0:00 the person that can turn their mind off in the final hour of their day and get the better, deeper sleep, I'm going to put all my money on that person. >> How turn off. >> The next time you have trouble asleep or getting back to sleep, keeping your eyes closed, slowly move your eyes to one side, then to the other side. Then you're going to move your eyes counterclockwise, then clockwise. Then kind of look towards the tip of your nose. You're not crossing your eyes, and then exhale. Now, when you do that, you disrupt the propriceptive circuits. Propriception is the knowledge of where your limbs are in space. To fall asleep, you need to forget your body position. This is the first critical step in falling asleep that nobody talks about. >> That really works. >> It really works. Andrew Huberman, professor and neuroscientists at Stanford and host of Hubberman Lab, one of the biggest and most influential
0:46 science podcasts in the world. This is a masterclass in training your brain to become sharper, stronger, and harder to stop. If I give you a 25year-old someone, how can they have this unbreakable, unshakable mindset, like an elite performer mindset that they will never collapse under pressure? >> I've never really discussed this on the podcast. If I only had 5 minutes to talk to somebody, [music] I would say, look, this is the best thing you can do for your health and wellbeing and performance. High morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol. Cortisol's main job is to deploy glucose and lipids from areas in your body that give you energy. It's an energy deploying hormone. [music] So, how do we do this? The best way to spike that morning cortisol is to get bright light in your eyes within the first 30 to 60 minutes of your day. Let's keep in mind, you can drink some
1:32 water during this [music] time. You can drink your morning tea or coffee if you like. If you can exercise in that first hour, [music] great. But this simple behavior is going to boost your morning cortisol levels. This is the key to long-term resilience and becoming, as you call it, dangerous. If there are two people, one sees that risk and jumps. The another thinks about it but then freezes. What happens in the brain of that person who's freezing and not taking the risk? They're imagining how great it could go. We think they're imagining how terrible it could go. But what causes us to choke is so much is at stake. If I can't do this, I can't do anything. >> Can you build courage? >> Absolutely. [music] Absolutely. Incremental. You get people to their edge of agitation and you let them just live there. >> When have you felt the most powerless in your life?
2:18 Well, that's a great question. You ask hard questions, my friend. Um, >> I have a small favor to ask you. I need you to subscribe to our channel. The more subscribers we have, the better and bigger guests we can bring and provide you more value through these conversations. And also, the full audio experience of the show is available on Spotify where you can follow us and stream and listen to all our episodes. Welcome on our show, Andrew Hooperman. >> Thank you for having me. >> Thank you. It's it's an honor to have you here. >> Oh, wow. Thank you. Well, delighted to be here. >> So, tell me further, if someone's
3:03 watching you for the first time and they have never heard or seen you or they have no clue who you are, how would you explain them what you do and why they should watch this podcast? >> Okay. Uh, two sentences of history. Uh just to orient people, I'm 50 year old 50 years old. Um I spent nearly three decades as a neuroscientist. Um I'm still a tenure professor at Stanford School of Medicine. I now teach uh neuroscience um to medical students and um do some other teaching as well. Until very recently, I ran a research laboratory. So that was really my life from about age 19 until fairly recently. Um, so studying how the brain wires up during development, how it can change so-called neuroplasticity and learning,
3:50 also some interest in neural regeneration and diseases of the eye and of the nervous system. Um, so that's my my academic grounding and my hands-on experience. >> Um, I've had a long-standing interest in health and fitness. um both running, resistance training, bit of martial arts, a number of different things um that I've been very consistent with for the last 35 years. So, while I'm not a certified expert trainer or anything of that sort, I've I like to think I've tried many of the things that do and don't work. And um I have thoughts both about the science around those and what I've found works best for me and that I think could be of value to people. In 2021, I decided to start a podcast called Huberman Lab. Turns out I also
4:37 had Huberman Lab at Stanford School of Medicine, but Huberman Lab podcast, which is myself and a few other guys um who uh put cameras in front of me and I started talking about how the brain wires up, how you can change it, how sleep works, how you can optimize it. um mental health uh modern treatments for mental health issues, everything from depression to OCD to uh anorexia, covering the scientific literature and offering what I call protocols um which are um scripted ways to improve something or optimize something or reduce a pain point. Um using behavioral tools, some things you do, behavioral tools, some things you avoid. Um, we do
5:22 talk about nutrition, supplementation, and prescription drugs as well. So, I cover all of it. So, I'm happy to talk about peptides, both of the conventional and unconventional kind. I'm happy to talk about hormone therapies. I'm happy to talk about behavioral tools. So, the podcast encompasses all of that. And I've largely done solos where I talk about these things sort of university lecture style. Um, but I also host expert guests in these areas because my network of science and um medical doctor scientists, excuse me, and medical doctors is pretty vast and I know some of the the best in the world. I don't know all of them, but I I'm very blessed to know uh many of them and they have incredible knowledge that I feel the the world should have. So, I think that's probably how you found me. That's why I'm here. And and my real love in life is learning and teaching
6:09 >> things that I believe can be useful to people. >> Perfect. That makes two of us. [laughter] >> Yeah, we share a kinship in that. Absolutely. >> So based on everything that you've learned, experimented, watch it fail, uh you know, acquired knowledge from other people on and your own experiments and everything, right? I I want to know if I give you a 25 year old someone, okay, right now today, and your only job is to make them mentally dangerous in next 10 years. mentally dangerous. >> Dangerous. Like >> could you define dangerous? >> Like how do you how can they have this unbreakable, unshakable mindset like an elite performer mindset that they can they will never collapse under pressure like someone who can handle everything
6:56 in their life and they can choose and pinpoint what to do and then be able to do that. Because here's the problem. What I feel a lot of young people like me, we watch uh people like you, we understand and learn everything from you. And then half of the things we are like Monday we're excited when we watch you and then by Thursday we're done. Like nothing works out. We don't change our lives very easily, right? A lot of people don't do that. So if I give you someone like this 20-year-old right now and your job is to make them me mentally extraordinary or mentally dangerous in next 10 years where would you begin? >> It's a great question. Um so my answer is at first going to sound a little um basic
7:42 >> but I think it's very important to understand the principles behind what I'm going to say as opposed to just the specifics. In fact, this is a broader theme I believe people should take to any discussion about health or performance, which is there going to be many many protocols. Do this, do it this way, do it then, don't do it that way, don't do it then. But the real question is what are the principles that are anchoring those statements? Why do I say this? Well, because ultimately new protocols will come along, new peptides will come along, new podcasters will come along. And the most important thing, the most important thing is to be able to place what you hear into a framework of, okay, that makes sense. There's a mechanism to support that or look, we don't have any knowledge of how that would work, but I'll try it and see
8:28 if it works, provided it's safe, and so on. The most important thing for this 25-year-old hypothetical person to do is to understand that there are a few non-negotiables in their physiology and psychology that are directly linked that they have to obey as often as possible. Notice I didn't say every single day, but as often as possible in order to get the most out of their life. >> What What are those? Well, as weird as it may sound, the most important thing to do is to ensure, and there are ways to do that we can talk about in a moment, to ensure that you have high morning cortisol levels, >> the so-called stress hormone, which is not a stress hormone. We'll talk about why it's involved in stress, but
9:14 cortisol is involved in much, much more. You want to take steps, simple steps that I'll describe to amplify your morning cortisol in the first hour or two of your day. and to make sure that in the last hour or so of your day, most days, your cortisol is low. Now, why? What? What? What in the world? Like, okay, but if you were going to build a human machine, okay, and I'm not talking about psychology now, but you wanted to build a human machine. And actually, let's make it a happy >> quote unquote dangerous machine, you would say, get that morning cortisol peak as as high as you can. Get your nighttime, last hour before sleep cortisol level as low as you can. Why? When you do that, it sets this person up to have vastly higher levels of daytime
10:01 energy, focus, ability to learn, resilience to stress when stress comes along, and ease in falling to sleep, deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. These are the things of repair of the body, repair of the mind, consolidating learning, removing the emotional load of previous day experiences that might have been, you know, difficult or stressful, taking off the emotional load so they can go into the next day and they can continue to show up for their family, their work, their health, and so on and so forth. It also turns out this pattern of high morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol is the pattern that men, women, people of all ages should have to optimize their immune system function. So, we're
10:47 talking about getting sick less and on and on and on. In fact, I've never really discussed this on the podcast, but if I only had 5 minutes to talk to somebody, I would say, "Look, this is the best thing you can do for your health and well-being and performance." high morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol. So, how how did we do this? People are probably immediately wondering. Um, before I answer, I'll just add one additional fact. Most people have heard of melatonin, this hormone that we secrete at night in darkness that light suppresses. It helps us fall and stay asleep. Most people don't realize that in order to get sufficient melatonin release, you need limited light exposure to your eyes. So, that's why it's good to dim dim dim the lights. You also want your body temperature cooling. Your core body
11:32 temperature going down is what brings melatonin up. Cortisol and melatonin are on opposite cycles. >> High cortisol inhibits melatonin indirectly, but it does it. So, if your morning cortisol is high, your morning melatonin from the night before will be lower, more alertness. If your nighttime cortisol is low, your melatonin peak can go higher. many issues related to falling and staying asleep become trivial under those conditions. They just kind of disappear. So, we should ask ourselves, what are the things to do to boost our morning cortisol levels? And notice I'm saying morning, I'm not saying 6:00 a.m. because one thing that is very important is given the flexibility, some people really do best waking up between 8 and 10:00 a.m. and
12:19 going to sleep later. Some people do best waking up between 5 and 7 a.m. and going to bed earlier. And some people are kind of someplace in the middle. Like for you for instance, what is your if you could control everything about your sleepwake schedule, what time would you go to sleep? >> Like two, >> right? Yeah. >> Like 1 or 2. >> And what time would you wake up? >> 9 10. >> Great. So let's call 10. 10 a.m. is your morning. 6:30 a.m. is my morning. That doesn't make me a better or worse person. Doesn't make you a better or worse person. We're just different. But when I say morning, I'm not giving a clock time. I'm giving a within the first hour or two of waking. Okay. All right. How do you boost your morning cortisol? We're building this ultra dangerous person. >> Okay. >> Great. >> But be before we actually build this, why did you start with morning and not the night before?
13:06 >> It's a good question, but the answer is that this peak in cortisol cause because it's on a what's called a negative feedback loop. it actually inhibits itself so that once you create that peak, it ensures that the afternoon and evening cortisol is low. And I'll explain why that is in in a few minutes if that's okay. Um, so getting that morning peak going, it's like a wavefront that starts the 24-hour cycle. >> Okay. Okay. So, let's assume you go to sleep anywhere from 6 to 8 hours the night before. >> Okay. Um when you are in your deep deep sleep, so two or three hours into your sleep, your cortisol is at its very lowest just naturally. Okay, your cortisol intrinsically with no
13:54 input from the world starts to climb in the hours afterwards slowly slowly and then faster and faster and faster. So that in the third uh phase of your sleep, if we just divide your sleep into three blocks, in that last third, your cortisol is rising very fast and so is your body temperature and then at some point you wake up. Now it could be because of an alarm clock. It could be because you wake up naturally. That is literally called the cortisol awakening response and it is the reason you wake up. So when people say cortisol is a stress hormone, you don't want your cortisol too high. That's true for the evening and night time. It's not true for your morning. You want your cortisol basically spiking first thing in the morning. So you get up, cortisol is now elevated. Cortisol's main job is not to
14:43 deal with stress. That's just one of its jobs. Its main job is to deploy glucose and lipids from areas in your body that give you energy. It's an energy deploying hormone. >> Okay. >> Okay. So that cortisol peak is rising very very fast. The best way to spike that morning cortisol is to get bright light in your eyes within the first 30 to 60 minutes of your day. In fact, you have a unique opportunity at that time to spike your cortisol up to 50% 50. Now, there's two ways to do it. The best way to do it is to go outside, take off any brimmed hat you might have or sunglasses. Eyeglasses and contacts are fine. Look in the direction of the sun. Now, you wake up later than I do. So, when I wake up, the sun is just coming across the horizon. That's great. If it's higher in
15:29 the sky, that's fine, too. Never look at the sun um in any way that that makes it too bright to look out. You blink, in other words, to protect your eyes. But you can squint. You can look a little bit off and away from the sun. But that bright light from the sun is full spectrum. It includes the short wavelength, medium wavelengths, and long wavelengths that are optimal for getting this cortisol peak. In fact, if you do that, you'll get a big peak in cortisol within 5 to 10 minutes. On cloudy days, on overcast days, it's especially important to do that because you're going to likely be spending more time indoors on overcast days. Okay? Ideally, 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Keep in mind, you can drink some water during this time. You can drink your morning tea or coffee if you like. You can do other things that, believe it or not, hydration boosts cortisol. Caffeine further boosts
16:15 cortisol. If you can exercise in that first hour, great. Most people don't jump right into exercise, but this simple behavior is going to boost your morning cortisol levels. That essentially establishes the the relationship between cortisol, melatonin, and your circadian clock. So the next day, your morning cortisol will start to rise in anticipation of this peak. It's becomes what we call entrained. So I'm listing off some protocols. Morning sunlight, but it takes 5 10 minutes. and you hydrate and you drink some caffeine, maybe you move your body a little bit, take a walk, some jumping jacks or something light like that. You can bring uh your spouse or your kids or whatever and you can just enjoy that time. Try not to look at your phone during this time. Do not stay in bed and look at your phone. Okay, this has also a forcing function on not
17:02 doing certain things. Now, if you are able to get some physical exercise in this hypothetical situation, I'd take this 25-year-old and I'd say, "Listen, I know you don't like to work out first thing in the morning, but you're going to either do some cardiovascular training or some resistance training, [snorts] one or the other for six days a week. One day a week, you can get complete rest. Okay? And I can explain later what the optimal protocol for uh for excuse me for exercise I believe is for the typical person wanting to be strong and have endurance and and build resilience as well brain plasticity and so on. Okay. The long and short of this is if somebody were to do that in the first hour to two hours of the day the cortisol then starts to drop
17:48 gradually around let's say about four or five hours after they've been awake. drops drop just naturally it just drops. Now let's say you get a disturbing text a you've got a deadline you're stressed cortisol will get deployed but the peak in cortisol will be very brief. Okay. Now, as that person heads into the evening, probably still working. We'll talk about this. Maybe some bright lights. You can't control the environment. You you are now buffered against some of that. You're protected. And then at night, in the final hour before sleep, it's dim the lights. Obviously, avoid caffeine in the final 8 hours before sleep. Most days, I'm drinking a little caffeine now cuz I got up very early today and it's late in the day now, but I can have a little bit. That's me. Some people might not be able to. You want to really emphasize lowering your cortisol. Long exhale
18:34 breathing is great if you find yourself too stressed and you're kind of getting ready for bed. Why long exhale breathing? There's so much has been made of breath work and meditation. But just to encapsulate all of breath work which you know I long before it came to the United States in scientific form people in India have been doing breath work of various forms. So I want to acknowledge that. But there's something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is just a fancy term for when you inhale with vigor and you extend your inhales, it speeds your heart rate up. Why? Because the diaphragm moves down, the heart gets a little bit bigger in volume. Blood within the heart moves a little more slowly and the nervous system sends a signal to speed the heart rate up every inhale. When you exhale,
19:22 especially if you deliberately extend the exhale, because the diaphragm moves up, the heart gets a little bit more compact or smaller in volume. Blood in there moves more quickly in that smaller volume. And the vagus nerve, which connects the body and brain in both direction, sends a signal to the heart to slow your heart rate down. This is the basis of so-called HRV, heart rate variability. for people wearing an Aura or a Whoop or using an eightlee or any other device and you say high HRV is good, right? What is high HRV? High HRV is your parasympathetic nervous system, this relaxing arm of the of your autonomic nervous system hitting the brakes on your heart rate. [sighs] If you want a higher HRV, you can exercise. You know, another great way to increase your HRV, do five extended
20:08 exhales during your day. Just anytime you just You're slowing your heart rate down in your sleep. Your heart rate, your HIV will be HRV will be higher. Most people don't realize it. Significantly higher. You're teaching your nervous system to slow your heart rate down just by five exhales in a day >> or three or one long one before sleep. [sighs] When you do an extended deliberate exhale, you slow your heart rate down. You lower your cortisol levels. Takes a few minutes to lower your cortisol levels. and you calm yourself down. When you hold your breath or you move about your day and you're inhaling [snorts] a lot and you're on average you're inhaling more vigorously than your exhales, your heart rate's going to be climbing up. So throughout the day your heart rate's doing this, it's doing
20:55 this. HRV, if you think, well, that's weird. Why would we want our heart rate variable? Shouldn't we want it nice and even? No, no, no, no. Because the HRV reflects the pumping of the brake on your on your stress system. Okay? So in that final hour, you are ideally you're not drinking too many fluids cuz you'll wake up. But if you're a little thirsty, drink some fluids. No big deal. You're avoiding caffeine. You're dimming the lights. Why dimming the lights? Because light hits a specialized set of neurons in the eye called the intrinsically photosensitive melanops and retinal ganglion cells. Okay? Those cells connect directly to a little region over your hypothalamus which is your circadian clock which then connects to another nucleus in your hypo hypothalamus and so on and so forth and then inhibits the release of melatonin from your pineal gland. All this can be
21:40 made very simple viewing bright light ideally from sunlight in the first hour of the day spikes your cortisol through a similar mechanis circuit with a little twist and in the evening bright light will inhibit melatonin. So, bright mornings and days, dim nights or dark nights, that's the ideal situation. And we can really flush this out even more. But I should say if you don't have access to sunlight for some reason, you would do well to um most people do well to purchase a 10,000 lux artificial light. I have one when I travel that's about the size of a tablet. Um it looks a bit like the lights in this room. That very bright light is sufficient to boost your morning cortisol. Sunlight is better because it's full spectrum, but
22:26 sometimes I don't have access to one. But I'm the guy on the plane looking at that light for a few minutes each morning. I have one in my home even though I do go outside. So when I wake up and use the bathroom, I have one in my bathroom. I have one in the kitchen. So I'm making my morning coffee or tea. I have it there. And so I'm getting blasted with bright light early in the day. And then at night, I'm either in dim light or I generally don't use candle light because I worry about burning things down, you know, if I fall asleep with a candles down. But I everything's dimmed way way down. Okay, now this sounds extreme, >> but we're really talking about 5 to 10 minutes in the morning, things you would do anyway, >> right? Hydrate, caffeine, most likely, >> exercise, ideally that takes a bit longer. And then at night, things that
23:12 you need to turn off the lights at some point. >> You need to bring your level of activation down. Learning to turn your mind off. This is the key to long-term resilience and becoming, as you call it, dangerous. If you are somebody who can push, push push on the gas pedal, but you don't know how to turn your mind off. Let's make it competitive. This will get people going. Give me two people. >> Both can work very very hard, vote, both extremely committed to their goals and both have perfect circumstances in terms of access to to food and exercise and all the things. The person that can turn their mind off in the final hour of their day and get the better, deeper sleep, I'm gonna put all my money on that person within 5 to 10 years, far
24:00 surpassing the other. How to turn off if someone super competitive is already feeling like they've lost in some way because the internet has made them believe that they've lost it already, right? So, they're in the hyper competitive mode. They just don't know how to turn off. M >> how can somebody turn off and be >> and feel less restless? >> Yeah, this is a great question and and it's going to take us a little bit in the in the uh direction of psychology. >> Um so I just want to make sure before we move on that I've closed the hatch on boost your morning cortisol by sunlight or 10,000 lux artificial light. >> Hydrate. Listen, do this every morning. But if you wake up on a plane and you don't happen to have this 10,000 lux light, open the window. If you can't do that, you're you're going to be fine. You'll you'll live a day, you know.
24:46 You'll live a day. You'll, you know, so do the other things. Hydrate, drink some caffeine. Like I don't you don't want to burn extra energy on the neuroticism of trying to get everything right. >> That's making you weak, right? You need and I look at every opportunity to build resilience. This like like I we were saying before we started recording, I you know, yesterday I had far less sleep than I normally get. I feel great today. I have a practice for that which I can talk about recovering mental and physical vigor. But I really wanted to see my best childhood friend who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist do a neurosurgery and be there and also recorded yesterday and I very much wanted to be here and it meant flying yesterday and the flight was delayed. So instead of getting angry about the flight being delayed, I always ask
25:31 myself one of two questions. Do I completely relax or do I continue to work? What I don't do is any in between. I am perfectly fine just sitting there completely relaxing. Yes, let yourself scroll social media for a short period of time. Let yourself watch a movie, socialize, text with friends, call your mother. You know, I'm on my mother, so call me more. So, but don't do a hybrid of the two or really focus in and get some work done. At the airport yesterday, I decided I'd had a long day. I knew that today was going to be a long but exciting one. Decided to just get complete rest. on the flight into San Francisco. I took a brief nap, got to my hotel, got things settled, and I could feel my my mind going towards h I'm going to be tomorrow is going to what good does that do? And you always should
26:18 be asking the question, is this in the left column or the right column? And I'll explain what that means. A guy named Andy Stump, he's a a former what we call tier one SEAL team operator. He has a podcast called Clearing Hot. Um he's super impressive guy from his work in the SEAL teams and he went on to break two world records doing other difficult dangerous things but he has this exercise that he shared with me which I do which is you take out a sheet of paper you do this about once a month and you write down in the left column all the things that concern you what people think of me the what I see I'm worries everything you put all that in the left column in the right column you put all the things that you can actually control what can you do exercise hydrate sleep practice
27:04 turning your brain off, call your mother, you know, all the things that and what you realize is that you really don't have any control over the things in the left column. And we all know this, but this exercise, it's so valuable. I'm so glad Andy taught it to me. He I read it about it first in his book Drown, which is an excellent book, but then he described it to me directly for the month afterwards. You notice when things are in the left column or the right column. So last night I was thinking, oh god, like if I even thought because this is the way the mind goes. H someone sets off a fire alarm or someone's loud in the hotel, I'm going to get even le. I'm like, can I control that? No, I can't control it. You notice how crazy the mind is with all these concerns and how few of those concerns you can actually impact. So that's the
27:52 main way you do it. And every opportunity to stress is an opportunity to practice stress resilience. Every opportunity uh to stress is an opportunity to let go of some component. These opportunities come all day long. You know, you don't have to be David Gogggins to be in the pressure test all day long. We are all in the pressure test. And even just keeping your mind in that right column. So I actually around our podcast studio and with my friends we we're sort of have this saying now like that's a left column issue like don't like and and so it becomes this question I think it varies culturally do you talk about it or does that build it >> maybe talking about things allows you to expune it to delete it I think it builds it stay in the right column and when
28:37 your mind starts drifting into the left column great that's a great opportunity to practice getting your mind back over into the right hand column how do you do that you Think about literal actions. You get extremely present. I can take a sip of water. Might sound trivial. I can smell what the air is like in here. Feels good. It's so quiet in here. I really like the background quiet of this place. I've enjoyed meeting you. I learned about some new neuroch already based on the the devices on your temple. Like you can really get present and suddenly because of this is comes from my training as a neuroscientist. The brain works in what are called dynamic attractor states which I is not a way of trying to sound academic or fancy. Think of your thoughts and your emotions as a ball bearing on a flat surface. But as you think more about something, that
29:23 surface starts to become concave. And as you learn more about it and you go into it and you think about it, it becomes a trench. And now that ball bearing is locked in that trench. And typically it takes something very robust like calling a friend and them saying, "What are you doing?" or getting a good night's sleep or exercise or some great event to knock that ball bearing back onto its flat surface again. But you are in charge of your mind. And you know, at 50 years old, I finally realized that it's possible to control one's thoughts. It it really is. You can you can learn to steer your thoughts. You can't eliminate thoughts, but you can take your mind to where it needs to go. And there opportunities all day long to practice this. Right before I came in here, I went in the bathroom. Yes, I use
30:10 the bathroom. And I have a practice of prayer. Right before I do or go on any podcast, I ask for clarity. I ask for the opportunity to share knowledge that I hope will be useful to people. I offer up the opportunity for new unexpected things to come through. I did I did that. I do it every single time because I take you and I take this very seriously, right? People are giving us their time. I'm not a person who neurotically, you know, controls every aspect of of my life, but I take every opportunity I can to make my life better because in this case, I like to think that us having a a richer conversation will benefit people more. So, learn to turn it off. But that comes from
30:56 practice and you're getting micro reps all day long. The more stress, the more opportunity. The more stress, the more opportunity. Now, in order to learn to fall asleep at night, high morning cortisol. Don't drink caffeine too late in the day. Get exercise at some point, ideally in the first half of your day, but if you have to do it in the evening, do it in the evening. But I am a huge huge believer, practitioner and fan of a practice that originated in India, which is called yoga nidra. This, in addition to the morning high and nighttime low cortisol, is in my mind the most powerful tool that we can cultivate because it teaches you to turn off thinking and planning and allows you to learn how to get into pure sensation. It
31:41 sounds so squishy, but I'll tell you, no drug will do this, at least not in a healthy way. Any drug that takes you out of thinking and planning and just into pure sensation, that drug is going to rebound you into a rough place when you come out of it. Yoga nidra and in fairness I you know I a few years back I started calling it non-sleep deep rest that was not this is a great opportunity to talk to your audience uh who may know that you know some people were critical of that decision. The reason for that is I wanted people to understand the real value of this practice and I always make the effort to credit yoga nidra as the the origin of it. I take no credit for this practice but in quote unquote the west such a silly term right but in the west there's there's this assumption
32:27 people hear yoga and they think movement and then a lot of people who they think I don't want to do yoga I don't which is just their own limitation but yoga nidra involves what it involves lying or sitting down you know this I'm sure long exhale breathing slowing the heart rate down deliberately noticing My mind is in a mode of thinking and doing and planning. I'm going to move it into pure sensation. Just focus on what I hear, what I feel. This is so critical. This is the first and most basic step in what I call turning your mind off. It's turning off planning and thinking and doing. And it's a skill. You do this for 10, 20, or 30 minutes one, three, or seven days a week. And across a couple of years, you
33:13 get very good at it. So, I started it in 2017 and I thought to myself, this is remarkable. I can fall asleep more easily if I wake up in the middle of the night. I know how to turn my mind off. >> Do that again. >> I do it again for 10 minutes. There's also an eye movement trick that you can do. You want to hear something really wacky? So, there's a paper published a few years ago where they developed this giant bed that rocks back and forth and people fall asleep very quickly. Hm. Okay. Well, I don't have a rocking bed. You don't have a rocking bed. it's not very practical. There's also a paper published in um a really fine journal showing that there's a particular rate of walking and swaying that parents naturally find that puts their baby to sleep and it matches the same rocking speed, right? It's a very slow back and forth rocking. Say, okay, this is
33:58 age-old wisdom, but what does this do? You would think it was the physical sensation and in some sense it is but turns out and this is the basis of some new technologies that I'm not a part of but I've had the opportunity to try of eye masks that can induce sleep. The next time you have trouble falling asleep or getting back to sleep. Keeping your eyes closed slowly move your eyes to one side then to the other side. Then you're going to move your eyes counterclockwise. I told you it would be kind of crazy. Then clockwise. Then kind of look towards the tip of your nose. You're not crossing your eyes. and then exhale. Now when you do that because there is a relationship between the eyes and your cerebellum this area of your brain that is primitive area of your brain that controls balance
34:45 you disrupt the what we call proprioceptive circuits. Proprioception is the knowledge of where your limbs are in space. To fall asleep you need to forget your body position. This is the first critical step in falling asleep that nobody talks about. And so now there's some really interesting technology stimulating and inhibiting certain brain areas that control propriception and it makes people sleepy and they fall asleep. So as crazy as this sounds, >> this really works. >> It really works. It really works. Now if you're if you drink four cups of coffee and you're ruminating over something, it's not going to override that. But if you wake up in the middle of the night, you go to the restroom, for instance, you I woke up, I go back, maybe it's noisy, someone made a noise. Close your eyes and with your eyes closed you're
35:31 gonna move your eyes to doesn't matter to the left or right first you go one side then the other side maybe do it again if you want then counterclockwise clockwise then you kind of point your eyes toward your midline or your your nose and then you exhale and you forget body position many many people who I've taught this to write to me and say I can't believe it but I then wake up the next morning it's wild I did it on the plane ride here I was out also these circuits that we access in yoga nidra of self-directed relaxation or of turning off propriception, our knowledge of our body position. They are amendable to plasticity, which is simply to say that they get stronger in response to these behaviors over time. The plasticity of
36:18 these behaviors is really critical. You get better at it. The same way that I'm sure you know, you sit down and you're really excited about something, you're in immediate focus. But I'm guessing at some point in your school career, your career career, you have something you're like, I don't want to do this. But you know how to get in gear. You think, okay, what do I have to do? Maybe you watch a YouTube video. Maybe you don't. You turn on some music. You tell yourself, what's wrong with me? Like, all right, let's get this. You call someone. Let's do it. And you're in. >> Yeah, >> you know how to ramp up, but do you know how to turn it off? Do you know how to ramp down? And you know, the best athletes know how to do this. That's a skill you learn. you and so this 25-year-old person I would say great you are in the peak of the opportunity to still rewire your brain in the right ways that includes get after it culture
37:06 but how are you going to turn off your brain to restore reset dump the data that's not significant from the day before the the conflict you had some the thing you saw online is an attempt to steal your focus and energy and sleep >> when I go on X I'm literally it's warfare I'm I'm a benevolent player there, but you're not going to take my energy. I think about this. You're I have I have a shield up. You're not going to take my Somebody says something about me. You're I know what they're trying to do. They're losing energy by But I'm not going to let them take It's It's a video game. And you win by taking as many of those attentional resources and putting them into your health, your well-being. This includes how you treat other people. You think you're a high,
37:52 can you be a like a high focus driven person and switch it off? >> That's a mental, career, financial, whatever you want to call it, physical athlete. That that's the that's the dangerous person. I don't worry about the person who can just get after it and drink 12 cups of coffee, pop an Adderall, and and just outwork everybody. So the next morning they're they're outworking everybody. Okay, see you on Thursday. I'm going to I'm going to blast past you. And I actually learned this when I was first starting off in neuroscience. I would go to meetings. I never liked drinking alcohol. First of all, I don't like the way people act when they drink alcohol. I never felt like I There might have been a few weddings or parties in my my life where like I'm with friends I really know and we have a few drinks and like there's that bonding feeling. It
38:38 was great. Let's be honest, it was great. But most of the time at scientific meetings, I just noticed people being sloppy and stupid, saying dumb things, getting themselves in trouble. Also, I was there to build my career. So I thought, well, maybe in 20 years when I'm a tenure professor, I'll do that. But now I'm going to bed early on night one. And on night two, those guys who are really established, like they're kind of dragging. By day three, they're falling asleep and like they're with their mouth open and drooling in the in the meetings and a bunch of students do too. These were athletes that'd be like, "This is too easy. I'm still there front row taking notes, getting my workouts in, and on the last night I might have a good time." So, it's not that I don't have a good time, but I from day one, I I'm going to pass you, not you, but you get the idea.
39:26 I'm going to pass up the next person by what I don't do as much as what I do. >> And we don't hear about this cuz it's a little bit hard to put all this into a 90-cond clip on social media. So, a lot of get after itself. Take this peptide, take this stimulant. And listen, I love caffeine and I think there's a place for these tools, but it's much easier to get in gear. How do you do that day in day out consistently? Have a reset day. One day per week I don't exercise. I try and spend as much time in fresh air, sunshine, and relaxation as I can, but if I can't, I might just veg all day. >> Like do nothing half a day, watch a movie with my girlfriend, relax, just kick back, hang out, be I call it I I sort of joke it's it's our zero cortisol day. No such thing as a zero c. I still get the sunlight in the morning at that
40:12 cortisol peak. You know, I didn't emphasize this enough before, but I'll just return to the if you have a high morning cortisol peak. Any stress that comes, you'll be able to deal with it. There's actually really good data on this. I I'm not here to plug my book, but I have this book, Protocols, which discusses this, that the return to baseline of of cortisol after a stressor is much faster if you had high morning cortisol. The worst situation is a what's called flattening of the morning of the cortisol curve across the day where it's not a big peak in the morning. It's kind of high midish baseline into the evening. Any stress that comes is riding on an higher baseline. Now it's carrying into the evening. It disrupt it's shown to disrupt all sorts of things. Blood glucose regulation, all the negative effects of cortisol, so-called chronic stress are really about afternoon and nighttime high cortisol. We're never
40:58 told this. Also, if you're somebody who uses, for instance, ashwagandha to suppress cortisol, that should definitely be done in the final hours of the day, not in the morning. Small amounts in the early part of the day, fine. later in the day not so good. I don't recommend people take ashwagandha for long periods of time maybe for >> two for well it potently reduces cortisol you know by one study depending on the amount but 600 milligrams you know twice you know or so um can reduce cortisol significantly by about 30%. You want high morning cortisol. So you want in the afternoon. I would say if you're going to reduce cortisol using ashwagandha at high doses, you want to limit that to about two weeks without taking and then take two weeks off. In moderate doses, you know, 300 up to 600 milligrams is probably fine to take
41:45 consistently, but in the second half of the day, um, some people take things to fall asleep. I I I think things like magnesium, theine, apagenine, which is chamomile tea, or things like ashwagandha, can help. But if you're not doing all the right behaviors, it's going to make a trivial impact. And I have been somewhat um you know bullish on experimenting with things like pinealon which is a peptide that can help increase REM sleep, but only every once in a while. I don't think it's good to rely on pharmarmacology to induce sleep too often. Also because you're shortcircuiting your ability to turn your mind on >> but I do like stimulants early in the day. In particular, caffeine. That's the my main stimulant. Alpha GPC and things of that sort. Energy drinks. Do you use nicotine? It seems like everyone uses
42:31 nicotine now. Go. Good for you. You might be the one male under 40 I've met that doesn't take nicotine. You know, nicotine creates an alert but calm state, which is a very coveted state. It's hard to get that state, but it does increase blood pressure and it's very, very habit forming. I mean, you see these guys who they start with one 3 milligram pouch and a six milligram pouch. Pretty soon it's five pouches a day. I love competing with those guys because in a few years they're going to have other issues. >> So like I'm my dad who's a scientist taught taught me this long ago. He said, "Listen, you got to learn to be a long-distance runner. This is a long game. [snorts] You want to win the long game. You want to win the short and the medium game, too, but you want to win the long game." And anyone can push hard in the short term, but they're just and
43:17 you're going to see you're just going to see people start dropping out. So take care of those final hours of the day. Learn to turn it off. You can also practice yoga nidra with a 10, 20 or 30 minute script. They're all there, you know, tons of them on YouTube. We have some on our web page. They're all zero cost. They're all it just depends on what you like. You could do the practice that in the day. If you don't get enough sleep, for instance, I highly recommend doing it first thing when you wake up in the morning to recover the sleep you didn't get. It's very potent at recovering mental and physical vigor. If you can't do it, then in the afternoon, I always have a little bit of a dip around 2 PM. If I didn't sleep enough the night before, I religiously do a a yoga nidra between 2 and 3 p.m., maybe even 10 minutes, ideally 20 or 30. Come out of that, hydrate, maybe a little bit
44:03 of caffeine. Boom, you're right back. There's now data showing that pockets of the of your sleep of your brain go into deep sleep and maybe even REM sleep while you do Nidra. So, it's very restorative. There is no pill that will do this. There's no pill that will do this. >> And you don't do that at night >> yoga nidra >> before sleeping. >> I generally don't because I don't have trouble falling asleep. The challenge I've had over the years is falling asleep and then waking up at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep. The eye movement trick plus doing nijra during the daytime has I have the ability to turn my mind off and go back to sleep. Well, the real key to becoming what you call dangerous and ultra resilient or antifragile, whatever language you want to use, is you learn to recognize what state you're in. This is this is the piece actually that sits
44:49 even deeper than all the rest. You know, the oracle said it first, but know thyself. You have to know where you're at. Am I in a good state? Am I in a vulnerable state? If I go on social media now and I see something that upsets me, am I just going to go down that rabbit hole? We all like to think we can just blaze through life, but knowing where you're at is like checking the checking the engine, checking the machine, is like the steering aligned. And I don't sleep as much as I need to or I have stressors in my life. My steering is not aligned. So, I have to do other things to keep myself in check. >> Um, you don't. >> Yeah. So, it's about building in a resilience that includes flexibility. >> And I think people hear like they think rigidity, but it's not that. You know, I'm working really hard on having a turn off button.
45:34 >> That's the hard one, right? >> It's really, really hard. And there was about like 3 years ago, there was a phase of my life where I was just like pushing through, pushing through really like >> Yeah, I get the sense you're that kind of guy. >> 3 hours, 4 hours sleep. And that's when I discovered NSDR yoga nitra from you. And they were like audios 10 minutes, 20 minutes. And I was doing like three podcasts a day, like you know, just 3 three hours. And then what I started doing, my team started noticing like in middle of one guest would leave and then I would have like a 30 minute break before the next guest comes right and I would put in the NSDR audio by you >> and I would just lay down and I would fall asleep like like a baby and they were like where did Raj go? Awesome.
46:20 >> Like where is he? And I'm like under the table sleeping and but those 10 minutes 15 minutes gave me so much energy which probably even a coffee didn't give me >> right >> that was like so good like those 10 20 minutes now >> your mind needs to turn off you need to go into this some people call default mode network which is associate people get confused because the the default mode network is associated with depression if it's too high but you need to go into idle you can't just push this engine that is your brain and nervous system all the time. I mean, you can do it. The problem is you can do it for a while, but what I love about what you just described is, and this is another piece, so I'd say know thyself. Learn how to turn your mind off, meaning learn how to turn off thinking and
47:05 planning. I'm not saying turn thoughts off. You can still learn how to go into pure sensation and relax. Boost your morning cortisol, keep it low at night, which allow your melatonin to be high. So, these are we're sort of building out a framework here. And then the other one is take yourself seriously. And taking yourself seriously is both hitting the gas pedal and knowing how to do that and knowing how to come off the gas pedal so that you can come back and do it again. You gave a really great example. What I heard, what I thought as you told me that story is awesome. You're taking yourself seriously. You're you're the equivalent of a professional athlete or somebody who's studying for their boards for neurosurgery for medical school, whatever. somebody's doing 15 years old, 20 years old, 25 years
47:52 old. Take yourself seriously. Now, people hear that and they think, uh, more rigidity, no fun, no laughter. No, laughter is great. Having a great time with your team is great, but the people who become leaders, the people who win in their fields, the people that do it consistently over time and enjoy the process and have healthy lives internally and externally, they know how to switch it off and they take themselves seriously. And you know it was um I think it probably comes from my dad's side you know that I I would go to these scientific meetings and I was like how could these people be like so serious about their careers but then they sort of like are like partying through the meeting and I realized oh many of them are actually just really
48:38 brilliant so they can do this. None of those people are around anymore. They're not in the field anymore. like natural proclivities and and genetic gifts, they'll carry you pretty far. But the people with genetic gifts and natural proclivities and circumstantial gifts [snorts] that take themselves really seriously, they we know they they excel. Okay, most of us have some opportunities and advantages afforded to us. Some people have none. The only way for all these people, all three categories of people to excel in the long term is you have to take yourself seriously. And people will hear this and they'll think uh like Huberman, he's just like take it. Yeah, take it. You've been gifted this life, right? It doesn't mean you don't smile, smile, experience joy, take
49:25 a day and just completely relax. You you want to be present to people. But if you don't take these things seriously, what ends up happening is you default to the mean, the dominant culture that you're surrounded with. So if you're around people that like to work hard, play hard, okay, cool. But pretty soon you're playing as hard as you're working and that doesn't look so good over time. Okay? Or you're around people that have given up or they're getting depressed and now you're not the person that can be there to really support them. You're one of them. So, nobody is made of steel, right? We're not robots. But take yourself seriously. Take your life seriously. And I know your listeners do that. But I think that perhaps they've been taught or they've they've convinced themselves
50:10 that to take oneself seriously is to never come off the gas pedal. >> You know, Formula 1 driver knows like that it's not just pit stops. The car needs care. It needs love. It needs rest. But when you rest and how you rest is absolutely key. And the other piece of it is, you know, that becomes tricky is, you know, which people belong in your life, which people don't. And that's a tough one because it starts to sound rigid. You know, when I hear about people's like, I eliminate all toxicity from my life. There's no such thing. Toxicity comes through the phone. There's no such thing. They're going to be people who have challenges and they're not handling them well. Are you going to be in a position where you can help lead them and guide them and uh and be the calm in their storm so that they can hopefully if you need it be the calm in your storm. That's how it works. So I
50:58 love that you do nidra in between. And if listen if one day you decide you know every once in a while you just scroll Instagram instead cool if you reset. [snorts] What you don't want to do is scroll Instagram thinking I should be doing yoga nidra or I should be doing the other thing. When our mind is split between two places, that's the most taxing thing. When we're trying to focus, but we can't. When we're trying to sleep, but we can't. The mind thrives on kind of unitary states, but those are hard to get into. We need to train ourselves to get into them. And sadly, the mind defaults to unitary states like anger and frustration very easily. And most of the algorithmic stuff that not all of it but a lot of it is designed to get you into those states very quickly so you're not doing anything else.
51:44 >> Yeah. >> So yeah, >> you know this used to be one of the biggest lies that I used to believe in that you don't need an off button. And I've I've been this hustle hustle hustle work work be obsessed. I' I've been like a kind of a poster boy for a lot of my life just like that in my family and friends and I've been there and I've realized in last couple of years like not not even couple of like very recently that you need to take a break you need to actually have an off button and now I'm very consciously practicing that trying to take an off right >> what has been what do you think like what's the biggest lie you know which is which we hear in the world about mental toughness or about elite performance. >> Yeah, great question. I think put
52:29 simply, it's that the goal is to just build a bigger and bigger capacity. >> What we don't acknowledge and people need to understand is that the better you get at something, this is a it's a weird one. The better you get at something, the more of an inroad into your energy it creates. Now, this is weird, right? Because when you're first learning something, it takes a lot of energy. Then you get >> you get fluid with it. You can sit down and podcast. I can sit down and podcast under most any conditions, right? As long as there's enough oxygen in the room. And maybe even if there's not, you and I can have a great podcast. We just know how to do it. But to really drop into your craft and I don't care if it's podcasting or finance or sport or medicine, it creates an inroad into your energy
53:16 and it is greater than when you're not very skilled at something because you're you're engaging more and more and more focus. So I think there's two things. The early part of any career, you have to find your edge. Okay, so this runs a little bit countercurrent to everything I've said, but you're trying to figure out, yeah, how how little sleep can I exist on? Okay, I break at two nights no sleep. Okay, I break. I can do one night. In fact, I did it last week. 30-hour work stretch with my business partner. Haven't done that in a long time. We did it. It hurt. We did it. We carried each other. I was like, I could tell when my mind was getting wobbly. He would step in. We would do things. And we did it. We had to do it. Feels good. I don't really want to do that again for a long while. Um but I built that capacity over many years. Okay, you
54:01 build that capacity by finding your edge. Now you don't want to die or injure yourself or become mentally sick but you get to that edge and then you stay away from that edge and then so I would say in the first year or two of doing something go for it. Just go all in. Reset only as needed to just keep coming back. Keep coming back. Keep coming back. But at some point you're going to hit a wall. You want that wall to be a non-lethal wall. Okay, you want that wall to be I'm exhausted. I need a week off. I can't afford a week off. Okay, I hit my wall. That's my limit. What can I do every day at this point consistently over time and work around that average? It's going to balance around that average plus or minus 2 hours or so. So, for me, I like
54:46 you, I have a a pretty large capacity. If I do the right things in between, on the way here, I cleared my mind. On the flight in, I slept. I know how to clear my mind and reset, but I can probably do anywhere from depends on the work. Um, anywhere from 5 to 10 hours of real work per day, real work. Okay, that's not including the lunch break. It's not including the walk. So, like >> five is doable. >> 6 to 7 is doable. Hurts a bit more. 10 hurts. The next day, I'm not doing 10. I'm borrowing from the next day where I can only do five, right? Okay. And you know this, but I had to find that. I had to establish that you build that up the same way you build up strength. You
55:32 know, there's a beautiful parallel to resistance training. Everyone knows, okay, you you do your sets and reps, you take the reps to failure or close to failure, you allow some period of time, the muscle gets stronger, you come back. But an old principle from resistance training that's still very true is as you get better at it, you know how to really cramp the muscle hard. you know how to really push. You know when the when the harder reps are coming, you get better at inducing the stimulus, the stress stimulus that causes the the adaptation of growth and and strength increase. You need fewer sets after resistance training for 10, 15 years. People say, "Oh, no, no, you need to do more." No, you need to pour more into fewer sets. You have the ability to do that. Now, when somebody first starts resistance training, they can't generate that kind
56:18 of focused intensity. So the more focused intensity you can bring to something, the more volume and focused intensity, the more rest you need to offset that. So what ends up happening is at your stage when you're, you know, I would say like the first year 1, two, and three, I think you can go on all gas pedal in anything. Just all gas pedal. Work work work learn learn learn learn, learn. Do it. Don't die. The goal is just don't die, but just go all in. Okay? Then in years four, five or so, you're learning how to create some balance and be more effective. You're trying to stay out of chronic illness. You're trying to stay out of autoimmune conditions. You're you know, this is typically if people don't do this is when their hair starts falling out. They start getting skin issues. The nervous system is >> is under stress. It's just you're that nighttime cortisol is too high. If we
57:04 really want to break it down, that's what's happening. The rhythm is off. The nighttime cortisol is too high. you're not resetting the nervous system and therefore the endocrine system and therefore all the immune system and so on. And some people break at that point. >> Um, you know, I do think that there's variability. People who are very driven, who are kind of highwired. I'm of that sort. Um, you might be of that sort. They tend to have a certain physical stature. Um, they're kind of go go go. They're kind of electric and they know that electric ant feels really good, right? They tend to veer more towards towards autoimmune conditions because they can push push push push push and the the cortisol just keeps coming and they can keep going. Some people just go into like a chronic fatigue. Boom. [clears throat] They just crash. They just crash. My problem your problem is we don't crash. We keep going but we're
57:51 our baseline is dropping. >> So the key is around years I would say four, five, six, you're learning to bring the balance in. Now by years 6 7 there's some overlap there obviously 6 7 8 9 10 you're a pro. Now you're a pro. You know when you're stressed. You know when you're feeling extra good. You know when you need to nidra. You know when you need to get off your phone and go do this thing and you know what to go do. So it doesn't mean you need 10 years to get good at something. You can get real far real fast in three years. But you can't keep that pace up. >> You have to learn to dynamically regulate it. And the unit of of analysis, like the the unit of time to focus on is the day. What can I do today? This is another big part of shutting your brain off. I'm not
58:37 thinking about tomorrow as its own thing. I know it's coming. I know I've got stuff to do, but what can I do today to get the most done, but know that I'm coming back tomorrow and I got to do it again. I want to do it again. So, years 1, 2, and three, go for it. years four, five, six, learn to dynamically regulate it. Beyond that, you're a pro >> and now you you really can start to integrate the principles of what you're and you'll and that's when you also can start guiding your team better. Hey, listen, that's a left column issue. >> Clip it. >> You know, here go do yoga. I don't want
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