Biohacking Creativity with Temperature, Light and Sound

When I travel, to help me sleep, I use high doses of melatonin. Okay. And I'll say if I could show you my sleep scores. You know, here in Nashville, I'm sleeping eight and a half hours a night. Perfect sleep scores. And a lot of that's due to the melatonin that I take before I go to bed at night. Large amount. How much work?

When you say large amount, what do you mean? You talk about over 5mg.

I use a 300mg melatonin suppository of the 300mg. I get it from my friend in Sarasota, Florida. He's a doctor, Dr. John Laurence. Wow. Company called Mitozen. And. And normally that amount of melatonin would not be absorbed well orally and would result in a large peak followed by a drop that wakes you up. This, by using the rectal delivery mechanisms, gives you a slow release of melatonin all night long. You wake up and the problem is you're groggy because the melatonin is still in your system. Sure. So I walk over to my hotel room window, I pull open the curtains, the sunlight comes in, hits my eyes, then five minutes. I'm fine.

As a pastor, for me, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to biohack my creativity.

Right.

I think that's how I found you. Because back in, let's see, when my wife and I first got married, 2013, 2014, I started watching CrossFit videos on YouTube because I was trying to figure out how do I increase my creativity quotient. I'm always writing, I'm always preparing sermons.

Chipping pull ups and cleaning jerks.

It didn't work as well as I expected, Ben.

Yeah.

But I think that's how I found you. So I'm wondering, aside from ice baths, is it really possible to hijack our creativity?

Yes.

Okay, how do you do that? Is there sort of some simple ways, small to big? Is there a spectrum?

Yeah. The, the, the so called limitless drug. Yes.

Pastors, we need this.

Yes. The, the, the Bradley Cooper of. Of Christ Kingdom. Yeah.

Okay, so hashtag goals.

Yeah. I mean you, you, you could put this into a few different categories when it comes to creativity.

Okay.

You can shift the brain into certain brainwave states, particularly like an alpha brainwave state that would enhance creativity using external variables.

Okay.

Namely temperature regulation. Another one would be light and sound. Those would probably be the top three.

Okay.

Temperature regulation. We already discussed like that. Like if, if you are listening and can implement that Cold shower, cold bath, regularly scheduled cold thermogenesis into your routine. You're automatically going to be able to shift your nervous system more into that alpha brainwaves.

Before or after I go to.

Right, you would do it before. Ideally this would be like at the beginning of the day if you, you can do like sauna, cold breath work at the beginning day. You're hitting three different variables that are all going to not only decrease stress but enhance creativity. And also I'm going to create an.

Assignment prep protocol right now with increased longevity.

Yeah. So sauna, cold breath work in the morning. Doesn't be a long session, but it could. And if you don't have a sauna, it's okay to sit on your living room floor, do a 20 minute breath work session and then get in the cold. My one complaint, just slight rabbit hole here with a lot of these breathwork apps is they're very new agey. Woo woo. Secular. Totally. Yeah, whatever. You know, it's, it's either empty headed meditation and in scripture we're called to meditate upon God's word.

Yes.

And not just to empty our heads and allow, you know, whatever other entity might be in the room to take us over. Which can happen sometimes with meditation. There's actually a great new book that just came out about this called the Enlightenment Trap.

No way.

Dying and getting possessed during meditation. A big part of that is they're not meditating on scripture or on God's word. No, it's written by Scott Carty. So.

So it's, it's written by a non Christian.

Yeah, it's just about the dark side of new age and enlightenment and meditate meditation. It's a good book. Wow.

Not to get distracted.

It just came out. I don't even, I don't even know if I might have gotten an advanced copy. But it's, it's very, very interesting. That is people who are kind of getting messed up from. And of course we know that can happen with things like ayahuasca and psilocybin and this whole plant medicine surge. But it can even occur, you know, with, with meditation as well. Now back to the issue with a lot of these breathwork apps that are all just like positive self affirmation, empty your head, you know, embrace the source or whatever. Right there. There's really not a whole lot that goes on during the breathwork session that's uplifting from a spiritual sense. And my logic is if you're going to be sitting there for 20 minutes, you know, in addition to your Breath, you might as well be focusing on something else. And my trick for this initially once I taught myself several different breath work tactics like slow count, in for four, hold for two, out for eight or in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Breathing. Yeah. Box breathing. Or like the Wim Hof style tactics was just to play soaking worship or some non lyrical uplifting.

Yes.

You know.

Almost. Almost like. Like Christian music without lyrics kind of legacy.

Natural inhabitation album.

Yeah. Anybody's listening to soaking music. What's it called?

It's. We did a soaking album.

Oh.

Each track is one hour. If you want to pray for an hour then you can play one track. It's got four tracks, four hours for the album.

Yeah. I'll send it to you and do. And just so you know like, I'll go back to my hotel room after this. I'm working on a cookbook right now.

Yeah.

And I've got a dinner tonight at 6:30. I'll probably get back to my hotel room at 1:30 so I can embrace like the brain fog in the afternoon. And in my hotel room, the bed's five feet away. Do I crawl in there and take a little nap?

Yep.

I will get back to my hotel room. I'll sit on the floor of my hotel room, I'll do 20 minutes of breath work. I'll take a cold shower and then I'll jump into the cookbooks and you're ready to go. This is what I'll be doing this afternoon.

Yeah.

Right. But the. You can either do music that's more uplifting or let's say you don't know what to do for breath work. You don't know when to breathe in, when to breathe out. You know when to do the hold. Etc. My logic starting a couple months ago was why isn't there a Christian breath work app? Right. That, that's more like. There's, there's some, there's some of like the orthodox breath is prayer. Like the Jesus prayer. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

Breathe in. What do they say? Smell the flowers, blow out the candles. So that's how you would do like breath is prayer. You smell the flowers, blow out the candle. So it's in through the nose, out through slightly pursed lips. And. And there's a variety of different breath prayers. There's even a whole book called Breath is Prayer which I think is fantastic. That's got about 25 different sections of scripture that can be used for breathless prayer. But, but the one, the earliest one practiced by like the early desert fathers and mothers was breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God. Breathe out, have mercy on my soul. Wow. Right. And that's a very, very simple breathwork routine where it's literally just for 10 minutes. Breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God. Breathe out, have mercy on my soul. Wow. But what I thought was, well, gosh, there's so much more that you could do with breath work just because it does shift you into almost like this receptive spiritual state. Yeah. You don't have to use breath work and biohacks to get close to God. Sure. But it is kind of cool that you can tweak your brainwaves in a way that opens you up spiritually, especially for. For conversations with God or to listen his voice in the silence. You know, I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence. Yes. I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence 90 seconds into an exhale hold during breathwork. Even better. Which, which sounds kind of gimmicky, but it just is, you know, God. God gave us breath and there are certain ways that we can use our breath to enhance our ability to, to be spiritual.

Absolutely. So I do it before I get on stage on Sunday.

Yeah.

So, like I'm standing backstage, I'm preparing to go up to preach and I'm trying and tell me if I'm doing something wrong. I'm doing like the.

Yeah. Oh, no, that, that's, that's perfect. That's that Wim Hof style breath work that not only gives you confidence and swagger. Senior preacher swagger swaggering. But also the rush of oxygen to the brain that can help with, with your focus and the blowing off of the CO2, which can help you to manage anxiety. So, yes, there's, there's, there's something to that. If you are super wired up, you'd want to do inhales and long exhales if you're nervous and, you know, but normally, yeah, breathing yourself up, especially if you're confident, familiar with your congregation, you want to be a little bit more excited than, you know, so nervous about all these people you're going to go out and preach to. And I don't know if preachers use the same tactic as a lot of public speakers. Imagining everyone in the congregation naked.

I've never met one guessing, yeah, I'm guessing that's not something that's. That's done. Although that was a tip I was given. What's one, two craziest tips I've been given for public speaking. And then I'll get back to the breath work was. Imagine everybody out there is naked.

Yep.

So that you think that they're just as nervous as you might be. And then I met this other guy who puts food in his. In his undershorts before he goes out on stage.

No way.

And he's a very well known, great speaker who I heard give a talk about how to give an effective speech. And he'll just be like, yeah, you know, I'll drop a few raisins down there or a little bit of leftovers from lunch. And he said, it's hard to feel uptight and nervous when you know you have food in your underwear.

No way.

Totally not joking. I never tried it. But this guy swears by.

Could you imagine a little bit of.

Food in your underwear?

So just dump a casserole.

Granola bar. Casserole. Wow. Yeah. Little green beans.

Dude, I've never heard of that.

Yeah, yeah, neither had I until I tell you that. So anyways, what I decided to do a couple months ago was start to record breathwork apps or breathwork sessions. That would be, for example, you know, the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians. And that's the opening verse.

And then amazing.

Three minutes of box breathing where you're dwelling upon that verse that's repeated a couple of times. And I've already had these in a bunch of audio sessions I'm going to release in an app soon.

Amazing.

And then move into your intense breath work for like two minutes. And on the inhale, you imagine breathing up all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. On the exhale, you exhale, hold, and it's all choreographed to music and everything.

Amazing.

And just listen and pray.

Come on.

And then you do another round. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Full inhale. Breathe in the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Full exhale, pray.

Incredible.

So you do like three rounds of that and then finish with another three minutes of box breathing and then a final Lord's Prayer. And my idea, I mean, obviously the Bible's a big book, right? Like, yes. I already have like 30 different breathwork sessions mapped out on a Google Doc on my computer. That. That I just need more time in the day to be able to record. But that's my goal, is for Christians to be able to not have to own some kind of like a new age app, to be able to do breath work and furthermore, to come closer to the Creator and be able to enter into prayer in a deeper state.

Yes.

Through breath work.

This is incredible, bro. You're revolutionary for this I think for doing this.

Yeah. I've seen a need for it for a long time. And I think. And some of the sessions will just be super short. Some of the sessions will be like box breathing, 10 minutes of. Well, like Jesus, son of God, have mercy on my soul, Pray done. Right. And then others will be a lot more epic and uplifting. And the first one I did like 35 minutes long.

I can't wait to try this out.

Yeah. And so back to your question about creativity. Yeah, he cold and breath work. Okay. Now I've kicked those horses to death. I think about as much as I can would be where to start. But then you've also, like I mentioned, got light and sound. Light and sound. So the body can respond to photons of light. I mentioned when I was talking about the sauna, how light is able to do things like excite the mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cell. It's able to, when you see natural sunlight first thing in the morning, to be able to stimulate that cortisol awakening response that helps you to feel awake and alert. An illustrative example of that would be when I travel, to help me sleep, I use high doses of melatonin. Okay. And also if I could show you my sleep scores, you know, here in Nashville, I'm sleeping eight and a half hours a night. Perfect sleep scores. And a lot of that's due to the melatonin that I take before I go to bed at night. Large amount. How much works?

When you say large amount, what do you mean? You talking about over 5 milligrams?

I use a 300 milligram melatonin suppository.

300 milligrams, Ben.

I get it from my friend in Sarasota, Florida. He's a doctor, Dr. John Laurence.

Wow.

He has a company called Mitozen. And normally that amount of melatonin would not be absorbed well orally and would result in a large peak followed by a drop that wakes you up. This, by using the rectal delivery mechanisms, gives you a slow release of melatonin all night long. You wake up, and the problem is you're groggy because the melatonin is still in your system. Sure. So I walk over to my hotel room window, I pull open the curtains, the sunlight comes in, hits my eyes. In five minutes, I'm fine. As a matter of fact, if you take melatonin in the middle of the day, it won't make you sleepy if you're out in the light, because the light shuts down that melatonin response. So, anyways, the. The reason I'm telling you this is that some form of light can be very stimulating for creativity and productivity. The two best kinds are red light, delivered either intranasally or. Or intracranially, and the same type of bright blue greenish spectrum from sunlight.

Okay.

Now you could get all of that by just going out in the sunlight every morning before you start into your creative work.

Got it.

You could also, as an alternative to if you got to be indoors, or in addition to that, get two different kind of like biohacking type of devices. Okay. One is called a V light. It's an infrared almost like a helmet that you put on that blast your entire skull with infrared light. I do this 20 minutes in the morning, and it's like a cup of coffee for my brain. And there's a little probe attached to it that goes up your nose. They originally developed this for Alzheimer's and dementia.

Okay.

But it works fantastically for overall brain health.

So you've got a helmet on.

It's kind of like a helmet. Not a full on helmet, but it's a bunch of. A bunch of lights that just get.

Are you doing the breath work at the same time?

No, this is just first 20 minutes of writing for the day. That's what's on my head. All right, guys, Just like an. And if you close your eyes, you can kind of sort of feel like this little buzzing hurt sensation, but you barely notice that it's on. Besides the fact that all of a sudden, just everything starts to go clear.

Wow.

So that's the first way that you could use light in addition to just natural sunlight. The second way is that the brain shifts into this gamma brainwave signal, hyper creative, hyper focused mode at about a 40Hz signal. Okay. And there's another company that makes a light very similar to the light boxes that they sell for seasonal affective disorder, such as you would put on your desk during the gray and dreary times.

Yeah, I'm aware of those. Some of my friends, they suffer with seasonal depression.

Yeah.

So they'll put it.

That works fantastically.

So you could do that while you're writing a sermon, for instance.

Yeah. But there's one company called. I think it's. It's Evie Evy. I have one of these. I've had it for a couple of years now. It works really well. You press one button on it and it's like those seasonal effective disorder boxes. But it specifically creates the hurt signal designed for creativity focus.

Okay.

And so that is on My office desk. And usually what I do my first 20 minutes of writing for the day, I pull on the infrared light, I push that button. So basically, I'm getting this 40 Hz signal of bright light from my desk and then the infrared light over my head. Wow. A lot of people don't realize how effective light is at shifting your brainwave state. The other one would be sound. Okay. Like I mentioned, so. So we've got breath work, heat, cold, light, and then sound. You. You've probably heard of these apps that will produce, like, binaural beats to help, you know, based on the hypothesis that if you blast the left ear with 405Hz and the right ear with 395Hz, the delta on those is 10Hz, so you shift yourself into, like, a 10Hz alpha brainwave zone.

Interesting. I've done this on YouTube. So, like, I'll. I'll put the headph the Sermon Prep Y.

And most of these are designed.

Okay.

To be done with headphones.

Okay.

That's a mistake a lot of people don't make is unless you have, like, I guess, surround sound speakers. We have a perfectly placed speaker on the left side of the desk and one on the right side of the desk.

Got it.

Headphones are best. And. And so some of these tracks, or binaural beats, are designed specifically to enhance creativity and focus and put you in kind of like that 10Hz all the way up to 40Hz brainwave zone. That would allow you to have enhanced creativity. Okay. I think the best one out there, I don't think it's even that expensive, is called Brain fm.

Brain fm.

Brain FM is designed and it's got, like, creativity, it's got focus, it's got, like, meditation, it's got sleep, like, four different settings on it. That one works really well for anybody who likes to listen to external sounds to enhance creativity or focus. And if you have headphones in particularly, yep, that works really well.