Dr. Jay Wiles: Health Optimization With Hanu Health

I mean, it doesn't matter if you're health optimizing, if you're, you know, growth hacking or doing whatever, you know, you put in the term there, if it is nothing but an escape and a band aid to numb. We cannot run away from these difficulties. We cannot out escape, we can't out work out, we can't out, you know, nutrition or out biohack. Some of the core issues that we're having, these are things that take deep work. If we don't do some of the deep reparative work that it takes, we're going to find ourselves stuck, still falling short and still not meeting the goal of peak performance of health optimization.

Welcome to the Pursue Whole Podcast. I'm your host Andy Maurer, and in this podcast I share my insights as a leadership coach and former therapist. I sit down with some of the highest level leaders in business, entertainment and human performance to help you pursue wholeness in your work, life and relationships. Thanks for joining me. Let's jump in.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Pursue Whole Podcast. Today I'm excited to have Jay Wiles with me. Jay, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me, man. Absolutely. So Jay, you're the chief scientific officer and co founder of Hanu Health. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you arrived at the company that you're at now. Sure.

So I discipline wise, I am a clinical health psychologist and so a lot of clinical health psychologists don't find their way into health tech or into digital health, which that might not be necessarily full. Totally true. Nowadays there are so many people who are entering to the space of digital health and health tech, but it really wasn't on the road map for me right out the shoot. So I always had this passion and purpose and meaning and drive really just to help people who are suffering with just trying to find daily contentment and we're feeling a lack of joy and a lack of peace and a lack of centeredness. So I decided that psychology was a good path for me to go down in order to do that. So I got my bachelor's degree in psychology, got my master's in clinical psychology psychology master's in clinical counseling, and then finally did my doctoral work in clinical psychology where I specialized in the field of health psychology. So health psychology really looks at the intersection or the interconnection between physical well being and mental well being because we know they're bi directionally 100 connected with 1 another. And as we affect change in one area or the effect there's effective change in in the other area. So it's really kind of this, once again, bilateral street. So I, I was very interested in that connection, but I didn't really come across like the field of health technology until later down the road when I was working with the Department of Veteran affairs and I was doing a veterans integrative pain clinic. And this pain clinic was intended to titrate veterans off of medications, opioid based medications basically. And because these veterans were so sick and tired of the immense amount of symptoms that they were experiencing, they were really sick and tired of just feeling awful, still experiencing pain even after, you know, sometimes years, decades of opioid based medication use. And so our clinic was really intended to help titrate them off of medications through the use of integrative therapy, since the Veterans integrative Pain center, and these were things like Tai chi and yoga and acupuncture and, you know, physical therapy and mindfulness based meditation, guided imagery, meditation, nutrition clinics. It was a really cool, diverse clinic. But one of the things that we had that I had never really had exposure to was that was biofeedback. And in particularly we used heart rate variability and EMG biofeedback. I had heard of the term heart rate variability when like maybe once or twice before then. And we have to remember too, this was before the advent of wearable tech where heart rate variability was a commonplace metric that now basically everybody has access to. There was that there was no such thing as Aura or Whoop or any of these other biometric type wearable companies at that point in time. So we were doing clinical biofeedback on really expensive, you know, we're talking 20,000, $25,000 EKGs and machinery. So it was something that, you know, was basically within the clinic and it didn't go outside of the clinic. And at first when I saw it, I was quite confused as to what I was seeing because it basically just looked like we were teaching veterans how to breathe. And it was just kind of like a high tech way of teaching them how to breathe. And in and of itself, that kind of is what it is. And I can explain more of why that's effective and why the liter has indicated that's effective. But I was basically not very sold on it until I started seeing that this practice led to immense changes in the physiological and subjective pain response of these veterans. And it was at that point in time when these individuals were reporting that they were significantly reducing their pain experience. We started publishing papers on this and presenting it at conferences. I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole and just could not get enough of just learning about the field of variability and biofeedback and psychophysiology. And it led to multiple board certifications and biofeedback and heart rate variability biofeedback and then led me to where I am now, which is basically taking all of this clinical biofeedback that was not once readily available. It used to require these 25 $30,000 machines to now being able to provide it for very, very inexpensive, but having the same amount of efficacy as going to see somebody who would be providing biofeedback as clinician. So that's my truncated what I've been doing for the last 10 to 15 years. But it's been, it's been a heck of a journey and now that we're, you know, launching kind of our, our product here in, in two months or sorry, no, geez, two weeks after 12 months of, of getting ready to do it. It's an exciting time.

That's amazing. And I want to get into some of the science around heart rate variability and some of the data around that because I think that'll be really interesting for our leaders. They're already invested into performance and optim hacking all of that stuff before we dive into some of the research side of things. If we could go back, Jay, a little bit more kind of in your story, I'm really curious what inspired you to personally want to work in kind of the mental health, physical health space based on your own journey in health and emotional health and wellness?

Yeah, I didn't really fully know or I would say self explore enough to provide an intelligent answer on this until probably the last six months, maybe the last year or so. I would have, if you would have asked me this, let's say a year ago, I mean, sorry, yeah, maybe a year ago I would have probably just initially said, well, I mean I just saw there being a need and therefore I wanted to provide a service on something that was needed. And I wouldn't say that that's not true right now, but there was a lot more of a deeper exploration that I've done that has kind of led me to that path that I'm in. I'm an individual who when I look back on my life is that I had a lot of privilege, a lot of things handed to me. Life for me wasn't that difficult. So I'm not one of those individuals who say, you know, I grew up in a broken home. Like things were just kind of chaotic, like I, you know, was out on the streets like, we were in poverty. I can't. I don't have part of that. That is my part of my story. Like, that's just not who I am. I mean, the way I grew up is I grew up in a rather affluent family. We lived in a really great neighborhood in a nice house. We had, you know, new cars, like, things. My dad was an executive businessman. My mom worked in the medical field. Like, all these things were kind of like, oh, it's like, you know, the story of, you know, just kind of like the suburban family who looks like they have it all together. And in ways, again, comparatively speaking, maybe we did. But the one thing that I did not have all growing up, and I would say something I've battled with all my life is just contentment. And when I say contentment, I am an individual who has always had difficulty with just enjoying the current moment I'm in. There's always something, right? It's either I'm anticipating and worrying about something that's coming up, or maybe I'm thinking about things that have happened into me in the past, or maybe even I'm passionate and excited and planning for something down the road, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is if it comes to the void of me being in the moment and enjoying what it is where I'm at in that time. And so I've explored this a lot and I've just thought, you know what? I am a person who just not. Has not experienced contentment. Even if I'm joyful and passionate and motivated to do something, it's like when I get to something at times, like, I'm like, okay, I got there. Like, I accomplished my goal. What's next? Maybe I don't feel as fulfilled when I got to it because I wasn't enjoying the journey. I was just looking at the destination. And I think that that's highly problematic. If we're not enjoying the journey, if we're not being aware and mindful throughout the time of our journey and content with it, then when we finally reach the destination, there's going to be a void there. There's going to be a lack of overall fulfillment. And that was kind of me. And so when I look back on my life and I kind of ask, like, what's my why statement? What's my mission statement? Well, my mission statement, and this absolutely bleeds into what we do at honu, is my mission statement is to guide and to help others find daily contentment so they live a life of joy, a life of peace and A life of hope. And so that's the impact that I'd like to have. Because for me, that's what I have been constantly seeking myself, or at least I should say I should have been seeking, is just this sense of contentment, this con. This, this sense of peace. Not looking solely at what the destination is, but enjoying the journey. And so that's, that's basically like why I do what I do and kind of how I've got to this point. And I think it's been this constant search for just how do I find just daily contentment.

Yeah, I think that's a very common struggle for a lot of executives I can imagine, especially in the high performance community. One thing that we talk about a lot kind of in pursuit whole is putting a box around that high performance or that success. And actually putting a box meaning define what is enough. And I think that's one of the most difficult things for leaders to do. And you slow them down and you say, when is it enough? And they're like, well, you know, when I accomplish this thing, I go to the next thing and then it's the next thing, which is kind of this process that's you're describing because they don't know what is enough. And I think even deeper than that, they don't know that they're enough. So talk me through this process, even for you, on what are some kind of boxing procedures that you do to define when it's enough and how do you slow down enough to tap into that. Contentment.

Is a difficult process, especially if you're not self aware. We, we always say in at Honu that our key two things that we want people to do is become more self aware of their experience and then learn how to better self regulate. Learn better temperance. I think that if we learn those two skills of being self aware and being able to self regulate, then we're going to find more daily contentment. It's just inevitably gonna happen. So for me, it's always the gut check and it's always just self checking. It's like I need to know at the very start of my day, I need to remind myself, what is the mission? Not necessarily what is the task, but why am I doing what I'm doing? This is Simon Sinek, right? Like you start with why? And, and I think that there's so much inherent power with that, because if it's the pursuit of money or if it's the pursuit of fame, or if it's the pursuit of whatever, you know, you put inside of that box. I'm not necessarily saying that that is inherently a bad thing, but if it's not connected to your mission, if it's not connected to your why, then the chances of you succeeding on that are slim to none. Or at least the chances of you feeling fulfilled or the chances of you being as good as you possibly could be is going to be highly diminished. So I think a lot of it is just assessing every single moment and every task that I'm doing. Like, like how does this and how does my why shine in what I'm doing? And you know, there are going to be tasks that are going to be things that we do in life that inevitably are going to cause us difficulty and cause us problems because we don't want to do them. And I'm not saying like, you know, don't. If you have something in front of you that you don't want to do, just simply don't do it. If you don't think it's a part of your why sometimes we have to muscle through and accomplish things, you know, based on kind of getting some of these tasks that we don't really want to do done. But what I am saying is that if the greater mission of what you're doing is not shining, if it's not coming through, if you feel like there is not a sense of meaning and purpose and value in connection to your mission and what you're doing, then that's what we have to take a long, hard, serious look in the mirror and ask ourselves, like, what do I do with this? Do I continue down this path or do I modify? Do I course correct all of those questions need had? And it's a very difficult process, Andy. Like, it's one of the things that I still continue to struggle with day in and day out is some of the mundane or minutia within the, the aspects of what I do as a co founder in the company. But I would also say too is just reminding myself again that even some of these tasks that feel mundane, that feel tedious, that don't feel like they're really helping much. Like as long as they, they really truly are helping the mission of the company, as long as they truly are helping my own personal missions, well then those things are worth the challenge, they're worth the obstacle that's being that that's in front of me, that barrier will only serve as a mechanism for growth and development. And if that is truly the case, which I do believe, so then it's all well worth my time to engage.

Yeah, you that's great. And you use two words there, use self awareness and self regulate. I think more leaders are going to understand the word self aware. That's everywhere. Self regulation is a term that I don't actually think a ton of people fully understand. They don't understand when we use the term regulation. They're like, what are you talking about? Is that my emotions, is that my mind, is that my physiology? What exactly are you talking about? So let's get into that a little bit. When you say really the steps you gave are first become aware of essentially your body, your brain, your, your mood, your, your whole being, assess where it's at and then work to self regulate that. What do you mean when you say regulation?

Yeah, so.

One of the lenses that I look at everything through in terms of self awareness might even be like self monitoring. And so biomechanics, sorry, biometrics are extremely important and valuable for a lot of people today, right? You know, you have sleep tracking rings and wrist wearables and chest straps and of these mechanisms for providing amazing data on what's happening with your physiology, you know, with your sleep, with your overall recovery. And these things are great, they're extremely important. But I always tell people that self awareness and self monitoring is great and you need to have that, that's key point and step number one. But without the ability to course correct and to change and to regulate and that can mean many different things, which I'll get in here to here in just a second. Without that the, the data is kind of meaningless. Like if I check in with myself and I'm aware of my mood in the moment and I am aware on how it's negatively impacting me, that's really good. But it doesn't mean much if I don't actually utilize that data in a practical, implementable way. And so basically when we think about self regulation, it is like one of the most underutilized tools. It is something that is if we are not utilizing good self regulation, right, at least, at least not actively training or actively conditioning that type of response, then from a performance standpoint we're leaving a lot on the table. But then in just a general well being perspective, we're leaving a lot on the table because in the end we know from research that if we are having better self awareness that leads to better self regulation, then this impacts so many different areas of life like our relationships, our sleep, our overall sense of well being and joy and peace and contentment and our work performance. Like everything kind of falls under this category that that if it's removed, good self regulation and good emotional regulation, then these other areas of life and these other pillars of health are significantly negatively impacted?

Totally. I know even in my own personal life, if I'm not self regulated with my children or with my wife or in business or with clients, I actually can't prioritize what's most important in my life. You kind of know this. But when we go into that survival brain, it doesn't go into the areas of life that are areas of thriving. It goes into how do I survive, how do I make it through? And I am just really curious for you, Jay, personally, like when you. How do you often find yourself getting dysregulated personally, and what are some really small things that you do to adjust that? I know you know, watching your stuff before, you've talked a lot about anxiety and the importance of regulating through that process, but are there specific things that you find really, really get you dysregulated and it's hard to kind of pop back in?

Yeah, yeah, it's. For me, it comes down to stubbornness. I can be a very stubborn individual. Like, I have kind of like my ideas about how things should run from a business perspective. As a father, as a spouse, like, I can just be very stubborn. And when sometimes I'm challenged, challenged, or my viewpoints are challenged, and I have these strongly held beliefs, it's very easy for me to stand my ground and to feel that just emotional denseness come across me. And I hear a change in my tone, my prosody, like all of these changes and characteristics in the way I communicate, they go into an area that they should not go to. And it's great because in life I've had a lot of individuals who are willing to call me out on it. Some I have people who I work with, who I actively say, call me out on it because I know if that starts to interfere, interfere, if the ego starts to get into the way and becomes inevitably the enemy that the ego is, then I know it will impair our ability to do our best work? I mean, that best work as a family, best work personally, best work as a, as a company. All of these things are impacted when ego and stubbornness gets in the way. So I have worked very actively on catching myself just to be a lot faster at catching myself, I should say, when this happens. And so does it still continue to happen? It does. I mean, we're only human. It's not like we have a remedy to where we completely remove stress, completely remove anxiety, completely Remove, you know, the propensity towards frustration and anger. Like those things are going to happen in life. When I never try to promise anybody that, either as a consultant or as someone who is providing a mental health related product, that you're never going to experience those things in life, that's just not true like you will. It is a part of human life. But what we can do do is reduce the frequency, reduce the severity, reduce the duration of those events happening. And even that small little change of reducing or turning the volume down on those areas can really impact our overall sense of well being and can may help us maintain and strengthen relationships. So what does that look like? Personally, for me, it all comes down to what is the number one, the minimal dose effect of how I can regulate in the moment. So what is the minimal thing that I can do? Do minimal time, minimal effort because I want to get the most bang for my buck. And then I also don't want to, you know, say, oh, I caught myself becoming very stubborn. So now let me go, you know, sit in a room and meditate for 30 minutes. Like that would be great in a perfect world where I have the ability and time to do it. I'd love to go get into a room and meditate for 30 minutes to calm my head, to engage in temperance. But most of us, that's the reality is we don't have the ability to do that. But what do I have the ability to do? I have the ability to regulate my physiology within a matter of seconds just by changing the way that I'm breathing and changing the cadence of my breath. So when I say the way, it means I can actually just go from breathing this thoracic chest fast, quick breathing to breathing more deep, low, slow. And I normally take my cadence down to around six breaths or around five breaths per minute. Excuse me. And that for me is an instantaneous signal that I can send from my body up to my brain into my mind that I am in a safe, secure and connected place. There's no need for me to fly off the cuff because what's in front of me right now is not going to kill me. It is not the thing that is a true threat to my survival. And so for me, it is a matter of literally doing it for 15 to 30 seconds, of just shifting the way that I breathe. That really helps me to rein everything in, to again send that signal of safety, send that signal of resilience and calm my nervous system down and my nervous system system, because I've trained and conditioned it so much will listen to me when I do it again. Does that not mean, does that mean that every single time like I do this? No. Sometimes I want to stand my ground and be stubborn and kind of fight and not be content. But then other times when I am realistic with myself and say it is not worth this fight right now for relationships, for work, for my own sense of well being. Now let me just really take a step back and do something that I know will not just benefit me, but will benefit the relationship, will benefit the other things that I'm engaging in at that moment, whether it be, you know, work strategy or, you know, with my kids around the dinner table. All of those things are way more important than me flying off the cuff and being upset about something that really is not going to actually affect anything.

Yeah. One of the things that I see in the high performance community, and you probably see this too, is this propensity. And you described it, you know, earlier on in our conversation of always needing to do more, to leveling up to be better. And one thing that I've seen happen in that process is a lot of these leaders, what they're trying to do is they're running away from something. And I think what they're running away from is the parts of themselves that actually struggle and the parts of themselves that feel emotions that they don't want to feel like loneliness or sadness or fear or discouragement. And sometimes they see that this high performance optimization can be a way where we, where we just numb and get away and try to basically outpace ourself. I would love to talk about how you see that play out in the high performance community and what we can do better as leaders to address those areas of our life that we typically are uncomfortable with or that we want to run away from.

You know, you bring up a really valid point and one that I love discussing because the high performance, you know, so called biohacking community, like it's really sexy for so many reasons, right? I mean the use of tech and you know, longevity purposes and all of these things are great and they look great on paper and I'm not even going to say they're not great to actually engage and implement in our life. But the problem arises for so many people. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're health optimizing, if you're you, you know, growth, hacking or doing whatever you know, you put in the term there, if it is nothing but an escape and a band aid to numb, you know, whatever's going on, I see it and I don't mean to bastardize this statement, but I see it very comparable to why people seek out alcohol and drugs. A lot of the times people think, oh well, that's not an adaptive way of doing things. You know, exercising, nutrition, biohacking, health optimization, all of that's adaptive. And you know, I'm not gonna sit here and try to argue that, you know, you, someone should choose alcohol and drugs, you know, in order to escape over, you know, health and wellness. Like, I'm not saying that at all people should absolutely choose health and wellness over drugs and alcohol. But what I am saying is that when people use it as a sole mechanism to numb or to band aid, the one big problem that we end up seeing is that what they think is going to fulfill their void there is, it doesn't. And so they're looking for the next thing, or they're looking, or how can I spend more money on tech? Or how can I do something else? How can I add something to my morning routine? And again, it all feels so adaptive to the individual because they're like, I'm doing this for my health and my, and my, and my well being. Meanwhile, if they do a gut check or if they actually check in with their sense of mental well being, they're like, yeah, no, I don't feel very fulfilled doing this. I don't feel a sense of meaning and purpose. I still feel anxious, I still feel stressed. My drive is not increasing. So I think that a lot of this again, is just coming back to this notion that whatever we do, especially making sure that it's a part of our mission, it's a part of our why. Like, we have to also realize too that we cannot run away from these difficulties. We cannot out escape, we can't outwork out, we can't out, you know, nutrition or out biohack. Some of the core issues that we're having, these are things that take deep work and we're, we might, might be able to engage in some of these other behaviors that are healthy for us and they may bring us, you know, a sense of joy and, and, and may act as a hobby almost. And, and that's great, but if we don't do some of the deep reparative work that it takes, we're going to find ourselves still falling short and still not making, meeting the goal of peak performance of health optimization as much as we try to seek it out. So it is extremely imperative for people to, to have that long hard look in the mirror, to take that gut check and ask themselves like, am I doing this basically for the right reasons, or am I doing this basically because I don't think alcohol or drugs is a better option? I don't think, you know, infidelity is a good option right now. I'm just going to fully immerse myself into this other area that's. That it's a hard question to have to ask. And again, I think a lot of high performance formers, a lot of health optimizers, like, if they ask that question, truly, like, they're gonna find that, yeah, like, I sought after this because, you know, I, I was trying to avoid something or I was trying to provide a band aid or, you know, even I'll hear the answer. Like, I'm trying to, you know, increase my lifespan and have longevity. And my, my, my response to that every single time is watch. Why? Why do you want longevity? Like, why is that important to you? That is the key and paramount question. Because if you can't answer why you want to live longer, why you want a better, you know, life and health span, you know, just because it's, it's a sexy term doesn't mean that it's actually going to be fulfilling. Like, why do you want those things? That's the question that everybody asks, high performer or not. Why? Why?

Yeah, that's spot on. And that's exactly what I was curious about. Because a lot of the leaders that I connect with are where they are because they are high performers. They optimize everything in their life. And yet sometimes I almost feel like there's a kind of a high performance rehab that needs to take place in order for them to deal with a part of themselves that they are using this optimization to get away from. And, you know, just a reminder for our listeners, optimization and this high performance that we're talking about, it should be a way to bring about healthy wholeness and integration with your body. It should not be a way to disintegrate or, or move further away from, you know, these parts of yourself and who you are that you, you might want to hide away. So, Jay, you've produced some tech that is, I think, super top notch. I am excited to get it and use it it and implement it into my own life. It tracks hrv, it tracks a couple other things. I think this would be a really important discussion to have on how your tech can really help people not disintegrate their life, but bring about wholeness and integration between, you know, their body, their brain, and their heart. Tell us a little bit about that and how that can help leaders.

Yeah, absolutely. So Hanu Health really came out of this idea, or maybe even to fill this gap that we saw of a lack of integration for overall mental wellness, mental performance, a lack of integration in the wearable space, but then also to just holistic applications and platforms. And so for us, we saw that, you know, within, if you look at the pillars of health, or at least what we see the pillars of health being, it's like really good quality sleep and then we see really good quality nutrition, and then we see really good quality exercise. And then the last one would be really good quality management of our mental well being, our mind and our stress. And so we saw great wearables in every category. Right. I mean for sleep you got Aura, Whoop, all these other really good sleep trackers. Over here on the nutrition side you've got amazing CGMs like Levels and nutrients. And then down here you have exercise applications like Apple Watch, Fitbit, It, Garmin, Whoop. Of course. And then over here in stress you're like, well, people kind of dabble by giving you an hrv, but it's really just one time and it doesn't really have much relationship to overall psychological well being. You know, in the stress category, the wearable market's not really there. At least the biometric market's not there. You have apps like Calm, Headspace, Bloom, Stoic. Like these are really great mental health apps, but they're missing a component. So we were like, well, what if Whoop and Aura had a baby with Calm and with Headspace. Oh, there we go. That's. We got Hanu. So what Hanu's intention is to do is to really help people to do two things. Number one, it works as a all day stress and anxiety and mental health monitor. So it's looking at your physiology and determining these subtle or large scale changes in physiology that demonstrate taxation on the nervous system. So heart rate variability obviously being the predominant one that we used. When we see kind of these events, events take place in your life where heart rate variability is significantly dropping, which is indicative that your stress response is being turned on, your stress or your nervous system is being taxed by something. Well, then we send an alert to the individual and we say, hey, it looks like something's going on. We just wanted to check in with you. Number one, are you, you okay? Are you stressed? And they have the opportunity to kind of provide their feedback subjectively. Like, yeah, I'm really stressed, like I need help or no, I'm good, like I'm actually pretty relaxed. Right now, now. And then after that we say, okay, well we just provided you with that level of self awareness of what was going on. And again, the more and more you receive that feedback, the more and more you're going to be conditioned to catch it yourself. So you become your own high priority level of self monitoring. Then we offer you again the key component that I come back to, which is self regulation. So now is your opportunity to self regulate. And we do so through biofeedback or HRV biofeedback, which is what I was talking about about earlier. We do so through different breath work practices, meditation practices, all with the intention again of training better resilient responses to stress and to anxiety and to other mental health related concerns. So the end goal here is that the more and more we become more aware, the more and more we become conditioned to be aware, the more and more we practice and condition a response of self regulation through these practices, the more and more we're going to condition that response. So even if you take the biofeedback machine away from, from you, the hope or the end result is, is that if you have reoccurring themes in your life, things that cause you anxiety over and over and over again, maybe it's your commute, maybe it's work, maybe it's, you know, I always talk about Janet in the cubicle next door. There's no Janet here, by the way. I always just throw her there. As my, my character who annoys everybody in the office is that maybe you have all these things in your life and you don't have a mechanism for regulatory and you find yourself flying off the cuff and yelling at Janet or you know, sending her a nasty gram email or whatever it may be. If we train and condition, which is again the better word to use a different response, then what people find is that Janet tends to not annoy them as much or at least if she does annoy you, you don't get to the point where you yell at her or you don't get to the point where you send that nasty email. So if we think about from a leadership perspective perspective, we think about from a work perspective and creating a culture where we don't have people aggressively interacting with one another is that this type of wearable or device can help people to, number one, understand what are those things that are causing me immense stress? What are those things that are causing me to fly off the cuff? And then the key point here is that we train better resiliency through different practices. So, so that when that event happens in the future. We don't see it being as severe, we don't see the duration lasting as long. We don't see their frequency of the event happening as often even. And that's again just kind of like classical It's Operant Conditioning 101 in psychology. It's conditioning a response to be associated with an event. And that is what we, what we have to have to help foster a better environment. So we've worked with different leaders of companies. Companies. We work with different high level executives and employees. And this is something that I did a lot within my consulting firm that I owned prior to Hanu is we worked on how can you as a leader take ownership of the choices that you have? Because in the end we cannot control most of the external events that happen to us. But shit happens. And there are some things that we cannot control there. But what we can always control control 100% of the time is our response. No event can ever make you emotionally respond in a way. Like can you naturally have a propensity towards it? Absolutely. But can you control the behavior that follows 100 and a lot of people feel like they are victim to the events that happen in their life. We want to train them more to have an internal locus of control. I have the ability to regulate my emotions at will. Like look at the strength and fortitude of my nervous system. Because you can throw an obstacle in my way at work, you know, within a relationship, at home, you know, you name it on your commute and you throw that obstacle in my way. And what once would just rev me up and have my nervous system going into crazy fight or flight zone now is transition to. I have the ability to control my response in a much more even keeled, temperate, manageable way. And I think that is kind of the whole point is that if you learn that level of self regulation, you're just going to focus, find more daily contentment, you're going to find more joy in life, you're going to find more peace. Instead of being pissed off at everything in life, instead of feeling like the world owes you something, like you're going to say, I'm going to take ownership of this and I'm going to control this. Because in the end, like when something happens in my environment, yeah, maybe I don't have the ability to control that external thing that's going on right now, you know, a deadline or you know, anything else that you might, you know, fill in the blank. But what I do have control over is my nervous system. And if I let it go out of control, then my performance is going to be hindered like you, you wouldn't even imagine. But if I control that response well now my performance is going to go up because I didn't get derailed by that thing that used to derail me. I said no, nervous system's not going to respond that way because I know it won't help me. I'm going to allow my nervous system to respond in a way that is truly adaptive, that is going to increase overall performance and increase well being and increase the culture of your company, increase the culture of, of your relationships. It's. You know, I don't mean to sound like a, a salesman on this, but I just know from the literature that learning better emotional regulation, regardless of whether or not you use Hanu. I want people to use Hanu. Right. I mean it's my company so I think we're building a great product but I also just really want people to learn great tools for self regulation.

And I love this product because what you're describing is a focus on the leader and what they can control. And for a lot of leaders, they have so many valves and hoses going out to pour into other people and oftentimes they completely forget about what they need and where they're at emotionally. So this tool, this tech I think is awesome because it allows them to stay focused on themselves in a really intentional way and then learn how to change their behavior in a way that actually brings about healthy outcomes and healthier regulation. So I want to know personally, like how can I get this? When can I get this?

Yeah, so we're taking pre orders now. So we start shipping in early August. So basically the first week of August we tell people the way to get in is right now because we'll never do a pre order again because it's the product is being launched out to market for the first time and we'll never run this price again. So the retail price of the device is that we send you the device for free. You get a 12 month membership for $300. It's really 295. However we have a discount code. I'm not sure if I've given you one Andy, but we'll get you one. If we haven't already. You can get the, the device and the membership for 40 off. So it's 180 bucks, 179 actually out the door. And, and for us we think that's immense value for continuous daytime. You can wear it at night, but we tell people daytime's really all you need to wear this device. Daytime monitoring of stress. It acts like a stress coach for you. Gives you tailored and personalized approaches to help build resilience and fortitude of the nervous system. And yeah, you can go into Han Hanu is H A N U, which is Hawaiian for breath. And you can go on there and get it. Now. The pre order special I know will end not actually after we stop pre orders, but we'll end in like probably late October. So we tell people to get it now or you know, you'll have to pay almost double and we don't want people to have to do that.

Okay, awesome. So I'm gonna go in and get one and we're gonna include that link in our show notes to this podcast. So feel free to click on it, get it, become more self aware as a leader. Regulate your emotions. And Jay, if people want to connect with you, you have a wealth of knowledge and experience and intelligence. How can they get in contact with you? Learn a little bit more about what you do personally.

Yeah, so hanwhealth.com is a great place to look at all the articles that we're publishing. So it's immense library of just information. A lot of podcast episodes as well. So the Honu Health podcast is one that I run with my co host, Patrick McCune. He's a breath work specialist, wrote the book Oxygen Advantage. So a great guy to have on there. So check us out on Twitter, on Instagram. Instagram's our most active accounts. So for me Personally it's at Dr. J. Wiles. Hanu is at Hanu Health. And then that's the same thing for Twitter, Facebook, all the other social media outlets. And then you can Visit my website, Dr. J. Wiles.com it's not updated as much as Hanukkah Health is because I don't do a lot of more personal things anymore like I was with my consulting firm. But Honu Health is.com is where you're going to find basically all the education portal and everything that we have to offer.

Fantastic. Jay, thank you so much for sharing with us today. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Thanks so much for listening. For more resources, links and show notes, visit pursue whole.com and click podcast. Before we go, it would be extremely helpful if you would please leave a review on itunes or wherever you find this podcast. This helps me understand my audience better and serve more leaders such as yourself. That's it for me this week. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or other social platforms and I'LL be back next week with another episode of the Pursue Whole podcast.