Episode 5 Brain waves

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. To develop an awareness and ability to control your nervous system and brain waves is one of the most powerful tools hello friends. You are listening to the All Things Good for your podcast. I'm your host Brian Bowen, founder of.

Integrative Health, Inc. And I'm Amy Christiansen, your co host and creator of Amy Christensen Health and Wellness Coaching.

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Good morning.

Good morning. Hello. Hello.

Good morning.

I just wanted to start the morning off with a little gratitude. I don't mean to be so emotional and woo woo this morning to start, but first of all I'm very grateful that you are up this early to do this, but I'm also very grateful for the amount of listeners that we already have that have downloaded our podcast. So it just makes me super appreciative for all of you out there that are interested in your health and wellness and taking this journey to explore and continue to improve your lives.

Yeah, very good thing. I don't think being grateful is emotional or woo woo at all. Maybe we'll get into that in our mindset podcast where we can take that away from being a soft thing to or at least if it's being soft, it's a good thing, right? It's a good thing for you.

Absolutely. It is a good thing. So woohoo. I'm super excited about today's topic. I'm even like just kind of thinking about this and things that we want to cover. It's kind of taken me on a journey backwards. So we're going to talk a lot about the parasympathetic nervous system just to really get a visceral sense of how that affects us in our lives, but how it associates to brainwaves. You know. That being said we want to really engage with you at that level to think about that stuff and how the brainwaves relate to the nervous system and so forth. But as I was thinking about this, it's kind of fun to like go back through your experiences in life and it's like, oh my gosh, when I did that, I was in this state or when I did that I was here. And so when I was did things that were more successful, I realized I was in this place. So ideally we want to move forward in that direction of having more control of our nervous system and our brainwave states and identify that. And so it's a really cool tool and we'll give you some tools at the end. So I'm excited to geek out on this a little bit.

Well, and you brought up kind of an interesting topic where a lot of what we talk about is being here, being now, being present. Everybody is very focused on be here. Don't focus on the past, don't focus too much on the future. But you made a good point. Those are just more kind of peripheral views. We use our past and things that we've learned and to grow on to gain wisdom and insight on in order to be more functional and appropriate or focused in our future or in our present time. Right. So that we can have the future we envision. While it's kind of hopefully a soft fuzzy boundaries of design for people for their future, it's still there. We can't have too hard of a line because then you're just going to be stressed and worried about your life being in a specific way. But utilizing looking back and looking forward to enhance the presence of now and doing that takes time to be aware, stopping and we say that a lot. I use aware self awareness a lot and more today it's becoming much more the mindfulness. Right. Being mindful of where you are, being mindful how you feel. And we've talked about this in all of our previous podcasts about how our purpose here is to bring people into paying attention to where they are. Mind wise, body wise. How's your breathing, how's your stress level? More consciously through the day, taking some little breaks to check in with yourself. So today, like you said, we're going to kind of jump into how we have even more so ability to control delving into parasympathetic and sympathetic systems when we want to utilize them more. So thanks for bringing that up.

Absolutely. Well, it's good to the, you know, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system both are critical and important. And there's a duality between the. The two of them. So it's not that we're going to totally bag on the sympathetic nervous system here, because it has a critical role, but there is a balance. And not to go all Chinese medicine here for a second, but when I was just thinking about the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and that duality of balance and how if you have too much of one, it affects the other, if you have too little of one, it affects the other. And in Chinese medicine, and I think people have heard this term yin and yang before, it's very in line with, like, the balance of the parasympathetic tone, if you will. So if you have too much of yang, there can be a depletion of yin. If you have too much, again, there's a rise or this excess of Yang. And so there's this balance. And so the same thing with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So I just thought that was an interesting, like, duality, and they both are a critical role, but we clearly get stuck in one. So I feel like I'm going to let you tee off a little bit with that again.

You know how I love it when things become connected and pulled together like little puzzle pieces. So I love that. It's exactly what it is, right? Parasympathetic. We don't want to be in either one for too long, and we typically live more in the sympathetic system all the time. I think at one of our conversations, you made a great analogy. It's like you've left the log on the fire for too long and you're burning out that system. So our stress level, our high anxiety, our high activity, our high distraction is all kind of stimulating that sympathetic system. So just to take it a step back, you know, parasympathetic and sympathetic. So you have your central nervous system. I'm not going to go too deep into the anatomy of it, but the central nervous system, brain, spinal cord, and then all the nerves that run off of that are basically your autonomic system. And your parasympathetic system is in charge of running all the kind of unconscious processes. Your heart rate, your breathing, your eyes dilating when needed, your metabolism. So we're not really thinking about these things. They do it automatically. And then your sympathetic system can also have an autonomic process. You know, you don't really think about the fear of an injury or that nervousness that's rising before a big event, or, you know, you get that Stress level rolling. You're not necessarily processing, going, I'm going to speed up my heart rate right now because I'm very nervous about this meeting. But it's happening. So the sympathetic, if you think about it, is more of the alert, stress, high activity. Then your parasympathetic system is the thing that brings you down. It's the rest and digest process. And what we can do now and what we're learning even more, that while we say it's autonomic, it does it on its own. We really do have the ability to control those and how significant the ability to control is for our health and our wellness. We're tapping into that more than ever. And again, it ties into a lot of things we've talked about in the past, that it doesn't always have to be a pill or a process. If you start taking steps now, you can improve your health, your wellness, your mindness, your productivity, your rest, just by stepping back and doing a few things. So I think that's where we're going to talk about what kind of things do we want to do? Like, what does it matter? You said you were in alpha. I was clearly left. I think I was on the edge of what, delta and theta?

Yeah. Well, I got a kind of a fun, not fun, fun for me as far as just awareness of my morning routine and how I can actually feel, go through each one of those. But I just want to back up real quick and jump back into that rest and digest. So the parasympathetic nervous system, like Amy said, is more of that rest and digest. And also you'll hear rest and recover, which I don't think we do enough of. And so when we think about that parasympathetic, and as we'll tie it to brainwave states later, there's really a big recovery component in that. And so I think we need to shift and start thinking about, like, on a daily basis, what are we doing to recover. Because I think with a sympathetic system, it's more fight, flight or freeze. Right. And I think that we are always mentally chewing on stuff over and over and over. And we are multitasking and juggling stuff and, you know, in that land, and that's those higher brainwave states that we'll get into. But I do, like you said, we tend to just hang out there a little bit more and get stuck, which can burn that parasympathetic system out. And so just like exercise or doing anything else, we have to have the ability to be able to know when we're moving from one versus the other and kind of exercise it. And I think that that helps bring a lot of awareness. And for all of us, just something aware of that tells us that is our heart rate. So if you catch yourself sighing and your heart rate's going a little faster and you're not taking big deep breaths, you are definitely more in that sympathetic state. So what are all your little telltales? Right? So if you're in sympathetic, a little telltale could be, heart rate's a little faster, Maybe you feel that anxiousness, shallow breathing, catch yourself sighing. Those are some little telltale signs versus the parasympathetic that slows the heart rate down. Right? Your breasts become a little more deeper, a little more relaxed, and the mind is a little calmer. So if you feel more of those little telltale signs, then good job. You're parasympathetic.

Right? And a lot of times, like you were saying, if you're taking a lot of sighs or gastric juices are maybe overactive and your stomach's upset, that's your body's signal. Like you said, neither one of them is bad, but it's just feedback. And that's your body's signal trying to tell you to bring it down a level, trying to get you out of that sympathetic system again, cueing into your body's data. Your body signals your car alarms going off. What are we going to do to bring yourself down into that parasympathetic state? Most of us aren't going to be thinking about it again. We talked about some tools and some of the ways that you can signify and trigger yourself to remember to stop and do some breathing activity. Setting alarm on your phone. You know, in the book about atomic habits, we talk about habit stacking and kind of triggers. Like every time you go to the bathroom, you remember to take a drink of water. Every time you walk through a doorway, you take a deep breath and kind of just give yourself a second to re situate and cue into where your body is. So doing little key moments of okay, before I get home and go into the house, if you've got family there or what have you, and it's going to be kind of a change. Like give yourself a moment before you walk in to just relax in the car, take a few deep breaths, kind of envision what you'd like to show up as. Not necessarily how the situation will be, but how you're going to show up in the situation. Because we don't always get to control what we're walking into, but tapping into some tools and some ways to kind of refocus and reset and trigger your body to dive into that parasympathetic system. So you are purposefully bringing yourself into relaxation.

There was something that you said about when you were talking about that digestive system that is another telltale that you know as far as the gut and the digestion. But so parasympathetic is when you rest and digest, so you're more optimized for digestion and then sympathetic, you know, your digestion isn't doing as good of a job, things like that. But I've noticed this a lot in treating people is a lot of people that have gut stuff have really high stress levels. And so those two correlate really, really tight together. And there's actually, you know, when I'm treating people from an acupuncture perspective, there's a very specific pattern where there's a system that gets overstressed and over kind of attacks the weaker system. And that's very in line with the same role of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So if you know that and you have maybe some digestive stuff or you're having some issues, that's another telltale that you're probably and more sympathetic system. So something to think about. But it's very common that I see. And I'm treating people with digestive disturbances or digestive imbalances that have higher stress levels. So it's amazing clinically to see that presentation. And so if you're a stressed out person, you want to actually chew and eat your food slower because your digestion is already vulnerable and so spending a little bit more time. But I think we tend to do the opposite when we're stressed and whatever. We tend to like burn it and eat a little faster, move a little quicker. And I've been guilty of that for sure. So I'll own that.

I had two very big brothers and I learned to eat fast if I wanted to eat at a very young age. But yeah, I didn't starve.

Yeah, good job. Glad you're here.

I know. I love my offhanded trying attempts at being funny in the morning. It always goes over really well. But, you know, it is. We've talked about when we're working on people, it activates the parasympathetic system and a lot of people's tummy scrawl and they're, you know, embarrassed and it's like, no, that's a great thing. That means your body is relaxing but because the way, well as we've mentioned, parasympathetic, sympathetic. Well, there's a whole nother nervous system. That's the enteric system, right. That's the nervous system that makes up the gut. And that's why we, you know, it's so significant. It's called our second brain. The brain and the gut have direct links, they've done research now where you don't have to actually be able to taste sugar for your body and brain, your stomach and brain to communicate. This is good, give me more of it. And it creates a craving of whatever you just did do more of that and you don't actually. It's not the taste of sugar, it's the development that what happens that the brain and the body are like, hey, this is good, give me more of this. This is something I can use right away. So when you're stressed and that system is in the fear mode, right. It's just there's not a good communication to the brain. It's not a good communication and development of serotonin and releasing the whole cascading event of dopamine. And your body's not going to get to that relaxed state. It throws all the rest of the chemicals in the gut, the digestive system off and creates, I think we've mentioned this before, it just creates a little cascade event and we're going to go into to a deeper enteric system digestion stress. Conversation at a podcast coming up soon. But just to touch on that, yes, it's very important and I think it's very telltale of our society today. Not just with the quality of what we're, or lack thereof, of what we're putting in our body and in our mouth and our gut, but the state of high stress all the time and how that is affecting our health and our gut being a huge factor of showing us that our bodies are out of.

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Homeostasis and out and moving into a dysfunction. We have more, you know, gut issues and autoimmune diseases today than we've ever had.

Yeah, no, it's amazing. And you know, again, what a great little telltale signs. What a great little awarenesses around those things to help determine kind of where you're at. So, and obviously those are things we want to avoid. So if we can learn how to balance that and understand where we're at in any given time and have awareness around that, we're not only helping something we already have, but we're helping prevent something we don't have, which is the critical point of all this. Right. So this is one of our missions, is prevention. And with the mind in that anxious level when you're in sympathetic, those higher levels that tends to where we don't make some of the best decisions sometimes, you know, we get frustrated and we're having heart palpitations and we're sighing and, you know, all this stuff and we're getting frustrated. Something's not working out right and it just tends to get worse. Right. So that pause and being able to step back from it, sometimes you just got to put it down, put yourself in a timeout, put yourself in a pause. So if you, you know, in a place where your mind's chewing on something a thousand times over and things just aren't going quite as smooth, you're not in wu way. For those of you who don't know what that is, in previous podcasts, it means effortless movement. When things just don't feel quite effortless, you're probably in sympathetic.

Right. Let's just break down a little, just a quick touch, because we keep talking about brain waves and let's tell people kind of those different levels and what they kind of relate to and where they can maybe little signs that they can recognize where they're at. Obviously, like I said, I was in Delta Theta when we woke up this morning because I had a very late night last night and you're.

I left Theta. And yeah, so if you don't mind. So, yeah, so Delta, obviously you need Delta. And you know, Delta is where your body is definitely in that rest and recovery, you know, phase. So people that are having some sleep issues and things like that probably are not getting enough delta waves. And so I'm going to break out just some hertz here. Now, there's a couple of charts when you look this up that there's some slight variables, but this will give you just an indicator. And for those of you who are visual learners, I want you to picture like a wave pattern and the frequency. So delta is 0.5 to 4 hertz. So picture waves that have a lot of space between each wave. The waves are big and there's a lot of space between each one. It's calming, this nice, calming wave pattern. When you're in delta, that's when the body and the mind has a better chance to heal and regenerate repair cells and relieve some pain. The stress levels of cortisol decreases and the serotonin increases. So this is a very opportune time for the body to recover. And obviously you're in a deeper sleep, so that's that more, you know, REM sleep. So too much or too little can affect you. Now, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna tiptoe just gently in this conversation because when you get into mental health issues, depression, anxiety, and obviously so many other components, which I'm not even gonna get into, but too much of some of these are. Too little can definitely play a role in mental health. So just like everything, there's a balance to it. But in general, delta waves just think about deeper sleep affects stress, hormones, body's recovering, all that good stuff. So that is when we say the word recovery. That's why sleep's so important, right? And so you know that seven to eight hours is recover time. And so now you can clearly see here, I hope that rest and recover, just like we were talking about, the parasympathetic, when you're in delta, that is definitely more parasympathetic, right? So just to tie these together, so delta, you're going to be in more parasympathetic rest and recover. It's more of that. Some people think about it as you can actually tap into the unconscious mind, like in a delta state. So pretty cool, pretty interesting theta waves. So picture your waves are getting a little tighter together, right? There's not as much space between. And they're 4 to 7.5 hertz. That's often associated still with like deep relaxation, more meditative state. And this is where intuition, creativity, and kind of inner peace are found. And so my joke earlier about being in theta, not my joke, I guess it wasn't funny, but my comment about being in Theta is when you get up out of bed and you're not quite awake. And I get on the couch, and I'm not awake yet, but I'm aware, and I just close my eyes and I'm just breathing. It's a really great time to meditate because your busy brain's not there. The brain waves aren't going crazy, so you don't have, like, beta brainwaves going. You got those still that nice, relaxing kind of. You know, you're at the beach with a beautiful water that's kind of just rolling in, and so things are calmer, but that's where your intuition and creativity and stuff is peaking a little bit more. And so it's a great time. I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but when I'm on the couch and I just close my eyes and I'm in that place, there's a lot of just awesome thoughts, like creative thoughts that pop up. Right. And it's very calming. I don't feel like overthinking things, and it just naturally just pops up. And so I've made a ton of life decisions and business decisions based off of things that have popped up to me. Sipping on my coffee. And that goes against kind of theta, but, you know, you got to have a balance and just kind of breathing.

You got to work yourself into alpha at some point. So that coffee is not a bad thing.

Exactly.

In healthy amounts. But you have to also be careful. A lot of times. I know this morning if I spent some time meditating, I'd go right back to delta because I didn't get enough delta. My body's going to be pulling me back there for a little while. I definitely need a little help getting into the alpha beta state today. Alpha. Right.

Let's just keep. Let's just keep cruising you up there. Well, so alpha's next on the list, so. Yeah. So moving from theta, so theta is clearly more. What would your guess be? Parasympathetic or sympathetic state?

Amy, what did you say? Theta.

Theta. Yeah.

Yeah. So we're moving out of. We're still in parasympathetic, but we're starting. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're still hanging out in parasympathetic, and I think theta is a really lovely space to be often.

Yeah. So think about, again, going back and not to divert too much, but that yin yang. Right. So this would be more of a yin state. So parasympathetic would be more yin. And so now we're moving into the next one, which is Alpha. And so alpha is a blend, if you will, of parasympathetic and sympathetic. So you can think about we're in some brackish waters here. And so we have a little bit more balance in that Yin Yang dynamic. There's enough yin, there's enough Yang. And so the frequency is 8 to 12 hertz. So now that wave pattern is getting a little tighter. Right. And this is a really cool space. If you could be in any space, more than anything, I think Alpha says it all right. It's kind of dominant, or it wants to be dominant here. And I believe there's a great quote that you can do anything in Alpha.

Tony Robbins.

Yeah, Tony Robbins, I believe he said something about, you know, you can do anything in Alpha. And so Alpha, again, it's still very relaxed state. You still have a wakefulness and tranquility going on. You're more physically and mentally, you know, active, but still in a very grounded space. And so this is where you're in the flow, if you will. And so this is when things are happening. Hey guys, it's Brian. I just wanted to take a pause for a moment in the middle of this podcast to thank our sponsors, Ouch, who's helping to make this podcast possible today. Ouch believes everyone should enjoy what life has to offer without enduring pain. They are a pain relief company. Listen guys, I use their products a lot. They're proprietary herbal formulas built on top of a 2000 year old formula, giving it time, tested, effective research and I'm gonna listen to that any day of the week. The combination of that with the founder having over 22 years of actual hands on experience treating patients for musculoskeletal pain makes Ouch a very special company. Ouch is made with the highest quality of certified herbs and CBD from organic hemp oil. Their ingredients are extracted with the utmost integrity to ensure the healing properties remain pure and concentrated to promote natural muscle pain relief and other benefits. I gotta tell you, I appreciate that so much. As a consumer, I want to know what I am getting is exactly what's being sold to me. So they take it a step further. They have a certificate of analysis for all their ingredients before it goes into production and after production to ensure that you're getting what you're paying for. Listen here guys, don't say, settle for a lesser version of your best self today. When you can feel your best today, check out Ouch Shop, that's spelled Outch Shop for a full line of their products. They're an amazing company. I use their products on a daily basis. So check them out.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you said exactly the flow. That's where we want to be. And I was guilty of this. When we first started learning, you know, alpha is. It has a different connotation, and it's not to be confused with, like, kind of. What's coming up more is the male, feminine, masculine, feminine energy balance that we're trying to get to. But again, there's a fun little tie in. We'll have to talk about that. Maybe in another podcast as well. That balance of feminine, masculine, you know, you don't want to be in one all the time. And it's not, you know, referencing our gonads, her sexual reproductive process. It's. It's an energy level. It's a state of thinking and a state of processing. So I used to think Alpha was like, the dominant thing, right. You know, we think alpha dog or what have you. But Alpha is actually where we want to be because it's like you said, it's that balanced state, and it's in the middle, right? So we've got Delta Theta on one side, and we'll get into Beta Gamma on the other side, and we really want to be hanging out in the middle of those as much as possible. So that's our calm and alert awareness where we're clear and crisp on things, but we're not in anxiousness. We're not discouraged, distracted. We're not trying to multitask a thousand things. We're just really kind of in our flow state, which is an important process to be productive, but also to be healthy.

Now, I don't know if everybody heard this. I felt it and heard it, but I felt you shift from theta to Alpha as you were talking about, especially after you brought up the gonads.

I was like, what am I gonna say? No, it's because I'm almost done with my second cup of coffee. The light is coming up outside, and now I'm waking up. Watch out, world, I'm awake.

Yeah, yeah. Wait till she gets into beta. So the other thing to mention about this is this is for those of you who have done much studies around presence and enlightenment and all that stuff. You know, Eckhart Tolle, this is like the power of now kind of place, right? This is where that kind of comes from. The other really cool thing, because you could talk about Alpha forever. I want to make a shirt that says, I'm in Alpha. But that could be taken, like, it could be taken wrong, and there could be a movement against me for saying that.

But maybe it'd be a great conversation strategy.

Exactly. I think it would be. I'd be curious to see like who gets it on the side that I'm talking about versus somebody that misconstrued that, that I'm just like going to take over and I'm a bully.

Well, and maybe if we put the Alpha brainwave symbol on there, the wave, that'll maybe cue people into it a little more.

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I like this, but I'm not going to do that. All right, moving forward, what's after Alpha?

Real quick, I just got to say this because this is super, I think really cool and this could be a whole nother thing. But Alpha is also the same frequency as the Schumann resonance, which is the resonance of the Earth's magnetic field, which is 7.83. And so when you're an Alpha, you have a synergy that's going on with the earth. So it's kind of like you're syncing up your breath, you're syncing up your body on the earth's natural rhythms. So there's kind of like an entrainment or. Yeah, syncing up or entrainment between you and the Earth. So that's why you also feel more grounded and all that stuff. So just super cool. So when people are out there in the park doing tai chi or qigong and they're all barefoot, you know, connecting to the earth. They're like trying to connect and they're in that alpha space.

So I know a lot of people think this would be woo woo but it's not. There's actually science that's coming out that's catching up with that process where we're proving it and measuring those things that our bodies do connect with energetic levels. And you can connect into a deeper space. And walking around barefoot in the grass is very beneficial to instigating and bringing your body back down into a parasympathetic system. So there's science behind the woo woo which I love.

I love it. And again, that's a nice duality, that's a great balance. And it's okay to have some woo woo and maybe not have science explain it because ultimately it's how do you feel? There's things that you do or we do that maybe it feels good. And there might not be any science that backs it at all. And guess what? The experiential side is super important.

So right. There's a website that shows since it's been recording since the 60s and I really should know the name of it, but it's very obvious. It's like Schumann recordings, Schumann Wave Recordings or something like that. But it does measure and you can see all around the world, different days at different times, the measurement of energetic waves, I suppose, and see kind of what was happening on different days of the year. It's kind of interesting.

Maybe I need to look at that before I make decisions and try to sync up with that before I make big decisions in life. Something to think about. Beta waves just to jump, move forward here are higher in frequency. So again, picture that wave pattern getting really much tighter. The space between those waves and that's 12 to 40 hertz. Again I've seen a couple of charts in this where it said 30 hertz. But just for examples, today we're going to state that. So 12 to 40 hertz and this is when you're super awake, your mind's fully engaged and you're thinking about a lot of different stuff. So the mental activity is getting louder. So total alert consciousness. Now having said that, so this is when you're thinking faster, you can see moving quicker, you're making decisions faster. But when you're about 24 hertz and up, that's when you're more anxiety mode. So if you were to break beta up into like three sections, like 12 to 23 is a better beta place to be in 24 to 40 is going to be more anxious state. So if you're going to hang out, just know like, okay, if you're starting to like feel anxious, bring yourself, you know, that's a good time to breathe. And it's like, okay, I need to step back, I'm high Beta. I'm going to take a big deep breath. I'm going to put myself in a little timeout. I'm going to go sit down for a minute. I'm going to go do an exercise for a second, something just to break that pattern up. If you start recognizing it, to bring yourself back to that 12 to 23 kind of range. So just think about that space. You don't want it too, too tight. But you do have to have it though for critical thinking and writing and all that stuff. But you just don't want to like hang out too long on that high end. So try to jump back into alpha a little bit. Gamma waves are.

Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off on that. That's.

Oh yeah, yeah, go for it.

Like if you're, if your body is giving you all these signals of the stress and anxiety is coming up and your heart rate's up and your blood pressure's up, or you're, you know, short breathing, your stomach is upset, your neck is all tight, those are signs that you are in that higher beta. And then we're going to talk about neurofeedback here in a second. But there's a point to why we're talking about these hurts. So I'm sorry to jumped in and cut you off, but let's.

Oh no, we're about to jump into Gamma. Said so beta is more, is sympathetic. Right. So we've moved from the brainwave states from parasympathetic slowly, you know, up and now we're in more sympathetic states. And the brain waves are important because these are give you the ability to make micro adjustments. These are like meters. Right. So it's one thing to say, hey, I'm in sympathetic or hey, I'm parasympathetic. So you can control moving up and down the scale to meet your needs. So that is kind of touching in through those. And we just have Gamma is the last biggie to go over. So in Gamma, this is more of a peak state of mental awareness. It's really deep focus and concentration at the highest level. It has a lot to do with learning and memory recall. And so I would think that like studying something, you know, something new and really diving deep into it and getting in that Kind of head space is where you're going to experience that the most understanding.

And correct me if I'm wrong because I think you might have a little more knowledge on all of this than I do. But the Gamma from what I understand is a bit unusual to be in. Isn't it difficult to achieve? It's considered like a higher realm of like ultimate peace and spirituality is reached there. I thought it was like a bit unusual to reach gamma. How often are we there?

Well, that's a good question. There's some definitely conversations and research and kind of stuff on that. But gamma wave is. They talk about still as being an important for binding the senses in regards to perception. And it's involved in still learning new material. But then there's definitely that part of, you know, higher consciousness levels. So again, how much of that is studied and has like science behind it? You know, that's a good question. But as far as when we got into having too little or too much, remember how we were talking about how you can have too little or too much of anything and there's a consequence for that. So an example of this, you know, that they've, that you read about is if you have too little of gamma waves that can be linked to learning difficulties or disabilities and impaired mental processing. So there is research behind that. And then you know, of course you can.

I'm sorry. And it's more frontal cortex, right? Like frontal cortex and hippocampus connections for like. That's what you're saying as far as memory and retrieval and for learning. So if you're not able to reach. So do you think, are you saying that some people have maybe either from injury or a brain impact or do they have a hard time reaching gamma.

Yeah. And especially I've seen people, you know, with cognitive functioning issues from head traumas and that have a hard time with learning new information and stuff that have had, you know, been in automobile accidents. And I had a poor client of mine who had a TV fall on old school tv. And so, you know, she definitely has like this processing, you know, issues and stuff. But yeah, you're right, there is plenty. There's stuff out there that talks about expanded consciousness and like spiritual awareness and stuff like that. So this is. That's a great. What we mentioned or what you mentioned earlier too when we were talking about just the woo woo and the science. Like there is the experiential part that maybe isn't totally backed by science, but what you experience and part of the exploration of this and finding out how to use this as a tool to micro detail where you are in your nervous system and be able to use that dimmer switch is what are you experiencing at that time? So maybe you know, you're like, okay, I'm definitely an alpha, I got my flow state on, I got this. What does it feel like inside of your body? Where do you feel connected to? What do you feel like? These are great questions to ask yourself in your own experience. Have to have, you know, a scientific answer, reasoning for everything.

Right. And you know, again, everything that we kind of dive into is just to encourage people to one explore all these options for our experiencing health and wellness and improving our life. I think we can even dive in deeper actually as we're talking about this. Maybe we can dive in even deeper to how gamma waves are affected with neurological issues, psychological issues, Alzheimer's, Just because you said that. Now my brain is going off on that direction. So I'm going to have to make note of it so we can discover that a little bit deeper, explore some things.

Yeah, that would be fun. When we talked about maybe even going to a brain institute, doing an on site with somebody or having interview somebody that specializes in that realm, that could be a fun, fascinating thing.

Yeah. And on that topic you mentioned like all the different hurts. Right. So you can go in and go to different facilities. It's not unreachable for just anybody to be able to reach out. I know that there's a lot of counselors now and psychologists that are using neurofeedback to help people with attention deficit disorder, depression, focus and other neurological imbalances or challenges. They're using these things and they recognize the little cap on your head and they can find where your brain is activated with certain thoughts or processes, or using gaming, using different type of meditation work and puzzles to kind of organize your brain to get into those hurts depending on the wave area that they want to help you reach. So that'd be really fun.

That's a perfect segue into. So we've observed kind of and have talked about the difference between parasympathetic and sympathetic as far as experience and how it relates to the physiological response and things like that. And then how those brain waves can be utilized for micro adjustments and getting control of your dimmer switch and being able to observe where you're at and how you can change that and you have control of it. And so, you know, going back to the beginning, you have the ability to control the nervous system and the brain waves and it's one of the Most powerful tools. So what are some of the other tools to help us understand and get that. So there's, I can't remember what book I read this in, but we always, you know, going back to, you know, alpha and even into Theta as far as that's where we are kind of the observer space. In another book that I read, they talked about you have the observer, the Director, the Guardian and the Warrior. And so I was thinking about this the other day as it relates to the brainwave state. So the observer again, you're in more of that parasympathetic, right? And then the Director, that's kind of parasympathetic, you know, a little more sympathetic balance. So maybe that's more of the Alpha state. And then you get into the Guardian and the Warrior tends to be a more sympathetic but.

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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. You can, you know, obviously bounce back and forth with those. But the reason I bring this up is we are asking everybody to be in an observer mode of where you are in what state and what those states feel like to really gauge that. And then the director mode is what do we want? And this gets into tools and tips of some things we're going to talk about. But what do we want things to look like? What do we want things to feel like? What do we want our experience in life? What do we want our experience in the moment to be like? So we can kind of start setting the stage and, and building the foundation in our nervous system by really having clarity about what we want our experience to feel like. Right. So if I am going into a situation where I think it's going to be stressful or I think it's going to put me in a, in a defensive posture, whatever, how can I reframe that before I go into that meeting or before I go into and be like, oh no, I'm going to change my mindset, I'm going to change, I'm going to reframe things, right. Go into that with a different aspect to recalibrate my nervous system. And then the guardian of course is like what do we allow into our lives like from external influence, Like I appreciate you Amy and I love so many different qualities about you, but if there were some things or you know, if you were a person where I was challenged or whatever, like how do I not allow that to influence me or you know, get under your skin, so to speak or, or whatever. And then, you know, moving into the warrior phase of I have tool total control. I am going to conquer this. These are my goals, these are going to how I'm going to do it. Right, let's go for it again. I bounced around a little bit there, but I just was thinking about that and wanted to get it out of my noggin and you know, get that in other people's noggins.

Well, I mean, and that's perfect. Like we have to have, you know, wrapping it up the session today. Like we always talk about techniques, obviously meditation, breathing, those things can, we've already addressed that you can have that affect, that control over your state, your health and things like without getting into the very specifics of it, I don't think we just don't have time for it. But ways to manage your brain states, they use different things like guided imagery and hypnosis and meditation visualization things. But just like what you said, guided imagery and visualization and even neuro linguistic programming. Right. Nlp, which some people get little freaked out about it but really all of those things are just helping you change the state of your brain waves and where you are and what you perceiving the situation to be and perceiving potentials to be your opportunities to be rather than challenges. I mean it's just changing your mindset and your state of brainwaves really. And like where are you in any situation and can you do something for your own benefit to visualize? Have a guided type imagery already set up for yourself. A little quick meditation, a little quick breathing process, a little quick self neuro linguistic programming. All that is is just telling yourself in certain words in the situation that you want it to be. All of those things that you can use as tools to affect your brain state. Right. I like that you can put names to it like the director and the warrior. That's, that's very helpful. Right. Because that's again just easy ways for us to identify with those characteristics for remembering them in the future. Sometimes you do need to be the warrior and sometimes you need to be the what was the other ones.

So in kind of the foundation of the observer, the director, the guardian and the warrior, you had mentioned the neurofeedback. And so think about like you have an inside out approach or outside in approach for controlling your nervous system, right? So inside out approach would be reframing situations, right? Being the observer, stopping and using your breath to down regulate or upregulate depending on what your needs are at that time. Meditation, different styles of meditation are more of an internal inside out approach. But just to jump back real quick to the neurofeedback, this is again something to have fun and explore. So two things that are more of an outside in approach that I think are really cool things that are super, super affordable now and super accessible to is binaural beats which is utilizing sound has become really a lot more popular. I mean the first time I experienced this was probably like 20 years ago and you know, is definitely not as accessible. Some of the technology wasn't there, but it's basically, you know, sound waves that are either embedded into a song or whatever and your brainwave picks up on these and you know, has to do with hearing it in both ears and stuff. But the sound waves change the brain. So there's different binaural beats to affect a very specific brainwave or behavior or subconscious pattern or whatever. So those are super cool to explore and available through most app stores and stuff like that. Now have you ever experienced or done any stuff with binaural beats?

I have, yeah. And I thank you for reminding me about it because it's been a while. But you can even look up different music set. Like you're saying like the beats, but. And I think maybe it's the same thing, but they're different levels. Like you can dial it into theta, gamma, delta, alpha. Like you can find meditation music on those wavelengths. You can do a search for those and put those up. I completely forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder, Brian.

You're welcome. And again, so the great thing is it's a simple tool. Now we want to utilize these tools in an awesome way, but we still want to be able to have the ability to control, to not use them too. Like the ability just to be able to recognize within. So these are great ways to start to develop that consciousness about where we're at. And then the great one you talked about was the Neurofeedback, which used to be really, really expensive, you know, to go to a specialized practitioner. And it was really expensive for a practitioner to buy the equipment at one time. So it used to be 20 to $40,000 to buy some good software and the right equipment. Now it's gotten a lot less expensive which makes it more accessible and less expensive to consumer looking for something like that. But I was just around, I'm like God, in today's technology, our phones, our computers and all that stuff, I wonder what the cost of this software would be for something for us to buy for our clinic or whatever. And even in the app store there's kind of downgraded versions as well. That's more applicable to the average everyday user out there where you can buy, you might have to order this specific head strap or headset or whatever and it's something you can do at home now. And so I think it's still awesome to go to a professional that specializes with stuff when you're really trying to understand and differentiate things. But even the neurofeedback is super accessible and the games and stuff like that is just, it's amazing. It's super cool.

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Yeah, I didn't even know that was an option. I think that's, that's fantastic. It's just like us teaching people how to do nerve glides and trigger point work. You can. The more you can do it on your own. It's not that we're bypassing the professionals that there's a need for that for sure. But more you can focus on it on a regular basis and have access to it more frequently, the better it is. More consistency and tie back into our neuroplasticity podcast. Right. It's what you do, you become. We have not done this yet. I think we're getting there as we're growing our podcast, but starting to develop more in our notes section. So maybe we can put down some links in the show. Notes for Binaural Beats say that we can drop in a couple of. And we're not supported by anybody at point this stage. We're not getting any type of connections or so I'll just put some easy access links in there for people so they can maybe play with that a little bit.

Yeah, so, yeah, so like Binaural Beats would be a good outside in kind of approach. The neurofeedback stuff is a good outside in approach. For some fun tools you could safe. You know, there's actually some stuff around emdr, but that's getting into a little bit more of some psychological stuff as well that you definitely want to, you know, if you're having issues, see a counselor or whatever. But there's still some good things you can do with that and explore. And there's some great apps for, for doing some stuff with yourself. With that inside out stuff, though, I think we need to talk about some of the basics too. You know, we already talked about meditation. There's an awesome breathing podcast that I believe some amazing podcasters did called All Things good for you that was released already. So make sure you check that. Make sure you check that out. And again, sometimes you don't know. Some people don't even know that they're in such sympathetic states. Right. Until you feel the opposite of that. So, you know, getting things like massage or some other relaxation therapies, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I've never felt so light. Like life just feels lighter right now. I've never felt such ease of mind. And then all of a sudden they're like, I didn't realize I was so stressed. And so finding tools like that to understand the dynamics between the two can really be a benefit.

Yeah. Not to plug our profession, but why not? We do what we believe in. And we talked on one of our previous podcasts, we do talk about bodywork and how it helps in different levels of interaction and how that communication of different. So for instance, I do a lot of deep work on people and every now and again, after a few sessions they come in, their issue has been a bit resolved, and they shock me and say, I think I just want a nice relaxing massage. And I'm just like, well, okay, that's exciting. Let's do that, but it's nice to know. I wonder how that would look on a neurofeedback level to work on somebody with in deep tissue work and then work on somebody in more of a relaxation massage body work and read their brain waves through those different states. Surely there's a need to either meet somebody at that level, whether it's for the physical work that we're trying to do, but also the psychological effect that we do when people need a deeper work. There's a tie into the, the brain, feed the brain state that they're in.

I got some exciting news for you.

You do?

Now after I started looking up the neurofeedback stuff, I decided I want to buy one for the clinic.

Oh diggity, that's so great.

So you can play all day long with it. Yeah, I want to do acupuncture and people and look at their brain states and even do different points to see what we see. So yeah, we're going to have some fun play time.

That's exciting. So anybody who doesn't know already if they jumped in at this state, Brian owns a company called Integrative Health. I think we announced it at the beginning of the show and he is so exciting and fun because he's always buying these great tools to help people and to just grow the practice. And I appreciate that about you so much. And you're always excited to do it one because we like to geek out on stuff like that. But you're truly always looking for ways to help people to get even more impact, for helping people heal their body and come out of pain and live and function well. So yay. This is very exciting. Thank you.

Good job. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Amy, this is probably obviously something that everybody clearly knows but I feel like it's important for us just to say it again because this is something that is just good for everything in life. But the other things outside of the breathing that we talked about, more of an inside out approach is nutrition and exercise as well. So nutrition is super important to help with the nervous system because it helps bolster the ability to decrease the sympathetic nervous system activation when you're stressed. So kind of looking at like anti inflammatory diets, things like that, still believe it or not, again, even the relationship to the gut and the body have an important role with our nervous system. And then that takes you into some supplements you can take like bees. All your bees are super important for chemical reactions inside the body, body related to the nervous system. So there's other nutrients, Vitamin A, C, calcium, And magnesium, iron, a lot of the trace minerals are really important for the balance of that parasympathetic nervous system. So you could talk about that. I think we're going to do a future podcast around nutrition. But just know again, you know, outside in, we were talking about the binaural beats, we're talking about the neurofeedback, things like that. Inside out, we want to do more of the breath work. So listen to that breathing podcast and then still work on the nutrition piece and then. But the exercise piece, I can never over discuss enough as far as how important exercise is at so many levels. And for me, if I do not get exercise at least four days of work a week, I can literally feel my sympathetic nervous system just kind of building. So it totally discharges my sympathetic nervous system and is a great tool for me personally. And I encourage people to explore different styles of workouts. Right. Of exercise for affecting your nervous system. So you can almost like this one affects me more and gets me more up into my sympathetic. This one affects me more and gets me down to my parasympathetic. So you can play with different exercises as well.

Absolutely. We're going to get into that. I'm excited to dive into the well that, you know, that's totally my wheelhouse. Getting into the enteric system, getting into gut health and nutrition and exercise. So I think we're doing two separate podcasts. We're doing one on gut health and then one on diversity and exercise. Right. And movement and why it's important to shake it up a bit, change your routine occasionally.

Absolutely. And you get to do the workout. And I'm just going to talk about your working out.

Perfect. Oh, and we're going to do a live. We're going to do a live dry needling next. Right. Or not next. But coming up, we're going to dry natal me and we're gonna do a podcast while we're doing that and we're gonna talk about trigger points.

And I think if you guys haven't picked up on this. Sorry, if you haven't picked up on this, we're like flying a kite in a storm sometime. Because we storm sometimes because we're super excited about talking about a lot of things. So we just won't commit to exactly what we're doing next time. But just stay tuned.

Yes. So this one is a long one because we got off on a little trail about what we're going to talk about, but they're all things good for you. So we're just going to Keep. We. We can literally talk forever about it.

Quick too. Just before I forget, this is something that's going to be sad for everybody, but there is a recommendation to decrease your caffeine intake and avoid alcohol for your nervous system. So I'm sorry to say that, that, you know, that is not a benefit to your parasympathetic system. But explore that. Explore it a little bit.

Explore it. And I just actually showing Brian that it's all about individual awareness because everybody's body is a little bit different. And there are studies that show the oils in coffee beans are actually very helpful for women in particular to decrease depression. And then there is a lot of studies that show, and I am not advocating one or the other, I mean, if you don't drink alcohol, don't start drinking alcohol. If you drink more than the recommended amount, then you might look into ways to curb that a little bit. But there's a lot of research that shows women in particular do very well with a glass of wine. More than just that, but it actually will engage the parasympathetic system. But it's all circumstantial. You know, you really have to understand where you're at. It's about your age, it's about everything else that's happening in your body of whether you're reaching homeostasis or coming out of that process and being more dysfunctional.

And what I also just heard is if there's something you want to do, find a research study that supports it. Because there's one. There's definitely one.

Feel good about it, that's all. No, yeah, I agree. All right, well, we've done a lot of trailing here at the end, so take away at the end. Do some things to recognize what brain state you're in. You can utilize the tools we talked about and pull yourself up or down as needed and check frequently throughout the day if you are allowing yourself and helping yourself. Take control of your life and your state and your health and make sure you're entering parasympathetic state more often.

That sounds amazing.

Thank you. Knock, knock, Knock, knock. Hello, Brian, are you there? Well, I am quickly reaching out of alpha into beta because we got a day to hustle on, so I'm going to jump off. Thank you for joining me on this lovely podcast day, Brian.

Thank you. And thank you everybody. We appreciate you.

Hey friends, thank you for tuning in to the All Things Good for you podcast. Please note, any information, experiences, ideas or opinions discussed today are for educational and thought provoking purposes only and not intended as medical advice. If anything piqued your curiosity, please consult with your doctor or personal medical professional. And if you're enjoying all things good for your podcast, hop on over and leave us a five star review so we can continue delving in and providing great content. Thanks again and we hope you are inspired to stay informed and responsible along your health and wellness journey.

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