How to Make Yourself ANTIFRAGILE With Vagus Nerve Toning | Stefan Chmelik

The people that design social media and games, they know what they're doing. This is a huge experiment. This is the first generation of human beings ever who we're doing this with. We have no idea really what the long term implications are.

We get a little squirt of feel good hormones every time we get a new stimuli. What is the danger of comfort and what is the potential solution?

Comfort, in a sense, is the opposite of antifragility. So antifragility, that's the idea that you get stronger as a result of challenge. Our vagus nerve is, you know, 4,500 million years old, whereas our human brain is only about a million years old. So our body and our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system responds to these cues of noise and sound in a profound way that we don't even know or can't interpret with our human brain.

Stefan, welcome to the podcast.

Great to be here.

We're talking about a device today that I came across. Lauren actually found it. So I got to give credit to Lauren from our team. This little stone, this stone that sings is called sensate. And you're the CEO, the founder, you're an integrated physician. You've been in healthcare for quite some time. There's a lot to discuss. I think, about these external mirrors of mindfulness that all of us have in life. You know, we all know about like the Fitbits and the Oura rings and all these things, but this is really different. And I think a good jumping off point for us would be talking about the vibration and the harmonics of sound and the difference between vagal stimulation through the ear and actual toning, where we're getting it through a different medium. Let's start there. For all the science people like you and I, the left brain people, the ones that tend to get stuck in our mind that are probably a good fit for sensate. Let's start at that place and then we'll go into your story after that. But what's the difference between, like, the stimulation and the toning and. Because I think people get those confused.

Yeah, I think it's an important distinction. Just to mention as well, my co founder, Anna Goodmanson is CEO. I'm the inventor and the kind of the CSO of the company.

Shout out to Anna.

But I came from a clinical background. I was using sound frequencies with many, many patients in clinic, and this was the, the version derived from that. I mean, we do make quite a clear distinction between toning and stimulating. So toning implies the ability of tissue to respond in A flexible manner. So to upregulate or downregulate, whereas stimulation implies that you are just asking something to perform a very specific function, to contract, if you like. Vagus nerve stimulating technologies tend to be invariably electronic devices.

Yeah.

So kind of like pacemakers, you have surgical ones that are inserted and then clamped onto the vagus nerve. You have kind of muscle stimulating, almost like tens machine type vagus nerve stimulating devices which go over a part of the body where the vagus nerve travels, like in the ear or in the neck. And they are using essentially electrical stimulation to flash signals into the vagus nerve. Not unlike getting a frog's leg to twitch, if you like, or getting a muscle to twitch by passing electrical current through it. The potential issue with that for me is that if you can stimulate something, you can relatively easily overstimulate it. And you do. You know, there are cases of people who have had vagus nerve overstimulation. They can become overactivated, anxious, they can have insomnia, etc. Or have palpitations. This isn't something we really see with what we call toning. So a bit like using breath work. Your own body is regulating the input, so it's quite. You can hyperventilate, of course, using breath weight, you can force yourself to over breathe.

Some people do that.

If you're using your own body to pendulate the experience, it's relatively hard to overstimulate yourself. And I loved your description of sensei as a singing stone. One of the ex arch druids in the UK here refers to it as a singing stone, which I think is a lovely description of the product actually.

Yes.

And in many ways that's exactly right. What sense that is doing is kind of accessing, activating these sort of things, the kind of things that human beings have done for themselves for tens of thousands, maybe longer years, where they've sung, they've chanted, they've breathed, they've hummed, they've exercised, they've gathered around a fire and chanted together and created frequencies in the chest which are then amplified through the hollow air spaces in the chest. So you get this vibration, this intensity throughout the entire body.

What is the main difference between the area where we actually would place the device? I was telling you before we recorded, I love this little adjustment piece here because I have a longer torso. And so for those of us out there that maybe we have a longer torso or we need to adjust, does the location of the stone and the frequency, does it matter? Because when I used it this Morning compared to other times. I never adjusted it until this morning. And when I put it right here, right where my thymus is, I noticed it was much more relaxing. Like, I feel pretty good. I feel pretty dang good this morning.

So, I mean, location matter, location, of course matters. Location, location, location. But you've also got quite a big target area. I mean, most people sternum is, you know, at least 3, 4 inches. And some people have a very long sternum. Like clearly you have like a 12 inch sternum or thereabouts. You know, the bone at the front. So it does have go at the bone in the front, it does have to go on the center line. You don't want it right up on the neck, you don't want it on the abdomen. But between there, you've got quite a few areas that you can use in the center, which is an acupuncture point, it's the chakra point. It's where the thymus is, as you say. So right in the center of the chest, between the nipples is the classical location for using sensate. The thymus is behind that. The vagus nerve runs behind the breastbone there all the way down. So it's very easy to activate the vagus nerve and the autonomic nervous system in general. Not particularly with electrical stimulation at that point, but with sound. Sound and vibration, you know, like thymus tapping as well as a similar kind of process.

You had mentioned that we've been doing this for thousands and thousands of years. The vibration, the singing through the voice box. And through some of my research and mentorship, I found that, you know, and maybe you can speak to this more as a physician, the body is 90% ish water. So if we are receiving vibration or frequency, which if you look at Tesla's work, that's all we are. You and I are buzzing right now. That's why we're able to connect. That's why we're able to actually talk through a computer and connect halfway across the world. But if we look at the element of how much water is in our system and how much sound and frequency affects that water, is it really just a question of what frequency am I receiving and how do I receive that frequency? Can you talk about the physiology and the SC of how my water and my system actually receives this vibration?

Yeah, I mean, it's such an important question. So our bodies are between 76 and 96, I think it is percent water. It varies a little bit, but very, very high water percentage. Absolutely. And speed of sound in water is One of the fastest things, and this is what I find so fascinating about this field. So nerve conduction speed is about 350 meters a second, which is very, very fast to get from your fingertip to your. But speed of sound in water is about 1500 meters per second. So in other words, when you're using sensate or humming or oming or some kind of similar resonant feedback mechanism, your body is perceiving that before your nervous system tells it is, which is, I think, fascinating. So it's this incredibly fast, very thorough propagation of frequency and sound through the entire body. You know, whales can hear sounds something like 16 kilometers kilometers. So, you know, sound propagates incredibly well through water, through solid substances because the molecules are touching each other and that includes your body. So one of the things my clinic New Medicine Group in London pioneered was the use and the understanding of fascia as a sense organ. So in about 15, 20 years ago, people started reevaluating connective tissue in the body and that's become more and more the case. And connective tissue is essentially water in a bound thixotropic state. So it's like it's water in this fascial connective tissue network. A lot of research indicates it's probably where the acupuncture channels are. It seems to be where a lot of the functions that we thought muscles did are actually done by fascia and connective tissue. It's where proprioception happens. It's probably where a lot of traumatic memory is kept. This water based medium which travels everywhere in the body is also a beautiful pathway, beautiful channel, literally a channel and water channel for sound passing through the body.

Wow, that is fascinating. The speed through water, it made me think of the ocean, you know, and all the creatures in the ocean. How dolphins and different, you know, mammals, they, they communicate through sound. And sound travels so much faster in water. I just never thought of that. And I think about what you've listed too in some of the research on your side about this infrasonic resonance. So infrasonic meaning what? What exactly is that?

So most people know ultrasound?

Yes.

Yeah. So the high end ultrasound or infrared, the other end of the spectrum is infrasound and ultraviolet. Yeah. So, yeah. So color and sound, as you were mentioning, these are all just number, these are all just frequency. They're all essentially the same. I mean, we can get into some really esoteric territory and we can go there. Yeah, well, you know, there's no neurologically. Color doesn't exist, you know, and our Perception of reality is based on a lot, the use of the default mode network in the brain. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to walk down the street with any great ease. And human beings also have, you know, done many practices over the years to change the relationship with the default mode network. So we can see through the veils, if you like, if you want to put it that way.

Yes.

But sound and color are really just frequencies. They're really exactly the same. There's very little difference, as I say, infrared and ultraviolet, ultrasound and infrasound. So infrasound is the low frequencies. It's below roughly 30 hertz. It's kind of mains hum and below. And as you say, a lot of animals in the sea communicate via infrasound. But actually a lot of animals, the big ones, the ungulates, the elephants, the hippos, communicate via. Via infrasound on land. So they can send messages and they can feel and hear through their feet a lot of the big animals. So they're actually communicating through propagation of sound waves, infrasound, low frequency sound waves on the land. And there's been a lot of much more research, fortunately or unfortunately, into ultrasound for medically, but also for, you know, cleaning things and all kinds of properties, much less research on low frequency sound. But we all know, you know, we all know low frequency sound, right. It's the reason we stand near a bass speaker in a reggae concert or whatever, right. You know, or sit or, you know, it's how we feel a sense of awe and wonder in many ways in a spiritual environment. So a lot of. There's a concept called archaeoacoustics, which is the study of sound in. In traditional spaces. And what seems to be the case in archaeo acoustic, including Stonehenge material, is that they were optimized for the transmission of low frequency sound.

A big part of this for me, I'm visualizing too. At my mentor's house once, Paul's house, we had some sand and he was singing through a microphone and there was sand that was forming shapes on a vibrational plate. Is that the same type of energy pathway for sound we're talking about here? Is it something different?

Yeah, that's something called cymatics.

Yes.

So it's the visualization of sound using, in this case, sand. You can use it with oil. There's various ways in which you can do it. And again, I would say it's about numbers and frequency. So, you know, D minor has a particular shape. It will always have that shape. And you play under the same circumstances. How you use that information is interesting. But sound has shape. Yes. And you can make. They're now making things like objects levitate, using ultrasound, et cetera. So yeah, there are a lot of interesting applications to visualizing sound.

You seem like a very spiritual man. The conversations we've had, you've mentioned Chinese medicine, you've mentioned things that, you know, a traditional, I guess you could say, Western American physician might not talk about. Is that potentially why you made the transition with Sensei? Like, in other words, what were you not able to share with your patients and what did you want from a clinical perspective using this technology, using esoteric knowledge, using your knowledge of spirit and science, what were you not able to do then that you can do now?

Well, New Medicine Group was always about challenging the idea that certain practices are alternatives. So we always said we don't practice alternative medicine, we practice integrated medicine. So we will use complementary medicine alongside mainstream testing and drugs, surgery where necessary. For me, it's about what works and what's best for any particular condition. But that's a particular skill set of knowing what the answer to that is. There are fantastic opportunities within science based medicine, but there are also fantastic opportunities within traditional knowledge. We have a quarter of a million years, let's say, of traditional knowledge and it would be crazy to not access that for the benefit of humans, mankind. So my thing has always been about, okay, what works, what's safe, what heals people in the most effective way. And given that certainly probably the biggest factor with illness and feeling bad at the moment is people's stress levels. They're kind of over adrenalized. Everyone's overstimulated. You know, trauma with a small T is almost endemic. Most people aren't sleeping properly. These sort of issues of overstimulation due to too much content.

Yeah.

Too much information coming in, but also the nature of the content about, you know, the end of the world and you should be stressed and you should be worried and you've got to work.

Food shortages, finance, education, everything's melting down. It's like, is it really we have to be careful what we take in?

Well, certainly we have to have resilience and we have to have what I call what's known as anti fragility, which is a step up, if you like, from resilience because it can only apply to biological mechanisms.

Yeah.

So it's particularly important for humans and for nature and for plants. But I suppose overall my view is that what we've over the last thousand Years, let's say, which is quite a small part of even human history. We've tended to put man at the top of this pyramid and we've tended, we've tended to make this assumption that human, you know, the nature is there, the world is there to serve mankind. Mankind's the master at the top of this pyramid. And I think, you know, we're now seeing the consequences of that. You know, by having this idea that you can take whatever you want when you want it, without giving back, without any sense of reciprocity, then you start to run out and you start to cause problems. And that's very much what we're seeing now. So the indigenous way of peoples all over the world until relatively recently was to have this attitude of reciprocity. If you take something, you give back, you give back at least as much as you take and then it's sustainable. So I think, I strongly believe that we're going to have to move back to something that has those kind of values.

Yeah.

Where, you know, it is about literally about give and take being, being generous, being kind, being understanding and only utilizing what we actually need. And the challenge there, though, is that, you know, we've become used to this extraordinary level of comfort. And you can't. And the thing about comfort, of course, is you can't have too much of it. Nobody has ever been made more comfortable than they want to be. You know, it's a bottomless need. You know, you get that big bed, but you then want a bigger bed or a bigger house or a bigger car or, you know, there's always more you can have, Right?

Yes.

And we can't, you know, we can't. From a human perspective, we can't continue doing that. But also from a personal perspective, doing that makes us vulnerable and not in a good way.

How so? How does it make us vulnerable? Because I'm thinking about the, the mechanism in the brain, the limbic system where we're constantly craving novelty and how that ties into our reward circuitry in the brain. I wonder how you'd explain the danger of comfort and potentially the solution for too much comfort.

Yeah, well, there's the dopamine driven response to a reward, as you say, which is, again, you can never have too much dopamine, so you're always pushing that button.

Hence the cell phone, where it's constant, various novelty at all times, which is why we're drawn to it so much.

And, you know, these designers are really, really good. The people that design, you know, social media and games, they know what they're doing. And you know, I have a couple of young kids. You know, you really see it with kids in particular even more than with adults.

I'm waiting. My son's, my son is 15 months old. He's not going to have a phone for a while.

Well, I think I said that. I think I said that. And then they get to 12 or whatever and it does become, it becomes hard. It genuinely becomes hard. It's a, you know, this is a huge, huge experiment. This is the first generation of human beings ever who we're doing this with. We have no idea, really. Well, I think we do have some idea what the long term implications.

We can already feel it though. I mean we can already see if you look at some of the research around our attention spans, how our attention spans have dropped. Because I want to circle back to that question. If we have this limbic system, it's driven for variable reward. We get a little squirt of feel good hormones every time we get a new stimuli. What is the danger of comfort and what is the potential solution?

Yeah, so this is why I talk about antifragility. So people know about resilience. And resilience is great. What can be great if it's done in a kind of non macho way. It's not about survival, it's not about how much pain, how much discomfort can I tolerate? Because that doesn't necessarily build up resilience, it just builds up how thick your skin is.

Sure.

So antifragility is a concept that only applies to biological mechanisms. Idea that you get stronger as a result of challenge. So you can't build that into a machine. Right. You can build a machine which is incredibly resilient, but eventually it's going to break. Whereas a biological mechanism, a plant, an animal, a human being, if they live in harmony, let's say, with their surroundings. And the challenge at any one time isn't overwhelming, like nobody's going to be antifragile against being hit by a truck. Then you can bounce back and actually you end up being stronger. And I've seen this in practice many, many times. Patients who say, my illness is the best thing that's ever happened to me. People who recover and are better, stronger, more resilient, more balanced physically and mentally afterwards than they were before. Comfort, in a sense is the opposite of antifragility. That for me is what I've worked out. And that's the problem. The more comfortable you are, the harder it is to be antifragile. If you've got this huge bed and this big duvet and this centrally heated house and the chauffeur to drive you to work and this made to cook your dinner and all this stuff, you don't have to do anything then any level of discomfort is infuriating. I know quite a few very, very rich people. Some small thing goes wrong in their routine and they're pulling their hair out. So that's the other side of the coin, isn't it? We assume that if we're rich, if we have more, that we're happier, despite the fact that all the evidence shows this isn't true. We know this, we know this absolutely that this isn't true. But we still presume that for us it will be different. But so removing, I'm a big, big believer in removing comfort systematically from your life and that, you know, there's a lot of that in biohacking, right. So in a cold exposure, regular cold exposure, water exposure is a good thing. I just did 10 days on Dartmoor in England without any technology and the thing I really noticed was the absence of any battery powered lighting because I've been outside a lot, right. But I haven't often not had a head torch. And you know, on a moonless night where you can't see your hand in front of your face and you're in the middle of a moor, it's challenging.

That's right. I went on a vision quest this year, my second vision quest. And it was so dark on one of those nights I could not see anything, but I could hear animals. And when we vision quest, we fast as well. Because I like you. You know, it's interesting in this conversation because, you know, you're part and parcel a wellness technology company. So you're using the good side of the sword to give people this mirror of mindfulness so that they can calm down through this vagus nerve. But also you're going out in nature and do you see what I'm saying? You have this blend of nature, of spirit and science with you, which is why I connected with the brand. It's why I really believe in what you're doing. It's not just a technology only company. This is something that's part of a wellness wheel. It's part of a holistic system. What are the ways in which we can really, I guess you could say, become antifragile. And how does sensate wrap into that?

Yeah, so I mean, the fact is most people still live in cities. So how do you expose people to the healing benefits of nature, particularly when they're living in a flat, in a city and they maybe don't have a park, let alone, you know, countryside to go out into. So there's something called biophilia, which is. The biophilia hypothesis is worth looking up, which is, you know, and there's so much research about this now from Japan and other countries where nature exposure is literally one of the strongest medicines.

Ah, Shenren yoku is forest bathing in Japan.

Japanese forest bathing, absolutely. But of course, you know, there's versions of that in every culture.

Sure, sure.

Going and spending time in nature, spending time amongst plants, amongst trees is one of the most balancing and healing things you can do. And I recommend that people certainly do it every week, do it every day if they can. But we, there's a lot of, we're taking people, holding people's hand and taking them down that path by having nature noises in the tracks, sometimes subliminal, sometimes obvious bird noises, water noises, wind noises, you know, all these things which again, you know, remember our vagus nerve is, you know, 4 or 500 million years old, whereas our human brain is only about a million years old. So our body and our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system responds to these cues of noise and sound in a, in a profound way that we don't even know or can't interpret with our human brain. And of course there's nothing that can replace this going for a great nice big walk in the forest. But that isn't available to most people every day. So a big part of the sensei solution is making the benefits of that available to anyone any day. Because again, the research is quite clear that just the sounds of nature is almost as effective as actually being in nature. And there's a lot less things. Yeah, and a lot. And a lot less. And a lot less anxiety provoking and a lot easier for most people.

Sure, yeah. Because I really feel like you're speaking to where unfortunately the majority of people are, is let's say they're working in careers where they're indoors, maybe they're in cubicle and they're getting that led, the non LED light like the halogen lights from the top of the ceiling. They're not getting the natural, natural circadian rhythms awakened in their nervous system. They're not really living in nature's cue. And so this is the reality of where we are. I don't think it's. Look, every, everybody would want to have a lifestyle where they could spend seven or eight hours in nature every day. And until that people are afforded that lifestyle, there is some biohacks that can get them as close to it as possible. I'm curious how you feel. I feel like with biohacking, really, we had Dave Asprey in the studio behind me here a couple weeks ago and I was just like, you know, I was thinking with Dave and we were going back and forth on what is biohacking. And I really feel like biohacking is any device or any technology that can get us closer to the natural way that we are afforded to live, that we are supposed to be living. In other words, if it's sun, sleep, breath, food, light, whatever it is, biohacking at its core wants to give us access to the things that nature would give us access to. Anyways, what is your thoughts on that?

I think that. But also the enhanced version of it. You know, biohackers of course, love to be able to supercharge that response. Most of them want to live forever. Most of the big Biohackers are big sense 8 fans. So Dave Asprey's talked about it. Ben Greenfield, Temu over in Finland, Tim in London, Tim Gray. So, yeah, most of These guys use sense 8 that have endorsed it on a regular basis.

Yes.

Yeah, I think biohacking, but it's not for everyone. Right. Because it takes, let's be honest, it takes a fair degree of commitment and not to mention money. In fact. That's an interesting point, the money side. I mean, obviously Sensei is a private company. It's a relatively expensive purchase. But I think we worked out the other day that if it saves you a year's therapy bills, then it comes in a fraction of the cost of, you know, other interventions that you might do.

Yeah.

So, you know, I like, I do like to think that actually it's a cost saving.

I mean, listen, I would challenge you even more. I would say, what about all the ways that people use alcohol and drugs and pornography and shopping and all these things to give themselves that deep breath, the calmness that are very deleterious to their health. It's probably in the thousands of dollars a year, even for a low economic person, that they're spending things to give themselves a really. A compelling breath, which is essentially what Sense8 provides.

Yeah, I mean, entertainment the way. I think it's a bit different in as much as people do things to distract themselves, those are the kind of, you know, when, when you're overwhelmed, the options tend to be either distraction, yeah. Through sex, exercise, diet, whatever it might be, tv, phone doom, scrolling on your phone, or engaging with it through meditation, reflection, journeying, like you've done and that, you know, so that's one is pretty harmful to your health and not, not really a long term solution. Totally fine.

Yeah.

To do it, to do sometimes, you know, watch it. Watch a film. Brilliant. Great. Lovely. Yeah. You know, but again, most people aren't gonna fast for a month and stick themselves on a moor either. So for me, it's about the numbers. The reason I effectively finished a very successful Harley Street, London practice, to commit full time to this was I realized that in practice I could see tens of thousands of people over the next 30 years, having spent 30 years seeing people already. But with Sensei, I could impact on the lives of millions of people. So that is my personal vision, is to have positively impacted the lives of 100 million people by 2025. And our users have now run about 25 million minutes. We worked out the therapy equivalent of that and it's tens of millions. But also a good example, for instance, was an American vet, American soldier, who like so many people unfortunately in the services, was suffering from ptsd, from trauma.

Yeah, yeah.

And hadn't left the house for five years. After a week, might have been two weeks of using sensate. You know, he emailed us, people spontaneously contact us quite a lot to say that he'd been out for dinner for the first time with his family of five people for the first time in five years. So I think there's five people right there whose lives which were just that little bit better that day and going forward because he'd been able to access them.

That's got to make you feel so good and sleep so good at night.

Yeah. You know, I mean, you can't, you can't buy that. You know?

Yeah. When I get a message from someone about the podcast and sometimes they'll message me on Instagram or they're sending message, it's like that's why we're doing what we do. I understand that we're in a. I believe in conscious capitalism. I understand we're in a capital capitalistic system and, you know, we're all doing our part to play and to, to do the best we can. But at the core of it all, like, why are we even in society, what are we even doing here if we're not making other people's lives better? Because when I make other people's lives better, it enriches my own. It gives me more meaning, more purpose, more zest for being alive myself so much.

And when we know absolutely that simply accumulating Objects, including money, doesn't make us happy. We do know absolutely that helping other people does make us happy. Having a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, knowing that we are valuable to other people, this is what makes us happy.

Yeah, I can see that. I can feel that too. And, and I want to pull the E brake because there was something I wanted to mention to you that's close to home and it was actually about King Charles and this anti fragility piece because you mentioned when people have too much comfort, when they're getting too, too much stimuli, people are in, you know, double king beds, private chef, everything. You know, I don't know in the world if somebody's more taken care of than King Charles. And I remember seeing a clip that we'll post, we'll post it down below, wherever you're watching or listening. And he had a pen, he was signing a document with a pen and the pen leaked on his fingers. And he got so angry that he started, almost like a child, he started going, I hate this pen. He was freaking out. And I think thought to myself, wow, that's, that's a pretty severe reaction to a leaky pen. And I, and I wonder if he himself being so comfort and so taken care of, if his fragility has actually become more exposed. What do you make of that?

Yeah, well, the, the, we could have a whole series devoted to the, the foibles of the English upper class and royalty in particular. I mean, in a way it's a, it's. They are very looked after, as you say, but they're also on the whole, fairly emotionally blunted by school and upbringing. So it's not a. I wouldn't foist that job on anyone, to be honest. I wouldn't do what any of them do. Yeah, it's a very, very thankless task. The privilege doesn't make up for it.

Sure, I could imagine too, because I'm thinking about here in America, everyone's goal is to have like the four or five bedroom house with like the boat in the driveway and the, all the trappings and all the vacations and everything. At what point have you seen, either personally or with your company or with patients, where the juice isn't really worth the squeeze? In other words, how much comfort do we actually need in this world? And what does that comfort actually, actually look like?

Of course, the boss of Patagonia, whose name temporarily escapes me, just gave the company away. Right. However many billion it was.

I heard about that.

Once you've got a few million, what are you going to do with a couple of billion? What are you going to do with it? And obviously people go through the motions of setting up trusts and various things, but they find it very hard. Most people understandably find it hard to really hand over control of those assets to somebody. They tend to want to remain involved in some sense and then it's not charity. As long as you have to control it, then it ceases to have that kind of role. I mean, I think we can live an incredibly simple life. I think it's hard. You can't uninvent anything. So it's a big deal to say I'm going to do with that technology, knowing that mobile phones exist. If you don't know they exist, it's not hard to, to do without them. Right, but we know all this stuff exists and you can't uninvent it. You know, we know that battery powered LED lights are really outdoors where it's dark. We know that lighters are a lot easier to light a fire with than rubbing two sticks together. So I think there is a natural balance between using things that are incredibly useful and then knowing when something doesn't really significantly enhance your happiness, but actually just makes, it's just another thing in your life, you know. And if we look at indigenous peoples around the world, the few that are left, a lot of them live incredibly simple lives. And it's interesting reading accounts of, say, Darwin when he was visiting some of, you know, some people, obviously before Westernism, Western economies as we know, arrived and literally failing to understand why they didn't want more things. You know, they would get there, the settlers, the early Darwin settlers would get quite annoyed with some of the natives. They would give them something and rather than just accumulate more wealth, they would divide it equally between everyone in the village, even like a piece of clothing perhaps. And you know, his, his thought process as a Victorian entrepreneur gentleman was, well, listen, if, you know, if you accumulate more, you can become the chief of this village and then you can dominate the next village. So it was a very, very different mentality to that everybody is equal and, but you know, the bowl accounts, these people were incredibly satisfied and happy. It's, it's, it's, you know, the more we build into our lives, the idea of what we haven't got, the more potential for not being so satisfied there is.

That makes really good sense to me because I'm thinking about at what point is the juice worth the squeeze? And everybody's heard of Maslow's triangle and some people agree with it, some Don't. But I think once we have our bases covered financially, we have shelter, we have food, we have water, we have breath, we have community, we have conversation, connection, all these things are so important. But I'm really speaking for and to the people that are out there in the world right now that are with us, that are, that are listening and watching, that might be in a car or stationary or in another business meeting. Like we've got to give our fellow citizens, our global citizens, some tools, some things that'll really truly help them exactly where they are. And I think, you know, obviously we can go and we can go sing and we can go hum and chant, we can get some of the benefits of this technology, of this vibrational technology, but you can't sing and dance during a business meeting. You know, there's certain practicality that we have to take into account. So what are some of the ways that you've been excited to hear about people using the sensate that maybe you didn't initially intend?

You know, the best things in life really are free breen of breathing and loving and caring and being generous with your time. You know, all these things are free, but because we value them less, therefore, so sometimes we need to find ways to bring them into our life. I mean, things, things that I. The kind of level of spontaneous testimonial that we get is lovely. I mean genuine lovely. We touched on this a moment ago as well. We don't, we haven't particularly solicited this from our users, but every day we get people writing in saying, you know, this has changed my life. This is, you know, this has made more difference to me than 10 years of medication, you know, whatever it might be. And although we don't particularly suggest that people use it with children, a lot of people are, it turns out, using it with their children. We don't recommend that. But I mean, one of the most heartbreaking things I think that's going on in the world is the epidemic of anxiety in younger people. I think it's a very difficult world to grow up in. I think the pandemic really highlighted that even more. There was a whole generation of children who spent like a year or more at home, were taken away from their friends and their family. Teenagers who were just starting to have relationships were pulled apart. So I think, and at the same time, the rise of technology has made meaningful connections harder and harder. I mean, it's made superficial connection easier and easier, but community based meaningful connection has become a rare and beautiful thing. And I think the pandemic in general, I think the unexpected consequences are tremendous. So many things that we didn't think were possible, we suddenly realize are like not going to work every day on a train. Things that three years ago we would have said, oh, I can't possibly do that. Actually, it turns out you can do that. And actually you have much more control over your life and how you run it than perhaps you thought you did. And a lot, you know, and there's lots of talk about the great resign and people working in new and different ways. And of course, a lot of that is technology based. So, as I say, we can't uninvent anything. Nobody's going to uninvent WI Fi, nobody's going to uninvent the smartphone, but let's find out how to use them to leverage humanity's development into the next phase of our life on this planet.

That's beautiful. And honestly, it's a perfect segue to my next question, because I was doing research and I was thinking about, what is this device really about? If we stripped away all the science, which I love science too, and we just said, what does this wellness tech actually do for somebody at their disposal? Deepest need. This is about stress resilience. And stress resilience is this body's ability to recognize a challenging situation and then choose something positive in a way to respond to it. And you can measure it through hrv. So we've talked about HRV a lot on the show. I think it's a really great barometer for many things. You know, even chronic heart disease and immune issues. It's becoming this piece in medicine where people are doctors, physicians are using it on a grand scale. Let's talk about stress resilience for everyone. And how can we use sensate for our HRV as almost like a feedback loop for wellness, where it's like we have our hrv. We're using the technology to calm ourselves through the frequency. And then also there's a wellness component to all of that, which essentially makes us more antifragile, more able to have stress resilience. Let's see. Expand that a little bit.

Exactly. I mean, I think the primary function and outcome of using Sensei is to increase connected connection, because so much of connection with ourselves and with others is physical rather than through the brain. Actually, it's in there. So much of our emotional intelligence is in our muscles and particularly in our connective tissue and in our central autonomic nervous system. You know, the higher stuff absolutely goes on in the brain and the neurology is fascinating, but well being is much more in many ways to do with the body than it is to do with the brain. Which is why Sensei goes on the chest, it's why it vibrates and resonates throughout the body via the autonomic nervous system. It's why we're not a headset electrically stimulating the brain. But we have measured. And when I was deciding how effective this technology was, we ran tests on hundreds of thousands of uses of the device in clinic, on patients, real patients, and particularly we were measuring a number of biomarkers, particularly heart rate variability, hrv, subjective well being, respiratory capnography, peripheral temperature, because that's a great measurement of autonomic downregulation, autonomic relaxation and you know, it improved. And in fact, Sensei was designed to have a measurable impact within 20, 20 minutes, which is what I thought the kind of timescale would be. It turns out it actually had most of its biometric impact within 10 minutes. So that is the use case that we say, we say use it once a day for 10 minutes. And for the vast majority of people that is measurably effective. Now, we're not a medical product. So that was a very specific decision to go down a consumer wellbeing route rather than a medical device because of less regulation. Yeah, well, I mean one, it probably wouldn't be on the market yet if we'd gone down that route, you know, several million pounds and many trials later. And I've seen some great devices disappear into a black hole that way because they get, they go, they jump through all the hoops and then actually at the end of the day they're not prescribed by the consultants because they have other solutions, but mostly drug based solutions that they're already using. So I didn't want there to be a layer of complication between the end user who had the symptoms, the consumer who was anxious or overwhelmed and the company. So it's a direct to consumer device, although we are pursuing higher levels of research at the moment, but we've already shown in clinic that there is a heart rate variability impact within 10 minutes. And for me, actually more importantly, there's a subjective well being impact. So subjective well being is how somebody perceives they feel and that's been shown in research to have a 96% accurate prediction of how long they will live for. Heart rate variability actually is quite similar, but heart rate variability is very sensitive to, you know, you've run up the stairs, you've had a cup of coffee, you've had A bad night's sleep.

Dehydration. Yeah, yeah.

And you really have to take it over at least a month for it to be of much value. Probably longer. Really. Probably three months.

Okay.

@ the biohacker shows, I often get people running up to me and show me the app and saying, look, my aura ring is telling me this, should I.

Worry? They say, should I worry? You're like, first of all, stop.

Worrying. No, you shouldn't worry. It's not productive. But I love subjective well being because anyone can do it. It's like, how are you feeling right now in this moment? On a scale of 06. And that is directly equatable in a linear fashion with how long you live for. So some, you know, if you can shift somebody's subjective well being by 20, 30%, which we would more than doing, then you're actually, you're literally adding a decade of life. You know, it's, it's major, major stuff. Yes. So I'm a fan of heart rate variability. I think it's more complex than we imagine. I think where it's currently positioned within the sort of training, elite athlete market I think makes a lot of sense because these are very dedicated people who try and reduce the parameters in their life and they try and get a good night's sleep, they try and eat the same. So, you know, using heart rate variability as a predictor of stamina and recovery, recovery makes a lot of sense. But for average people, for a lot of people who lead irregular lives, I think it's a harder metric than some to make sense.

Of. What would be a better metric than.

Hrp? Well, vagal tone. Vagal nerve tone. That's why we've allied on vagal nerve tone. Because what drives blood pressure, what drives heart rate variability, what drives how you feel, what drives gut function? Remember, the vagus nerve is literally the physical anatomical representation of the gut brain axis that is the vagus nerve. If you drill down into all these things that we measure, what you tend to find basically is vagal nerve tone underlies that capacity. If you can improve vagal nerve tone, you pretty much are improving everything that you should be interested.

In. How do we measure vagal nerve tone? How do we do.

That? Ah, now that is also complex. Measuring it directly is really quite hard without putting a lot of very invasive equipment on you. So that. Which of course will then tend to make people a bit anxious. So it becomes quite difficult to measure in a non clinic based population. But you can measure the biomarkers, their heart rate variability. You know, is a direct reflection of vagal nerve tone, heart rate, morning heart rate. Peripheral circulation is a measurement of autonomic nervous system flexibility. So you know, if you, if you measure breathing rate, CO2 levels, all these sort of things, if you measure a number of biomarkers which are underpinned by vagal nerve tone, then, then you've got a good.

Idea. That's fascinating to me because I think about the objective well being of someone. I think collectively or just seeing like objectively our society. I don't know a time where people have been more stressed and more under really an existential threat. But also the world is still a beautiful place. There's still incredible things going on. There's so much to be grateful for. How do you make sense of, of this as a physician from a spiritual perspective? Where we are in society's evolution.

Right now is what I refer to good stress, clean stress and dirty stress. So although in many ways the world is the safest, cleanest, least famine prone, least disease prone it's ever been in the history of humanity, on the other hand, we feel the most threatened and we feel the least safe that we've ever felt. And in terms of the maslow and the hierarchy of needs, the triangle, the bottom line that pyramid rests on is feeling of safety because nothing else matters. Forget shelter, forget food. If you don't feel safe, then you're unable to settle. And I, from what I've seen in clinic and from what I've seen in the last few years with sensate, most people have at least some lack of safety in their, in their makeup. Yeah, they feel chased and this is the problem. It's kind of nameless, you know, when you are actually being chased by a wolf, you know, you know what the problem is.

Right?

Yeah. But when you're being chased by emails and texts and whatsapps and a thousand deadlines, it's a dirty stress, it's not a good stress. And also there's very little you can do about it. In trauma therapy, Peter Levine's work, you see animals in the wild, they either get eaten or they get away. If they get away, they shake and they pant and they hyperventilate and then they're fine. So other than animals in the zoo, a very, very different term thing. But animals in the wild don't get PTSD because they have inbuilt mechanisms to recover and to shake off that trauma. Whereas human beings, you know, we don't, we don't when it's happening to us constantly. So we all have this kind of level of low lying trauma or major traumatic feelings. We're over activated. Yeah, we're over generalized and were.

Overwhelmed. I felt more calm as you were discussing that because I thought about. I've seen zebras and tigers and I've. We've talked about this before on the show. The mechanism of our body to actually somatically release the pressure, the stress, the trauma, the tension. And what has been for me has always been and always will be the breath. It's why I have my students@breakworkio it's why I do breath work myself. I mean I did it before we jumped on our podcast because it's a way that I can not just stay connected to myself, but also in your scientific nomenclature, have that tone, actually tone myself. I'm really curious for the future, how science might blend with spirituality and the things that we already know are great to do, like breathing like sun, things like that. What do you think the future holds? What excites you about the future? When you look at this frequency, this harmonic therapy and the ways that it can help people be more resilient to stress and just honestly give people a deep breath and people the healing that they need. Like what excites you the most about the.

Future? Yeah, I mean breath work is incredibly effective. You know, it is. Our first breath in is the first thing we do. Our last breath out is the last thing we.

Do.

Yeah. A relatively infinite number of.

Breaths. That's a wild thought, isn't.

It? It, it's a crazy thing. And breathing is, breathing is the only autonomic nervous function, nervous system function that we can.

Control. The only lever we can pull. And the, it's voluntary and involuntary. It's the only.

One. Exactly, exactly. Which is. And that's the point. Right? So we, when we get scared, we hold our breath and then that becomes a pattern in the fascia in the connective tissue. So you know, the, the breathing is, is the routine, but it's also the cause of the problem in many circumstances. I mean, I think, I do genuinely think the sound in all its forms, including music, you know, the crossover now between music and well being and entertainment is very, very visible. You know, a lot in a. Most, a lot of artists are doing music for sleep, music for well being. Obviously Apple and Dolby and all these kind of channels are working on content using spatialized sound and other ways of creating higher levels of immersive.

Experience. What's the spatialized sound? What's.

That? Well, so spatial. So the way. And we're Remixing a lot of our stuff in spatial sound. We're working with a number of spatial artists. So I think of mono as being one dimensional, stereo as being two dimensional, but still completely artificial. You know, two sources of sound, totally artificial. Spatialized sound is in like 3D. So you're, you're mixing sound and experiencing sound in.

360. Is this where you'd blend that 3D experience with isochronic and binaural beat.

Technology? Sort of. So yeah, binaural beats are where you have slightly asynchronous sounds in each ear and it harmonizes the two hemispheres of the brain and can produce certain brainwave frequencies like alpha, et cetera. But it's more, let's say, for instance, if you're in a concert hall and there's a piano player up there, if you turn your head, the piano player doesn't move with.

You.

Right. If you're wearing headphones, the entire orchestra moves as you move your head, which is kind of obviously completely unnatural. But also, you know, if you're walking through a forest, you've got a bird up here, you've got a twig underfoot, you've got a river over there. So much more than simply stereo sound. So you can use normal stereo headphones and you, you can create these 360 degree mixes. And then if you add sensate to that, that's four dimensional sound. So you've got this bubble of sound all around you, plus physical sensation. And at least 50% of our experience of sound is body. We tend to think about obviously compressed airwave activity in the ears, which is incredibly important, and it's how we hear and perceive nuanced sound. Yeah, but so much of sound is perceived via sound receptors in our body, not in our.

Ears. So those receptors in our skin and in our organs, they work in tandem with our audio.

Receptors. Exactly. So that's the function again of the autonomic nervous system, is to process the combination of these two. That's what we do with sensei. We write these pieces of music which are where the audience, the audible sound, is synchronized with the felt sound. And in England, there's a lot of very big churches and cathedrals here. And some of the early composers, sacred music composers, but people like Bach and Monteverdi as well, they were composing for the church organ, which its two lowest octaves are infrasound. They're below human hearing. So one of the things that is attributed to low frequency sound is a sense of as being the inventor, the originator of religious experience, of creating awe and wonder within the body. That kind of that deep, beautiful rumble that you can feel almost like.

A primordial sound, like a. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. And you know, I've got a guy in one of the churches near me, one of the cathedrals near me, to play some of these lower octaves on the organ. And it is extraordinary. You don't. You don't hear anything. You just feel the building start.

To. There's an organ pavilion. I was born and raised in San Diego, California. There's an organ pavilion that is. If you ever get the chance, if anybody gets the chance, go listen to it. It's exactly what Stefan's talking about. You'll feel something before you actually hear it. It's like this vibrational kind of like cozy. It's so powerful. It's so beautiful. We've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of ground today, man. I've really enjoyed where we've gone in this conversation. A lot of this stuff I've never thought about. I just quite simply haven't thought about it. So, y', all, you need to get this in your life if you're the kind of person that spends a lot of time indoors. I think this is a perfect device for people that want to break in the middle of the day, but maybe can't get outside. And obviously nature's best, but, you know, we have technology which is also nature itself working through us. The link is joshtrent.com sensate. It'll be linked right there. And you can use the code, Josh. 20 for $20 off your order. So thank you for that generosity, Stefan. We appreciate you. With all the ground that we've covered, what did we miss? You know, what's part of the conversation about this healing technology that maybe has come to the surface yet in our.

Conversation? Well, Josh, I suspect we could probably talk all day about interesting subjects. There's so much of interest in the world, isn't there? I mean, I just, you know, my pleas is to each of us as individuals, as human beings, is to do the work, do the work on ourselves and start gently. Yeah. Don't, you know, to build antifragility. Start gently and work up. Yeah. Remove very small little comforts and challenge yourself in small ways and be of help to other people. Yeah. That's the number one thing we can all do. Help.

Others. Yeah. It's a huge part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. I remember when I wasn't leading a purpose based life, I Had a lot more health issues. I had a lot more stress. And honestly, I just would wake up in the morning and just not feel good about life compared to, like, how I do now. And look, the human experience, experience is always unfolding. We don't know what the future holds. But I really love the way that you put some of the concepts in here, connecting us back to nature by using these subtle technologies that can get us more aligned with maybe the way we were designed to be. And maybe it's not even a maybe. I think that it is. So I really appreciate you, man. I really appreciate what you've done to come from a medical background to bring that into this technology sector. How would you, as we say goodbye, how you would you define wellness if you had to put a definition on well being? How would Stephan define well being? What is a life well.

Lived? I think contentedness. I think we elevate happiness when we should elevate contentedness. Things being just fine as they are, that really is what we should all aim.

For. And why is that? Why contentness instead of happiness?

Because happiness, like its opposite, can't and probably shouldn't last. Happiness is a fleeting state, whereas contentedness, if you simply are content with what you have, then you're never unhappy. And there'll be times when you are happy. You can only be unhappy if you think you haven't got something. Words of your contents, by definition, you don't think you haven't got.

Something. I think you're right. You know, when I feel into that answer, even the question itself, like, well, being isn't supposed to be 100%, 24 hours a day happiness, that's just not realistic. But being contentment, there's a space of ease and contentment. And of course, the opposite of ease is dis. Ease. So it's. It's very beautiful. The etymology of all, all these words. I really.

Appreciate. You can't. You couldn't live your life in awe all the time, right? Yeah. Unless, you know, maybe you do enough of that, you become a transcendent master. But, you know, great. But for most of us, you can't live in awe, right? Because, you know, you. You'd forget to eat.

Yeah. Well, most of us, Good news. Most of us are not floating on a cliffside wearing a white cape with a huge jewel around our neck. So I think, think we're good. I really appreciate you. As I've said before coming on the Wellness and Wisdom podcast, we really think that, you know, we're super careful about who we partner with. And it means a lot that you guys are doing what you do in the world. So, you know, you have all of our support and just keep going, man. Keep affecting all these. These lives and giving people that deep breath and this connection to their body again that I think is missing for so many. So, from my heart to yours, thanks for coming on the show. Direct people where they can go if they want to look at some of the science and the research or just get involved more in the conversation. I know down below here is joshtrent.com sensate, but tell people where they can get involved in the science and some of the other.

Things. Yeah. So getsensate.com is our website. You know, there's a blog there which I'm not updating as often as I would like, but there's a blog, there's the science, there's obviously more about the product on getsense8.com Great, Stefan, thank.

You for coming on the.

Show. Thank you so much. And let's just take a nice breath in and then out through the.

Mouth. My favorite. That's my favorite thing to do. Okay, you guys, until we see you again, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you next week. Hey, thanks for watching the podcast. I appreciate you being here. If you haven't done so already, click the subscribe button and the little notification bell so you never miss any of this free weekly content delivered from my heart with care right to yours. If you love this video, you'll love any of the videos on this page. Just click the one you want to watch.