you, is there any science or research behind prayer or faith that helps people heal their body, their mind, or their souls?

They answered for you. Well, first of all, great to be here. But truly, it's really wonderful. Believe it or not, there's quite a lot of science now about prayer and meditation, but we differentiate between those two. Work by a guy by the name of Dr. David Disteno at Northeastern University and others has really identified, first of all, a number of clear health benefits to acts of faith, including prayer. So the- Acts of faith. Acts of faith. What does that include? The mere statement that one believes in higher power or God or something larger of some kind is not sufficient to glean these health benefits. It's not a problem, but it doesn't get you any health benefits. However, people that engage in faith-based practices, pretty much of any kind, that get your mind outside itself to some extent and acknowledge something or other things outside of you, have been shown to have pretty spectacular health benefits in the short and long term. Everything from reduced cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, recovery from grief, recovery from addiction, and on and on and on. In ways that we can separate from the social connection that often goes with faith-based practices, which, of course, are also wonderful, convening people, in some cases, praying with people.

Of course, prayer and faith is a very individual thing. It's something that for a long time made scientists uncomfortable, unless you look into the history of scientists, and then you realize that many scientists actually had faith-based practices. The reason I say faith-based practices is it's different to engage in actions related to one's beliefs, as opposed to just thinking, Yeah, I believe in something greater than just- So not just saying, I believe in God, or I believe in the universe, or a high power, or whatever whatever you're saying is bigger than you.

It's not enough to just say that, but it's actually having a practice of prayer or communing with people in a faith-based practice.

That's right. I'm a long-time meditator since I was in my teens. I turned 50 in a couple of weeks. I still am. Yeah. And feeling good. Thank you. Meditation for me started off as a standard 20 minute a day or 10 minutes a day. It soon went to zero minutes per day type practice as it does for many of us, it's very difficult for people to maintain a meditation practice. Very few people do that. It's a wonderful practice, as you know, for reducing stress, giving often insight, allowing more creativity. There are many, many hundreds of studies on this now. But the practice that I really embrace starting back in 2017 that I'm a huge proponent of is traditionally called yoga nidra. This has been something that's been known about for thousands of years and done for thousands of years. It involves lying down, doing some long exhale breathing. We can talk about why that's beneficial, which lowers the heart rate, among other things. The body scan, getting the mind out of thinking and doing as they say in these yoga Nidra scripts, and to one of just being and feeling, one in pure sense compensation.

That's my meditative practice. I coined that somewhat reluctantly as non-sleep-depressed because I thought that would bring more people to the practice. But I acknowledge that's a thousands-of-year-old practice that was not developed by me, was developed by others. That's a form of meditation in the sense that you're not in a dialog with anything outside yourself. Prayer, I think we all know what that is, is something quite different. That's something that I've always done. In the past, it was somewhat covert prayer for me. I didn't really acknowledge that I pondered an existence of a higher power. I wouldn't say a religiously a divided family, but their beliefs and value systems were, let's just say, very diverse within my family. It was a point of confusion for a long time. Then starting about a year and a half ago, I got into a regular practice of prayer, daily, or it's actually nightly for me. The way I do it doesn't really matter because, again, it's highly individual. But it's a communication with a non-human entity for me in praying to God. People do this very differently. Again, I think it can make some scientists uncomfortable because you say, well, you're supposed to be a person of science.

You're supposed to be objective. Scientists and theologians have gone back and forth that, Can you prove? Can you disprove? As Dr. David D'Asteno points out, it becomes irrelevant at the point where you acknowledge that the human brain, I think we can all acknowledge that the human brain is spectacular. It can change itself. It can make plans. It can enact those plans. There's a reason why we are the curators of the Earth. We have brains that are far more sophisticated in terms of our ability to build technologies than any other species. Here, I, of course, acknowledge the incredible sophistication of other species. But humans are the ones basically in charge of taking care of this planet. And yet human brains alone, and even in combination, are spectacularly terrible at solving certain problems. Every time we see a challenge in the world, as we do many challenges these days, but recently, some of these have been highlighted again and again. It's hard to not just acknowledge that and see that and think, are we progressing? So then people cite statistics, right? They say, well, 100 years ago, things were far more violent or difficult, and infectious disease was worse, et cetera.

But somehow you'd think, well, shouldn't we have it right by now? Shouldn't we be able to control our behavior, resolve our differences? That, to me, personally, I'm just revealing my personal beliefs, is where acknowledging that humans are not equipped to have all the answers. That's where I look to my training as a neuroscientist. I say, We understand a fair amount about how the brain works, certainly not everything. I don't think that the human brain, for all its beauty and abilities, is capable of managing everything that life here on Earth presents to us. For me, this notion of higher power and faith-based practice has been enormously powerful for me in terms of helping me navigate decision space, come to clearer understanding about what emotions that exist in me and in others mean. Again, it's a very personal thing for each and every one of us, and I acknowledge that. But it's something that the science is really demonstrating has immense benefits as well.

What have you personally gained in the last year and half since diving deeper into the practice of faith and prayer for you? Whether you've researched it or not, what has personally been supportive for you?

It's a work in progress.

Have you Are you seeing health benefits or mental benefits?

For once, I can answer in one word, which is peace. Oh, wow. That's good.

Wow. Did you not have a lot of peace before you started this practice?

No. Really? I could find joy. I could find happiness. I like to think I could find meaning in my work and relationships. But I didn't have that notion or that I sense this really core belief that I now hold that I'm not supposed to have all the answers of how to bring about peace. I pray for, among other things, peace for myself, for others. One of the things that I found to be most beneficial, and we've heard all this in the psychology studies, is actually praying for those that you dislike the most. Actually, I didn't think we were going to go this direction. I didn't either.

But you brought it to me last time.

I'm going to try not to take the entire hour by doing this, but when I sit up on my seat, that's where I'm getting at. Let's go. Okay, may I? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so yesterday, two days ago on my podcast, I had a guy on my podcast by the name of Christoff Kosh. He's a luminary of neuroscientists who's been studying consciousness for the longest time. That episode will come, I believe, Monday. But the point is not to plug the episode. The point is that I asked him, What is consciousness? We have a conversation about that. I asked him about how one changes the brain. I know a thing or two about that, and he does. I was learning from him as well. Then we got to this point of there seems to be two bins right now, broadly speaking, two bins of mindsets about the world that we see around us, which, of course, is filled with wonderful things, but also is filled with very troubling things, including questions about whether or not we're evolving or devolving, frankly, whether or not social media is good or bad. I think we all acknowledge that these answers are somewhere in the gray zone.

We got to the point during this podcast discussion, which was an agreement that there seemed to be two stances that one could take about life. One is live and let live. Look, as long as somebody's not harming anybody else, live and let live. The other is one of moral judgment where we feel infringed upon by people's choices. I think we all have the capability to go into either of those. If we acknowledge that that's been the case throughout human history, and very likely is going to be the case going forward, then I don't think we can expect things to get that much better, as long as those two bins exist. The question is how to get outside of this, what Christoff calls it different perception boxes. He made up that term, I didn't. These These are boxes of perception based on what neuroscience we call priors, which is nerd speak for your own personal history and memories. You believe certain things based on how you're raised and your experiences. Other people believe different things, different perception boxes. How do we get outside it? By the end It was that very long conversation, and I basically came to the conclusion that I started with at the beginning of the conversation, which is that humans don't have all the answers.

We can't do it ourselves because the brain is just not equipped to do that. It's We're up to do many wonderful things, but the brain is so context-dependent, it's so self-perception box-dependent. We're all looking out at the world through these boxes that are built on our personal histories and beliefs. Unless we were to embark on a worldwide experiment where we all try and enter the minds of other people and develop immense empathy and make that a project, it's very, very hard. I think we can assume that many of the same problems are going to continue to show up, but in different form. If we I believe, if we really want to evolve our species, and evolution is often discussed as a cornerstone of non-religion, but if we want to do that, we're going to have to embrace the idea that we can't do it alone. We need some outside guidance. We have to because otherwise, it's going to be human brains which are fallible, making fallible choices despite best of intentions because of these perception boxes. I don't have a stance of pessimism. We also talked about, and maybe this is a segue, perhaps, to more daily life things.

But on one end of the continuum, we have optimism and curiosity and neuroplasticity plasticity, the ability to change our minds in ways we want. On the other end of the continuum, we have cynicism. I think the most dangerous thing to bring change to plasticity is cynicism. I'm absolutely convinced that cynicism Cynicism is the enemy of all good things. What is that? Cynicism is the belief like, Yeah, well, people are... Fill in the blank. Any statement that dismisses the possibility of change. A negative thing. Could be a group, could be about yourself. The worst thinking, and there's science to support this. I have a colleague at Stanford who studies this. The worst thing for brain plasticity is cynicism, because by definition, cynicism is in the idea that things are one way and they're not going to change. Curiosity is an interest in what might be there or could be there, sometimes layered with an emotional hope that it might be a certain answer. But real true curiosity is about Wondering and wanting to find out and doing the work to find out, understanding that the answer might be one thing or another. Curiosity and neuroplasticity are absolutely linked.

In In fact, if you look at the great minds throughout history that seem to be great learners throughout their lifespan, the great Richard fineman among them, the great Oliver Sacks, neurologist writer among them, they were curious about many, many different things besides science, art, animals, nature, And curiosity is something that we can breed inside ourselves. It takes more work for some than others. But curiosity is basically the gateway to brain change. I'm certain of it, and the data support that. Cynicism is the way you make your brain filled with cement. You take what you got now and you cap it off and you go, I guess I'm just going to live out the rest of my years, believing this, believing that, and not just about other people, but about ourselves. I truly believe that with each phase of life. I can say these things now because I'm turning 50. With each phase of life, I think the real work for us to do is the same work we did as we were children when we were children, which is to embrace the learning and the curiosity about what's being presented to us in this next frontier of life, the next month, week, year, and trying to evolve into it, evolve with it, as opposed to clinging to these notions of self.

The Buddhist talked about this as ego detaching from the ego or disillusion of the ego. But I think ultimately, since simple things tend to stick with us, cynicism is the enemy, curiosity and neuroplasticity is hope, basically. Wow.

I'm so excited about this because a lot of the things we've been talking about, my man down here said he came back this year. Tell me your name again. Corpus. Corpus came back this year from last year. And I said, Why did you come back? He said, To help me overcome the negative thinking in my life because it just keeps coming, creeping back in. And what I'm hearing you say is that the cynicism sounds a lot like negative thinking. Doubting myself, doubting what's possible, doubting Could I actually do this thing? Is that similar to negative thinking and cynicism?

Yes. Cynicism is it's anchored in this core belief that things can't change. If they do, not much. If they do change much, then they're going to change back. It's work to be curious. This is what we forget. It's like any time we see a great performance of someone in the arts, we think that it just came to them. Virtuosity does not arrive by chance. It's built on tons of work, and we know that. The work to make our minds perhaps not optimistic, maybe optimistic is too lofty to really reach for. We just try and remain curious. Why the cynicism? Ask questions. I mean, the best way to trigger brain plasticity is to ask questions of oneself. Going back to this thing about prayer, that's also something you can pray for. You can acknowledge that the brain, our brains, all of us, are stuck within our own modes of thinking. I mean, this is so wild. You talked about the kids, right? The kids. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. Because otherwise it's like...

We had a gender reveal the whole thing yesterday.

Because if not, I just... He's having twins. He talked about the kids. No, we didn't. For many years, I taught human fetal brain development, so we could talk about that. Perfect. But the point here is that the most incredible thing, the most incredible thing, is that all our brains built themselves. Don't get me wrong, your wife's doing a lot of the work, and you're doing this much. But your brain built itself. It took the genetic instructions and built itself. Sure, nutrients come in. We need to support it. There's a communication between mother's body and fetus, of course, but it built itself. Then the human brain can self-direct its own change. Now, fetal development is a miracle. It's a spectacular miracle that you join two cells, sperm and an egg, and you get a baby. That's crazy. In your case, you get two babies because you're ambitious. I think that the most important... I'm going to say it's the most important thing, like 50 times, I realize. A key thing to understand is that we don't have infancy, childhood, adolescence, teen years, adult, and that's it. Development is Our whole life is a developmental progression. Some of the great psychologists, like Erichson, understood that at every stage of life, we're dealing with some core conflict that we need to resolve.

He was smart enough to understand that it's not like you become an adult at 25 and your brain's wired up. By the way, I just found out that for men, the myelination, the unsheathing of the neurons with the tissue that allows for fast transmission between neurons doesn't occur until 50. Yeah, I know. You'll notice mostly female laughter in that one. It's a frequency shift.

Two more weeks.

Oh, man, you got it in for you. You're so stoked. I'm so happy for him. I really am. To see your friends who, obviously, Lewis, is going to be a spectacular father. This is so awesome. Thank you. Thank you, brother. It's going to be so much fun. So brain change is not easy. It's more and more difficult as time goes on, but it's a skill. It's a skill that can be mastered any other. We could talk about ways to access it. I've talked about that on various podcasts. We say you got to be alert, you got to be focused, okay, you need to be alert to be focused, and you engage in some learning process, and it's going to feel hard, it's difficult. It turns out that the challenge the friction of learning, the errors themselves, or the signals back on the learning system that it should change, which makes sense when you hear it, but then we all are looking for flow states. The notion of flow states is wonderful, but flow states are something that are a higher order thing. When you start reaching for them, it disappears and it's like grabbing for fog.

You have to go back to this alertness, focus, effort, errors. That means you're doing everything right. Every time you have a cynical thought, but you're like, There it is again. Actually, I'm going to sound like a name dropper, but he's a close friend of mine. I just spent a couple of weeks with him each summer as I do. Rick Rubin, who's a master of creating things. We talked a lot about meditation. Now, Rick's awesome. Just such a nice person, too. He is a long-time meditator, and his process of meditating is very simple, but there's a very powerful tool within the meditations that he had never told me about. I'm pissed that he didn't tell me about it earlier, which was, he said, when he's meditating, which, by the way, he does every day, I observed it, and a thought comes up, he just labels it with a little sticky thought. That's a thought. When we We can start watching our own mental processes. We can start seeing things like, Oh, I'm in friction. There's an error here. I need to try harder. You start to observe yourself learning, and you get better at that process.

Frustration becomes the prerequisite. All that's good and fine. Then you need to sleep at some point. I've talked a lot about sleep and how to access sleep on the podcast. Sometimes you actually access sleep on the podcast because they're very long. I always joke, If nothing else, I'm going to cure insomnia. But really, serious hat tip acknowledgement to the great Matt Walker, author of Why We Sleep, because I would like to point out that 10 years ago, the mindset in the high-performance community, it was like, We'll sleep when I'm dead. A lot of those people are now dead. But Matt was the first one to really start beating the drum like, Hey, this sleep thing is important. Now, you don't want to get sleep-related anxiety about getting sleep. But during sleep, in particular Usually the second half of your sleep night, the brain rewires, you get neuroplasticity. Okay, all that's fine and good. But if we really think about neuroplasticity, how can we accelerate this process of learning? The real process of accelerating neuroplasticity and learning absolutely comes from clearing away the clutter and accessing the things that for us feel most true, even as we're making errors.

There's something really pleasureful about digging through a learning process. It's very hard when we have to learn something we don't want to learn. Here's what's very interesting about the neuroscience literature over the last couple of years, which is that the release of dopamine actually occurs often in response to errors that we make while trying to learn. Here again, we thought dopamine was pleasure. We know it's motivation. We know it's a number of other things. But here it's also released in response to errors that we make which wake up the brain that has the opportunity to change. Rick and I were, and he gave me no permission to talk about this, but I'm just going to do it anyway. Because we decided it's interesting. There are all these meditations. There's love and kindness meditation, there's yoga Nidra, non-sleep deep rest. There's even forms of hypnosis out there. But wouldn't it be amazing if we could place our brain into particular states to do the things that we want to do? This is my real wish and my real work over the next year or so. I don't even think these are meditations, but the practice that I I encourage you all to try is very brief, is these days we know we're being bombarded with tons of content.

We essentially walk around with little TVs, like little TVs all the time. Then we're like, I don't know why I can't focus. You're watching TV all the time. But our brains are very context dependent. The way to think about the way your brain works is that in certain states of mind, your mind and your focus is like a ball bearing on a flat surface, and it can go anywhere if you tilt that surface. As you get more focused, imagine little dimples in that surface, and it can drop into any one of those dimples. The thing that we're all seeking is for the ball bearing to drop into a deep trench and be locked there for as long as we want and then out. But typically, it's the other way around. We get locked into these states that are either because our emotions have been grabbed by something external or because we're upset about something and so on and so forth. It's very hard for us to get that ball bearing down into the trench of the thing that we know we need do. The practice that I've been developing for myself is one in which I acknowledge this.

I acknowledge that the world is noisy, my brain is noisy. I have a practice now of about one to three minutes. Believe it or not, I just scripted it out onto a voice memo. I do believe that when we do it in our own voice, and I encourage you all to do it in your own voice, it's more powerful than listening to someone else's voice, because after all, it's your voice. I highly recommend I'm recording three voice memos or four voice memos. The first one is one that you tell yourself, there's a lot of noise in my head, there's a lot of noise in the world, and I'm going to get distance from that noise. For me, the visual is one thing. I can share it with you, but for you, it might be another where I just imagine the noise moving further and further away. I'm still acknowledging I'm in the world and it's happening, but it's like ripples moving further and further away. After about three minutes, I shift to a different voice memo, which is This sounds so crazy, but knowing what I know about the brain, I figured it's not quite as crazy, which is then I listen to a one to three minute script about focusing, which is really to try and acknowledge that focus is something that constantly drifts until we're in a flow state, That focus is a process of redirecting our attention, redirecting, redirecting, redirecting.

I had Alex Honold on the podcast, the guy that we were all terrified to watch Free Solo up L Cap, probably more than he was. Amazing. That's the craziest movie. We know he lives from the first frame of the movie. It's still terrifying. But in that state, he's got so much to anchor his mind that I doubt he's pushing away lack of focus. But for most of us, because it's not life or death circumstances, you have to acknowledge that you're constantly pushing away things and you have to refocus, refocus, refocus. It turns out people that are very good at accessing flow states have powerful activation of what's called the no-go pathway. There are two pathways of in the brain in a brain circuitry called the basal ganglia, a number of different brain areas. One is go, to generate movements or thoughts. The other is no go, to try and suppress movements or thoughts. Flow states are mainly accessed, mainly by the no go process. The more you can shift out of your mind cynicism and try and redirect, for instance, to curiosity, the more you're in a no go, that way, yes, that way. This second short script is what I use to visualize focus.

Sometimes I actually will think about Alex's climb as a the pinnacle of an example of focus. Then I'll go into something I really need to do. This might sound silly or overly structured, but I'll tell you what's really silly. What's really silly is that voice in my head saying, You should do this thing. Now, I got to do this thing. Oh, wait, there's a text message. Then three hours later, you're a little fatigued and you need lunch, and then you're a little fatigued because you ate lunch. Then the next thing you know, the thing didn't get done. I'm talking about a one to three minute investment to clear, get distance. That's it. Get distance from noise, a one to three minute script to acknowledge the focus process and get into it, and then to do the thing. That we procrastinate the thing that we can just avoid until it becomes a deadline or it's terrifying or it's passed. Now, here's the real key to plasticity. Those steps are required, but the real key is when you finish out what you're doing, your focused work on whatever is most important to you. At some point later that day, you need to reflect on what happened in that work about.

This is so important. If you remember nothing else that I said, please take this away. We know now, based on the neuroplasticity of learning literature and how best to study and that whole mountain of literature, that the best way to remember information is to not forget it, which sounds like I'm joking. No, it sounds like I'm joking. I know. I was like, I have to get in before the-How do you not forget it? Here's the thing, you self-test. Every bit of learning turns out to be anti-forgetting. I know it sounds like it's just a twist on words, but here's the experiment that's been done many times now. I give you a passage to read four times or one time or two times. In some cases, I have you self-test just in your mind for a few minutes later that day. Then I wait three to six months, and I come back and I test you on the material. Turns out reading something Six months and self-testing later and realizing you don't remember it all, but you remember certain things, allows you to remember significantly more information six months later than had you read it four times.

It's the reflection on the thing that we did earlier that locks it in. I'll give you an example of a ton of sensory exposure with a ton of focus and a ton of attention that you devote every single day and you remember nothing of. If you were to think, okay, last night, you probably yesterday, you probably scrolled social media at some You didn't think about it afterwards. Do you know how many dog posts I look at? If I think about it now, I'm a little afraid to do this because I don't want to remember the Wiener dog sleeping in first class thing that I saw yesterday, and now it's stuck in me. Social media is wonderful. You can learn there, you can connect there. But when we reflect on the thing that we did or that we learned, in particular, the errors that we made, you lock in the critical information. You prevent forgetting. It turns out that most information that comes in through our eyes and ears, et cetera, is designed to be discarded, which is why reading something four times doesn't allow you to remember it that well compared to reading it once.

Yes, your mind will drift. Then later that day going, Okay, what do I remember? I'm tired. I don't remember that. I remember that piece. Okay, I'm going to go back and look up that piece. So testing is not just something that we should experience of others testing us. Self testing on knowledge or skill, or this could be Physical skill, musical skill. It could be relational interaction. I mean, how many people after couples therapy take a walk by themselves and go, Yeah, what did I really learn? Maybe that's why I should do more of it. Who knows? But the point is that we don't do this. We tend to think that the experience is the experience. The learning was the learning. It turns out you can learn so much faster. You can learn so much more durably. There's a terrible instance in life where we know this works, which is in case of trauma and things we don't want to think about later. The replay later is critical. Replay later is critical. If it's not happening automatically, as is often the case, you need to do that for yourself. Then the force... I have a one to three minute script which reminds me of this.

It says, Andrew, the data I'll tell you, and I already know it, but it's useful to have a practice. This is why, dare I say, we coined the word protocols, even though it existed before, because in laboratories, you would say, what's the protocol to stain these cells for dopamine or something? Protocols, to me, make sense as a word, because it's supposed to be a list of things that you do that work the first time and every time to get you someplace. It's critical that we acknowledge that our brains are just not good at doing all the steps without a little bit of self-guidance. Then the question becomes, what self-guidance? Then the question becomes, well, how can that self-guidance be weaved into my day in a way that's seamless and easy and quick and doesn't cost anything. I'm giving you some examples of these. This is simply what I've been doing and I found to be very useful. Neuroplasticity does exist across the lifespan, but in a acknowledgement of a reality, it's harder to learn now than it was in my 20s. But I think with these practices, I find that it's not that much harder.

All the data tell us that our brains plastic throughout our entire lifespan. I encourage you to think about these not as meditations. The word that comes to mind is activations. You're trying to place your brain into particular states that have you less noisy in your head, more focused for the second one, then you do the thing, whatever that is, and then in a state of reflection to really lock in the plasticity that you'll experience that night or the next night's when you sleep. That's basically what it is. Sorry, there was probably another question, and I just kept rico. No, it's amazing.

I haven't even gotten to the first question. I haven't even-So I'll stop. I have all the questions for a whole episode on the protocols of greatness, but you just kicked it off so beautifully that I was like, All right, we'll have to do another one later. I was just in flow state watching you, man. I'm like, It's amazing. You got so much information. I'm curious for you, When you were talking about the self-guided meditation, essentially, these voice notes, this is something I did 22 years ago when I was in college playing sports. I would record voice notes, not on a phone back then, but on a voice recorder, and I would sync music to it to create an emotional feeling for myself, like a motivational song with my words over it. I played a night and tried to anchor in this feeling of belief in myself for the next day, for practice, for games, for things like that. You are just reminding me now that I need to do that again, these voice notes. Do you have music over them, or is it just a voice note for two minutes that you just say to yourself and listen to?

For me, there's no music. It's just dialog. It's funny. Like 10, 15 years ago when you were doing this, you said 20 years ago? Okay. You look so young. It was 20 years ago. You were like an info. College. No? Okay. You know a lot of the The stuff that we now know is supported by science was people were like, Oh, that's like breathwork. Are you going to levitate, too? I was like, Well, if I could, I would. But it's been just a little bit of an editorial here. It's been really interesting to me. My lab worked on respiration physiology. We used to call it breathwork. We didn't call it that because that sounded like mysticism. It's really interesting that science is evolving. Meditation, there's tons of peer-reviewed, federally-funded studies on meditation. Thank goodness. Also on yoga Nidra, lowers cortisol, helps you sleep, helps you learn better. I mean, respiration. Basically, the breathing thing is all pretty straightforward. The conclusion I've come to after all these years of looking Everything from Wim Hof breathing to Kundalini breathing to physiological sign to box breathing, to all of it is that if you emphasize the exhales, make them longer or more intense than the exhales, your heart rate slows down, you get calmer.

If you emphasize the exhales relative to the exhales, your heart rate goes up, you tend to be more alert. You do a combination of the two, you can be very alert and very calm at the same time. It works through respiratory science, say, arrhythmia and the motor and the sensory branch of the vagus and the diaphragm and carbon dioxide and oxygen. But basically longer, deliberate exhales calm you down. Longer, more intense exhales, wake you up. I'm not trying to trivialize hundreds of studies, some of which I got very involved in for a long time, but that's basically the crux of it. But for many years, science and my community of scientists, they weren't disparaging of it. They're like, Oh, yeah, I don't know. That seems a little weird. Then I'm like, Well, you look stressed, and maybe you should do it. Likewise with the sunlight thing, right? People have been talking about getting morning sunlight for thousands of years. All of the circadian biology, all of it tells us that it's extremely valuable for elevating your morning alertness, which we could talk about the mechanism for that, improving your sleep and things that I've blabbed about for a long time.

When we talk about adding music, music is an incredibly powerful anchor for emotions. There's something really special about the music that a company Any particular life events with other people we care about. I'm sure you can remember the song they played at your first dance after being married, this thing. You'll probably play music as your babies are being born. That would be awesome.

Every time we play music, they start dancing inside. It's cool. We got to start moving.

Amazing. He's so stoked.

Yeah, it's going to be fun.

I love it. You make me cry, man. Don't do that. Don't do that. Okay. Yeah, don't do that.

Hubertman never It never shows any emotion. He's very scientific.

Yeah, I'm a real robot. Actually, last year, I cried on two podcasts. No. Stephen Bartlet's podcast, I welled up and I was like, and then when Martha Beck was on my podcast, she made me cry. Oh, wow. Yeah, she made me cry. Talking about my Bulldog, Costello. I told my producer, Rob, I looked at him. He's been in every podcast we've ever done. When it was just me, him and Costello, in my little closet into a paying good. I After we wrapped with Martha and I go, We're not releasing that. He goes, We're definitely releasing that. I was like, Oh, man, I still can't watch it. Emotions are good. Emotions are good. Emotions are good. Emotions are good. Emotions are good. Emotions are good. What happened? I'm half Latin, man. My dad's Argentine. It's like the- I'm curious.

Speaking of emotions, what happens to the brain or the body when we express our emotions, whether it be through tears, through crying, through physiological release of some type? What happens when we do it and when we block the flow of emotions that we want to release, but then we stiffen up?

Well, unless it's... Okay, so feeling emotions, obviously, is healthy. The ability to feel your feelings. What's probably not healthy is catharsis directed at somebody else.

Like, angry you mean?

Screaming at them, screaming at yourself. I've let out some pretty loud gels at myself that were pretty effective, I think. There's a time and a place for it. We know that pushing down of emotion is not healthy. We know that. But of course, we have to behave ourselves. All the data tell us that this vagus nerve thing, I did an episode about this last year that really opened up my eyes. We all know that mind and body are connected. The vagus is the connection between the mind and body. More serotonin is made in the gut than the brain. But I had no idea. Even though I teach neuroanatomy, I had no idea how far the research has come in the last four years. Basically, the vagus can be summarized this way. It collects sensory information from your whole body, heart rate, lungs, how full they are, your gut, the status of your... Conscious and unconscious stuff. Stuff, and it's sent up to your brain. 85% of the vagus nerve pathway is sensory. It's stuff going up to your brain. It's feeding your information, feeding your brain information, excuse me, about the status of your body and what it's experiencing.

Then There's about 20% that's descending information that is motor. It's controlling your heart rate. It's controlling how full your lungs get or how not full your lungs get. It's a bi-directional pathway. We've heard so much about it being parasympathetic. It's a calming system. But it turns out that it's a system that's positioned to understand when you're packing something down. That packing down that we're all familiar with because it's not the appropriate time for something or you You just don't want to feel what you're feeling. Stuffing. Yeah. Sadly, I can say, and I think I'm certainly not alone in this, I can remember one particular event in my childhood history where I remember feeling something and I was like, wow, that's good. I can do that. I can pack that. That turned out to be not so great. That's not good. It was not so great. But the ability to pick time and place and way of expressing emotions is obviously key. But emotions are the gateway to plasticity. Your music experience and practice. It certainly acknowledges that. We talk about peak and awe experiences. We never forget those. On the darker side of things, traumatic experiences, we can unload the emotional component of those through things like cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, R.

These days, there's a lot of interest in it's not really a psychedelic, but in pathogenic therapies like MDMA, which, by the way, is still schedule one. It's still illegal. I have to point that out. Maybe we'll get FDA approval this year. If you ask me, I'm hoping for FDA approval, but they need the proper safety checks in place. The question is, who are going to be the therapist? How is this therapy going to be done when people are in a state of vulnerability? Some really serious issues. Despite what you could say about government and the FDA under any political leadership. They really do. There are good people who want to protect people from harm. But I think with empathogenic help, you can learn to more easily and have empathy for self is a big part of being able to tolerate emotion. Emotions are a wonderful aspect of life. It's about being able to control time, place, and way of expression. But yeah, I think crying into your pillow every once in a while is pretty healthy. Good thing. Yeah, I do. I think it's a good thing to do, and no one has to see it unless you do it on a podcast.

Okay, I'm going to try to get to my first question. I still haven't gotten to the first question.

I'll keep going on. I don't care. This is great. I love this. It's up to you. People probably want to go see the Canelo fight, or they want to go out to dinner.

Canelo is fighting tonight, right?

Yeah, I know.

It's all right. It's okay. We're all hanging out tonight. I know what's going on.

I'm perfectly happy to miss the fight.

Yeah, I'll see the replay. This is all about the protocols to greatness. Again, I wanted to give you guys the best of the best here at Summit of Greatness. This man is the most popular scientist in the world, the biggest following in the world. He's changing lives. I'm curious for you if you had to say, These are my top three. Top three science-backed protocols to support you personally. The evidence is just abundantly clear that if you follow these science-back protocols, you will have more peace, more clarity, more focus, more freedom, more of what you really want in your life. What would those three things be?

All right, well, I'm going to take a freebie and tell you Perfect. Because I'll just reiterate earlier. It's interesting you started with prayer. You're like, Let's go in the deep end here first. I do think that when we feel least able to control our mind and where it goes, that's an especially good time for something like prayer, where you give it over. It's not your task to handle everything. It certainly isn't the task of other people in your life. I mean, that's another benefit that I've noticed is that meditation, prayer, they unburden a lot of people in your life that I was otherwise burdening to solve things or to reflect back things. I mean, we're a crazy species, and we love love, and we don't like to feel angry, and then it can get all mixed up, and it's tough. When you just acknowledge and you just ask for feelings to be taken away so that you can have more clarity and more depth of connection with the things in your life and the people in your life. Anyone who's done this knows it works. I can't tell you why. I love that I can't tell you why.

For once, it's a short sentence. I don't know why, but it works. Okay, The other three. The other three, I talk so much about this morning sunlight thing that it's almost like a joke by now. It's like a meme. I keep seeing it, the morning sunlight thing where long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate or NSDR. I do think nowadays, thankfully, something that, by the way, back in the day when I was a teenager in my 20s and 30s, resistance training, it's all going to turn to fat. That's only for bodybuilders and military. It's like, no, everyone needs to do this. Now everyone knows they need to do it. Basically, whatever they're saying right now is ridiculous, that's the future. Have you caught on to the pattern? Whatever that people go, that's ridiculous. This whole creatine craze is pretty interesting to me. I don't think everyone needs to take it, but there are some benefits for many people. It's not necessary. But creatine has been around a long time. It just only broke through now. Vitamin D3 made it first for some reason, and then magnesium will probably be next. Just remember, not everything is safe, but whatever is being chuckled at now is very likely to be the thing in 10 years, five years.

I think rather than give you three protocols, I'll give you a framework that encompass all the protocols. I'll try and keep this brief. When I was a little kid, my mom... No, seriously, my mom, bless her soul, I She would say to me, we'd be in the kitchen, and she'd say, Sweetie, we're just going to take two minutes, and we're going to stop talking. I was like, But why are we going to stop talking? When I was really little, the reason this worked is, okay, half-Argentian. We call the pacifier, the chupete. I used to have one in my mouth, and I carry one in each hand, so I learned how to talk out the side of my mouth. What they should have done is just said, Just shut up and send the corners. But in all seriousness, here's the deal. You want your cortisol, this so-called stress hormone. It's not a stress hormone. You want your cortisol high in the hours after you wake up. I don't care if you wake up at 5: 00 AM, 4: 00 AM, 8: 00 AM, noon. It doesn't matter to me. Do what works for you and your schedule and your life.

You You want your cortisol low at night. Use that as the bookends and the framework of your days, and you'll be amazed how many things go incredibly well. Here's the deal. Viewing bright light, ideally from sunlight, in all the ways I've described elsewhere, I won't rattle off all the details, take off your sunglasses, put on glasses and contacts are fine, etc. Blink as needed, protect your eyes, all that stuff. In the first hour after you wake up, doesn't matter what time you wake up, doesn't matter where the sun is, although I'll place a caveat on that, you have a unique opportunity in that first hour to amplify your cortisol levels. You wake up because your cortisol levels rise. It's called the cortisol awakening response. You actually wake up in the morning because of that. Most people are keeping themselves in environments that are too dim in that first hour. Your phone won't do it. A 10,000 lux artificial light will if you don't have access to sunlight, but get outside and get just a little bit of sunlight. You'll amplify that cortisol. Guess what? After about two hours, going outside will feel nice. Going outside will feel warm.

That sunlight won't amplify your cortisol. Drinking caffeine, provided your regular caffeine drinker, won't amplify your cortisol. It'll extend the duration of your morning cortisol. Exercise will. Get surprisingly, deliberate cold exposure, won't. Amplifies epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine, the so-called catecholamines, but it doesn't amplify your cortisol. Now you say, Wait, cortisol is a stress hormone. I don't want to be puffy. I don't want visceral fat anymore than I already have. What are you talking about? Here's the deal. Your cortisol is going to go up and it's going to go down every 24 hours. The higher it is in the morning, the lower it's going to be at night and the easier it's going to be to fall asleep. If you look at conditions like cancer, you look at conditions like PTSD, you look at anxiety, you look at mild or major depression, what you see is what's called a flattening of the cortisol response. Instead Instead of a big peak in the morning and then it tapering off into the afternoon at night, you see this gradual tapering off. The higher it is later in the afternoon, the easier it is for little bouts of stress to ride on top of that higher baseline.

Then you find it, typically people can fall asleep if they're exhausted. Then at 2: 00, 3: 00 in the morning, you wake up. So get your cortisol high in the morning. There are a bunch of other things you can do. Believe it or not, eating grapefruit will double the duration of that peak in the morning. So that's Cool. I like great fruit. You don't have to do that. Licorice root with something called glycerin greatly amplifies your cortisol. But here I have to say, be careful. First of all, don't take licorice root late in the day. That glycerin will greatly extend the activity of any prescription drugs you're taking because it works on some enzymes in the cortisol, but other pathways, too. You have to be careful. You could take a little bit of licorice root with The glycerin. Actually, many licorice root products and teas, they have the glycerin out because it increases cortisol. Exercise, bright light, taffine, great fruit, licorice root, these are very basic things. People with Cushing syndrome, be careful. It's a whole other thing. Talk to an endocrinologist. Now, ashwagandha, the herb, rather, that everybody knows can reduce cortisol, and it does have a fairly potent cortisol-reducing effect.

You wouldn't want to take it in the morning, would you? If you are going to experiment with it. It would be in the evening. I don't think you should take high dosages of it, at least not for long periods of time. It is very potent at lowering cortisol. By the way, pregnant women, the cortisol rhythm of high, low in morning versus night, it's maintained. Perimenopause, menopause, it's maintained, but it tends to flatten a bit around the transition between perimenopause and menopause. Doing a few extra things to try and make the peak higher will make the trough lower later in the day. Then at night, just think about all the things you would do in the morning to increase your cortisol and do the opposite. Keep the lights dim because it doesn't take much light in the evening to raise your cortisol. Long exhale breathing. Certainly avoid things like licrish root and caffeine. We know these things. So pretty soon you go, Wait, the protocols just fall into these bins. Of course, you can't do all of them every day, and you need to be careful about which ones you select. But if you think about cortisol, not as a stress hormone, but what its real function is, the real function production of cortisol is to mobilize glucose and other energy stores to your brain and body.

That's why it wakes you up in the morning. And guess what? If you sleep with too much bright light in your room, even with your eyes closed, if you don't use an eye mask, morning blood glucose is elevated. This was published last year or two years ago in a really fine journal. Makes sense, right? Cortisol is released and it causes elevations in blood glucose. So now we can regulate our blood glucose with cortisol? Yes. This is the way it works. And For me, I'll continue to pursue and evolve protocols and share protocols. We talked a little bit earlier about these short one to three minutes. I call them activations because they're not really meditations. I'm trying to create a certain neural state to be able to do things. I just call them that. That was Rick Rubin's idea. He's so damn smart. He was like, Well, they're not really meditations. And he goes, Activation. Activation. I'm like, Damn. Well, that's why you're Rick Rubin, right? By the way, he was in the Beastie Boys. You know that? He wasn't just a producer. Yeah. Go back and watch the first video. Yeah, he's the big guy with the beard that back then was not a big white beard.

It was a big brown beard. If you imagine these bins for your morning and evening, it all falls into place. Then you say, Well, wait, does that mean I can't go out dancing at night? But guess what? Going out dancing at night, you're not elevating your cortisol. It's a stressful experience. Look, it's okay to get some bright light exposure after dark every once in a while. You're going to be getting a lot of that. Actually, I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to give you something. We all heard of red light therapy. It's great. Increases mitochondrial function for reasons we can talk about. By the way, you can get it from sunlight, long wavelength light from sunlight. It goes through your body. This was shown by my colleague, Glenn Jeffrey, and it improves your mitochondria. The long 850 nanometer light, which is long wavelength light, comes from the sun, goes through your body and charges your mitochondria like a battery. Wow. Wild. But for you, because the little ones are going to be here soon, at night When you're up, you're going to be up, by the way. What do I need? You need red lights, like a Christmas tree red lights, or any lights where they're not very blue, not LEDs, incandescent bulbs or red lights.

You'll sleep better and your babies will sleep better. The other thing that I just learned, and this makes so much sense, is like, how stupid are we? Turns out women will... They produce breast milk, and they'll pump, and then they'll set aside milk to give their babies. Turns out the milk collected in the early part of the day, guess what? It's very high in. And in the evening, the opposite. People tend to not divide them by morning collected or evening collected. They're now looking at the... It turns out babies could sleep well all the time. Sorry, parents. No, it's like... It has a big effect. There's a big effect on improving the sleep patterns of babies. These poor babies were being blitzed with cortisol. I was probably one such baby. Anyway, I'll stop there.

This is amazing. I've got three things Three Things. Three Things for you. We're going to have to do another episode in the future because I have a lot of questions I need to get to. I'm sorry.

You wonder why I'm an introvert? It's because I have no friends, because I meet up with people. I know that.

Two, can we put up Andrew's slide for his new book? It's not even out yet.

It's delayed. I have to-It's delayed. It's delayed. But they can pre-order it, right? You can pre-order it. Thank you. That's very you. You can pre-order it.

It comes out of the QR code here. I encourage all of you to get your phones out, pre-order this. This is going to be... I told this to Mel Robbins last year, mid-last year. I said, Your book is going to be the number one book of the year, and it's been number one on Amazon, I think, for the last nine months. This is going to be the number one book of next year, if it comes out next year, maybe in two years. I don't know. Whenever it comes out, it will be the number one book of the year, I guarantee it. So make sure to support this man right now.

Thank you. I should say I didn't ask him to do that. That's very kind. And the reason it's delayed is because I decided to include illustrations and lists to make it clearer as to what was in the text. So forgive me, but...

And the last thing, we got the book up there. We got some of the protocols here. What's the last thing I'm thinking. I need to recall the beginning. The first thing that we talked about was about faith. And I wanted to acknowledge you, Andrew, for starting to talk about that and you doing this in your own practice the last year. Because there's a lot of people that say inner peace is the new rich. And you are creating more peace in your life. And I think it makes you a better person in all areas of your life. You seem healthier and happier and thriving. And I'm sure it's many different factors. But I'm glad to know that you're bringing prayer into your life more frequently. And I think you're only going to be a better scientist and researcher in that process by doing that. So I want to acknowledge you for that. And give it up one One more time for Andrew Huberman. Give it up, guys. Give it up.

Thank you, though.

Thanks for going long. You're good. I appreciate it, though. One more time, guys. Andrew Huberman. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. Now it's time to go out there and do something great.