Mini Episode: Unlock the Benefits of Light and Sound Therapy - Dr. Patrick Porter : 1162

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today's a special mini episode highlighting some of the cool tech and gadgets that you can try at this year's biohacking conference. This is the first biohacking conference ever and the largest and longest running and frankly, the coolest. Dr. Patrick Porter, who's our guest today, is a recognized expert and author and researcher in neuroscience and personal development, personal improvement. His company, Braintap, is designed to enhance your brain's neuroplasticity using light and sound combined with guided visualization, including some from yours truly. It's, it's interesting because neuroplasticity was one of the two main themes in my big book on cognitive enhancement. And we have a world class expert who makes cool tech on the show today. You can learn about Braintap by going to the biohacking conference. They'll be there, they'll have probably 20 or so units and you'll be able to actually try them out. So come to Dallas at the end of May. Go to biohackingconference.com to get your tickets now. Dr. Porter, welcome back, my friend.

It's great to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me.

You got it. All right, Braintap, what's the science behind it?

Well, we've been researching since the 80s and what we found out was of course then we didn't have eeg. Now we have such cool tech that people can actually do their own experimenting if they want. But we, we can show that. We just finished a study actually with nurses. You know, how nurses get jacked around with their time. We wanted to see what could we do to improve cognitive function with nurses. And so we're, we're constantly doing, evaluating the brain and how it works. And my thought is it's not just the brain. Between our ears, every cell, we have a thinking nervous system, we have a thinking immune system. So how is our body responding to our brain? And what we found was if they could do something like brain tap meditation at 2pm in the afternoon, or if they were working a different ship, whatever it would be that we could improve their cognitive function. And the studies are incredible. We're going to be sharing that at the conference, that study, because so many people are worried about sleep and how to hack sleep. So we've done several studies since last year about sleep just to prove to people that you can't always set up your sleep, especially if you're traveling. So we've improved sleep with the coal miners by 70%, the nurses by 68%.

Wow.

And the whole thing is about how do we downregulate that nervous system from what's going on in our media to what's going on in the world around us? You know, as we talk about, you know, just the exposure to our environment which is causing stress that people don't even understand, we need to downregulate that. So the main thing Braintap does, I guess is helps you to downregulate the nervous system so your brain can actually operate in a, what I like to call subspace. That's what happens when you get into that alpha and theta space where you're not being controlled by the media or by past thoughts. And we've actually proven now we have technology that shows we downregulate the default mode network, which is what master meditators do when they meditate. We have a piece of technology now that shows that that default mode network goes into a state of abeyance when you're listening to Brain Tap, which is kind of the reason that people will get the results they can because their own thinking stands in their way between, you know, who they are today and who they want to be.

It's funny because a lot of psychedelics also down regulate the default mode network in the brain. I wrote about that some in, in Headstrong, my big cognitive enhancement book. And the new book that I'm working on has a large section on psychedelics and eeg. And what we're finding is that almost all of them downregulate this. So if advanced meditators and psychedelics do this, well, maybe you could get a Brain Tap and then you can do the same thing, increase neuroplasticity and downregulate that. These are all in the realm of, of what psychedelics, or I'm just going to call altered states work in general does. I don't want anyone listening to think you have to do psychedelics. Because Braintap is one of perhaps a dozen different ways, some with tech, some without that you can enter similar states without using any substances. And so there's, there's been an association of altered states with drugs. And the reality is altered states are human states, they're just not the ones we normally are in. And you used to have to meditate in a Cave for 20 years and you could use Brain Tap and get a little bit faster. It seems like a better deal to me. How many users have or how many sessions have there been now on Braintap because you've been sponsoring conference for years.

Oh yeah, we, we have, we've overhead over 30 million sessions, listened to, we have 120,000 users now. But I was going to say we did a study in Dallas actually where we're going to be doing the conference with Dr. Rosenthal with the vets. We're now the integration of psychedelics for the military because it's not just the one time neuroplastic change. And we know that these psychedelics do that and they make a higher order gamma activity happen in the brain. But then how do you make that last? Because the nervous system only resets for 72 hours. If you don't do something within that 72 hours, it tends to go back. That's why you have to do these things over and over again in tech, like brain tap or breathing techniques. We've also shown that last year we got research for the year in India, all of India, because we did a pranayama breathing technique to show how ancient traditions and modern technology, they can actually match the frontal lobe. Most people don't realize dementia happens because you don't have voltage in the brain and those two hemispheres aren't matched. As soon as you match those hemispheres, especially in alpha, which you know because of your, your cognitive training that you do that that's going to help basically keep the brain functioning. Because we're assembling memories, people think you go back to a filing cabinet and get all those memories at once. But you need those neural pathways. And if we don't have energy, our brain starts doing something called neural pruning, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. It's good if we're neural pruning bad ideas and concepts, but it's a negative thing if we're neural pruning those positive things that we want to change.

How does braintap help you prune the right stuff?

Well, one thing our brain, just like our, our whole body is designed to heal. But the problem is thoughts, traumas and toxins get in the way. So if, but so our brain knows what's best for us. We won't keep a negative memory if we have the energy to dissolve it and dissipate it. But if we don't, we have low energy states and then we have low energy thoughts. So what we do is we're going to bring energy into the brain. That's the one thing I think technology today has proven is that like you know about red light therapy and things like that, what's happening with the Brain is. If we get the right light into the brain, that's. That's really what's happening, even with psychedelics, is we're getting a massive amount of energy in the brain. It then reorganizes. And when the brain reorganizes, kind of like a chiropractic adjustment, really, people go, how does that work? Well, when the body gets into a state of, let's say, infinite possibility, it reorganizes back to the best possible state for you in this moment. The brain's always trying to do that, but if it doesn't have energy to do it, we just keep repeating the past. So in order to make these changes, really, and I've said this before, when we go to your conference, we see the best brains. I mean, par. None. I mean, we. We show. We show off. We don't tell them who they are, but we say these are brains we had at the. At the Upgrade Labs event. And they're. They're usually super. And they. And they still buy the equipment because they understand that if they can hack that and make it happen even faster. But diet is super important for the energy, and movement is super important for the brain. And all the, you know, for bdnf, I mean, all these things happen. So when you do a brain tab session, it's almost like a good physical workout. But you don't have to work out. The brain's doing it for you. You're doing. A lot of people just think they're laying there like, they walk by the Upgrade lab event, they'll see people passed out. They're not really passed out. They're doing a lot of neurological work. It's just being done in what I like to call subspace instead of physical space and time.

Do people ever get confused when you say subspace?

Oh, yeah, all the time. So part of. Part of learning is you got to confuse people first. Confusion is the deepest trance. And then you. You have to direct them where they're going. You know, people say that all the time. So when you think about. When they think about this world, everybody thinks they have to change with their conscious mind. That's the problem. The conscious mind only controls 5%.

It's not conscious.

Yeah. So if you. If you keep. Everybody keeps trying to fight against their conscious mind. And the conscious mind is like the front desk operator. They might be really good at their job. They take calls, they direct things, but they don't have any authority. So we got to get back there to really who's in charge. And it's not the conscious person that's sitting there. In fact, I tell people when you use Brain Tap, you don't even have to be present. We've done shows where we've actually hooked up to eeg and I said, their brain's going to be at this state in seven minutes. It's going to be here in 13 minutes, going to be here in 14 minutes. They go, but the person's snoring and they go, how did it do that? Well, the brain learns differently than we learn. Yeah. When you learned a language growing up, they didn't give you a textbook. You immersed yourself in the language using the theta brainwave. Really? And that brainwave absorbed that language and then you were able to use it because we have, we learn basically through vibrational information more than we learn through textbooks.

And there are definitely studies showing that you can learn when you're asleep.

Yeah.

And there were other studies showing that when you're in non sleeping but altered states, you can learn more quickly, especially auditory stuff. I remember years ago when I had a float tank, you know, one of those, those big, you know, salt water flow tank things. I was testing that out as a tech that didn't make the cut for upgrade labs and you could play sounds through the water. And I, I just remembered going, wow. My recall of that stuff is amazing because I was in an altered state while I was receiving the info. So the idea that you can have Brain Tap with the lights and the sounds putting you in an altered state and then layering in like the mitochondrial meditation that, or the forgiveness meditation that I've done for you guys, you have about a thousand others. This is a good idea. So if you were going to just listen to an audio file, you get X amount of benefit. Do it with BrainTap, you get 3 times X benefit because you were in the right state to get the benefit of the words. So this is just a time saving thing and maybe money saving. If you were going to eat some mushrooms to get bdnf, well, you lose eight hours of functionality.

And you had.

To pay for the mushrooms. And here it is, you've got your Brain Tap and you just spent 20 minutes on a session or a half hour. You got the brain plasticity, you got an altered state, not the same one, but similar enough. And then you went about your day. So it's just very efficient. And I think it's, it's just good stuff. Patrick, any other new research that's come out about things like GPAs or studying or memory or anything like that?

Well, yeah. At Seminole College, we're constantly doing studies. We're. We're furthering our dementia study. We have over 100 people now that every one of them has been taken off the dementia scale in six weeks. But part of that study was with our, with the sports teams and the, Our girls golf team down there is four time national champion now, but they are. They have the highest GPA in the school. So now we're doing a full school program where they're not getting the lights, but they're getting just the audio because we're not going to donate, you know, a couple thousand headsets.

Sure, that's a lot.

But, but they can come into the. And they can do that. But I also want to tell the listeners, when you come to the Upgrade Labs event, in the VIP lounge, we have our chairs, the human touch chairs that are programmed in with transducers.

Yep.

So they call it a dry float because you don't have to get wet, you don't get undressed, but you're getting that sound through, just like Dr. Emoto was talking about with the Secret Life of Water, where you're getting the vibratory information through the whole nervous system at the same time. People love that. So we put. We're going to have two of those chairs up in your VIP lounge.

Sweet. Thanks for bringing those. What a. What a great idea. And, guys, if you go to braintap.com Dave, you get to save some money, get an exclusive offer, get some free stuff. And if you go to biohackingconference.com you can get your tickets. We're looking at thousands of people, way more than a hundred vendors, so you actually get to talk to the inventors and the creators, and you get to be there in community. So you'll see Dr. Patrick Porter walking around. You'll talk to him in line at lunch. Actually, there isn't a line at lunch because we bring lunch to your table. But you know what I'm saying. You'll just see a lot of the speakers in the tech hall because it's that interesting. And talk about a community you want to be a member of. These are the people whose brains look the way they look. There's tons of grads from 40 years of Zen, and you just see bright, shiny, happy people, and you get to play and be curious and have fun. So I'm excited. I cannot wait for this year's. It's our. We're calling it our 10th annual, even though it's officially our 12th, because we took a couple virtual years but this was a hundred people in a bar about 12 years ago, and now it's thousands of people. And it's a $63 billion business, this biohacking thing. And braintap is a. Is an important part of it. So, Patrick, thanks for your. Just decades of curiosity about the brain, about altered states, about human performance, and then making something that's really simple for people to use. I think you've. You've taken the idea of what you can do with lights and sound to a whole new level.

I enjoy it. I just love doing it. I didn't know I was biohacking in the 80s until you coined it and made a whole industry out of it, which has helped us tremendously. So I'm glad I did.

There was no word for guys like you and me, like. Like we didn't have a community. So biohacking is about building a community. And this is the conference where it happens.

This is the conference that I stay at. A lot of people go. You're sticking around because a lot of conferences, I just fly in and speak and leave. But this is one where I get to play with tech I don't see anywhere else. So if you're curious about biohacking, this is the one to go to, for sure.

There are a lot of companies that have launched at the conference, like Viome launched at the biohacking conference, their first thousand users. And so many companies do that. And then maybe they go to a couple other conferences, but there's a difference. You see big numbers of people who are just really curious and interested versus just kicking tires. So I would just say, if you're listening to this, you love the show. Think about coming out to Dallas. It's easy to get to. And you will get to talk with Patrick. You will get to experience the tech, and it's all over the place. So it's just. It's the most fun I could think of having. So I welcome you guys there and I will see you there on stage.

Yeah, I'll see you there. It's great. I'm glad we're getting to come back. And my team loves this event too. So it's one that everybody gets to. We bring everybody, we clean the cupboards and come and. And be part of it.

You and me both. My whole team is there too. It's all hands on deck for this because we want to make it the best experience we can for you. And thank you for your. Your continued support of the biohacking movement and the conference. And just for all the attendees thank you. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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