Consciousness Unleashed: Exploring the Sens.ai Journey with Paola Telfer

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. Hello friends, and thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Regarding Consciousness. I am Jennifer K. Hill. It is always a privilege and an honor to get to be here with you and share wisdom from thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs, from around the world who are at the forefront of consciousness and what they're doing, which is exactly today why I wanted to bring our guests to you. We have Paola Telfer, who is the CEO and founder of Sensei. After a motor vehicle accident, Paola experienced the power of neurofeedback and recognized how it not only helped her nervous system recover but also enhanced her cognitive performance While helping to deepen meditation, with brain training having had a transformative impact on her life, she made it her mission to make it accessible to everyone. From there, she founded Sensei Sense.ai, a company empowering people to do world-class brain training in the comfort of their own home and to feel their best and live their best lives. Paula is an innovator in the technology space, and she has designed network intelligence ASICs. that fueled backbone networks and managed 9-figure production portfolio— product portfolios, as well as led technical consulting in enterprise and government projects and managed government healthcare technology initiatives. In fact, Vandrico, her previous tech startup, leveraged wearable technology to improve safety for field workers in traditional industries. Paola, thank you so much. I'm so grateful we got to know each other through Baby Bathwater and we get to share your wisdom today.

Thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. It's so nice to talk to you.

Yeah, thank you. So talk to us a little bit about your journey. My gosh, you have this injury, and then you get inspired to go in a whole other direction with your career. How did that come about?

It's not an uncommon story arc, right? Like, I had been, I would say, at a stage in life where I'd done my education. I had gone through corporate life. I had actually just branched out into my first startup, and then Something happened that pulled the rug out from under my feet, right? And when those moments happen, there's a choice, right? We have a choice as to whether to continue on, right, with the same methods, right, trying to control things, resisting it, or we have a choice to surrender.

Mm-hmm.

And so that moment for me came in, I guess it was 2015, and it was the motor vehicle accident that you referenced. And boy, I resisted. I resisted for a long time, but then eventually surrendered. And in that journey, I just— I learned so much. Maybe I unlearned so much. And in that, I was moved to try and empower others to try and take control of that in their own lives, to try and bring that into the home. And I did that in the way that I knew how because I'm a techie. I did it with technology assistance. More specifically, if we look at, let's say, the developmental journey, as we would probably all be very familiar with, from victim consciousness to victor consciousness, moving into that next sort of stage of surrender, that is something that kind of life does to you. You don't really go seeking that, right? You can't manifest that. And so for me, it was that motor vehicle accident. So prior to that, I remember having this great business meeting. I was coming home from a university thinking, think tank sort of thing, and had a nice new suit on and sunny day and feeling pretty good about life. And so the motor vehicle accident had some very profound things for me. I had a concussion. I had PTSD, so I was stuck in this fight-or-flight, hypervigilant state, right? I'm a mother. My son was about 6 at the time. I'm a wife. My husband— it disrupted our lives, our balance, and our relationship. And so for me, it was very much about how do I change this and move it back to what it was? How do I get back to my happy place? What doctors do I need to see? What actions do I need to take? Or how do I control the situation? And it wasn't until I went into a neurofeedback sort of intensive where they were able to take me very precisely into a very deep level of consciousness that you would define as like an alpha-theta state from a brainwave perspective. That's what it would read on EEG, but it's a hypnagogic state, right? And it's a state where you can Face your fears, reprogram your stories, and do that inner work. And I was quite transformed by that. And it was something that I knew I wanted to bring to the masses in a way that was safe, in a way that was systematized, and in a way that people could do that developmental work. Right? Because it's not something we're taught in school, is it?

I wanna backtrack for a moment cuz people are curious. I always like to imagine what people are asking in this moment, and people wanna know what is neurofeedback? Not everybody who's listening or watching might be familiar with that.

Yeah, for sure. So first I, I would say it's, it's a technology that is reading your brainwaves. So whenever the neurons are firing and you're thinking, even you're moving muscles and stuff, there's electrical activity that can be sensed at the scalp. And so neurofeedback is reading that and then giving it back to you as a mirror, right? So imagine it's audio and visual, and you're seeing it in real time. So it's coming back to you faster than the speed of analytical thought. And so you are— you're immersed and really dancing with your brainwaves in real time. And it's this sort of— what'd I say? It's a visceral— experience of your mind state. And so the reason people do that is because we've all heard about neuroplasticity. It's self-directed neuroplasticity. You are actually using your innate ability to direct your brainwaves and change your mental habits. But you're doing so in a way that is very purposeful.

Beautiful. And so talk to us a little bit about then how did you turn that into a technology where people can do this at home? I've obviously heard of neurofeedback. I haven't tried it. Personally, but I've heard of neurofeedback where you go to a therapist and there's a contraption and they hook you up. So how does that work with Sensei AI?

Yes. And, and that's really important. A lot of times we do need a therapist. We need someone with us, right? But there's also, there's room for us, especially when we think of it as inner work, for us to be able to be empowered to do certain things at home. And so it really is about the safety of that journey. So if we create an analogy, I, I like to think of it like, like an ocean of the subconscious, right? And I think this helps us understand the brainwaves and what they feel like. So a lot of the time when we are externally focused, we are in a beta brainwave state. And, and so the beta brainwave state is very important. It's important for us to be able to command where we direct our attention. When it's out of, out of alignment, we might have things like ADHD. Or we might go into hyper-beta and go into burnout. So there's a healthy beta that you can train. And so that is part of the initial Sensei gamified experience, right? And the experience unlocks going deeper and going higher. But we start with the beta and actually, and the alpha. And so that is where we build the ability to command your focus with the beta. And the alpha is being able to develop an inner sense of safety. So alpha feels more— you might think of it as relaxation. It's very embodied, sort of spa-like experience. But it's where you want to be at the end of the day when you want to be with your family and your friends. You don't want to be still stuck in that analytical mind. You want to be able to relax and be more peaceful and engaged. And so that's how we made it a safely guided and hopefully— it's so funny— I love it. And safely guided and hopefully It's a very engaging experience. It's gamified so that you start with the beta and the alpha, and then when you want to go deeper into theta, and now theta is much more meditative, it's insights, it's creative states, right? But it's much more, what'd I say, ethereal, right? It's less embodied. And then when you wanna go into the gamma states, gamma is much higher states, and then that's more about connecting the disconnected. That's the aha moments. And what I'm sharing with you now, those experiences of, that's 50 years of study in this space, right? There's been a lot of clinical work that also has a lot of performance implications, like peak performers, their brains being studied. We happen to have a great bench of scientific advisors and consciousness advisors. So we've really purposefully embedded the knowledge that's already there. We didn't want to reinvent the wheel. There is a knowing in this space, and what we're hoping to do by bringing it to the home is not only to empower individuals to go on this developmental journey, but also to gather more, what do I say, scalable data that can help further the field. Because we want to further the field. There's so much left to know about the brain and the mind, right?

How can we apply this in our everyday life? Say we don't have sensei. Is there anything that you could recommend based on the research or your personal experience of how we can personally utilize this in our everyday just to better understand these different states and frequencies of consciousness in the mind?

Yeah, there's, there's a number of pathways that are accessible to us. Neurofeedback is just one of them, right? So another one that I know you're very familiar with is heart coherence. Heart coherence is another state. It's this state of harmony between the brain and the mind, and it can be detected mathematically when you're reading the heart rate. And we, as we do in Think Incorporated's heart coherence training, and it starts looking like a, a sinusoidal wave. The heart rate variability starts looking that way. And so we can give you a guidance that is essentially breathwork. It's your personalized breathing rate for heart coherence. That is one way to do it. And the HeartMath Institute is a pioneer in this space. And that is a, a device that people can use, which is much less expensive and very useful. So that's another way. Another way for these sorts of transformations to happen is a plain old breathwork, right? Like breath circles and all— there's so many different styles of breathwork there. There's a great book, I think it's called Breathe, that sort of— I would highly recommend that gives you that landscape view of it. But that is another way for you to come into the experience of, of life, the experience of that transformation and being, being welcoming of it, right? I'll just— I'll pause there for a minute and say the reason neurofeedback was transformative to me Was because I was able to go into a state to face the fears that motor vehicle accident had created in me, and that's what I needed to do. I didn't need to be positive about it. I didn't need to control it. I needed to actually surrender to it, be with it, and be peaceful with my fears around being a burden to my family, my shame around. Not being able to carry out my roles as a mother, as a wife, as an entrepreneur, right? I needed to be with that and let that flow through me. And so that practice is what I'm suggesting. You can use other tools, the breathwork, the heart coherence, plant medicine is another tool that you can use, certainly with, when done intentionally and responsibly. And meditation is another tool. of course, to do that. And what I think is, you asked me for something practical and like a free tool. I think within Sense8, we've tried to incorporate these various aspects of psychological transformation. So we do have the meditations, the heart coherence, like I mentioned. But there is a little nugget in there, which I'll share, which is that when you do sit and find stillness, we talk about softening the eyes and softening the tongue and shifting your center of, of self, of your perceived self, from the brain into the heart. And I think those— that is a very swift way of coming into mindfulness, mindful presence in the moment. And if you were to pair that, let's say that you don't have a a heart coherence device, if you were just to pair that with a breathing practice that is 4 seconds in, 7 seconds out, right? That is a practice where you can come into contact with a different, more non-ordinary state of being, and then come more into presence in your day-to-day life.

Yeah, it's so powerful and beautiful. I love it. One of our last guests, Eldon, was just sharing a little bit about that on one of the last episodes. There are all these ways, and I would call it in general tools for self-regulation. I really appreciate you just sharing so candidly about your journey, and it's not just a car accident that happens that has us feel this way. There are all sorts of traumatic events that happen: being stood up on a date, being broken up with, being fired from a job. And yet these all have lasting, often psychological implications for us, PTSD or otherwise. We see it with veterans, of course, which is why it's a community I. always desired to serve and be of service to. And I think that it all comes down to your point. How do we cultivate these tools, these consciousness tools, so that we're not at the effect of our body and our mind? We are in harmony, we are dancing with it, and we are allowing a beautiful flow and synergy to happen there where I think so often we get mad at ourselves, right? Oh brain, why are you not working today? Or you're bad. And we have the sense of judgment if we're not at peak potential. But you know what? Some days we might be sad, angry, stressed, lonely, tired, exhausted. And all of these have an impact on our physiological being. And I think that's where Sensei and other products like that can come in to help us become more regulated and regulate ourselves so we can be the best mother, father, sister, brother, friend, whatever it is, coworker to one another.

Precisely. Yeah. And it's simple things like I think of this too from a parenting perspective. My son's 14 now. And, and something simple for him, he hasn't really gotten into meditation. He does use our device at times, but one of the simple things I try to help him with is just knowing what he's feeling, being in touch with that and letting that be okay. And sometimes it's all these undesirable negative things, right? It's anger, it's frustration, it might be shame, right? And, but that's how I feel like we can make the world a better place. We're in this difficult time in history. So the work that we're doing on ourselves, the work that we are supporting our children in, our friends in, is that much more important. Even at that micro scale, it has the potential. It has— we really need it at the micro scale for it to be authentic, right? To create more of this consciousness movement.

Yeah. What I've noticed, and I'd be curious your take on all this, is it all comes down to safety. We've been talking about this. We've had a lot of neuroscientists and other wonderful experts on the show lately. And I think that at the core level, we don't feel safe as human beings. We feel bombarded by technology, by one another, by our fears, our thoughts. And then our capacity to be human beings, to be joyful, to be present, is significantly diminished. And thus we are these zombies, for lack of a better word, walking through life attached to our technology, to our phones, et cetera. And I think a lot of people are afraid of technology. And at the same time, I think that It can also be a wonderful way where it's like all things. A thing can be good or a thing can be bad. It just depends on how often you use it and what you use it for. So tell me a little bit about what you think about the future of technology and how it's going to help us to deepen our connection to consciousness.

Yes. First, with the inner safety, that is so important. And that's why before you can be comfortable facing, let's say, your shame, Before we can sit with it, welcome it, allow it to fully flow through us, we need to feel safe to do that. And that is the reason why we sometimes we don't allow ourselves to feel deeply enough, which hurts us in our experience of life. It hurts us in our relationships. People can feel when you are not feeling deeply with them. And so we— that's why it's so important. Neurofeedback or whatever the method is, what we're trying to do with our, our mission here right now is help people to train, to cultivate that capacity to feel in a safe way. But then back to your broader question, why is it that there is this lack of safety? I think we are in such an individualistic society. We don't feel like someone has our back. Like, we don't— we feel alone. That is something— we've lost community to a greater degree than I think we realize. And it's more— it's maybe accentuated by COVID and all of this. Yeah. But it's Probably just now we realize it more. And so that, that's a piece of it. But back to your other question, it was around technology. If I, if we look at the world where it is right now and what's happening, and I don't think it's overdramatizing to say we have 4 sort of existential threats. And one of them is, let's say it's climate change. We've got war, we've got pandemics, and then one of them is AI. And what we create All of us, what we create is a reflection of ourselves and our state of consciousness. And so it is that as well. And it will be a reflection and it could be great and it could be terrible. And we need to rise to the occasion, all of us who have the deep capacity to feel, all of us who are, let's say, in closer in touch with our true selves beyond personality and are coming, are alive in this, we need to become alive in the world. And we need to take part and be heard and be seen. And this is another aspect of the mission of Sensei is how can we get meditators out of their proverbial caves and taking part in life because we need everyone. And so with AI, yes, I think that we need to be cautious of the technologies that we adopt and how we use them. Don't— let's not let the same thing that happened with social media and the attention economy happen now With AI as this tool. It's cool. It's making my life a little easier. Let's not get necessarily— let's go eyes wide open. Let's think about privacy. Let's think about security. Let's think about our own empowerment, our autonomy. And what is the ultimate goal of these people who are putting these tools in front of us, right? Are they really trying to elevate consciousness, or are they— is there another goal that is more self-serving and individualistic? inclined. So I think that's a part of it. But there's a greater, there's a greater call here, which is that beyond the existential crisis of AI, more near-term, we have a future of work problem, right? There's going to be a growing divide. I think we can start to see it already between the haves and have-nots. There's going to be a lot more people displaced in terms of how they can contribute to the world and earn whatever currency is required for them to live well and feel good about themselves. And are we as a society going to step up with the necessary compassion to guide the principles of AI and the new economy, the new socioeconomic rules, so that it's not just the same greed and us versus them and competition? And are we going to have other elements in there that are more about a social safety net and looking after the disenfranchised in our society? Are we going to learn from our ancestors and realize that we can lift each other up and that we're all greater for it? So I think that is, is the— where we're facing, we're facing the challenge of technology, because it's coming really fast and furious. Yeah,

it's so true. It's funny, I think another guest we're going to have on the show soon is Beth Redden, who's an AI expert who created— I think it's called vast.ai. And she was talking in a conversation we had that inspired me to want to have her on the show about how, just like anything, the people who are creating AI, their own biases are going to be embedded in the AI itself. And if we're not consciously participating in how do we make this Equally available, equally not just the consciousness of the few with the money or the brains or whatever it is, but making it equally accessible. I think that's what frightens people, is that the world is shifting honestly so dramatically, Paola. It's amazing. We're all seeing it. And in many ways, technologically, we can travel more, communicate faster, have these sorts of conversations from anywhere around the world. And a thing can be equally dangerous if it's not used for the right purposes. And I think that's where consciousness comes in. If we insert consciousness into everything— and again, my friend Don Hoffman, who's been on the show, would say that AI itself is consciousness because all things are consciousness, which is a whole other conversation and episode we could have— I think that's where we begin to get to shift our perspective. If we see a thing as bad, it becomes bad. If we see a thing as good, it becomes good. So what's the harm for looking in the good in everything and everyone. And in technologies, finding the good technologies like Sense AI and all these wonderful tools out there that are helping people to come back to themselves. Because the people, the fear-based, shame-based, guilt-based people, that's not who we intrinsically are. Who we intrinsically are are people filled with love and joy and compassion. And yet it's masked by this fear, masked by the uncertainty And techniques and tools like you've just so graciously shared today that brings us back to ourselves and gives us— it puts us back in the driver's seat. We have these powerful horses that are basically driving our consciousness, if you want to think of that analogy, and yet we're— we've let go of the reins. And so part of what you're suggesting and what Sensei and I think other technologies are doing is putting the reins back in our hands so we can direct The power of those horses to the direction we want to go rather than letting them wildly run off a cliff of our imagination or our fears.

That's right. And also, I think it's important to acknowledge that as we're looking at developing consciousness, there are some core things that we've become aware of in terms of mental wellness, right? So we have sleep problems. There are foundational problems, right? Sleep and anxiety and control of our attention, brain fog. And so we understand in Sensei, we understand that a lot of people who who are coming to us are not really looking for consciousness development per se. They're actually looking at things that are much more timely and imperative for them.

Practical.

Practical and also essential building blocks before we can start looking at the mindfulness practices, etc. And so the gamified experience by design, and I think just part of our human condition is, let's look at, let's look at where you're at. We do an assessment and we say, okay, Hey, do this mission. It's a 2-month mission on sleep. And then after that, we reassess. And then there's another mission. And then some things unlock over time, like creativity and mindfulness, et cetera. But that is— one of the surprising, maybe shouldn't have been surprising findings for me with Sensei was that most people start with the sleep mission. It is even though everyone's coming to us for meditation deepening or peak performance, One of the most missing building blocks is sleep. And so that is actually— it's really important because we feel like the first cohort of people who have come through, and we have a few thousand people on the platform now that have finished our sleep mission, 77% of people improve their sleep.

Wow.

And not only that. Yeah. And I was like, oh, it's great because you don't know how it's going to scale. And people are coming, people, some people are on meds and it's in the wild sort trial. And then, but we are able to measure the impact that has on their lives. And so we can see that we also shifted their accuracy, their reaction time, their thinking speed. And so now we're moving them closer to the next level of development, right? So it's just important to acknowledge that regardless of where you are, there's room to do the brain training, and it's important to do it with whatever methods that you choose.

That's so beautiful. And there's one more tool that came to my mind as you were speaking earlier. It's called the Global Coherence— I think it's called, yeah, the Global Coherence app. I'm sure you probably— you might be able to see it on my phone right there. It looks like that if you're watching on YouTube. And it's free. It's actually put out by HeartMath. I do a collaboration with them around the Global Coherence Pulse, which we do the 3rd Saturday of every month, which is also free. But what's amazing with the Global Coherence App, say you don't have the resources right now or don't want to spend it on a HeartMath thing or a Sensei or any of these wonderful tools, it's free. You just go there, you put your finger on it, and it actually measures your coherence real time for free and tells you your level. So it's pretty cool that it does that. It's been such a pleasure to have you. Where do people go if they want to find out more about Sensei?

Yeah, our website is the same as our name, so sens.ai, and our Let's say our Instagram is sense.ai.inc. So check us out. Check out the blogs. Dr. Mark Atkinson is a valued member of our team and, and he's been doing some great blogs that might resonate with your audience on happiness and pathways to superconsciousness and some pretty, pretty cool and deep work.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. We've had Paola Telfer here with us today, head of Sensei, who has been sharing with us wisdom on how we can connect with ourselves, how we can become more resilient, sleep better, and have greater livelihood, I would say. And it's always such a pleasure because I love geeking out on these tools, whether it was Dr. Paul Zak a few months ago who shared with us about Best Tuesday Ever or his Tuesday app. There are all these wonderful technologies and tools out there that can help us connect more deeply to ourselves, To one another and to feel more psychologically safe in our beings. So that is my wish for every one of you. I wish that you go out there in the world, that you have the tools, the resources, and that you may be able to live your best life and to have peace in your heart. Thank you for being here with us.

Thank you so much, Jennifer. Such a pleasure.

Thank you.