10 Ways To Grow Tiny Superhumans - Ben Greenfield's Top Tips For Raising Strong, Resilient, Happy K

I have a master's degree in physiology.

Biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding, and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Hey, what's up? It's me, Ben Greenfield. If I sound a little funky or the audio sounds a little funky, it's because I'm snowed in in New York City. I'm in my buddy's condo, his loft here in Tribeca in New York City with the snow coming down. So got snowed in last night. Thus I'm not in my recording studio. And also it means I'm bringing you a very special episode today. I decided that I wanted to give to you to gift to you this holiday season, the entire.

Recording of my book, how to Raise Tiny Superhumans. Now, I wrote this book when my children were young, when they were about 5 years old. I in no way profess to be the ultimate parent. As a matter of fact, the one area that I question myself in most is my ability to be a good father. That's what leaves me awake at night sometimes. That's my pain point, the area where I lack confidence. Every day I ask myself, have I been the father that I want my kids to grow up and remember fondly? And every day I feel like I fall short. I wanted to share that with you because I don't think I'll ever think I'm the perfect parent. And I think that's what continues to drive me to discover everything I can about not only how to raise healthy, young, resilient children, but how to develop amazing relationships with them. So this book, being something that I wrote when the Children were five, contains a lot of tips for babies, for parents of young children. But interestingly, a lot of these concepts, from biomechanics to exercise to the hygiene hypothesis to many of the things you're about to hear, also work for adults. So this is something that even if you don't have have kids, I think you're going to get a lot out of. And this is also something I recommend you send to someone you know who does have kids or is planning on having kids or wish they had kids, because many of these concepts can even increase fertility. So hopefully you get something out of today's show. I really thought this would be a special one to give to you. Take a sip of my coffee here. This is.

This is not Kion coffee. This is the coffee from the Laughing man coffee shop down the street. But you can get yourself some of the fantastic, pure, antioxidant, rich Kion coffee that I have available for you over@getkion.com but here's the deal. There's a Black Friday. You knew it. You knew I'd do a Black Friday right now. When you're listening to this, Black Friday is just a few days off. But what I've got for you is I have a coffee package, a special coffee package you can go check out@getkion.com where you get over 20% off of your order. I've got a recovery bundle that I put together which are very pure amino acids, Kion Flex, which is the most potent super fuel for your joints that you can put into your body. Everything I've been able to discover to assist with joint inflammation and recovery is in Kion Flex. And then we combine that with some very fine, pure triglyceride based fish oil, exactly the same as you'd find in fish and nature, packaged with astaxanthin and vitamin E. That's our recovery bundle and that one's running at over 10% off. And then we also have our daily Kion Life bundle where you get the aminos, the coffee, the bar, and then my favorite weight management supplement that we have over there, Kion Lean. You get all of that. So Kion Black Friday also orders over 100 bucks. You get a $25 gift card. Wham. So you can give it to somebody for Christmas. If you order over 250 bucks, you get a $100 gift card. Boom. Give that to somebody for the new year. Give it to somebody different than the one that you gave for Christmas. I digress. Getkion.com More Black Friday specials than the ones I just mentioned, but that's where you can get started. One other Black Friday that I wanted to tell you about was my friends over at onit. Starting on Thanksgiving, they're gonna do their biggest sale of the year with their deepest discounts, their nootropic alpha brain. They're all Marvel and Star wars fitness equipment. They're also giving free shipping for Thanksgiving. They've got 25% off of many of their supplements, 18% off their fitness gear, 20% off some of their functional foods, 50% off DV and books, 30% off their cool clothing. And in addition to the massive price cuts, the more you buy, the more awesomeness you unlock. They're given a $10 coupon, free shipping and premium free gifts available all year. So here's the deal. This is Onnit. You can go to onnnnit.com that's o n n I-t.com black-Friday that's o n n I t.com black Friday Friday. The free gifts and the doorbuster deals are unlimited supply, so you just might miss out if you don't get over there. Check that out. A few Black Friday deals for you. The Show Notes for Today's Podcast by the way, the show notes for today's podcast you can find at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Superhumans if you want the ebook version of what you're about to hear, you can get that there along with any resources that I mentioned. That's@Ben greenfieldfitness.com Superhumans.

Welcome to the audio recording of Tiny Superhumans, written by Ben Greenfield and narrated by Ben Greenfield.

I have twin boys. Their names are river and Taryn and they're six years old and they love to do things like triathlons. They also do Spartan races. They swim 500 meters at a time, run 5Ks quite slowly with stops to play in water fountains and balance on curbs, play the piano, act in theater musicals, cook pad thai program, Lego robots, break dance and dance. Overall, much, much better than their father. Now, whether you have children, you plan on having children, or you know children, the wonderful fact is that you live in this privileged era in which you have the ability to enable the kids in your life to be tiny superhumans who look, feel and perform like optimized human machines. Do you have kids? Grandkids, nieces or nephews? Are you expecting a little one? The fact is, if you answered yes to any of those questions, you're in a unique position to give the child or children in your life every physical and mental advantage possible. And I don't know about you, but I really, really want that for my children. And if you don't want children, you don't like children and don't know any children, then the cool thing is that the same things that make your kids superhuman make you superhuman too. So you don't have to tune out or quit listening if Kids are just not your thing. Now think about this. Mozart learned to play the piano at the age of 4, composed his first piece at age 5, and wrote his first symphony at age 8. Picasso, when he was 12, had a complete grasp of the fundamentals of art and was producing photorealistic anatomical sketches. A couple of weeks ago, when my wife and I took our children to an art gallery, there were amazing and intricate sculptures of fish and bears and bighorn sheep created by some man who had spent his entire entire life studying sculpture. And then my wife, who studied art in college, explained to me that some guy named Bernini was churning out sculptures just like this when he was 8 years old. I looked it up, and it turns out she was right. It's amazing. But these folks aren't special childhood prodigies, idiot savants, or some kind of weirdo autistic geniuses. They're just normal human beings. In our modern era, though, we've forgotten how to nurture and grow an amazing human body and mind, and we've instead settled for a generation that winds up on people of Walmart.com attached to leashes, chewing on Ritalin. Yikes. Well, let's begin, shall we?

So we'll start with number one. Let them get dirty. Now, let me ask you a question. Did you eat your own boogers when you were a kid? Well, it turns out we may actually be hardwired to eat our own boogers. An Austrian study from last year showed that a kid snot actually harbors bacteria that, when eaten, helps to strengthen the body's own natural immune system. So my kids kiss our dogs on the lips, they lick the floor. And I've seen them do this at public coffee shops. Of course, that was when they were a baby. They take an actual real bath about once every three days. I've observed them to rip diapers off and eat their own poop and crawl through entire airports. And you know what? I don't really care. See, it's no coincidence that in our modern era of antibiotics, antibacterial hand soap, bottle boiling, and daily bathing, we're experiencing new and unparalleled occurrences of problems like autoimmunity, autism, add, food allergies, leaky gut, and obesity in our kids. The reason for this is that a child's immune system gets stronger when it's exposed to dirt, germs, bacteria, viruses, and even parasites. So if you protect your kid from things like animal poop, dirt, farm animals, lots of other kids, and of course, boogers, they don't develop their immune systems. The right way, and they grow up more likely to have issues like skin disorders and gut issues and allergies. Now, on a very related note, I was actually pretty bummed that when we had our twins, my wife got a C section and it wasn't because it ruined her abs, because it didn't. And I have to say that because she might listen to this someday. It's because babies born via C section have been proven to have weaker guts, worse immune systems, and lower amounts of good bacteria. This is also why babies who are breastfed develop healthier immune systems, since breast milk contain good bacteria that colonize the gut. Incidentally, this is also why if you weren't breastfed or never shut down your mom's vagina, you can actually benefit quite a bit from using probiotics, eating fermented foods, and even using a type of supplement called colostrum, which comes from animal breast milk. So quick, take a break, go call your mom and ask her if you were breastfed or born vaginally and then act accordingly. Now when I pick up my kids from kidcare at the ymca, I sometimes get strange looks from the other parents because I go out of my way to remind my kids not to use the antibacterial hand soap. That stuff can create nasty superbugs that can actually hurt your kids. So can antibiotics. I also only use soap in the shower once every two or three days and the rest of the time I just rinse with water. Same thing for my kids. Let those dirt and soil based organisms thrive on your child's skin. If no soap showers are just not your thing, then you may be interested in this New York Times report on aobiome. And this is a biotech startup that created a refreshing cosmetic mist which contains billions of cultivated bacteria commonly found in dirt and untreated water. So now you can basically pay for an expensive skin cosmetic to get the same thing you'd basically get from rolling around in your lawn. So how else can you get your kids dirty? Well, consider that kids who grew up on farms and in large families have been shown to have stronger immune systems. So go get a horse. I'm just kidding. You don't have to get a horse or chickens, but you should let your kids have pets that they can get down and dirty with. And if a dog or a cat or guinea pig or hermit crab or goldfish or snake or tarantula isn't an option for you, I did have a tarantula when I was a kid. By the way, then at least let your kids play with as Many other kids as possible. And by the way, have you ever eaten natto? It's this slimy, snotty, gooey fermented soybean mix. And most of them come in this little white cup with an orange Japanese cartoon character on the side. Just the other morning I walked in on my son Taren eating a giant spoonful this natto stuff he had found in a container in the fridge. It appeared he had dumped a little organic ketchup on there. Now I personally prefer natto with a little white rice and mustard, but to each their own. And natto is a fantastic dirty food. My kids eat lots of other fermented bacteria rich foods too. Like kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, yogurt and kombucha. Your kids should do the same. And you should too. That's all bacteria. It's dirty and it's awesome for you.

So speaking of eating weird foods, let's take this one step further. Let your kids eat lots of fat too. Now my kids eat bone marrow. Bone marrow is chock full of healthy fats, DHA and fat soluble vitamins which are all incredibly important for your kids brain, hormones and nervous system. In her book Deep Nutrition, Kate Shanahan, who works with the LA Lakers professional basketball team outlines four important factors that have been proven to determine beauty and symmetry in facial development of babies and kids. Those four factors are vitamin A, D, E and K. And you know what makes all those vitamins similar? That's right. They're all fat soluble vitamins. Let's take vitamin K2 for example. It keeps kids from getting calcified growth plates. Calcified growth plates will stunt the kids growth. But K2 is only found in animal based fats that kids are rarely eating these days. So my kids drink bone broth, they eat sardines out of the can and drink the oil. They consume plenty of egg yolks and eat grass fed butter. You know how walnuts are shaped like little brains? Those are also really good for your child's brain. My kids have a big handful of raw walnuts every morning right before they eat eggs scrambled in bacon fat. So what should your children not eat? And what do I keep my kids away from? Well, they shouldn't eat egg whites, they shouldn't eat fat free cereals, and they shouldn't eat low fat yogurt. They should eat brain food instead. Incidentally, this is also why I personally test my blood four times a year to make sure my total cholesterol stays above 200. Because I know as author Nora Godgaudas points out in her book Primal Body, Primal Mind that cholesterol below 200 is actually associated with low IQ. And by the way, kids who have low intake of essential fats also have higher levels of add, autism, and aggression. But some aggression is actually okay. Which leads me to point number three.

Let your kids fight. Now, at home we have this game we play with my kids. It's called Takedown. I get down into a low squat position and then my boys run at me and try to take me down. Another game we play is I lie down on the ground on my stomach and both my boys get on top of me. And my task is I simply have to try to throw them and their friends off and stand up. And then of course, we play the one where I put the Rocky 3 soundtrack on Pandora streaming radio and we just fight for rounds until we're all exhausted. Anything kind of goes. Although the boys know that if they bite, scratch, claw, or go for any cheap shots, that it hurts. Daddy. Roughhousing and fighting is so, so important for your kids. It teaches them how to adapt quickly to unpredictable situations. It teaches them how to deal with pain and discomfort and even losing sometimes, especially if you don't always let them win, which you shouldn't do. And how about this? Did you know that the amount of roughhousing that kids do actually predicts their achievement in first grade better than their kindergarten score tests do? This is because roughhousing increases levels of something called brain derived neurotrophic factor, or bdnf, and that increases neuron growth. Now you might think that roughhousing would make your kids more violent, but that's simply not so. It's actually the opposite. Kids who roughhouse are more socially and emotionally mature than kids who don't because they understand the difference between play and aggression, between kindness and hostility, and they learn to stick to the rules of morality better. Roughhousing also makes you bond stronger with your kids because it causes both of you to make more oxytocin, which is the same bonding hormone that gets released during things like sex and breastfeeding. And of course, roughhousing gets your kids physically active, which I don't have to tell you, is a huge missing component of kids lives these days. And that leads me to point number four, which is to let your kids stand a lot. Now, I have a poster that hangs on the wall of my office called Think Outside the Chair. And it comes from this book called World Distribution of Postural Habits. And I first learned about this book and this poster When I interviewed a biomechanist named Katie Bowman, my BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast and the poster shows you over 50 different positions that you could be in during your workday. It's kind of like the Kama Sutra of standing workstations. So I'm going to try a new position right now while I'm talking. So I just switched into a lunging position. Now, you've probably seen the news that sitting is the new smoking and that having your butt planted in a chair for eight plus hours a day, or even for two hours at any given time, is one of the worst things you can do for fat loss and heart health. It actually doesn't even matter how much you exercise at the end of the day. It just matters how much you got up and around during the day. And that happens to be one of the reasons that I'm both standing and lunging as I record this for you. While they've done the same research in kids, one study last year gave kids the option of using standing desks for an entire school year. Over 90% of the kids chose to stand, and those that did burn nearly 100 extra calories a day. Another study found that totally cool. Irrespective of the total time kids spent sitting or standing, the more frequent the breaks in sedentary time, AKA recess, the lower the health risk for everything. Weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, bad cholesterol, everything. So recess is good. So are standing workstations. They make them for kids. Check out websites like Updesk or Focal, Upright or Varidesk.

Now. Next, let their feet free. When your kids are standing, you might as well let them not be wearing these big overprotective shoes. Now, I'm very uncomfortable when I'm standing around at a party or a social gathering wearing shoes. I don't like them. As a matter of fact, I avoid shoes and actually sometimes pants too. When I'm working at home, I'm that guy who sits around writing and recording in my boxers. Now, my kids also rarely wear shoes like some kind of ancient tribesman or their own dad. They have these ugly, callous, tough, bulletproof feet. But they play outside, hike, run, stand, move, and of course do their hotel, gym, treadmill, prowler workout. That's running on a treadmill with the motor turned off, all primarily barefoot. The reason for the importance of letting your child's feet free is that the shape and density of your kid's bones are a direct result of the loads and geometry placed on your kid's body. So this Means that the way your child's foot is loaded will affect the lifelong shape of their pelvis, their hips, their knees, their ankles, their back, and even the space in their chest that their lungs are in. This is why kids with poor posture grow up to be adults with poor posture. Kids who haven't had their bones exposed to a variety of loads like running or lifting or moving objects, have been shown to have lower bone density later in life and to suffer from flat feet. And pediatric research is now showing that overprotective, built up, stabilizing modern footwear can interfere with the development of your kid's foot strength, ankle stability and movement patterns for the rest of their life. Your child's foot muscles atrophy and their foot bones degrade. Now, this is all reversible, of course. You can't reverse it in just two weeks by buying Vibram Five fingers, getting a stress fracture, and then filing a lawsuit, which has been done. It takes patience. Most of my clients need one to two years to make a full transition back to developing strong and natural feet if they've been wearing cushioned, overprotected shoes much of their life. But with kids, things happen faster. Kids can reshape and redevelop foot structure and bones within just three months. So besides avoiding modern built up shoes, what else can you do to give your kids superhuman feet? Well, choose shoes that are super flexible or minimalist. Good brands are Vibram, Vivobarefoot, Happy Little Souls, Boboox, Merrell and Nike Free. Play foot games with your kids to encourage motor skills and healthy foot development. Like they can pick up marbles with their feet and put them into a cup. Massage your child's feet for a few minutes before bedtime. Use Happy Feet socks, which are a special kind of sock that spread the toes and strengthens the feet. You can wear these too yourself. And if you live near sand, let your kids run and walk in sand, which is one of the best ways to both strengthen and stretch the feet.

So now that your kids are eating boogers, breastfeeding and barefoot, it's time to kick them outside and walk away. There was this article that appeared in the Atlantic magazine called the Overprotected Kid. And the article goes into and describes this little adventure playground in a housing development in North Wales. There's no fancy playground structure with a shiny metal slide and a bright red steering wheel and a Tic Tac toe board. There's no yellow seesaw with a central balance to make sure nobody falls off. There's no little rubber bucket swing for the babies, there's basically just some old tires and pieces of wood. There's a frayed rope swing that carries you over a creek if you can make it that far. The article talks about how the day the journalist was there researching the article, the kids were mostly playing with an elderly person's walker that was at any given time used as a scooter, a jail cell and a gymnastics bar. Well, a preoccupation with safety has stripped our kids of independence, risk taking and discovery. Kids who don't have a chance to solve their own problems, control their own decisions and follow this internal moral compass grow up feeling less in control of their own lives and fate. They don't learn to, as this author, James Altucher, says, to choose yourself. Now, there's an essay called the Play Deficit. And there are movements like free schooling and unschooling. And there are books like Free Range Kids, Baby Knows Best, Duct Taped Parenting, the Kids Will Be Fine. In other books, they all show how the loss of unstructured free play and a set of strict, rigid play and schooling rules has resulted in depression, narcissism, and a loss of creative thinking and empathy in our kids. Now, I grew up on six acres of land. I was homeschooled. I would finish school by 11 and then play outside until it literally got dark. My parents never called me in for dinner or came out to find me. I just showed up somehow alive and having learned a heck of a lot about the world around me, about making decisions, solving problems, exerting self control and following rules set by me and my tribe of friends. And look at me. I'm pretty messed up, but I'm at least still alive and doing what I passionately love, which is mostly still just playing outside. Now my kids are now growing up on 10 acres of land. We do the same thing. We just kick them out the door and they go. Their exercise and physical activity isn't always supervised by a soccer coach and sidelined. And their playground isn't always lined with fences and that special soft rubber gravel substitute stuff. Of course, we try to make sure there's no major hazards like mountain lions and bear traps in the general vicinity our kids are playing in. But we also understand that there's a big difference between avoiding major hazards and having our kids grow up in a protected bubble. See, growing tiny superhumans isn't about creating perfect kids. It's about creating resilient, free thinking, free spirited kids who can survive in unpredictable situations and who perhaps even think beyond the realm of growing up to be A factory worker or drone completely void of creativity.

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So next is let your kids join in. Now, there was this very interesting study done at the University of Essex. And in the study, they asked kids to rate how active they thought their parents were. Then they had those kids complete a test of their own cardio fitness, in this case a bleep test, where a loud bleep sounds, you run about 20 meters and the bleep sounds again and you run again, basically running back and forth with increasingly shorter recovery times until you're completely exhausted. What researchers found was that how well a kid did on a BLEEP test was directly influenced by how active and fit that child perceived their parents to be. In other words, the fitter and more physically active your kid thinks you are, the fitter and more physically active your kid will be. So how can you include your kids in your workouts? Well, we do push ups, bodyweight, squats, crawls, crab walks, overhead presses, and hill sprints with our kids wrapped around our backs, torso and chests. Obviously, if your child is 15 years old, this may be a fast track to a hernia, but if you've got young children, you can simply use them as your weights and they love it. And you get more of that oxytocin release I mentioned earlier, too. We play follow the leader with our kids, where we'll go on a hike in the forest or walk in the neighborhood. And we use the world as our playground. Balancing on fences, picking up heavy rocks, climbing on obstacles like walls and park benches, carrying each other, crawling, jumping, rolling, walking backwards, walking sideways and moving in as many fun ways as possible. I even swim with my kids on my back, especially when we're traveling as a family and at these short little hotel pools. Since our kids were born, we've also used jogging strollers for uphill sprint repeats and runs, and pool kickboards for the kids to beside us when we swim laps. We have a local neighborhood family yoga class that we sometimes take our kids to. We drop in for family Zumba at our ymca. We have mini Kettlebells and mini medicine balls at home for the kids to join. In our living room workouts, we play tennis at the park and basketball in the backyard. I'm even learning how to break dance right now with my kids using a Breakdance dvd. When it comes to making your kids a part of your workout, the sky's the limit. And if you want to grow tiny superhumans, you must think beyond confining yourself to a Treadmill and your MP3 player and doing your workout at 4am when nobody is watching.

Now, as your kids begin to get dirty, do more unstructured free play, do workouts with you and sit less, you're gonna find that they and hopefully you naturally spend less time on devices, especially electronic devices. And this is a good thing. See, every phone has a warning label on it that tells you to keep the distance between the phone and your body at a few inches in most cases. It's why my phone is either always in airplane mode or, if I'm using it, hooked up to a special kind of headset called an air tube headset. And it's also why, based on the absorption of a cell phone signal through a child's goal being twice that of an adult's goal, that I take special steps to ensure I'm not frying my kids. From neural degradation to insomnia, cancer, and add. There are thousands of studies on elect electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, particularly with regard to children's health. From smartphones to WI fi routers to computers to game consoles to smart meters to microwaves, television, and cell towers, EMFs can be prevalent in just about every aspect of your child's life. And you know what's scary? Kids absorb far more EMF than adults because their body has a higher water content, which makes them more conductive to radiation. They've also got thinner skulls, a growing brain, and rapidly dividing cells, making them all the more susceptible to damage. So at our house, we have dirty electricity filters plugged into each room of the house. We have electrical kill switches installed in every bedroom of the house. We don't use our microwave, ever. We play outside instead of using gaming consoles like Wii and PlayStation. Our kids don't use smartphones, iPads, or laptops. And we won't be introducing these until they understand the importance of keeping devices clear of their ears, heads, and the little growing gonads in their laps. It's kind of funny because I tell people we have a completely stupid home, the opposite of a smart home. There are almost zero wireless signals or Bluetooth signals as a Matter of fact, right now, while I'm talking to you, my wireless router is unplugged and I'm instead hardwired into the router. And this quiet, stupid little home is also very important. For another thing that's crucial for creating a tiny sleep let your kids sleep every night. Week after week, month after month, year after year. We have the same bedtime routine in our house. Our kids put on pajamas, they brush their teeth using fluoride free toothpaste, of course. And then we snuggle up in their bed and I read them a story. We each list one thing we're grateful for. And finally, I sing and play them a song on my guitar. And for that bedtime routine, there's no blaring television, no phones, no iPads, no bright lights, and no other such melatonin disruptors. Occasionally the kids will even come curl up in my bed where I have a full body warming red light bulb. And that's actually one of the best little $10 sleep hacking investments you'll ever make for your own sleep. Quality sleep is when your cells and your nervous systems repair. And that's why I geek out on sleep so much. It's when memories form and the day's important lessons are cemented. So by cutting down on sleep, you learn less, you develop less, you're less bright, you make worse decisions, you accomplish less, you're less productive, you're more prone to errors, and you undermine you and your children's true intellectual potential. Sadly, a kid sleeps an average of an hour less a night than they did 30 years ago. A big part of this is our post industrial infatuation with productivity. We think it's okay to use an alarm clock to cut sleep short, okay to work in shifts, okay to travel people, including kids around the world through multiple time zones and assume their body just bounces right back. Okay to save time by sleeping less and working more. Okay to pull kids out of bed in time for school. It's even been shown that daylight savings time, designed by our government to save energy and fuel, actually alters your child's fragile internal body clock twice a year. And that results in lower SAT stores compared to states like Arizona, which observe standard time all year long. Probably the worst part of all this is that little kids around the world are woken up early in the morning to go to school to learn. And not only do these kids get stressed and cranky, but their immune systems get undermined and their growth is blunted. Some sleep researchers who understand this problem are now trying to battle the establishment for more school schedules that allow kids to go to school one or two hours later. And I realize that a giant groan is growing in the throats of those of you who would rather not have your kids still be hanging around your house at 8am in the morning. But my optimistic prediction is that sooner or later, government, school authorities and parents will realize that late bedtimes due to overloading with homework and the use of an alarm clock to rip kids from their beds contradicts the very goals of education. So if you want your kids to become superhuman, then let them sleep.

Finally, let your kid relax. Have you ever been laying next to your spouse or significant other at night and just felt like something wasn't quite right? You felt the energy in the room was just off? Or maybe you had hot, crazy, wild sex and everything seemed so, so right. It's like you're one. It's like your hearts are beating in rhythm. Well, the amazing thing is that your hearts are literally are synced. See, your heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy in your entire body. And your heart's electrical field is 60 times bigger than your brain's. Your heart is also connected to your brain via something called the vagus nerve. And this means that your heart signal can directly affect other people's hearts, their brains, their mood, and their entire body. This also means that an intimate connection of heart brain synchronization can occur between two people or even between a person and an animal. Your heart's electrical field extends out in all directions in space around you, and it touches anyone or anything within 8 to 10ft of where you're sitting right now. So just imagine you're playing at home with your kid. And imagine that your heart is racing, you're stressed, you're running from a lion that's jumping out from your email inbox, rushing around the house with your phone clutched to your neck, and hurriedly trying to make dinner all at the same time. Well, your child feels that it affects them. Your heart signal has a direct impact on your children's stress levels, and this stress affects their brain long term. That's why every morning before I get out of bed, the first thing I do is measure something called heart rate variability, which is a direct quantification of the heart's electrical rhythms and gives you instant feedback of whether you have a healthy balance between your fight and flight nervous system and your rest and digest nervous system. And if my heart is out of balance, I don't get out of bed till I've fixed it, because I know it affects my family, my kids, it even affects my dog. If I find myself engaged in shallow chest breathing, or irritable or moody or rushed or stressed during the work workday, I stop again and fix the imbalance. I have a home office and I know that if I'm stressed and if my children are in the vicinity, they can instantly sense that without me saying a thing. It's just the way us humans are wired. So do you want to know how to instantly fix stress and bring your heart's electrical rhythms back into balance? Well, it's done via something called the quick coherence technique. You can easily teach it to your kids and I'll teach it to you right now. Do you want to learn it? Okay, let's do this. Close your eyes. Okay, good. Now, with your eyes closed, breathe deep, nasal breathing deep from your belly. And first focus your attention on the area around your heart, the area in the center of your chest. If you want, you can place your hand over the center of your chest to help keep your attention in your heart area. If you're teaching this to the kids in your life, have them put their hands on their heart. It's important that you teach your children to feel their heart and know right where it's physically located. Now imagine that your breath is coming in and out through your heart area. Just find that natural breathing rhythm that feels good to you. And every breath is coming in and out through that heart area. Every breath of oxygen feeding right into your heart. Next, think of a positive feeling. Let's get even more specific. Think of a child in your life. Your son, your daughter, your niece, your nephew, your grandkid. Imagine their face, their laugh, their smile. Imagine their soft hair up against your cheeks as you snuggle them. Hold them tight, feel their smooth skin and let those positive emotions wash over you. And breathe those emotions. Feel those emotions going straight into your heart.

Now, when you're ready, open your eyes.

What you've just learned, you can do anytime, any place. You can teach yourself to achieve that feeling within just 10 seconds. It's the most powerful stress reducing relaxation technique I can give you. And better yet, if you take just one thing from this recording, go to the child in your life and teach that technique to them. Give them that gift and they will become superhuman. And I hope you will too. Thanks for listening.

Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can subscribe to my information packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right hand side of that webpage that says Ben recommends where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, finally, to get your hands on all of the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company kion@getkion.com that's getkion.com.