Andrew Huberman: The #1 Reason Why Faith-Based Practices Matter When It Comes To Your Mental Health

27:06The other is no-go, to try and suppress movements or thoughts. Flow states are mainly accessed, mainly, by the no-go process. So the more you can shift out of your mind cynicism and try and redirect, for instance, to curiosity, the more you're in a no-go that way, yes, that way. So this second short script is what I use to visualize focus. And sometimes I actually will think about Alex's climb as a kind of a, um, the, the pinnacle of an example of focus. And then I'll go into something I really need to do. And this might sound silly or overly structured, but I'll tell you what's really silly. What's really silly is that voice in my head saying, you should do this thing.

27:49Now I got to do this thing. Oh, wait, there's a text message. And then three hours later, you're a little fatigued and you need lunch. And then you're a little fatigued because you ate lunch. And then the next thing you know, the thing didn't get done. So I'm talking about a one to three minute investment to clear clutter, get distance. That's it. Get distance from noise. A one to three minute script to acknowledge the focus process and get into it and then to do the thing. that we procrastinate, the thing that we can just avoid until it becomes a deadline or it's terrifying or it's past. Now, here's the real key to plasticity.

28:21Those steps are required, but the real key is when you finish out what you're doing, your focused work on whatever's most important to you. At some point later that day, you need to reflect on what happened in that work bout. And this is so important. And if you remember nothing else that I said, please take this away. We know now based on the neuroplasticity of learning literature and how best to study and that whole mountain of literature, that the best way to remember information is to not forget it. Which sounds like I'm joking. No, it sounds like I'm joking. I know. I was like, I have to like get in.

29:00How do you not forget it? So here's the thing. You self test. Every bit of learning turns out to be anti forgetting. and I know it sounds like it's just a twist on words, but here's the experiment that's been done many times now. I give you a passage to read four times or one time or two times. And in some cases, I have you self-test just in your mind for a few minutes later that day. Then I wait three to six months and I come back and I test you on the material. Turns out reading something once and self-testing later and realizing you don't remember it all, but you remember certain things allows you to remember significantly more information six months later than had you read it four times.

29:42So it's the reflection on the thing that we did earlier that locks it in. And I'll give you an example of a ton of sensory exposure with a ton of focus and a ton of attention that you devote every single day and you remember nothing of. If you were to think, okay, last night, you're probably yesterday, you probably scrolled social media at some point. You didn't think about it afterward. I mean, do you know how many dog posts I look at? And if I think about it now, I'm a little afraid to do this because I don't want to remember the wiener dog sleeping in first class thing that I saw yesterday, and now it's stuck in me, right?

30:14But when we were, the whole, social media is wonderful. You can learn there. You can connect there. But when we reflect on the thing that we did or that we learned, in particular the errors that we made, you lock in the critical information. You prevent forgetting. It turns out that most information that comes in through our eyes and ears, etc., is designed to be discarded, which is why reading something four times doesn't allow you to remember it that well compared to reading it once. Yes, your mind will drift. And then later that day going, okay, what do I remember? I'm tired. I don't remember that.

30:48I remember that piece. Okay, I'm going to go back and look up that piece. So testing is not just something that we should experience of others testing us. self-testing on knowledge or skill or this could be physical skill musical skill could be relational interaction i mean how many people after like couples therapy take a walk by themselves and yeah like what did i really learn and you know and maybe maybe maybe that's why i should do more of it um who knows but the point is that we don't do this we tend to think that the experience is the experience the learning was the learning and it turns out you can learn so much faster you can learn so much more durably.

31:26And there's a terrible instance in life where we know this works, which is in the case of trauma and things we don't want to think about later. The replay later is critical. Replay later is critical. And so if it's not happening automatically, as is often the case, you need to do that for yourself. And then the sort of fourth, so I have a one to three minute script, which reminds me of this. It says, you know, like Andrew, the data I'll tell you that And I already know it, but it's useful to have a practice. This is why, dare I say, we sort of coined the word protocols, even though it existed before.

32:01Because in laboratories, you would say, what's the protocol to stain these cells for dopamine or something? So protocols, to me, make sense as a word because it's supposed to be a list of things that you do that work the first time and every time to get you someplace. and so it's it it's critical that we acknowledge that our brains are just not good at doing all the steps without a little bit of self-guidance then the question becomes what self-guidance then the question becomes well how can that self-guidance be weaved into my day in a way that's seamless and easy and quick and doesn't cost anything and i'm giving you some examples of these so this is simply what i've been doing and i've found to be very useful um and you know So neuroplasticity does exist across the lifespan, but, you know, in a kind of, you know, acknowledgement of a reality, it's harder to learn now than it was in my 20s.

32:52But I think with these practices, I find that it's not that much harder. And all the data tell us that our brains are plastic throughout our entire lifespan. So I encourage you to think about these not as meditations. The word that comes to mind is sort of activations. Activations you're trying to place your brain into particular states that have you Less noisy in your head more focused for the second one then you do the thing Whatever that is and then in a state of reflection to really lock in the plasticity That you'll experience that night or the next nights when you sleep it That's basically what it is, so Sorry, there was probably another question and I just kept rich.

33:36Oh, it's amazing. I haven't even gotten to the first question So I'll stop. I have all the questions for a whole episode on the protocols of greatness, but you just kicked it off so beautifully that I was like, all right, we'll have to do another one later. I was just in flow state watching you, man. I'm like, it's amazing. You got so much information. I'm curious, and for you, you know, when you were talking about the self-guided meditation, essentially, these voice notes, this is something I did 22 years ago when I was in college playing sports. I would record voice notes, not on a phone back then, but on a voice recorder.

34:12And I would sync music to it to create an emotional feeling for myself, kind of like a motivational song with my words over it. And I'd play it at night and try to anchor in this feeling of belief in myself for the next day, for practice, for games, for things like that. And you are just reminding me now that I need to do that again, like these voice notes. So do you have music over them? or is it just a voice note for like two minutes that you just say to yourself and listen to? Yeah, for me, there's no music. It's just dialogue. And, you know, it's funny. Like 10, 15 years ago when you were doing this, you said 20 years ago?

34:50Huh, okay. You look so young. 20 years ago, you were like an infant. No? Okay. You know, a lot of the stuff that we now know is supported by science was, you know like people were like oh that's kind of like weird like breath work and you know and like are you going to levitate too and it's like well if i could i would but it's been just a little bit of an editorial here it's been really interesting to me um you know my lab worked on respiration physiology we used to breath work we didn't call it that because that sounded like mysticism yeah and you know it's really interesting that science is evolving to you know meditation There's tons of peer-reviewed, federally funded studies on meditation.

35:32Thank goodness. Also on yoga nidra, lowers cortisol, helps you sleep, helps you learn better. I mean, respiration, you know, we now, basically the breathing thing is all pretty straightforward, right? The conclusion I've come to after all these years of looking at everything from Wim Hof breathing to kundalini breathing to physiological sighing to box breathing to all of it is that if you emphasize the exhales, make them longer or more intense than the inhales, your heart rate slows down you get calmer if you emphasize the inhales relative to the exhales your heart rate goes up you tend to be more alert you do a combination of the two you can be very alert and very calm at the same time right and in and it works through respiratory sinus arrhythmia and the motor and the sensory branch of the vagus and the diaphragm and carbon dioxide and oxygen but basically longer deliberate exhales calm you down longer more intense inhales wake you up and And, you know, I'm not trying to trivialize, you know, hundreds of studies, some of which I, you know, I got very involved in for a long time.

36:32But that's basically the crux of it. But for many years, science and my community of scientists, they were disparaging of everything. Like, oh, yeah, I don't know. You know, like, that seems a little weird. And then I'm like, well, you look kind of stressed and maybe you should do it. And, you know, but and likewise with the sunlight thing. Right. People have been talking about getting morning sunlight for thousands of years. all of the circadian biology all of it tells us that it's extremely valuable for elevating your morning alertness which we could talk about the mechanism for that improving your sleep and things that i've you know blabbed about for a long time so when we talk about adding music music is an incredibly powerful anchor for emotions and there's something really special about the music that accompanied particular life events with other people we care about right i'm sure you can remember the song they played at your wedding first dance after being married this kind of thing right i mean um you'll probably play music as your babies are being born right that would be awesome every time we play music they like start dancing inside it's cool yeah they start moving amazing he's so stoked yeah it's gonna be fun i love it um you make me cry man don't do that yeah yeah don't do that okay yeah don't do that um huberman never shows any emotion you know he's very scientific yeah i'm a real robot yeah yeah actually last year i cried on two podcasts no steven bartlett's podcast i kind of welled up and i was like and then and then uh when martha beck was on my podcast she made me cry oh wow yeah she made me cry talking about my bulldog costello and it was it was it was actually and i told my producer rob i looked at him he's been in every podcast we've ever done and like when it was just me him and costello my little closet into paying god and i looked at him after we wrapped with martha and i go we're not releasing that and he goes we're definitely i was like oh man i still can't watch it but uh the um no emotions are good emotions are good emotions are good emotions are good um what do you what i'm half latin man my dad's argentine like we're used so it's like you know the uh i'm curious speaking of emotions what happens to the brain of the body when we express our emotions whether it be through tears through crying through a physiological release of some type what happens when we do it and when we block the flow of emotions that we want to release but then we stiffen up yeah um well unless it's um okay so feeling emotions obviously is healthy right the ability to feel your feelings what's probably not healthy is catharsis directed at somebody else like angry mean screaming at them you know screaming at yourself um you know i guess there's so i mean i've let out some pretty loud yells at myself that were pretty effective i think um you know i think so that there's a time and a place for it um we know that pushing down of emotion is is not healthy we know that but of course, you know, we have to behave ourselves, right?

39:40All the data tell us that, you know, this vagus nerve thing, I did an episode about this last year that really opened up my eyes. You know, we all know the mind and body are connected. The vagus is the connection between the mind and body. More serotonin is made in the gut than the brain. But I had no idea, even though I teach neuroanatomy, I had no idea how far the research has come in the last like four years. Basically, the vagus can be summarized this way. It collects sensory information from your whole body, heart rate, lungs, how full they are, your gut, the status of your conscious and unconscious stuff.

40:15And it's sent up to your brain. Like 85 % of the vagus nerve pathway is sensory. It's stuff going up to your brain. It's feeding your information, feeding your brain information, excuse me, about the status of your body and what it's experiencing. And then there's about 20 % that's descending information that is motor. It's controlling your heart rate. It's controlling how full your lungs get or how not full your lungs get. And so it's a bidirectional pathway. And we've heard so much about it being parasympathetic. It's a calming system. But it turns out that it's a system that's positioned to understand when you're packing something down.

40:54You know, that packing down that we're all familiar with because it's like not the appropriate time for something or you just don't want to feel what you're feeling. Stuffing. Yeah, sadly, I mean, I can say, and I think I'm certainly not alone in this. I can remember one particular event in my childhood history where I remember feeling something, and I was like, wow, that's good. I can do that. I can pack that. That turned out to be not so great. That's not good, yeah, yeah. It turned out to be not so great. But the ability to pick time and place and way of expressing emotions is obviously key.

41:25But emotions are the gateway to plasticity, your music experience and practice certainly acknowledges that any you know we talk about peak and awe experiences we never forget those and on the darker side of things you know traumatic experiences we can unload the emotional component of those through things like cognitive behavioral therapy emdr these days there's a lot of interest in it's not really a psychedelic but in pathogenic therapies like mdma which by the way is still schedule one it's still illegal i have to point that out. And maybe we'll get FDA approval this year. If you ask me, I'm hoping for FDA approval, but they need the proper safety checks in place.

42:07The question is who are going to be the therapist? How is this therapy going to be done when people are in a state of vulnerability? So some really serious issues. And despite what you could say about government and the FDA under any political leadership, you know, that they really do. There, there are good people who want to protect people from harm. So, but I think within pathogenic help, you can, you know, learn to emote more easily. And have empathy for self is a big part of being able to tolerate emotion. So emotions are a wonderful aspect of life. It's about being able to control time, place, and way of expression.

42:43but yeah i think crying into your pillow every once in a while is pretty healthy yeah yeah i do i think it's a good i think it's a good thing to do and no one has to see it unless you do it on a podcast so you know okay i'm gonna try to get to my first question i still haven't gotten to the first question i mean i'll keep going on i don't care right this is great i'm not i mean i love this i mean so it's it's up to you you probably people probably want to go see the canelo fight or they want to go out to dinner canelo's fighting tonight right i know yeah it's all right it's We're all hanging out tonight.

43:14I'm perfectly happy to miss the fight. I'll see the replay. This is all about the protocols to greatness. Again, I wanted to give you guys the best of the best here at Summit of Greatness. This man is the most popular scientist in the world, the biggest following in the world. He's changing lives.

43:33I'm curious for you if you had to say these are my top three. Top three science-backed protocols to support you personally and the evidence is just abundantly clear that if you follow these science backed protocols, you will have more peace, more clarity, more focus, more freedom, more of what you really want in your life. What would those three things be? All right. Well, I'm going to take a freebie and make and tell you four. Perfect. Because I'll just reiterate earlier. I, it's interesting you started with prayer. You're like, let's go in the deep end here. first. I mean, I do think that when we feel least able to control our mind and where it goes, that's an especially good time for something like prayer, where you give it over.

44:22It's not your task to handle everything. And it certainly isn't the task of other people in your life. I mean, that's another benefit that I've noticed is that meditation, prayer, they unburden a lot of people in your life that you that i was otherwise burdening right to solve things or to reflect back things i want i mean we're a crazy species and we love love and we don't like to feel angry and then we it can get all mixed up and and it's tough and so when you when you just acknowledge like and you just ask for feelings to be taken away so that you can have more clarity and and more depth of connection with the things in your life and the people in your life i mean anyone who's done this knows it works.

45:07I can't tell you why. And I kind of love that. I can't tell you why, like for once it's a short sentence. I don't know why, but it works. Okay. The other three, the other three, the other three, you know, I talk so much about this morning sunlight thing that it's almost like a joke by now. Right. Um, it's kind of like a meme. I keep seeing it. The morning sunlight thing or long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate or NSDR. And I do think nowadays thankfully something that by the way back in the day when i was a teenager and in my 20s and 30s resistance training oh it's all going to turn to fat that's only for bodybuilders and militarians like no everyone needs to do this and now everyone knows they need to do it so basically whatever they're saying right now is ridiculous that's the future i mean have you have you caught on to the pattern right whatever that people go that's ridiculous like well this whole creatine craze is pretty interesting to me i don't think everyone needs to take it but yeah there's some benefits for many people.

46:05It's not necessary, but cretin has been around a long time. It was just only broke through now. Vitamin D3 made it first for some reason. Then, and then magnesium will probably be next. Just remember, not everything is safe, but whatever is being kind of chuckled at now is very likely to be the thing in 10 years, five years. So I think rather than give you three protocols, I'll give you a framework that will encompass all the protocols. and I'll try and keep this brief. So when I was a little kid, my mom, no, seriously, my mom, bless her soul, she would say to me, we'd be in the kitchen, and she'd say, sweetie, we're just going to take like two minutes and we're going to stop talking.

46:52And I'll say, but why are we going to stop talking? And when I was really little, the reason this worked is, okay, half Argentine, so we call the pacifier the chupete. it. So I used to have one in my mouth and I carry one in each hand. So I learned how to talk out the side of my mouth. And what they should have done is just said, just shut up and send the corners. But in all seriousness, here's the deal. You want your cortisol, this so-called stress hormone, it's not a stress hormone. You want your cortisol high in the hours after you wake up. I don't care if you wake up at 5 a.m., 4 a.m., 8 a.m., noon.

47:25It doesn't matter to me. Do what works for you and your schedule and your life, and you want your cortisol low at night. Use that as the bookends and the framework of your days, and you'll be amazed how many things go incredibly well. Here's the deal. Viewing bright light, ideally from sunlight, in all the ways I've described elsewhere, I won't rattle off all the details, take off your sunglasses, put on eyeglasses and contacts are fine, etc. Blink as needed to protect your eyes. All that stuff. in the first hour after you wake up, doesn't matter what time you wake up, doesn't matter where the sun is, although I'll place a caveat on that, you have a unique opportunity in that first hour to amplify your cortisol levels.

48:10You wake up because your cortisol levels rise. It's called the cortisol awakening response. Okay. You actually wake up in the morning because of that. Most people are keeping themselves in environments that are too dim in that first hour. Your phone won't do it. A 10 ,000 lux artificial light will if you don't have access to sunlight, but get outside and get just a little bit of sunlight. You'll amplify that cortisol. Guess what? After about two hours, going outside will feel nice. Going outside will feel warm. That sunlight won't amplify your cortisol. Drinking caffeine, provided your regular caffeine drinker, won't amplify your cortisol.

48:47It'll extend the duration of your morning cortisol. Exercise will. get surprisingly deliberate cold exposure won't amplifies epinephrine norepinephrine and dopamine the so-called catecholamines but it doesn't amplify your cortisol now you say wait cortisol is a stress hormone i don't want to be puffy i don't want visceral fat any more than i already have like what are you talking about here's the deal your cortisol is going to go up and it's going to go down every 24 hours the higher it is in the morning the lower it's going to be at night and the easier it's going to be to fall asleep. If you look at conditions like cancer, you look at conditions like PTSD, you look at anxiety, you look at mild or major depression, what you see is what's called a flattening of the cortisol response.

49:29So instead of a big peak in the morning and then it tapering off into the afternoon at night, you see this kind of gradual tapering off. And the higher it is later in the afternoon, the easier it is for little bouts of stress to ride on top of that higher baseline. and then you find it typically people can fall asleep if they're exhausted and then at three two three in the morning you wake up so get your cortisol high in the morning there are a bunch of other things you can do believe it or not eating grapefruit will double the duration of that peak in the morning so that's cool i like grapefruit you don't have to do that licorice root with something called glycerin greatly amplifies your cortisol but here i have to say be careful first of all, don't take licorice root late in the day.

50:14That glycerin will greatly extend the activity of any prescription drugs you're taking because it works on some enzymes in the cortisol, but other pathways too. So you have to be careful. You know, you could take a little bit of licorice root with glycerin. Actually, many licorice root products and teas, they have the glycerin out because it increases cortisol. So exercise, bright light, taffy and grapefruit, licorice root. These are very basic things. People with Cushing syndrome, be careful. There's a whole other thing. Talk to an endocrinologist, okay? Now, ashwagandha, the herb rather that everybody knows can reduce cortisol and it does have a fairly potent cortisol reducing effect.

50:56You wouldn't want to take it in the morning, would you? If you are going to experiment with it, it would be in the evening. I don't think you should take high dosages of it, at least not for long periods of time. It is very potent at lowering cortisol. By the way, pregnant women, the cortisol rhythm of high, low in morning versus night is maintained. Perimenopause, menopause, it's maintained, but it tends to flatten a bit around the transition between perimenopause and menopause. And so doing a few extra things to try and make the peak higher will make the trough lower later in the day. and then at night just think about all the things you would do in the morning to increase your cortisol and do the opposite keep the lights dim because it doesn't take much light in the evening to raise your cortisol long exhale breathing certainly avoid things like licorice root and caffeine we know these things and so pretty soon you go wait the protocols just fall into these bins and of course you can't do all of them every day and you need to be careful about which ones you select but if you think about cortisol not as a stress hormone but what its real function is The real function of cortisol is to mobilize glucose and other energy stores to your brain and body.

52:06That's why it wakes you up in the morning. And guess what? If you sleep with too much bright light in your room, even with your eyes closed, if you don't use an eye mask, morning blood glucose is elevated. This was published last year or two years ago in a really fine journal. Makes sense, right? Cortisol is released and it causes elevations in blood glucose. So now we can regulate our blood glucose with cortisol? Yes. Yeah. this is this is the way it works and so for me i'll continue to pursue and evolve protocols and share protocols i mean we talked a little bit earlier about these short one to three minute i call them activations because they're not really meditations i'm trying to create a certain neural state to be able to do things i just call them that that was rick rubin's idea he's so damn smart he was like well they're not really meditations and then he goes activation activation you know i'm like damn well that's why you're rick rubin right by the way he was in the beastie boys you You know that he wasn't just a producer.

52:56Yeah, go back and watch the first video. Yeah, he's the big guy with the beard that back then was not a big white beard. He was a big brown beard. So if you imagine these bins for your morning and evening, it all falls into place. And then you say, well, wait, does that mean I can't go out dancing at night? But guess what? Going out dancing at night, you're not elevating your cortisol. It's a stressful experience. And look, it's okay to get some bright light exposure after dark every once in a while. You're going to be getting a lot of that. Actually, I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to give you something.

53:29So we all heard of red light therapy. It's great. Increases mitochondrial function for reasons we can talk about. By the way, you can get it from sunlight, long wavelength light from sunlight. It goes through your body. This was shown by my colleague, Glenn Jeffries, and it improves your mitochondria. The long 850 nanometer light, which is long wavelength light, comes from the sun, goes through your body and charges your mitochondria. Wow. Like a battery. Wow. Wild. But for you, because the little ones are going to be here soon. Yes. At night when you're up, you're going to be up. Yeah. By the way.

54:02What do I need? You need red lights like of like a Christmas tree red lights or any lights that where they're not very blue, not LEDs, you know, incandescent bulbs or red lights. You'll sleep better and your babies will sleep better. The other thing that I just learned, and this makes so much sense, is like, how stupid are we? Turns out, you know, women will, will, you know, they produce breast milk and they'll they'll pump and then they'll set aside milk to give their babies turns out the milk collected in the early part of the day guess what it's very high in and in the evening the opposite and people tend to not divide them by morning collected or evening collected and they're now looking at the turns out babies could sleep well all the time like sorry parents no no it's like so it has a big effect there's a big effect on improving the sleep patterns of babies.

54:51These poor babies were being blitzed with cortisol. I was probably one such baby. Anyway, I'll stop there. This is amazing. I've got three things. Three things for you. We're going to have to do another episode in the future because I have a lot of questions. I'm sorry. You wonder why I'm an introvert. It's because I have no friends. I meet up with people. two can we put up Andrew's slide for his new book it's not even out yet it's delayed I have to pre-order it right you can pre-order it QR code here so I encourage all of you get your phones out pre-order this this is going to be I told this to Mel Robbins last year mid last year I said your book is going to be the number one book of the year and it's been number one on Amazon I think for the last nine months this is going to be the number one book of next year if it comes out next year maybe it's in two years i don't know whenever it comes out it will be the number one book of the year i guarantee it so make sure to support this man right now thank you i should say i didn't ask him to do that that's very kind and the reason it's delayed is because i decided to include illustrations and lists to make it clearer as to what was in the text so forgive me but you know and the last thing um the last thing we got the book up there we got some of the protocols here what's the last thing i'm thinking you know i'm trying to i need to recall the beginning the first thing that we talked about was about faith and i wanted to acknowledge you andrew for starting to talk about that and you doing this in your own practice over the last year because there's a lot of people that say inner peace is the new rich.

56:36And you are creating more peace in your life. And I think it makes you a better person in all areas of your life. You seem healthier and happier and thriving. And I'm sure it's many different factors, but I'm glad to know that you're bringing prayer into your life more frequently. And I think you're only gonna be a better scientist and researcher in that process by doing that. So I wanna acknowledge you for that and give it up one more time. or Andrew Huberman. Give it up, guys. Give it up.

57:08Thank you, bro. Thanks for going along. You're good. You're good. Appreciate it, bro. One more time, guys. Andrew Huberman. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.

57:44Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.