Brain and Heart Coherence: Navigating Resolutions, Relationships and Stress with Eldin Hasa

Creating your own reality. Is it possible for me? I am Jennifer K. Hill, the Consciousness Architect, and I am here to tell you that it's not only possible, it's closer than you might think. Welcome to the show. Welcome, friends. Thank you so much for being here for another episode of Regarding Consciousness. I am Jennifer K. Hill, and it is my pleasure and honor to get to spend this time with you every week. As we delve into consciousness from a 360-degree view, ranging from neuroscientists, thought leaders, spiritual leaders, and other bestselling authors and experts from around the world, such as our guest today, who is both an author and a neuroscientist, Eldin Hasse. Eldin and I had the pleasure of connecting, I believe it was during COVID when we were both doing global projects to elevate consciousness of the world. And Eldon has just been kicking butt and taking names since I last saw him. He's a highly accomplished neuroscientist, human behavior expert, and transformational coach with an impressive 18 years in his field, and he has a passion for understanding the intricacies of the human mind and behavior. Eldon's expertise has garnered significant recognition, including recently numerous interviews on BBC Radio. Where he has shared his insights with a wide audience. Additionally, he's been writing a lot of articles lately for publications such as Yahoo UK, Women's Health Magazine, OK Magazine, and also featured in the Daily Mail, The Sun, and the Daily Telegraph. Through these platforms, Eldren has contributed thought-provoking articles that have provided valuable insights into human behavior, personal development, Alden, it's great to be reconnected with you, my friend.

Yes, thank you so much, Jennifer, for having me on your show. It has been an absolute honor to work with you for the number of years that we have been working together on various projects. And yeah, I'm so happy to be on your show today. So thank you very much for the invitation.

Thank you, Alden. Well, tell us, what is the hot topic on everybody's mind right now? We're a few feels like we're finally moving away from what happened with the pandemic and into new frontiers in this upcoming year of 2024. What has been the hottest topic that everybody's been asking you about these days?

There are 2 things that have carried on since the December, towards the end of December, Christmas time. And one is the New Year's resolutions, or in fact, What stops people to follow through on their New Year's resolutions? And now we are in January, and now people are asking questions about the January blues. What's going on, and why do we experience January blues? So it's intertwined from the New Year's resolutions and inability to follow through, and now the feeling continues in January. Those are the 2 hot topics these days.

Yeah, it strikes me as you're sharing this, Eldon, that it seems like an ongoing thing that plagues us as human beings is not feeling worthy. Talk to me a minute about that from a consciousness standpoint. Why is it that we often self-sabotage, whether it's a New Year's resolution, a great relationship we've entered, a new job? What has us from a consciousness standpoint to basically impede our own ability to be successful and feel worthy?

These things are very much deep-rooted in various parts, especially in the brain, as the synaptic connections in the brain. And the brain, actually, you'd be surprised, it dislikes novelty, it dislikes change. And so what happens when it comes to these kind of novel things like people set the lofty goals, or they might be transitioning into the new career, it's they are still operating from the state of the old synaptic connections. So if you will, old computer programs, which that's pretty much what they look like and feel like within the brain and within the body, within the subconscious mind. And so By just trying to do these new things from the old set of programs, it's what is a stumbling block, if you will, or what are the number of obstacles for them to follow through. So by not identifying first what they are in the first place and then taking the leap, they are going to come up against themselves if There is a saying, you have to get out of your own way. And we can delve deeper into the intricacies of what I just described and perhaps even share some tools, how people can follow through and how they can alleviate those challenges. And I love the part when you asked first about the feeling of inadequacy. And I think Personally, in my view, I call it— that is the number one global pandemic, epidemic, crisis, if you will, because that's where every single human being should focus on. Because, and I say focus on as in internally, why that is important is because if you think about it, every single day we wake up, we are bombarded by so many things pulling us for attention. And more often than not, these things that they are pulling us and asking for attention are things which are telling us that we are not good enough. You have to wear certain clothes, you have to wear certain makeup, certain fragrance, certain this, and drive that, and own that, and have that. Things you have to in order for you to be adequate. And this has been indoctrinated deep in our subconscious minds from childhood because, God bless our parents, they didn't know any better. They were stuck into that loop, into that trap. So then what happened is they passed that on to us and that's how they raised us. There was this quote, it says, please, parents, teach your children to learn to identify Animals and nature and plants rather than names of celebrities and brands. And if you think about it, there's nothing wrong in knowing all the brands and the name of celebrities and who is marrying to whom, who broke up with whom, who sings what song. Those things are great. But in reality, what that means is that they should be taught valuable skill sets and valuable values, which is what makes us a human being. And I mentioned to you earlier before the recording, we have a 2-year-old boy. And one of the main reasons we chose the school for him from September '24 is these values. They said, our values are focused on child's happiness and developing Compassion, kindness, collaboration, love, joy, inner peace. Those are the school values. And we're like, this is the default human state. The human consciousness default state is what I just described as those values. And what happens is when we feel inadequate, we actually go into the state of fight or flight state of stress, state of survival, kind of emergency state, and we activate those stress hormones. And some psychologists would lead you to believe that's normal state. I call it altered state of consciousness because in those states, we don't feel well. We feel angry, we feel frustrated, we feel resentful, insecure. We don't like ourselves. We seldom feel love for ourselves, let alone for others. So those are altered states. And the only way you can actually feel well internally is by developing skill sets from inside out to have those experiences externally.

I think it's so beautiful to tie in what you were talking about, fight, flight, and flee, or freeze is another one. Is it activates— correct me if I'm wrong on this— our amygdala. And our amygdala is the animalistic lizard sort of brain that's attacking. And just, it's basically you're running from tigers, and it's there to help protect us. And I heard somebody in the last several months say something beautiful. They said it's like our brain was not prepared for all of these inputs of information, social media, all the things that happen in society today. So unfortunately, where it served, it actually served us for centuries, millennia to keep us alive. Okay, there's a lion or a tiger and I need to run, fight, flight, freeze, whatever it is. However, in today's modern age, the problem is that everything is a tiger and our brain doesn't know how to differentiate between tiger or something safe. So we're in this hyper-aware state where our adrenals are completely depleted. We're exhausted. We're reactive with the people we love and work with. And our children, of course, too. And in doing so, that doesn't give us the capacity to access our prefrontal cortex and our higher functioning, which is where we can be thoughtful, compassionate, kind, responsive rather than reactive. Talk to me a little bit about your experience with that.

Yes, I love this topic or these number of topics because you see, When we, our ancestors, the, our fight or flight states of survival was activated because there was a saber-toothed tiger, there was some kind of wild animal about to eat us, or many animals as humans were leaving caves to go and hunt for food or gather food. Those states were adaptive. And what happens actually for the listeners and the viewers who are not familiar with what is state of stress. It's actually when the brain and body is knocked out of balance, and it's actually not a bad thing. Stress has got this bad rap, like a bad name. Stress is actually a good thing where it's a process where brain and body, it gets itself into homeostasis, and it takes approximately between 1 and a half minutes to 2 minutes, depending on the situation and depending on the human. Now, if there is a real danger, we're being chased by a tiger, Then those states are adaptive and they are very good and positive for you because you need to outrun the pack of coyotes or a grizzly bear or a lion. But then in the modern society, it's a coworker, it's a mother-in-law, and it's traffic. It's a nasty email. It's a nasty comment on your social media. It's in fact no comment and no like from your best friend or your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend. which activates the same state of stress, fight or flight. And it's actually learned. What happens is when we go in a state of stress, state of fight or flight, there are production of these stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. And what happens, these stress hormones are highly addictive. It's actually measured. They are more addictive than any drug or any alcohol or any other chemical that you can ingest. What happens is when we are very often activating these stress responses by reacting to, as I said, social media, text message, email, something, our body becomes habituated to experience the cocktail of chemicals called thoughts, feelings, or emotions. And now the body becomes like an addictive kind of person craving those feelings in order to— and of course, in the brain, there are these synaptic connections, which are memories of the particular state that we have been living in, a perpetual state of fear, perpetual state of stress. And according to a lot of research in Europe and in the United States, I would say they say over 75% of time, average person lives in a state of stress with their eyes open, and they're not even aware they are doing it. And the big cause is when they go to bed thinking about their problems. So 5, 10 minutes before they put their head on their pillow, they think about their problems. And then they go to sleep for 6 to 8 hours, and they marinate and ruminate in those juices. And then even before they grab their mobile phone, their cell phone, they wake up feeling anxiety, feeling panic attacks because they didn't really have a good sleep. And now they are reliving the memories of the past because what is the emotion? What is the feeling? It's actually a memory of the past. It's not something in the present. And they unconsciously, they're projecting these negative experiences into the future. And then what they do, they reach for their cell phone, for their mobile phone, when the brainwave state is in the theta still, it's not fully conscious. And what happens is they get bombarded by so many things. Maybe they had a fight with a partner, with a lover the night before on text, and now they went to sleep, they marinated in those juices, and they take the cell phone and they read some texts which activate even further fear and stress in them. And they live like that. They live like that. And then they go, and that's why people say, I had a bad day, and they go to a bar, they drink a few drinks, or they take some other substances, some exogenous substances. But what the person is actually saying I need what is my natural state. I need my brain and body to go into homeostasis. Now, consuming exogenous substances gives them that, but it has side effects because if you do consume those things for prolonged period of time, you are just dealing with symptoms. You have not dealt with the root cause of the problem. You have not replaced and rewired the brain to remove those synaptic connections. And you are just going to go like a hamster on a hamster wheel, rinse and repeat, living the— we are in a new year. People say happy new year. And then by this time, all of their newest resolutions are out of the window and they are not having a new year. They're just having another year. as the last 10 years, as the last 20 years. So unless something changes physiologically, biologically in your brain and in your body, you will have the same year over and over and over again. And then you say, why am I so unhappy? Why am I dieting? Why am I having fights with my partner all of the time? Why am I having these kind of relationships with my daughter, with my son? And you are totally oblivious that there is something within you that you have to, A, become aware, recognize, unlearn, relearn. And if you go through that process, then there is a way for you to change.

Deep wisdom that you're sharing, Eldon. It is all about our consciousness. And I love what you were sharing about stress. And I think if I'm not mistaken, there's a healthy form of stress called eustress. And one of the things I remember learning about many years ago was the biosphere. Did you ever hear the story of the biosphere in Arizona in the late 1980s?

No, I haven't. Please share with us.

Yeah, absolutely. So what was fascinating about this is scientists wanted to mimic life on Earth. So they created the perfect quote unquote environment to grow plants and animals and trees, and everything went according to plan. Except for one thing. Do you wanna know what that was? The trees, Alden, grew faster and taller than they ever would in a natural environment. However, what happened before the trees hit maturity is they fell over. The one thing the scientists had not factored in was wind. In creating this perfect environment, they didn't consider that wind actually pushes the tree and causes its bark to create what's called stress wood, which allows it to grow tall up and to penetrate its roots deeply down. And without wind or stress or what we consider healthy stress, the trees fell over before they hit maturity. And so too are we as human beings like those trees where we treat stress as though all stress is bad stress, where there is actually very good healthy stress that's helping us to build resilience and to withstand the test of time, the winds that life throws at us.

Absolutely. And since we are on that subject, one would ask as a listener, as a viewer, so how does a human deliberately create beneficial and positive stress? One way is what is called in neuroscience mental rehearsal. It has another name, which is visualization, but I prefer the term mental rehearsal. And what happens is actually, this is measured. There's a lot of brain scans and heart monitor scans out there to confirm and peer-reviewed scientific papers to confirm what I'm saying. But the way it works is we do this all the time. All of us are experts on mental rehearsal, but unfortunately, most people, they do it unintentionally, unconsciously. So what you do is you deliberately Mentally rehearse putting yourself in a stressful situation. So for example, you have fear of public speaking, right? And so what happens is your mental rehearsal is you unconsciously see the movies that when you are on a Zoom call or in a public presentation, you know, and how your body responses will be and how you would feel. But if you begin to mentally rehearse, like literally, how am I going to be on a Zoom call? How am I going to be in my next presentation? How am I going to be with my coworker who usually pushes these emotional buttons that I go into the fight or flight state of stress? My boss, my ex, whatever it is. And you mentally rehearse to choose different states. And when you are choosing these different states in that mental rehearsal, you then couple that with the emotions that you do like to feel. And now you are able to deal with a lot bigger challenges in life because in that mental rehearsal, what you are doing, Your tree is growing and you are getting stronger roots. Because people say to me, but if I just do it in my meditation? The thing is, if you do it in your meditation, if you do it with your eyes closed, you've got to put yourself to the test. If you have fear of heights, vertigo, you literally have to go up a few flights of stairs and stand on a balcony And you have to have an experience where you self-regulate your emotions. You don't allow yourself to have panic attacks because you've rehearsed it. And now that you've rehearsed it, you actually feel comfortable to go up on a 20-story building and look down. Because you've now actually— you didn't just rehearse it like some woo-woo stuff out there. You've actually created new synaptic connections in the brain permanently. to look like the event has already happened. And you actually trained your emotional state to be in coherence with your new synaptic connections in the brain. And when you go and put it to the test, now you have become that person ahead of the experience. And that's the key.

Such wonderful wisdom. I think resilience is something that we can all use a little bit more of in 2024 and in the coming years. I think that our personal resilience and ability to be coherent directly correlates to our ability to fulfill on the things that we intend to fulfill on. When we're resilient, it gives us access to being proactive rather than reactive. And I think that's a beautiful and very poignant point that you just brought up there, Alden. We're coming close to time here. I would love to know from you, are there any closing thoughts that you'd love to share with our listeners, our viewers, anybody out there watching on YouTube at Jennifer K. Hill? You can find the episodes on YouTube or listen on iTunes or of course other podcast channels. Any other closing thoughts for you, Eldin?

Yes, I'd like to actually, since you just discussed about the coherence, I'd like to teach your audience a quick brain and heart coherence technique. It usually takes about a minute, so you can actually use this technique in the morning, in the evening, but also Anytime the need arises, because what happens is it's a tool which helps you to self-regulate, to get into the highly coherent state, to take the power of everything outside of you into your own hands and to have control of your inner state and have control of your life. So you no longer are reacting to your children, to your husband, to your wife, To your coworkers, and when you do feel that you have a need, you can apply variation of this technique. It takes you maybe ten seconds with your eyes open. So once you know it as you practice, yes. So the way it goes is that you place an open palm of your right hand over your beautiful heart, and you inhale through your nose count of five. And you exhale through your mouth, count of 8. So it's like you're smelling the roses and you're blowing out the birthday candles. In for 5, out for 8. And most importantly, you focus your attention to be breathing through your heart. With every breath, you are breathing through your beautiful heart. And as you do that, you evoke the emotions and feelings of gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness. Compassion, kindness in your beautiful heart. You visualize those emotions within your heart, and if you need some help, you think about an event, an experience, a person. The moment you think of this, it brings you an enormous amount of joy, happiness, appreciation in your beautiful heart. So that breathing, deep breathing. Coupled with appreciation and gratitude, it's a very powerful tool. It's used actually in sports athletes. They use it before they do their competition. Special forces military use it before they go into battle. Business people use it, musicians. Because when your brain and heart is in highly coherent state, now you actually slow down your heart rate. You have the inner peace. Your stress responses have calmed down, and now your immune system works at the optimal level. Every system is working at the optimal level. And when you have coherence, you have clarity, you have creativity, and you can actually then go and perform and show up as the best version of yourself in every area of your life.

I am a huge fan of HeartMath. I'm not sure if that's where you got it from, but I do that technique every single day. And I remember when it was first taught to me. One of the things that can be very helpful to do that my teacher taught me is every time you walk through a door, go into heart-focused breathing. So that way it becomes a habit because that's one of the most challenging things, whether it's a New Year's resolution to take it back to the beginning of our conversation or something we're trying to achieve in business. How do we create healthy habits that can build our resilience in any situation? And so whatever it is, Create a tool or a way that this becomes like breathing for you, this way of breathing, so that way you are perpetually in a state of heart-brain coherence, as Eldin just so beautifully showed us. Eldin, I love that. Where can people connect with you?

Yes, I'm on social media at EldinHassa. Well, Eldin Hassa and social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. I think I have TikTok as well. I believe. And my website, eldenhassa.co.uk and eldenhassa.com, you have a lot of articles and resources and videos on my website. And I host online workshops as well as in-person, and there are some courses on my website as well. So I'm going to be traveling to different parts of Europe to teach in-person workshops in 2024. as well as in the United States, Dubai, Vietnam, Bali, and different parts of Middle East. So yeah, if you are somewhere around the world, go to my website and you can find out more about all the upcoming in-person live events and retreats. Yeah. So thank you so much, Jennifer. It's been an honor to be on your show again.

Oh, it's so great to be back with you again, Eldon, and big hugs to your beautiful wife and son. Can't wait to see you guys when you're out in Portugal. And great, so grateful for all the wisdom teachers, neuroscientists, thought leaders like Eldon who joined us today. And my intention for each and every one of you, maybe there was one little piece of wisdom, one little pearl that you are able to take away. And whatever that is, nurture that spark, nurture that flame, and use these tools to help you build the life of your dreams. I'm Jennifer Cahill, and as always, it's a pleasure. Thank you.