Cracking The Code Of Wim Hof Breathing, Writing A Bestseller In 30 Days, Barefoot Ultrarunning & More With Kasper van der Meulen

Oh, hello. I feel like I should be speaking like a German or maybe a Dutch person because my interviewee today is indeed Dutch. He's a crazy Dutch guy. His name is Casper van der Meulen and we talk about Wim Hof breathing, how he wrote a best selling book in 30 days. Not kidding, barefoot, ultra running and a whole lot more. He's a really fascinating guy, actually. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, people who have brains that don't read or focus inherently very well, especially on books, they opt out whenever there's a line break or a page break because they feel like I'm never going to be able to finish. So there's never a block that's more than 250 words long. The breathing was the most powerful thing for me as I was doing these ultras because I was not in the best shape when I started running. And I kind of hacked my learning curve, or the curve of becoming a runner in that sense, towards doing ultra endurance.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey folks, my guest on today's podcast describes himself as a lifestyle adventurer. He's also an author. He used to be overweight. He used to be burnt out. He used to be what he says is pretty unhappy and now claims to have superhuman focus, fitness and personal freedom. I've met him actually at the time of this recording. We'll be meeting him in Finland where we're both speaking together at the Biohackers Summit there. And he's actually pretty interesting. His name is Casper van der Meulen. Casper van der Meulen. He's put himself through a ton of different self experiments and challenges. He's run ultramarathons in his bare feet. He's tested like every diet on the face of the planet, explored a lot of kind of esoteric practices in an attempt to kind of like demystify and methodized principles for cognitive performance and biohacking and very, very interesting approach. He wrote this book called Mind Lift that I have here and that I've read recently. It's an Amazon bestseller. And as a test of whether or not all of these things he does to make his brain work faster and all these things he does to improve focus, he actually wrote this book in 30 days. And again, it's an Amazon bestseller that he wrote within 30 days. He's also the head teacher at the Wim Hof Academy, which is pretty interesting. He runs retreats in extreme nature and. And he trains a bunch of professional athletes. So very, very interesting, dude. And today I want to delve into some of the things that are in this book. I also want to learn more about what my guest today does with Wim hof. So, Casper, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you. Thanks for the awesome introduction.

Yeah, no problem. So, dude, I mean, this book isn't like small. It's not like a seven page ebook. Did you really write it? And 30 days. And by the way, for those of you listening in, the book is called Mental Fitness for the Modern Mind. That's a direct translation from Dutch. I assume you're Dutch, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, the book is called Mind Lift in Dutch too, because we're very much Americanized country.

Okay, so 30 days. Is that true? Because I write books, dude. How'd you bang this thing out in 30 days?

Well, it was interesting because one of the things I wanted to do was really, like you said, I wanted to test whether I could actually do the things I was gonna write about because I was writing about productivity. And I worked as a science teacher in a school at the time. So I actually had a job as I was writing the book in those 30 days. Only three days a week, but still I had the job. And I started noticing if I tweak things a little bit, and if I approach brains differently so other people's brains, but also my own brain, I could get a lot more cognitive performance out of those brains, including my own. And especially in a world where distraction is the main ailment that people have nowadays, it was important for me to really, really, really see if what I did in the science class with those kids could also work on me. Because one of the biggest limiting beliefs I had and all the things you mentioned just now to me weren't really performance aspects. They were more a way to really challenge the beliefs that I had about myself and seeing which ones really fit and were really still true. And two of the biggest limiting beliefs I had about myself was, well, one of them was I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't focus. I was that kid in the back of the class, couldn't sit still. Couldn't concentrate. I know a lot of people listening out there.

Nobody else has that problem.

Exactly. So wherever I, wherever I come to speak, people always like, oh yeah, that's, that's totally me. And there's so many of them. Which is interesting how the school system seems to be failing such a large group of people. But anyway, so that's what, that's what I believed in. And then also, I would never read books. I would. And let alone even think about writing a book. So really I always thought I was like the least literary person in the planet.

And see that, that, that's a foreign thought to me because I have just loved books since I was frickin, you know, five. My, My kids are like me. We. We've all got huge stacks of books next to our bedside. All we do is read. Like, like a new movie will come out and my kids will want to stay home and read or have me read to them. And I'm the same way. Like, people are like, watch a documentary. And I say, hey, where's the book the documentary is based on? And I go read that instead.

So.

So what you're describing is a foreign concept, but I know a lot of listeners probably think that they suck at reading or hate to read, so. So please continue.

I'm always like, is there an audio version? Please let there be an audio version. And I still, I got pretty good at reading. So one of the things I started doing, for example, is learning speed reading. And I noticed I could, I could read it like 6 to 700 words a minute after a few days of training, which was really interesting. I didn't really enjoy it that much. But anyway, that, that used to be me until I got into the mode of personal development that I have been in for a few years since the last time, I was kind of, you know, depressed and burned out. That's when I found books. And I was like, how did I miss all of this? This is amazing. But it still had that limiting belief. So I was like, you know what? Let's see what is really possible. And also, it was kind of like a weird period of my life where I started to build this speaking business next to my teaching job. And I was always trying to be the inspirational teacher, telling these kids, like, you can do anything in the world and everything is possible and go out there and do something awesome. And then this one kid basically said to me, yeah, well, you're the guy telling us that, but dude, you're a teacher. I was like, oh man, that stung. But he was Kind of right. I was like, I should step my game up and do something cool and really see what's possible if I challenge these beliefs. So I was like, I can't focus. I'm not a good reader. So let's write a book about focus and I'll write it in 30 days. And I've always had my bouts with burnout and depression, like I said, so I'm no stranger to stress. And I started finding all these studies about stress and watching all these TED talks and uncovering some really interesting things in the way stress works. So I was like, if I want to write about this stuff, I need to kind of like find a way to increase the stress that I'm giving myself to really see if those things work. So it was a big experiment. And one of the things that helped me was accountability, which I created by basically designing the front and back cover of the book, writing the back blurb, having it test printed with completely empty, and then when it landed on my doorstep.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, that's. And I think it's like an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote where he says he has the movie poster designed and printed first and he hangs it in his house. I love that. Whenever he goes like, what am I doing? Yeah. And he just goes, that's what I'm doing.

Yeah, I do that when I write articles. Like, I'll write the beginning and the end and what do you think? Leave your comments even before I've actually written the article. But of course doesn't come back to bite you too. Like if you. And they've done research on this, right? If you say you're going to do, let's say like a triathlon, and then you post that to Facebook like, I'm training for a triathlon. Swimming and biking and running. Sometimes it can give you a mental impression or the same mental effect as though you'd already done the race. So I've seen some evidence that it could come back to bite you. But nonetheless, I kind of like that approach of, of having some built in accountability by having created parts of what you want to create before you've really done the meat of the work. Because what I find is if you have a cover like you did, or in an article you have the beginning and the end, filling in the in between spaces is actually easier. Now I realize a lot of those of you listening in, you may not actually be interested in writing. However, Casper, on page 126 of this book, you get into nine tips that I think are Fabulous. That I would love for you to share with people in terms of some of the things that you specifically utilized to get a book done faster, that I think people could utilize to get just about anything done either faster or more efficiently. Can you go into those nine tips and just kind of rapid fire fill me in on what each one is?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, actually, it's interesting. I just want to come back to one thing you said, because that is some. One thing I write in the book about habit change is to keep it a secret mission to not tell anybody beforehand, because if everybody cheers you on, then you basically get that internal high from.

That's what I was cheering you on.

You don't want to do it. Yeah. So that's very interesting. So I did that with all my lifestyle changes, like losing weight, quitting smoking, all of that. I did a completely secret. And then I made sure that people would notice, like, and they would ask me carefully, like, did you, did you lose some weight? And then I was like, yes, finally, you know, I lost 80 pounds and talk about it, stuff like that. So that's definitely. But for the book, I did it differently because I was like, as soon as the book fell on my doorstep, the test print, I was like, I want to do something with this. And then I made a little video saying, like, I'm going to write this book in 30 days and you can already order it. So I made this pre order online and at the time of writing, about 250 people ordered it already. And they were very excited about following me as I write the book because they were especially interested in how I was going to do it. So that's why I put those nine tips into the book to teach people about productivity in a way that might be different. You know, I've noticed a lot of people who work in time management, there are people who are inherently good at managing time, like people who are authors, they're inherently people who love books. Right. And I'm. I come from the other end of the spectrum. I was a. I was a teacher. I was a very highly celebrated teacher in my school, to be honest. But I never wanted to be a teacher. I like inherently hated teachers. So having the perspective coming just from another side might be refreshing to people. That's why I put that in. So one of the most important things that people could take away from this, and I think all those tips really revolve around that, is the idea of working like an athlete, is to take the athlete's mindset with you to the work that you're going to do. And what I mean by that is, well, as you know, and as any athlete knows, or even anybody who has heard about fitness in the first place, right, they know that if you. Let's say you want to become strong or you want to be able to run far, and somebody would say to you, you know what? I want to be big. I want to be a big bodybuilder. I want to have big muscles. I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to take the dumbbell, and I'm going to lift it until I'm huge, right? For an undetermined amount of time, just go there and lift it. And everybody would understand it's totally ridiculous, right? If somebody would say, hey, I want to become a marathon runner, I'm just going to get out my door and I'm going to run until I'm a marathoner. Everybody would be like, that's ridiculous. It doesn't work that way. But we still do that with our cognitive performance and our learning, basically, and our work and productivity and deadlines and stuff like that. And we say things to kids like, you know what? Go to your room and stare at your book until you're smart. Work until you get it. Take the deadline and. And crush it. Like, keep going and keep banging your head against the wall until you finish it. And that might not be the most helpful way because focus is a function of the mind in the same way that strength is the function of a muscle. So working like an athlete means that, first of all, you determine when's the best day to do, the best time of day to do the work, or even the best day. So a lot of people, they kind of like, slog along for eight hours in the office while they can only really focus the three hours before they have lunch. And then after lunch, their focus completely falls away. So one of the things I tell people is find your golden hours. Find the moments when you can really focus and really do your important work and also optimize that. So that's all my writing, all my creative work. I do everything in the morning when I'm still fasted, when I'm still only on coffee, right before I have my meal, and things like that.

I'm the same way, Casper. But I want to point out one important thing. Sometimes I find that when people work in intervals, they work on different tasks. They're like, I'm going to do this for 15 minutes, take a break, then do this for 45 minutes, take a break. I've found that for people who are consumers, right, who are reading, checking things on Facebook, replying to emails, et cetera, and considering that to be their quote work, unquote, that works pretty well. But for what I would call deep work. And there's a great book about this as well by Cal Fussman called Deep Work. For deep work, or to be what folks are calling these days more like a maker, if you're working like an athlete, if you're working in intervals, it's also important that if you really want to get deep work done, you might work in like, you know, on any given day, like let's say 6, 45 minute on 5 minute off intervals. But each of those 45 minute intervals would be spent on the actual project, you know, and lunch would be spent catching up on emails. Do you, do you agree with that or, or are you saying just split things up throughout the day?

No, no, 100%. No. I, I don't use the intervals on different tasks. So if I go for like, for example, I write an article, I still stick to kind of like the pomodoro technique of 20 minutes, but then I do, for example, four blocks of 20 minutes on the same task. And the way you step away after those 20 minutes is really important because most people, they work basically sedentary, right? So one of the reasons that I set the timer, I stay in deep work and I basically stay in deep focus. But if I'm working seated during that little break, I stand up and I walk around. So in my office, I have all these excuses to move, I have a pull up bar to hang from, I have the juggling balls and everything, but my mind stays with the same task, just in a different mode. So switching, I'm not switching tasks. I'm not like, okay, 20 minutes of Facebook, 20 minutes of email, 20 minutes of writing. I think that would actually just train your brain depending on what you do, if you're not doing deep work, if you're basically doing urgent but unimportant work, like about 90% of the emails I have to answer or, you know, Facebook notifications from my business page and stuff like that that are, you know, they require me to do them, but they don't require all my attention. I do those after lunch when my focus is not optimal. And then I switch around between tasks or 20 minutes of Facebook, 20 minutes of email. But if I want to do deep work, I do still stick to intervals, but my mind stays on track on the deep work. But I just use the timers, the intervals to switch around between for example, my position. So I start seated at my desk. The timer goes. I walk around. Like I pace around my room in circles and just have my mind wander. And then the next interval starts and I go sit on the floor or I go sit on my treadmill desk and I do 20 minutes to there timer goes, you know, so I keep myself in that flow. You don't.

You don't actually sit at your treadmill desk, I would imagine. You walk on it.

Sorry, I was going to say like a bicycle desk.

Oh, really? You have a bicycle desk?

Yeah, I don't have a. I'm Dutch, you know, everything's bicycles here. I don't have a treadmill.

Well, just out of curiosity, kind of an aside, but what kind of bicycle desk do you have? Is it like homemade or is there a company that makes good bicycle desks?

No, man, no. I got a €30 old bicycle from a secondhand shop and I just basically bolted a little desk on there and it's all wiggly and it's unstable, which I really like because that keeps me focused and has me balancing while I'm working, actually.

Wow. Wiggly, unstable bike. That sounds like a safe way to work.

Yeah, well, it's pretty safe, but it's especially teasing my brain the whole time. Just enough to not distract me.

Okay, well, when I interrupted you, you said that you take those breaks to just kind of do nothing in between, which I've actually heard is really great for creativity too. Like, if you're going to take a pomodoro break from deep work, don't use that break to send emails. Use that break to sit in silence or to stare at the trees, or to do a few stretches, or pace up and down the stairs, or duck out of the office and walk up the stairs to the restroom, that type of thing. But is that just to make sure we don't get lost in the weeds here? So, of the nine tips, you said that the first tip is to train like an athlete. Is that correct?

No, it's my favorite one. The first one is to find your golden hours and to figure out what times work best for you.

Okay, so find your golden hours and the time that works best for you would be tip number one.

Yeah. And work like an athlete. I don't probably know them in order by. I don't have the book here to make sure I check myself correctly, but I have.

Well, I do have the book. I do have the book. So I can maybe I can ask you a few questions as we go about the ones that really stood out for me. We covered one which was kind of like to do one thing at a time. And you even said that you had a study from the Institute of Psychiatry that shows that constantly checking your email in between other Tasks lowers your IQ by about 10 points, which is more than staying up all night or smoking weed, which is kind of interesting. Like, checking email in between tasks is something that. Not that I'm guilty of that, but I think a lot of people do that. Heavy multitasking.

Somebody does it. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you talk about finding your golden hours, that you're going to be productive versus when you're going to be creative, as well as describing rituals. You know, little rituals, little routines that get you into. Into a groove. Now, one of the next things that you talk about, I guess this would be tip number four, would be to transform your workplace into what you call a focus temple. Can you go into some practical ways that you transform a workplace into a focus temple?

Yeah. So for me, the most important thing is so a lot of people think it's about no distractions. So you just have an empty room with a desk. That wouldn't work for me. Now, there are people who would thrive on that, but that's not me because one of the things I very quickly realized is that it's yin and yang. So you can't focus without distraction. So that's what the brakes are for. So I plan my distractions, and I know if I'm going to be distracted, I want to be distracted by something that actually gets my brain back into groove. So my workspace has four or five different options to work with. My laptop. So I can stand. I can sit on a chair. I can sit on my wiggly bike. I can sit on the floor. And what else is there? Let me think. I have one of those balls that you can sit on that moves around. Lately I've been sitting mostly on the floor, so there's a few different options to work. So if I notice that. So if you have that focused tempo, it means that everything is there to support your focus. So if you feel your attention drifting, you can't really keep focus anymore. You can't keep your work going. Then it's easy to kind of go like, oh, well, it's probably not for me, I should leave. But then I just switched to another position, so that's something. Then I have a lot of excuses for me to move more. So as. And I love when you were doing an interview with Taimo, actually from the Biohacker Summit that you were on a treadmill as you were doing the interview. And then I was like, I'm going to have fun talking to this guy. Because I'm like that. I got to move around so I have stuff laying around to keep my fingers moving. Because, you know, your motor cortex activates your neocortex, which means the moving brain activates the thinking brain. So I have some balls laying around to juggle with, to play with. I have things to fidget with. So I do have distractions. But the important thing here for the focus temple, and I call it a temple, because it's a holy rule that if you do get distracted, if you do take a break, that is not helpful to that space, you leave the room. So, for example, I don't do Facebook messages, I don't do email. I don't do negative, non helpful distractions in that room. I leave the room because as soon as I walk in, I want my brain to kick into gear.

Because you associate the room. Yeah, I'm the same way. I use the kitchen table upstairs. And I realize if you work in an office, you may. You have to be creative with this. Kitchen table upstairs is for like emails, Facebooking, social media. My office is where I podcast, it's where I write, and it's where I have very important meetings where I might be walking on my treadmill. And so when I walk into my office, my brain is programmed to know that I'm freaking taking a deep dive into whatever it is that I'm doing, and it's not meaningless or busy work. And in addition to that, if I could expound on what you said about moving constantly. Yeah, I do the walking treadmill. Like right now, what we're talking, what I'm doing is I'm leaning up against what's called a mogo upright stool, which is kind of like a pelvic bone shaped stool that I can lean against. So that's the position I'm in right now. But I'm standing on what's called a topo mat, which is a mat that has a variety of different curves and textures on it that I can stretch my calves and my legs out on while we're talking. And then finally, what I'm doing right now, and I'll do this typically once per day for a podcast, is I have a golf ball underneath my left foot and I'm rolling that golf ball. And sometimes I'll use one of these little foot roller massage devices. But a golf ball is what was handy. Today I'm rolling the golf ball around My left foot and then my right foot while I'm talking to you. So that's just an example of little things that allow me to focus while admittedly making my body better. And I've talked before on other shows about kind of like you. I've got a fricking pull up bar in my office and a kettlebell and I've got the seated pelvic shaped stool which is like a saddle and I've got different foam roller devices. So yeah, I agree. Turning your workplace into a temple doesn't mean it's just like one single desk that you sit at, but instead is kind of a workplace that allows you to stay focused, to stay moving and that you associate with again, not to throw this term around too much, but deep.

Yeah, and there's, there's also a deeper thing there going on on the philosophical level. Which is, which means that you walk in and you look at your environment and then you ask yourself, why are these things? What is this environment like? And why is it like that? Why are the things that are there? Why are they there? Why do I decide if I have to do work, I sit down and if you walk into an office space and you look at what an office space looks like and there's a lot of companies now that ask me to come in and remodel things and like help people find their focus and, you know, completely innovate the way they work. And I always ask them, why is it set up this way? And then they say, well, this is how offices work. And I say why? And they can't give me a good answer. And the answer always comes down on a much deeper level as to productivity being more important than individual life quality, which is, you know, this is the way of thinking. Kind of like the ancient way of thinking where workers have to work and their life quality is not as important as the productivity, which is kind of ridiculous because obviously burning people out and destroying them is not good for productivity in long term. So that's, that's something, it's a matter of consciousness of looking at your surroundings, at basically anything that you have present in your life and going, why is it there? Is it helpful? Where does it come from? And how can I optimize it?

Yeah, I love it. And aromas are important too. Like my, my entire office always smells like one of three aromas. Like while we're talking. Oh yeah, I have, I have rosemary essential oil diffusing, which is especially good for memory or for, let's say if I am in my office and I'm studying something or I'm writing a. Let's say I'm writing fiction, right? So I can diffuse, let's say, another uplifting scent. And my three are rosemary, peppermint, and cinnamon. But let's say I decide peppermint is going to be what I diffuse in my office while I am. Well, while I'm writing fiction. Well, what happens is every time I smell peppermint, every time I walk into the office and smell that, it reinforces that scent to be associated with productivity, with the writing of fiction. And so you can even go as far as to associate certain aromas with certain activities. But it's fascinating how far you could go with transforming your workplace into a temple. And for people listening in, I'm going to keep notes for all this stuff. Just so you guys know, it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindlift that's BenGreenfieldFitness.common mindlift sorry, Casper, I feel like I keep interrupting you, but go ahead.

I just know we just. I know that you say something, I get way excited. And then I say something, you get way excited. It's good. It's good. We could talk for hours, but. And also that's a good thing because we're. We're throwing out all these tiny little tips that are easy to forget because one of the ways I discovered this was when I was a kid and I basically hadn't gone to school for a few years, and I just spent a few years. It was kind of like a darker period in my life. I was just out in the street getting high and not being up to no good. And after a while, I found my love for science and wanted to go back to school and I started having panic attacks. Well, that's actually the first chapter in the book where I explain how I got through it and everything. Anyway, related to this specific thing was I went back to school and I was finally over the first panic attacks of even going to school. And I walked into school because I had to do exams and I hadn't been there for a while, and then there was this very specific smell hanging in the school and. And boom, my physiology just flipped. I had a full blown panic attack, like adrenaline, everything. So just that smell coming into my brain unlocked the information that it had stored about the bad place that that had been for me. So then my mother, who's a total, total genius, I had been when I was studying for the exams, preparing to go back to school, she asked me, what do you want to eat? She Was like, you should have some nice food, like anything you want. As long as you're going back to school, we're fine. And I got these Italian kind of like rolls, bread, and they had this very specific combination of herbs in them, which was in the bread. And I ate that while I was studying. And then I came home and I was in total panic and I was like, I can't go to school. Even the smell of school completely throws me off. But I had been actually have been having fun learning at home, because I like to learn. And so then she got me the same bread to take to school. And I just basically had that in a bag under my nose every time I wanted to come up. So I kind of like found that little trick in dire circumstances. And then I also learned that taste is a very powerful one. Like I worked with kids with, with anxiety around tests and I had them chew a specific gum. Chewing gum is another way, good way to activate a whole bunch of muscles and send blood, blood flow up to your head. But then also choosing a specific taste that you only chew while studying. And then also you only have that while you're doing the test. And that translates obviously to putting your gear, your brain into gear for work mode or whatever kind of thing. It's all association.

Yeah, that's funny. I actually use this brand of gum called simply gum. And it's one of the most natural preservative or artificial flavoring free gums that are out there. I sold off Amazon, comes in a six pack with flavors like fennel and maple and coffee. And so I can literally have specific gums that I choose for specific occasions. And I haven't even talked about this much before on a podcast. But yeah, in my office I have the peppermint box. And upstairs for chewing in between meals, I have the fennel box. And so, yeah, taste. And using gum specifically for taste is also a cool little tactic. Now you talk about do one thing at a time and find your golden hours and work. Only then use rituals to get into the zone. That's number three, transform your workplace into a focus temple. Take a break. And also number six, do mental interval training, which you talked about. Now the next one that you mentioned, number seven out of nine is to go on an information diet, which I'm quite interested in what you mean by that because I am a voracious consumer of information. I use a program called Feedly F E E D L Y on my computer and on my phone to subscribe to about 50 different blogs. And so every morning I've got all these different blog feeds coming my way. And so going on an information diet, admittedly makes me a little nervous. What do you mean by that?

Well, I didn't say information fasting.

Okay?

That's what people think about when I say diet, because people assume the associated diet with not, you know, with less, but I mean with more curated. So you basically go in the same way. You go into your physical environment and. Or the same way I went into my mental and physical environment in my own body and mind and went, why is this here? What is it doing there? So what are the beliefs that I have? What are the thoughts that I have? How did they get there and are they helping me? That's the process I started with. I started in my mind because I had the panic attacks. And then I started looking at my body and I went, hold on. How fit I am, Am I. What are my injuries? You know, what feels good, what doesn't? Why is it there? Where did it come from? What can I do with it? And then I did that with my direct surroundings. And then I realized that your information diet, so the information you take in digitally or through books is just as important, might be the most important. Actually, the most important might be your social environment.

So basically, you're kind of like cleaning up the amount of information that's coming at you. And obviously, some of the things you talk about in the book, like disabling push notifications and unsubscribing from junk email, is important, but I'm curious if you have this same habit. Like when I walk into a hotel room and I think I picked this tip up from Dave Asprey, the bulletproof guy, or the bulletproof exec. He puts away all the magazines and the breakfast menu and the reminder to. To hang the towels up. Like, anything that would involve little reading of things that really are an information distraction. And I'll do that in hotel rooms on the airplane. I will take the magazine and all the little things one could read in that little folder in front of you on the airplane. And what I do is just put that stuff under the seat so I'm not tempted by or distracted from the other work I'm supposed to be doing on the plane. Even here in my office right now, the only. Only thing that I have to look at, aside from your book and a little Asian poster on my wall, that is the Japanese kanji symbol that means family is a safe harbor, which just reminds me of the most important thing in life. Aside from that, there's nothing to distract me in my office. I don't have posters even with inspirational quotes or anything like that. There's just nothing. Except you right now, Casper.

Yeah, well, the same here, but so here's the thing. It's about junk information. It's not even about necessarily distraction. So you take away those little folders. But then it's not necessarily. Because when I'm on a plane, actually all my plane rides, I turn them into very long fasted silent meditations and nose breathing practice. That's even if I fly, I fly all over the world, probably the whole flight, 12 hour flight. I try to, I have. The only thing I have is an audiobook.

Generally you don't write it all on planes or anything like that.

Well, I have to be honest, it depends. So if I. It depends on. I've been kind of become a nerd of hacking, you know, the jet lag. Because I have to always when I fly I also have to perform. I don't have holidays, I just come to speak or to teach workshops. So I want to be on my best. And actually I've noticed that if I have to be on a plane for 12 hours I could definitely work. But then I noticed it's not good for my shoulders or whatever. Then I go, you know what? I always feel like I don't have enough time to do very dedicated long seated meditation practice, for example, silent meditation. Because I'm always moving around and everything. And I just go, you know what, let's just be quiet, close my eyes and focus on like what, what can we learn about nose breathing in these next 10 hours?

You know, I'm definitely not wired that way. Like when I'm on a plane, I am. I take advantage of having no distractions and I frickin just let. I either work like an animal or else I sleep on the plane. Those are my two modes.

Well, I do that on shorter flights. If I have a shorter flight I definitely do that. But if I do that on a long flight, I kind of tend to burn out my brain and then I notice that I can't really be calm and relaxed afterwards.

Why do you listen to video game music while you work? That's number eight that you talk about video game music.

What was number seven? What were you talking about? Actually, the information diet. I was just gonna. Yeah, so the main tip there is.

Come on man, focus. Quit multitasking.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm just going with the flow. I'm enjoying it. And multi. I'm single tasking on the flow. So the point Is that curating? Like, you have 50 blogs you read. I'm still on Facebook a lot, but the things I have on Facebook, like, I have rules, if I see somebody complain, if I see somebody talk politics or like there's certain information or like people sharing news articles, I don't want to have any news in my feed and I just weed them up. So it's very much about being selective and conscious about curating what you do. And the same thing goes for music. So music is full of meaning. Like normal Western pop music is completely packed with meaning. And it's built in the most optimal way to grab your attention in no time. Like the. I used to be a musician and there's just a science about how to write a good pop song. And you can follow the formula. And if you look at the formula, it's built to grab your attention. It has emotion in there, it has different changes, different harmonies. It's built to grab your attention. So if you listen to music that is meaningful, like pop music or love songs while you're working, that just comes in as an extra stream of data, which means you're going to be multitasking. And the brain is a single task device. You can't multitask. So video game music, on the other hand, is not built to grab your attention, right? So if you look at the reason that music is built to grab your attention is because it's pop music. It's on the radio. If it grabs your attention, it means they sell a record historically. So that's why it's built that way. Video game music is the opposite. So it's ambient music, but it's also built to support your concentration. So I used to play a ton of video games and I just noticed that music was always set to a scene. So you have exciting music, you have calming music. The different worlds in the video game have different kinds of music. So it's much easier to find music that fits you. So if you just look at, if you go in Google or go to YouTube and go type in concentration music, you generally get some binaural beats, or you get some drums, or you get some singing balls, you know, or. Or some, some chill hop kind of thing, but it's more difficult to curate exactly what it is. But if you go search, if you want to, like, go, I have 20 minutes and I'm just going to slay these emails. I've got these to dos. I can do them fast and I should do them fast. Let's go into hyperdrive and just crush it. Right. And then you search on YouTube for epic video game boss music, and then you're going to get that kind of music that fits that. Right. So it just, it made it easier for me to find music that was supporting in this specific task that I wanted to do by Googling video game music. And also that was a familiar field for me, and I noticed that it just worked.

Now, do you ever use any of these forms of music, like Brain fm, for example, which is music set to artificial intelligence to improve focus or creativity, or even binaural beats or sound frequencies? And what I mean by that is the use of anything from, like, there's a company called EarthPulse, for example, they make a device that. That emits a very focused, like, 10 Hz alpha brainwave frequency that you really can't hear, but that you feel. Or like I mentioned, Brain FM develops not binaural beats, but specific tracks that are designed to enhance the production of specific brain waves, like, say, alpha or theta for sleep. Have you ever experimented with any of those?

I have, and I found some of them very helpful and some of them not helpful at all, even though the theory behind it looked kind of solid. And then I noticed, like, what is really the factor that is determining whether it helps me or not, and that was just whether I liked it or not. So I could have, like, the most optimal brainwave kind of like, crafted thing for my brain, and if I just don't like it, it's not going to help. And actually, I think I cited a study in that specific little piece of the book that said it shows that, you know, music is a mood regulator. And the thing that is most important is whether it fits your mood. And I think people overestimate. And I might be off on this. Like, people might be able to quote hard silence on me and, you know, I might be wrong, which is about anything I'm saying in this whole podcast. You know, that's always an option. But I mean, in my experience, people overestimate the effectiveness of, for example, a binaural beat on a technical level, and they underestimate the power of music as mood regulator and regulating mood as basically the fundamental skill for getting your brain into any mode, right? Because it's all. If you look at all these things as certain moods, if you have an association with a specific kind of music that gives you flow state, then. And if it's, you know, heavy metal and it gives you that flow state because that's what you used to ski to, right? You're a skier and you're always listening to heavy metal. And then you take your heavy metal into your workday and it puts you in a flow state. I think that's going to be more effective that association than putting on a bunch of binaural beats that you're kind of bored by, that don't really do anything for you. Right. Even though they're technically. Should be more made for a flow state. Yeah, that's my experience.

Got it. Okay, cool. Tip number nine is the coffee nap. And you talk about, you know, how you drink the cup of coffee, fall asleep. It takes 20 minutes for the coffee hit your bloodstream. And then after you've woken up, after your power nap, you're. You're ready to rumble because the coffee has just now hit you. I personally don't use the coffee nap technique because, well, frankly, I tend to take a nap that's closer to like 40, 45 minutes because I just get better rest that way, I found. But is there a specific reason that you choose 20 minutes as your power nap length?

Yes. So I don't use the coffee nap that often anymore. The main reason I put it in is because I thought it's such an awesome biohack. You just kind of like figure out how that little receptor works, that it's shaped like the caffeine, kind of like fits in there and, you know, and it tells you something about the brain. I love that because it's like one of the most typical biohacks where you can give somebody like, here's the system, here's how to hack it. So that's why I loved it. But, you know, definitely. And so most people depending, you know, there's an individual difference. But in general, the sleep cycle for a human, for an adult human, is about 90 minutes. So you have about 20 minutes of kind of like, let's say shallow sleep, beginning of sleep, and then 50 minutes of deep sleep and then 20 minutes of again, slowly shallow sleep coming out of it. And you go through a bunch of cycles like that now, depending on how fast you fall asleep. So let's say you do 40 to 45 minutes. Do you fall asleep right away, by the way?

Well, for a nap, you mean? Yeah, I didn't for a little while until I recently began to use a device called the circadia, which is made by the electrostimulation company Fisher Wallace. And because I take a nap after lunch, what I'll do is kind of finish up lunch and put that on my head as I'm getting the dishes done and on my way to My nap. So if you're in, say, an office, you would do this as you're getting ready to take a nap. And by the time I've settled down from my nap, what this does is it induces a decrease in cortisol and an increase in serotonin and dopamine, and I am lights out as soon as my head hits the pillow. Now, for that nap, my only complaint is I don't always use it for a long night of sleep because it's got wires and sometimes you wake up as you're rolling around in the wires. But ultimately, for a nap or for an airplane, yeah, I'm lights out right away. But why do you ask?

Well, because some people, they say I take an hour nap and I wake up so groggy that I can't get back to work. And because their brain has gone into deep sleep, this is true.

I'm groggy after my nap. It takes me like 15, 20 minutes to get back into the game.

Right. And so. And those 15, 20 minutes will take you. So here's the thing that if your brain goes to sleep the first 20 minutes, it can get out of sleep easily. But once it's in the deep part of the sleep cycle, it's going to have to finish that cycle. So if you wake up 15 minutes before the end of the deep sleep cycle, you're going to need those 15 minutes to wake back up. So this is why I time my nap to 20 minutes. Because I know and, you know, it's different. Sometimes it's 30, and for some people it might be 35. But I know for me it's 20 minutes. And I lay on an acupressure mat to do my nap. And I'm working on a little, little article called the Ultimate Napping Protocol. And the acupressure mat is definitely a part of it. Yeah. And I set my timer, and I know after those 20 minutes, I'm not going to be in deep sleep, so I can wake up and get straight back into work. And I feel very, very energized, especially if the caffeine kicks in. And also 20 minutes is just enough for the coffee to pass through your digestive system. So this is another thing of association. If you drink your coffee and you feel energized right away, that's just your brain. That's just placebo. Because the caffeine is not being used yet, it takes 15 to 20 minutes for it to be digested. That's just association. So that's how powerful that is, depending.

On your mode of administration. You could always do your coffee enema before you take a nap.

Yeah.

There are other ways to distribute coffee throughout the body, for sure.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to get into a nap after coffee enema.

Oh, you'd be surprised. You just clench and fall asleep. I just don't try that at home, folks, unless you have a very good. What are those little soaking pads they put underneath the mattress for children who wet the bed at night? You're gonna need, like, three of those and a good washing machine. So you talk about, of course, video game music and the coffee naps. Those are tips number eight and nine that you give. And then another few things that really leapt out at me when I was reading your book. One thing is that you wrote the book in such a way that the book itself caused you to focus. And early on in the book, you talk about some of the things that you use to do that. For example, on every page, there are a maximum of just 500 to 600 words, and each paragraph is supposed to be no longer than 300 words. What are some other things that you did specifically in terms of the way you laid out the book to ensure people could get the most out of it?

Yeah. So pages are. There is no block that is larger than 250 words. So one of the things that people who don't like to read books or people who don't focus optimally, they really have a hard time with is they open a book and there's just letters from top to bottom on the first page, then letters top to bottom on the next page, they flip it, and again there's letters top to bottom, and there's like line breaks and page breaks. And if you're not a good reader, the brain goes, oh, man, I don't even know how long. So that's one of the things, like working like an athlete, is that you know when you're going to quit. So if I tell you, you know, let's go for a run, and I don't tell you how far, you're not going to go into a full sprint. Right. Because you might have to do a marathon. So people who have brains that don't read or focus inherently very well, especially on books, they kind of. They opt out whenever there's a line break or page break because they feel like, I'm never going to be able to finish this. So there's never a block that's more than 250 words long. And there's maximum of two of those blocks on a page. Which means that if you start on a page, you can finish the page and get the idea, you get, you get the information. So it's really weird.

I didn't even realize that until I started reading the book. But there really is not any line break or word breaks that carry over into the next page. So you consume the content you started with by the end of the page that you started on, which is really interesting. I haven't read a lot of books that have that approach.

Yeah, and absolutely. And even in the Dutch version, I wrote it in the end version of the makeup and it works a bit better there because then we had to change it to the international printing and whatever. But that's generally what I did. So all the pages are filled out. So I have been willing to take out content to fit to that regimen to help people finish it. And actually, one of the coolest compliments I can get is from people who don't like reading, because I love reading. Like as soon as I found it, I was like, man, why didn't I do this my whole life? And now I get these emails from people that read my book and they go, this is the first book I've read cover to cover. You know, I found my love for reading stuff like that. And then I go, yes, it was worth it because it was kind of also on a hunch. So that's the thing. And I learned that in education. I started timing my classes and I told these kids, okay, listen, I'm going to talk for 10 minutes at this speed, at this volume, please set your brain to 10 minutes. If there's at any point you think your focus needs to cop out, just let me know and we'll switch and we'll make sure you get there. And then I showed them the timer and then I started adding that to text format too. Started kind of like hacking the tests in a way where they would know exactly how much time they could use for this and that and help them with time management. So that's what I did in the book. So that's things that the page breaks, line breaks, then the book tells you how many words, how many words there are going to be in a chapter and how long that takes at an.

Average estimated reading time based on an average of 250 to 300 words per minute. So each page will approximately take you two minutes to read. If you read at the rate of the average person, which is cool to know how long it's going to take you to get through A specific chapter. I mean, it's a very, very interesting way to write a book. And I mean, you've got way more in this book than we even delved into. You have at the end 50 different tips divided into seven categories. And each, each of those tips is designed specifically to enhance your productivity. Like, for example, you've got everything from like your fitness tips include things like walk like an animal and work standing up, which some of these things are pretty intuitive. But then you've got others that are really interesting, like sit quietly in the woods or master your breath or, or cool your face. Like a whole bunch of interesting tips. But what I wanted to ask you because you do talk about things like breath and things about cold. As you get into all these different tips in the back of the book for different techniques for fitness, for physiology, for what you call rewilding your life or attention management, you obviously do this whole WIM HOF thing because you are like. Are you the lead instructor for WIM hof?

Well, I think the official title is the Teacher Teacher. It used to be called head instructor. The thing is that they don't want, and I agree, we don't want a system where there's different levels and there's like a hierarchy. So I'm not the top instructor or number one, but basically I'm the one who together with WIM hof, teaches the other instructors. So every instructor you can find on the world that teaches this stuff has been trained by me, mostly together with WIM hof. So and I worked with him and his family to develop the instructor program, you know, together. And it all started with me kind of making a bunch of lectures that explained the science behind the method in. Well, in a way that people like to hear it. That's, that's my specialty, science teaching. And I used to teach science to kids, like to non motivated kids. And I made it fun for them. And that's one of the first things I started doing when I quit my science teaching job was teaching this biohacking stuff in the WIM HOF method. So it all fell into place.

And is that the method that you used to train to do ultra endurance running while barefoot?

Well, that was definitely a massive, massive performance booster. So the fact that I learned about breathing because that the first marathon I ran was on bare feet and it was on the beach because I thought that would be a good idea, turned out to be not the best choice because it's basically sandpaper. Well, it's sand, you know, so it's not the best Thing. And actually the biggest problem on the beach is that because there's a slant, your one foot is always higher than the other, so your pelvis gets completely messed up anyway. But yeah, the breathing was the most powerful thing for me as I was doing these ultras because I was not in the best shape when I started running. And I kind of hacked my learning curve, or the curve of becoming a runner in that sense and towards doing ultra endurance, especially by breathing and by using the cold. So that was a big, big game changer.

Okay, so I want to know about the practical, because you hear people talk about I was breathing and I was doing the cold. But what would a typical training session look like for you? Is it that you're stopping during the run and doing some kind of special breath work? Are you jumping in a cold bath before and after the run? How would one combine cold breath work and running barefoot for a typical workout?

Well, first of all, if you run barefoot in cold environments, which is dangerous and you can damage yourself, but if you do it gradually and correctly, your feet will become so powerful like it's insane. The problem with feet is that there is people who transition to barefoot running, they notice that there's so many different tendons and pieces of fascia and so many different little bones. It's pretty sensitive. And things like tendons and fascia, they don't really have their own circulation apart from, you know, the circulation towards the muscles. So it's very easy to get injured. And training with the cold in cold environments or just dunking your feet into an ice cold bath for 10 seconds and then taking it out and letting it adjust is sauna training for your feet, which means the circulation in your feet improves your ability to deal with pain and to understand what the pain means improves. So that keeps you away from injury just by improving circulation. That's the thing that's part of the.

WIM HOF training, isn't it? Like, like you do you do cold plunges with just your foot into a bucket of ice?

Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things we use a lot. And also with the feet, with the hands. And we use that also to reprogram the neurological pathways where people deal with pain. It's a very, very great, easy practice. People think I need to get an entire ice bath with cubes and everything. But if you just train your hands and feet, that's powerful.

Okay.

For an athletic standpoint. So let's say you want to do a max performance run or CrossFit workout or whatever it is. You want to do. One of the limiting factors for performance is body temperature. Because if you think, you know, imagine being in a sauna or the hottest day of the year, you know, you feel that your body does not want to give off any extra energy.

It wants to remember the weekend afternoon hot runs. Getting ready for Ironman Hawaii. That was like the worst run of the week.

Yeah, absolutely. Because your organs are getting fried and your body doesn't want that, so it'll stop you. So if you can cool your body right before you go into performance, you're giving yourself a head start because the body is like, oh, yeah, give me, please, let's move because we want to get this heat up right. So that. So right before a marathon, I would definitely do. Do an ice bath or any kind of cold that I could get. Like, I ran an. An ultra in Switzerland, the Eiger Ultramarathon 51K, and it was cold streams everywhere. It was perfect. And if whenever my feet hurt or when I was completely like ready to quit, I would just run until I found one of those ice cold streams and I kind of like dunk my feet in there or just my face or completely go in there. So you cool your body temperature and also you modulate your circulation. That's very helpful. Training with the cold in general helps you deal with pain, so it improves your circulation overall, but it also helps you deal with pain. Especially as soon as you hit the cold. You kind of tease out that little voice in your head. It wants to tell you that things are dangerous and scary and that you should stop and you can't go on anymore. And that's the mental training that the cold has given me. That, you know, in the hardest part of the. Of a marathon or a long run or even a heavy lift, I just noticed that that voice comes up and I'm conscious of it, I'm aware of it, I can listen to it and I can let it go. And I learned that in an ice bath. And keep in mind that my life was controlled by the voice because I used to be addicted. And you know, I had an anxiety disorder and all of that. So that little voice saying take the easy way was in charge of my life for a large part. And training with the ice and especially the combination with running, this running is also practice of dealing with that voice has been very profound. So in terms of ice, that's definitely. Those are definitely ways to train. After a workout or performance thing. You can use the ice, but there's a bit like there's more knobs and levers to it. You could, you could do some harm with it if you don't modulate it correctly. So I work with a lot of athletes on how for their specific program to use the cold to modulate recovery after a set.

Yeah, well, you could also shut down your, your, your hormetic response, just like taking high dose antioxidants after a hard workout. And, and by the way, you can also cool during a workout. I did a story for Lava magazine a couple years ago where I raced the half Ironman World Championships in Las Vegas and It was like 105 degrees. And I actually did the run just to see what would happen physiologically wearing one of these lightweight cooling vests, a hat made by Zoot that was infused with xylitol to cool the head during running. Arm cooling sleeves made by the same company that also cooled the arms while running. And then finally, very similar to the Stanford cooling glove that they did these experiments with. And you guys don't know about this? Just Google.

Google.

Actually, I'll put a link to the article in the show notes, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindlift and I'll link to the Stanford cooling glove experiment. But what they also have is a cooling glove that you can wear that keeps the hand cold. And so as blood circulates through the hand and goes back to the rest of the body, it keeps the hand cold. And so I used all these techniques during the run. I stayed quite cool. At the same time, I had a lot to manage. Right. I was like, I'm holding the thing and I have a vest on. But, but at the same time, like, I like the heat was not an issue when I did that. So you can even do this during exercise?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I remember Scott Jurek's book Eat and Run where he talks about doing the bad water ultramarathon and they basically drive around with an, with a casket full of ice that he goes into every two hours and just goes from, from extreme hyper to hypothermia in like minutes.

Right.

That apparently helped him a lot.

Yeah, interesting.

So that's the thing, and it's funny that this interview kind of like follows my kind of career because I started out with all this cognitive performance and learning enhancement and focus stuff because I worked as a teacher and that was my mind frame. And now I work mostly on extreme performance, on hacking the nervous system, breath work, and I work with athletes. So it's kind of like shifted. And that's also how the conversations shifted, which is Cool. So I started experimenting with breathing, the first thing. So the traditional WIM HOF breathing, which people should definitely check out, it's a very profound technique, is a great way to get your body into gear. You're basically shifting between.

I've interviewed WIM a few times, by the way, so you don't have to go over the whole WIM HOF breath work thing because we have literally, like hours of interviews on it.

Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's great.

But you use that. What I'm asking is, though, how did you use that while you were training barefoot? For ultra endurance? Is this before the workout, during it, after it?

Yeah. So the classic WIM HOF breathing, I would do that before, and that was very helpful then. What's very important to understand is for ultra endurance, what you need to teach your body to do is to basically be in a parasympathetic state while you're being active, which means that your nervous system is in a state of rest, even though you are running up a mountain or, you know, biking or swimming. So you need to build a balance between the different functions of the nervous system where you can keep your heart rate low, but you're still moving. And you. And as you know, in ultra endurance, if you can't eat, you can't finish. Right. And actually, I read this quote that says ultra endurance is an eating competition with some running in between. I don't know where I read it, but it's probably from point to run, so. But I did this. I did my first marathon on bare feet, by the way, fasted, which took that thing out of the equation. But so if you can keep your heart rate down, keep your nervous system calm, you're gonna be able to last longer. And you do that by breathing slowly. So learning how to nose breathe while running, breathing as slowly as possible, focusing on the exhale, because that's where you, you know, that actually stimulates the vagus nerve and gets you in a calmer mode. The slower you breathe, the lower your heart rate and less energy you will use up and the more efficient you will become. So that's one thing that I used during the marathon. Now in training, I would even combine that, and I still do with breath holds. This is something to be careful with because you can get really dizzy with it. So please, you know, be careful with this stuff. But for example, doing a training run, and I would do hill repeats, and I would do one hill running up a hill with my lungs full and holding my breath. Then at the top of the hill I would do, for example, I would stand still, do five slow breaths and then breathe out and hold. So an exhale retention and run down the hill. That was a little protocol that I used. Or even running slowly, breathing as slowly as possible, suddenly holding my nose, holding my breath and doing a sprint, and then recovering my breath as fast as possible. And. But then during. So restricting breath creates efficiency, basically, which is what you want if you're doing endurance. So that was very, very helpful. Also holding your breath creates a silence, which allowed me to scan my body to see what I needed. And another thing that's important, especially in barefoot running, is to really be mindful of your form, to really be able to scan your body while you're running and go, hold on and putting my toes slightly to the left and that's creating a blister, or it's putting my Achilles tendon in a certain position, which is not helpful. So I would actually use breath holds as a moment of silence where I didn't have to focus on any of my breath to scan my body and then to adjust my form. So that's the thing.

Yeah, that's interesting. I love these forms of breath work. You know, I will go on a walk, for example, and every time I pass a telephone pole, hold my breath for as long as possible. And then the entire rest of the walk is simply comprised of box breathing, right? Four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count, four count hold only through the nose. And the other twist that I've thrown into that workout is that you do the nasal breathing during the entire walk, right? Four in, four hold, four out, four hold. But as you are approaching, say a telephone pole and you know you're 30 seconds away from reaching that telephone pole, you go into Wim Hof style breathing, right? Like short, rapid. And then when you arrive to the telephone pole, take one deep breath in, exhale everything and then drop and do push ups. And then you get back up and keep walking, going straight back into that nasal breathing. I took a couple of friends on a walk like that and we walked for an hour like that. We got back, these guys were red faced, they were exhausted. Now, mind you, all we were doing was breathing and walking and they said that their diaphragms hurt because they were using all these new inspiratory and expiratory muscles that they'd never tapped into before. So, yeah, breath work is powerful.

Oh, man. And it's overlooked. Like, this is the thing in athletics. I'm a mediocre athlete like I did some feats of endurance which were, considering the timeframe and where I came from, were impressive in a sense, relatively. I'm a mid packer. I don't. I'm not a very high level athlete, but I work with pro athletes all the time. And because I had to kind of like hack my way to do athletics again because my body was kind of broken and was out of shape and all of that, I just had to use these methods that were overlooked by most athletes and one of them was breathing. So now I work with like Olympians and with very high performance from all kinds of different areas. And they go, how did we miss this? This is so profound because in one little session you can get people, people's performance like to, to a higher level at an insane rate. So that was definitely, like you said, box breathing. I like to do box breathing and then increase the intervals. So for example, 30 seconds in 30 second hold. So you have basically one inhale and exhale over spread over two minutes, which is obviously something you work up to start with the four minutes and then stuff like that. And also I recently opened a gym in my hometown called mlad stands for Move, Lift, Act, Breathe, where we focus on mindset training. But we also have these specific breathing protocols that came out of all my experimentation that don't really fit any method I know of right now, or at least, you know, we tinker with it with our athletes. And one of the things you can do, which is a very important thing for me after a workout, is to modulate your nervous system back into resting mode. So I especially crossfit athletes or fighters, people who do high intensity interval training, they come out of a workout and then the next at night, right. And go to bed and then they can't sleep because their heart rate is still up and their nervous system is still in fight mode. And that messes with their recovery and with their performance. So what we do, like the evening workouts, we close them off with a breathing protocol where you breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds. You do that four times, then you do the breathe in for four seconds, but breathe out for eight seconds. Right.

And you basically double reactivate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Exactly.

Yeah. It's super interesting, man. We could keep going. What's the URL for that gym, by the way, that you just mentioned?

Oh, that's Nlab Life.

N Like Nancy?

No, like Move, Move, Live, Act, Breathe.

Life. Of course. There we go.

We will get into this stuff because I'll be doing A workshop at the secret off site VIP event of the Biohacker Summit.

So that will likely have happened by the time this podcast gets released. But if not, and you happen to hear this and have a chance to get over to that Finland biohacking Summit in time, go. And if you listen to this podcast at any point in the future, go to my website@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and search for Biohackers Summit Finland because it is a must add to your bucket list. Casper is teaching there, I'm teaching there. We have an off site where we camp out in the wilderness in the middle of Finland and do plant foraging. It's amazing. And I'll put a link to everything Casper and I talked about, by the way, over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mindlift I know we jumped around quite a bit because there are so many things to talk about, but grab his book Mindlift. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well@BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindlift and then if there were topics that we didn't delve into deeply enough for you or you have follow up questions or comments. Casper, are you cool with folks leaving those in the show notes and we can kind of tag team replying?

Absolutely. I love doing podcasts. The one downside is that it's a one way traffic and the thing I love most after a podcast is people getting in touch with me or having a space to discover us or just to see. You know, for anybody listening, if there's anything that stood out to you that you might, might have helped you or you think that inspired you, like feel free to get in touch or. Yeah, on, on your website. On. In the comments. I'll show up and I'll be around because I love the interaction. That's where I learned the most. You know, the. The audience is the most important source of inspiration for me.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, folks, well, I'll put the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com mindlift and you can interact over there just like it sounds. Mind lift and Casper, my Dutch friend, my hyper productive Dutch friend, thank you for coming on the show today and sharing all this stuff with us.

Oh man, it was a big pleasure.

All right, folks, well, until next time. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Caspar van der Meulen signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy and amazing week. 3, 2.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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