Alright,
So welcome to what is going to be a deep dive into optimizing your brain,
Your reality,
And your environment for flow.
And to kick things off,
I'm going to give a quick overview of what we're going to cover today so you know the lay of the land here and what we're going to explore.
So to kick it off,
We're going to talk about the different types of flow,
The benefits and some nuances of understanding what flow is that will help you get into it more easily.
Then we're going to talk about brainwave states and how those relate to flow and how you can use those as a hack to optimize your life,
Your environment,
Your reality,
Your brain,
And so on.
And then finally,
We're going to get into the nitty gritty of how you actually optimize your reality for flow.
So it's going to be a deep,
Deep,
Deep dive into all these topics,
And it's going to give you a lot of practical tools and things you can start doing and a lot of different insights and mindsets that you can take on that will help you start to access more flow throughout your day to day life.
So let's talk about why we want to optimize for flow.
So if you don't know what flow is,
Flow is when we feel our best,
When we perform our best,
And we're in the optimal state and stage of consciousness for success,
For creativity,
For joy,
And to actually get life to start conspiring in our favor.
Flow is extremely popular with some of the world's most successful people.
And that's well known,
Right?
But what's not as well known is it's equally popular with monks and meditators and people that aren't so concerned with worldly life,
But also experience things that a lot of us really want and crave at deep levels,
Like deep inner peace,
Emotional freedom,
Feeling oneness with reality and other people.
I mean,
All these different things that completely span the spectrum of what it means to be a fulfilled human being on every level,
Practically,
In terms of our real world things like career and success and so on,
But also spiritually in terms of our consciousness and our personal development and everything on that wavelength as well.
So flow is really this all encompassing peak state of being and peak state of consciousness and way of life really,
When you look at the full spectrum of flow,
Which I'm going to talk about in a second,
That allows us to live in the most fulfilling and meaningful and purposeful reality possible.
So hopefully that's something that you want.
If you're paying attention,
If you're watching this video,
Then I'm assuming that's something that you're interested in.
And so let's break down the different types of flow and how you can start applying it in your life.
So to really understand flow,
You have to understand the two different types of flow.
So there's flow states on one end and flow consciousness on the other end.
And these are on the same spectrum of flow,
Right?
They're connected and they are both experiences of flow and they overlap in the middle,
But at the same time,
They're also distinct in their own ways.
That's why they're at two ends of what I call the same flow spectrum.
And so flow states by their very nature are inherently temporary.
They come and they go and the states are like sleeping,
Eating,
Waking,
Being angry,
Sad,
So on and so forth.
These are things that are transitory.
They happen for a little while and they shift into something else.
So flow states are really amazing,
But by their very nature,
They're inherently temporary and they're inherently fleeting.
Nevertheless,
When you're in a flow state,
You oftentimes experience huge increases in creativity and intuition,
Huge increases in productivity,
In performance.
A lot of the studies around flow states have shown that there's sometimes up to two,
Three,
Four,
And even 500% increase in experiencing these things that I just mentioned here.
So they're hugely,
Hugely valuable.
And when people are performing at their best,
Whether they're artists or CEOs or athletes,
Or even just somebody working at a normal day to day job as an accountant or whatever,
When they're in a flow state,
Their work performance,
Their work quality is going to go up exponentially.
So flow states are really valuable for entering into these peak states of consciousness beyond the day to day mundane.
When we're in a flow state in a more spiritual sense,
This is something that we might access in a really deep state of meditation.
Somewhere we might go after 30,
40 minutes of meditation when we enter into this whole new reality of bliss and transcendental consciousness.
We can project our consciousness across space and time and experience phenomenon that seem impossible when we're not in that state.
So flow states are this pretty wide spectrum of experience,
But they're inherently temporary by their very nature.
On the other end of the spectrum,
We've got flow consciousness.
Flow consciousness is not so much about flow states.
It's more about experiencing flow all the time.
And this is more akin to the Taoist concept of wu-wei,
Or effortless action,
Or aspects of Zen philosophy.
It's also much more than that too.
But just to give you an idea,
Living in flow consciousness is where life conspires in your favor at all times.
It's the path of least resistance and highest success and fulfillment in life.
And so it's much more of a stage of psychospecial development.
It's a way of living versus a state of peak performance where you're just trying to get into this state for whatever benefit that brings.
This is about taking the state and trying to stretch it out as long as we possibly can.
And you do that with flow consciousness less so by optimizing your environment per se,
Although there are aspects of flow consciousness where you would want to optimize your environment in different areas of your life.
It's much more about internal optimization.
How do we shift our internal perception?
How do we access innate qualities and skills?
How do we change how we're perceiving and acting in external reality to lock us into flow?
And so what we're going to be talking about today is kind of somewhere in the middle between the two.
I think this talk is going to be a little bit more biased towards flow states,
Although it will dip into flow consciousness a bit.
It's going to be somewhere in the middle,
And it's going to offer some timeless keys and some insight for flow in general.
So whether you want to live in flow consciousness,
Flow states,
Or you want to live in both,
What you're going to hear about today is going to be really helpful.
And one final note on flow consciousness,
Flow consciousness,
The benefits of flow consciousness are a little bit different than the benefits of flow states.
So they're similar in some ways.
You definitely get the peak performance boost from time to time,
And those flow states tend to happen much more often when you're in flow consciousness.
But flow consciousness has different benefits.
Flow consciousness,
Some of the benefits are lasting states of inner peace,
Lasting states of emotional freedom,
Exponential growth and success,
Heightened fortuitousness,
Which is a way of thinking about,
A way of saying life is conspiring in your favor.
These are similar to the benefits from flow states,
But they're also different and unique and are more meaningful when you're thinking about flow extending over time.
And productivity is great when you're working,
But what about when you're having a deep conversation with somebody and you're not engaged in some kind of work or performance or output-oriented tasks?
What about when you're walking through nature?
What about when you're just going about your day-to-day life?
Are you in a state of constant menstrual chatter and stress?
Are you able to take that flow state transcendental awareness and bring it into your everyday experience and infuse that into every moment and then reap the benefits of operating in that state of consciousness all the time?
So,
There's a lot of benefits to being in flow states,
A lot of benefits to being in flow consciousness.
Ideally,
We want to do both as much as possible,
But it's important to understand the differences so that you don't think that if you're only able to achieve a flow state sometimes,
That you're not able to be in flow consciousness,
Or if you're in flow consciousness at certain times,
You're not able to be in flow states.
They both are synergistic and when you understand how both work and are able to master the elements of both,
Then you get this really beautiful peak flow experience that allows you to have this incredible experience of flow all of the time and have those peak valleys when you hit a great flow state.
Okay,
So now that you understand a little bit about the different types of flow,
It's important to understand how brainwave states play into flow,
Particularly flow states,
But flow consciousness as well,
And understand how our external reality,
Our environment and different lifestyle habits that we have can affect our brainwave state and by extension flow because basically when you're in flow,
You are in specific brainwave states.
Again,
I'll talk about the different brainwave states that we can enter into in a second here,
But basically the important thing to remember is that when you're in flow,
You are in a special brainwave state.
By extension,
When you're in a special brainwave state,
You're in flow.
So if we start to optimize our reality and our lifestyle habits to be in certain brainwave states,
Then we end up in flow.
So it's a little bit roundabout way of thinking about it.
Like a lot of times people say,
Okay,
I want to be in flow,
So how do I live in flow?
And it's like,
Well,
You can go about it that way and you totally should,
But it's also important to think about how you can optimize your reality for these brainwave states as well because then that's also going to contribute to you being in flow.
So as far as flow is concerned,
There are five key brainwave states that we want to pay attention to,
And they are gamma,
Beta,
Alpha,
Theta,
And delta.
And pretty much all human experience can be mapped to these five brainwave states.
And certain brainwave states that I just mentioned,
Right,
About three of these are really important for flow and the ones that we want to start optimizing our reality for,
Particularly those are gamma,
Theta,
And alpha.
I'll talk more about that in a minute,
But just to give a quick overview of brainwave states,
At any given moment,
Your brain is in one of these brainwave states,
Whether you're sleeping and in delta or you're waking and in beta or you're in some kind of flow state and in theta,
Alpha,
Or gamma,
Or some combination of those three,
Your brain is in one or more of these states at the same time.
And so what we want to start doing is optimizing for gamma,
Alpha,
And theta.
And before we get into that,
I'll just break down a little bit about each one of the brainwave states so you kind of understand how they operate.
So gamma waves are the highest frequency brainwave state.
There's actually more that are higher,
Further beyond gamma,
Epsilon,
And so on.
But for all intents and purposes,
Those are not really well understood yet,
And we don't know exactly how they correlate to flow or brainwave states,
Although it looks like there is some correlation.
But nevertheless,
Gamma,
For all intents and purposes,
Is the highest frequency brainwave state that we typically experience and that we really understand from a neuroscience perspective.
And gamma is often seen in monks and advanced meditators and people that have spent a long time in deep spiritual or contemplative practice.
They typically display a lot of gamma activity,
Especially when they're in their spiritual practice.
And gamma is associated with transcendental consciousness,
Creativity,
Insight,
Heightened awareness,
These things that you might associate with someone who's meditating all the time.
That's pretty good correlation to what gamma is like.
The next highest frequency brainwave state,
So this is lower in frequency than gamma,
Is beta.
Now,
Beta is basically what you would term waking consciousness.
So when you're just out and about or maybe you're at your job and whatever you're doing,
You're in beta consciousness.
Most people,
When they're walking down the street,
Are in beta consciousness.
Most people,
When they're awake,
Are in some level of beta consciousness.
And beta also covers things like stress and rational thought and anxiety and all these different experiences that we have emotionally that are either associated with just day-to-day life or maybe even being stressed out.
This is typically the domain of beta.
In more metaphysical terms or more psychological terms,
You might associate beta with your conscious mind.
Any activity that's going on in your conscious mind,
Your day-to-day stream of thoughts and so on,
Is typically correlated to the beta brainwave state.
If you're really caught up in the hustle and grind,
Which is basically the polar opposite of being in flow,
Typically you're in high beta.
So beta is actually not really associated with a high degree of flow.
It can show up sometimes when people are in flow for various reasons because we might still be engaging aspects of our conscious mind.
So being in beta doesn't always mean that you're stressed out.
However,
A lot of the research into flow states and to flow in general shows that beta waves go down significantly when we're in flow.
So generally speaking,
We're going to want to avoid beta and optimize for other brainwave states.
So the next highest frequency brainwave state after beta is alpha.
So gamma is the fastest,
Beta is the next fastest,
Alpha is a little bit slower than beta.
And alpha,
You may have heard of alpha waves.
These are pretty popular in the collective psyche.
Alpha waves are basically,
Think about a more chill beta.
That's what alpha waves are correlated with.
So you're relaxed,
You're centered.
You're still awake and alert,
But it's not a stressed out awake and alert.
It's kind of more of a Zen,
Slightly meditative alertness.
And a lot of times when people are in a flow state or a mild flow state,
They're in alpha wave consciousness.
So alpha is where things start to get good.
Gamma things are great,
Beta things are okay,
Alpha things are pretty sweet.
And so alpha is a great place to be in for flow as well,
But there's an even better place to be in for flow,
Which is the alpha-theta border.
And so let's talk about theta a little bit.
So theta is basically the domain of deep intuitive awareness,
Psychic capacity,
Also creativity,
Insight and intuition,
Oneness,
Consciousness,
Inspiration.
And theta is slower brainwave cycle than alpha.
And so theta,
You can think of it like it's a slowing down of our consciousness.
So oftentimes we'll naturally be in theta when we're coming out of deep sleep or entering into deep sleep or in a state of deep relaxation.
So theta is this kind of more even deeper meditative awareness than alpha or gamma.
Gamma,
Our brain is actually like operating at a really high frequency.
So think of it like kinetically,
Like there's a lot of movement in our brain.
So gamma is a more active state,
Whereas theta is a much more relaxed deep state.
And that correlates to the decrease in the frequency of the brainwave cycles that are associated with delta,
Excuse me,
With theta.
Theta is typically in the range of about four to eight hertz,
Right?
Or four to eight cycles per second.
So much,
Much slower than alpha,
Which is eight or nine to about 12,
And then beta,
Which is 13 to about,
Yeah,
Depends on who you ask,
13 to about 18.
And then gamma is much higher than that.
So you can see the numbers go up because the brain's activated and it's moving at a much more kinetic and faster pace neurologically.
So below theta is the last brainwave state we'll talk about is delta.
And delta is basically deep sleep for all intents and purposes.
It's relaxation to the point where your conscious mind is completely shut off and you're in the domain of unconsciousness or subconsciousness.
And delta is associated with deep sleep,
Obviously,
Because that's the only time we typically experience it.
It's possible to actually experience it while you're waking in deep meditative states.
It is possible,
But the stronger delta gets and the more all encompassing it becomes in taking over all the different regions of your brain,
The more likely you are to be unconscious and in deep sleep.
And delta is associated with self-transcendence,
Right?
Because our perception of self lives in the conscious mind.
And when we go into delta,
We're basically shutting down our conscious mind.
So delta is like self-transcendence,
Deep relaxation,
And other things along that wavelength,
Right?
When we go into anesthesia often in surgery,
We're in deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep,
Deep delta.
Okay.
So we're going from deep unconsciousness to like peak consciousness and transcendental consciousness with gamma.
Now,
For all intents and purposes,
Delta is not a really practical state to be in,
In your day to day life.
It's possible,
Like I said,
To be in like the theta delta border,
Right?
And that's kind of a good space to be in,
Although you'll be very relaxed.
And if you need to do something that's really high energy or requires a lot of mental activity,
It might be hard to do in theta delta,
The edges of the theta delta border.
Okay.
But nonetheless,
Theta is actually pretty useful in terms of flow.
And so is alpha and so is gamma,
Right?
When we're in really deep theta,
Like typically it can be hard to operate in normal waking consciousness.
But at the same time,
When we're in the higher levels of theta,
Right,
We're at the higher end of the spectrum of theta.
And we're basically at the alpha theta border,
Which means that we're kind of writing that wavelength between the alpha theta border.
This is actually the ideal space to be in flow of all types.
And if you're really good and if you've done a lot of meditative practice,
You'll be able to start accessing gamma as well.
So it's actually possible to have certain parts of your brain in gamma and other parts in the alpha theta border.
And that's basically what we want to optimize for when we're optimizing for flow states is the gamma,
Alpha and theta coexisting simultaneously,
Like the parts of our brains that need to be more awake and alert will be in gamma.
And the parts of our brains that aren't as involved in our immediate experience of our environment can be in alpha and theta.
And that allows us this really deep intuitive connection,
Which is also part of being in flow.
So all of that to say that the alpha theta border plus gamma is ideal.
And you'll know that you're in this space,
Right?
You know,
It's like,
Okay,
That sounds great,
But how do I know if I'm there?
And if I don't have,
You know,
An EEG or some kind of machine to measure my brain waves or some kind of or ring or biometrics device,
How do I know I'm in that space?
Well,
You know,
You're in these states,
If you feel in the zone,
Okay,
If you feel super inspired,
If you feel extremely creative,
If you feel ecstatic,
You feel super Zen,
If you feel deeply a deep sense of inner peace,
If you feel super centered and joyful,
If you feel blissful,
Right,
When you're feeling deep resonance in connection with somebody,
You're feeling oneness,
All of these are signs that you're in some level of theta,
Alpha or gamma.
Okay,
So the more of those qualities you're experiencing,
The deeper you are in any of these brainwave states.
And it's not super important to be like,
Well,
I'm in gamma now,
Or I'm in theta alpha now,
It's not really super important,
As long as you're kind of in that general space of consciousness,
Then you are tapping in to some degree of these brainwave states and by extension flow.
Okay,
So now that we understand,
Now that you understand that,
We can start to get into how do we actually optimize for flow.
Okay,
And I'm going to use a framework that I call a sensory map for accessing flow.
And the reason that that I'm going to use senses as a framing for the different ways we can access flow is because our consciousness,
Right,
Basically,
Senses are the input output stream of our consciousness,
Right,
Whatever you conceive of as your mind or your consciousness,
It interacts with reality through the senses through our sensory data,
Right,
Our taste,
Our touch,
Our vision,
Our sight,
Sound,
And so on our six senses as well,
Right.
So these are basically how our consciousness or our mind receives data from the external environment.
And if you're going to be optimizing your environment,
Your reality for flow,
You need to know how to optimize for each of these different senses so that you can have the proper experience of consciousness because even flow states and flow consciousness are both states of being or states of consciousness.
So we want to optimize the sensory input into our body for flow.
And we do that by focusing on the senses and dialing everything in for the senses.
And in terms of flow consciousness,
This is a little side note,
But in terms of flow consciousness in particular,
We want to optimize the consciousness itself.
So flow consciousness is much more of the inner domain,
Like I said,
Of flow.
And when we optimize our brain and our consciousness itself,
Then that affects how we experience our external reality as well.
So that's a bit paradoxical.
And flow is a bit of a paradox on some level.
So we need to be able to ride that and also understand how to optimize internal and external environments.
So I'm going to kick it off talking about the senses.
And senses really have to do more with the external environment.
And then at the end,
We'll get into some of the things you can do to optimize your internal environment,
Your flow consciousness for more flow.
All right,
So let's kick off how to actually start optimizing your reality for flow with the auditory sense.
Now the important thing to understand with the auditory sense as it relates to brainwave states and flow is that there's two different types of sound essentially,
In a general sense,
Right,
Is that there are man-made sounds and then there are natural sounds.
Okay,
And it's an important distinction because man-made sounds affect the brain differently than natural sounds.
And so natural sounds are essentially any sound that nature creates,
Right,
That's not created by man.
And man-made sounds are sounds that are obviously created by humans.
Now not all sounds created by humans are bad or counter flow,
Okay.
And not all sounds created by nature are pro-flow.
But I would say that 90% plus of the sounds created by nature are pro-flow and pro-flow brainwave states.
And 90% of the sounds created by man are anti-flow or anti-flow brainwave states,
Okay.
And you can experience this for yourself by listening to the difference in sound quality between for example the sound of a car engine and the sound of being in the middle of a forest,
Right.
And there's been research that's actually shown that nature sounds prime your brain into an alpha wave and even a theta state,
Okay.
So literally nature is tuned,
The sounds of nature are tuned such that they produce alpha and theta waves in particular in the consciousness of animals and humans and plants to some degree,
Okay.
So makes sense,
Right.
Nature is the ultimate example of flow and therefore the things that are created by nature tend to put us in flow.
And you know if you were to look at the brainwave states of indigenous peoples who are living in raw nature in much deeper communion with the environment,
You would notice,
You would see if you hook them up to an EEG that they're largely in the alpha theta spectrum and maybe even gamma as well.
Now on the other side of the spectrum you have modern day humans and you know some kind of western civilization that are living in a city and if you at any point in the day if they weren't regular meditators or something like that,
If you just hooked an EEG up to their brain I can pretty much guarantee you they'd be in beta.
Because the sounds that are generated in the city are predominantly man-made and they're not tuned to actually keep us in the brainwave states that support flow.
So let me give you,
Let me break that down a little bit more so you understand what I'm saying.
So basically a car engine for example,
Okay,
Produces what in musical terms is called disharmonic sounds,
Right.
If you study music theory you understand that there are harmonic and disharmonic sounds and there's harmonic tones and disharmonic tones,
Right.
And so harmonic tones are called harmonic because they produce a feeling of harmony like in the ear of the listener and even in our in our felt experience to some degree,
Okay.
And disharmonic tones when they're when they're played or disharmonic chords for example will cause us to feel out of harmony.
They produce a feeling of being out of harmony or out of kilter to some extent.
And so when songs seem really sad typically they are in more of a disharmonic tone or key than songs that sound really pleasant and you know soothing.
Those are in much more of a harmonic key than the disharmonic music,
Right.
So the same thing applies to all sounds.
When you're in nature the composition of all of the different sounds of nature,
The rustling of the leaves,
The chirping of the animals actually produces a harmony that therefore creates alpha wave,
Theta wave,
Gamma wave states in the human brain.
Whereas the disharmony of all the sounds that are that are man-made creates beta wave experience in the human brain.
And this is because when engineers are creating different machines they're not optimizing it to put you in a specific brainwave state.
They're optimizing the machine to do whatever they want that machine to do and that's it.
This is a big problem with how we currently operate as a culture is that we're so singularly focused on one thing that we ignore other things that are really important.
So basically all these engines are being designed to run cars efficiently but what they neglect is that humans are in the cars and that we are you know outside when cars are driving by and the noise that the cars generate is ricocheting all over our cities and our environment and because those engines are not tuned to produce harmonic sounds what's happening is that it's creating psychological stress and stress in our nervous system that causes us to slip out of beta wave state because it's disharmonic and beta wave is the most disharmonic brainwave state.
There's a saying in homeopathy like treats like and at the same time you know like creates like right so there's a disharmonic sound in the car it's going to produce a disharmonic state in our consciousness.
So when you when you kind of take what I'm saying and extrapolate it at the scale of a city or even just you know an indoor environment you have tons and tons and tons of disharmonic sounds dominating the auditory field of the environment that you're in and then what happens is that creates a standing state of disharmony in the consciousness of the person that's exposed to those sounds consistently.
Basically whatever sound that you're exposed to consistently your brain will actually start to filter out that sound especially if it's actually a stressful sound an unconsciously stressful sound because your brain like doesn't want to hear it because your brain is trying to get back into alpha,
Theta and gamma states because it's actually you know ideal for your health and so your brain is going to try and lower the volume on that.
So what happens is when you're living in a city for an extended period of time you actually start to tune out the sounds and anybody who's lived in a city knows this and anybody who's lived in a city and has gone out to the environment to nature for a few days like deep nature where there's almost no man-made sounds for a few days and comes back it's like oh my god it's so freaking crazy and loud in the city and you take it for granted when you're living there because your brain basically gets Stockholm syndrome to the sounds and adjusts itself to that environment and tries to create homeostasis in that chaotic environment.
So basically when you're exposed to a ton of man-made sounds it's going to create a ton of disharmony in your brain unless those are special man-made sounds that have been tuned to produce some kind of harmony or you know maybe it's binaural beats or some kind of soothing music that's been specially created to create harmony in the body.
But in cities you're bombarded with things that aren't so you've got sirens.
Sirens are actually if you don't know the sirens are actually tuned to be extremely disharmonic because if they were really pleasant they would just make you calm down and then you'd be like oh that's really pleasant I wonder what that is.
I mean literally they've done studies that show this so they tune horns to be out of tune and in disharmonic tunes because it's very jarring when you hear a horn it startles you because it's not a natural sound like you would ever hear in nature and they want that so it like activates your consciousness into stress so you become hyper alert so you go into beta wave consciousness.
And to some degree that's kind of beneficial with cars too because with cars if they produce really pleasant sounds you may be less aware of the sound of the car and that could be dangerous when you're trying to cross the street.
This has actually been a problem with some electric cars and Priuses and so on is that they're very very silent because the engines are basically they're electric and they don't have a sound and there's actually like a higher incidence of accidents with these cars with pedestrians because people don't hear them and so they don't get triggered into being more alert and then they can walk into the street and get hit by the car more easily.
So you know on one level it's producing beta conscious on another level you know it has its benefits.
However for flow being around that sound all the time is totally going to cramp your lifestyle it's going to cramp your flow big time.
And so when you're in the city and like you know the sound of your printer in the corner the sound of the coffee maker you know the neighbor next door listening to TV right the TV right you know the sounds of jets flying overhead all of these sounds are not tuned to get you into a flow supporting brainwave state.
So when you're in a city you're basically constantly bombarded by this.
When you're in nature on the other hand you're constantly being tuned to be at least an alpha wave and even theta and gamma.
I've had the experience of living in cities and living in the country and then living in suburbs over the course of my life.
So I've had all three experiences I can tell you without a doubt that living in nature which is where I live now is a hundred times better for flow.
It's a hundred times better for your brainwave state.
There's this deep sense of peace and calm that you get just from the default experience of being in nature.
So when you're optimizing your reality and your brainwave states for flow it's really important to try to control your environment as much as possible to eliminate man-made sounds and to encourage nature-made sounds.
And if you can't eliminate man-made sounds completely then to select for man-made sounds that actually support the kind of brainwave states that support flow.
So an easy way to do this is to listen to nature sounds while you're working or to play nature sounds through your sono speakers or whatever that basically create a simulated nature environment in the space.
Just listening to that music alone is going to help you get into the brainwave states that support flow.
There's other things you can do as well like installing soundproofing in your home.
Doing different things to control the environment to try and minimize the artificial sounds that are coming into your environment.
And so there's a lot of different ways to do this and I'm not going to go into all of them here.
And if your situation is really bad and really extreme you might actually consider moving when your lease is up or selling your house or renting it or whatever because at the end of the day your health and your flow is the most important thing.
So if you can't be in an environment that's really supportive of that you have to ask yourself what you can do to optimize for it or do you need to move?
Do you need to move somewhere that's actually better for your overall health and well-being?
So that's optimizing for the auditory environment.
And it's something that we often take for granted but it's super super important.
Now that I've brought it into your awareness you might notice that there's a lot of things that you've gotten used to when you take a look around your room that are actually creating man-made noise that are in your space.
And you know if you live on a busy street or something like that there could be a lot of things outside and there may be things that you want to do to start optimizing your house for your apartment or whatever for better brainwave states and flow.
All right the next layer that we want to optimize for flow is our visual sense.
And if you're into biohacking you probably have some idea of what I'm about to say but I've got a couple extra hacks that you probably haven't heard of.
And basically you know our vision is really intimately connected with how our brain works for obvious reasons.
You know our eyes literally sit right in the middle of our forehead which is really you know one of the most important areas of our brain.
And our eyes,
Our optic nerves actually connect back to our pineal glands and they connect back to different important glands in the body and they control hormonal secretions and hormones are basically the master controllers of how our physical body functions.
So if your visual sense is distorted again through man-made things that do not support the proper brainwave states that support flow then you've got a problem and you've got visual distortions that are going to knock you out of flow.
So basically there's a couple different things I want to talk about.
So the first is natural landscapes and natural shapes versus man-made landscapes and man-made shapes.
And this is really about simplicity versus complexity or complexity being associated with natural landscapes and natural shapes and simplicity being associated with man-made shapes and man-made landscapes.
And so what's different between these two and how does it relate to flow?
So when you look at nature like I'm staring at it right now past the screen here because there's basically a forest right outside my front door and there's big windows there.
The environment is ultra complex and it's embedded with sacred geometry.
So what I mean by complex is that there's all kinds of colors and shapes and patterns and different things that actually stimulate and tickle the neurons in your brain.
Literally when you see something that's really visually complex it actually causes activation in your brain and not necessarily in the sense of causing beta activation but it actually causes like stimulation that's positive.
It's like doing Sudoku for your brain but through your vision right.
It causes these sensations to go in your brain that light up your neural circuitry and basically like massage different areas of your brain.
And again nature is the ultimate example of flow and nature is always tuned for flow.
And so when we observe nature by extension this first principle whenever we're engaging with nature we're more likely to be in an alpha,
Theta,
Gamma spectrum flow state.
So just seeing nature is literally stimulating us to be in flow.
So when you're seeing any kind of natural environment whether it's the sky or the mountains or forests or ocean or desert whatever it is even just staring at a house plant.
Even just staring at a house plant or having rocks or crystals or some kind of natural element in your house or wood patterns in wood and so on.
These are going to bring you into brainwave states that are much better for flow.
Now I said sacred geometry before and there's a whole ancient esoteric science of sacred geometry and it's also being validated by a lot of modern research.
There's been research that's shown that the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence embedded in art produces images that are more pleasing to the human eye that actually make you feel good and when you're feeling good again you're entering into a flow state.
So literally sacred geometry which is embedded in all layers of any nature all every single layer of nature is embedded with sacred geometric forms.
When you're staring at nature you're inherently staring at sacred geometric forms that are impacting your consciousness in a direction that puts you in flow.
Okay I think you get it right.
You want to be looking and observing nature as much as possible.
Now the other hand man-made surfaces do not have these properties built in typically.
Sometimes they do you know you get these Renaissance artists that are super tuned in and tapped in and they will paint paintings that have you know the golden ratio embedded in and there's different artists and people that are really aware of these subtle layers of reality and consciousness will embed things in them.
And a lot of art will naturally be pleasing to our consciousness like observing art it's not super disturbing or you know too simple will oftentimes produce increases in our brain wave states in the direction of more flow.
But that's the minority again you know 90% plus of man-made things are not going to support flow brainwaves.
They're going to be dialing us more into beta whereas 90% plus if not even 100% plus of natural landscapes or natural creations are going to bring us into more flow.
So for example we spend so much of our days now looking at computer screens.
Computer screens do not have sacred geometry embedded into them and they also have artificial light that's in the blue light spectrum and this is kind of bleeding into the next thing here that basically send over stimulating you know photons into our retinas and therefore into our brains that have been shown through a ton of research to produce all kinds of negative effects on our hormones and our consciousness.
So man-made things are not typically they don't typically contain complexity.
They don't typically contain sacred geometry and a lot of times they have artificial light that creates stress in our brains and in our eyes and in our different glands in our body and has all kinds of imbalancing effect on our hormones and in our endocrine system.
So just in terms of raw complexity and simplicity nature versus synthetic like when we observe things that are man-made they're too simple.
They don't stimulate our brain.
Our brain goes okay that's a white blank wall.
There's nothing there.
It's just white blank one color.
It's boring.
So when we're in man-made environments like cities where everything there's a lot of consistency of color like you're all the skyscrapers kind of look the same.
They're all the same shape right.
A lot of them are gray.
A lot of them are white or they're brown.
When you're inside a room right and it's not really well decorated even if it's well decorated but especially when it's not well decorated right it's super boring.
It's the same repeating pattern on the wallpaper if there's even a pattern at all.
It's the same drab color.
There's no variation.
There's no sacred geometry.
So when we're in a natural man-made environment like a city or even inside our houses if they're not really set up properly we're just constantly our visual sense is constantly being stimulated by things that produce like a neutral effect or even a beta effect in terms of our brainwave state.
So not ideal.
Now I mentioned before blue light screens or blue lights versus natural light.
So most man-made lighting not all it's not as bad with the lighting but these days it's getting worse for a lot of reasons but basically a lot of man-made lighting is in the blue light spectrum and there's a ton of research I'm not going to go super deep into it you can just Google it and find a ton of research about you know blue lights versus red lights or orange lights or different spectrums of light but essentially the sun's light spectrum is not strongly blue in wavelength and so our brains of course are tuned to the natural environment they're tuned to be optimized for sunlight and then the darkness that's present when there is when night falls and so the blue light spectrum that's not really a naturally occurring spectrum in nature in the in the same way that it's occurring in our phones and computers is basically we picked like the one spectrum that's really in some ways it's easy to see but it's not ideal for you know producing flow based brainwave states or flow enhancing brainwave states and so basically we have this huge problem we're inundated now with blue lights that basically completely mess up our circadian rhythms and all kinds of things that that echo out into imbalancing flow and brainwave states so we want to as much as possible bring natural light into our experience so being in buildings or houses that have a lot of windows and that are in that let in a lot of sunlight is really ideal so that we don't have to rely on blue light so much to have light in our environment and also at night time you know making sure that we're not using too much blue light at night right because it's not natural for our bodies to have that kind of light at that time of day and in general to be exposed to blue light you know for such long periods of time so one of the things you can do is to switch out the light bulbs in your house or anything that uses a light if you can to switch out the light bulbs to a light bulb that has better spectrum lighting that's more similar to the sun or ideally at night that is much deeper in the orange and red wavelength spectrum because those lights orange and red in particular actually cause melatonin secretion it's hard to see with the naked eye but if you can if you can you know do a wavelength spectrum analysis of the type of light that's present at dusk and even to some degree at night you would find that there's a lot of red in that wavelength and it causes our brain to that there's a lot of red and in that type of light and it causes our brain to start to secrete melatonin and keep our circadian rhythms balanced so you actually want to have that if you're gonna have lights on at night you want it to be in the orange and red spectrum there's apps that you can get for your phone that will you know change the tint of your screen to be more on that wavelength and so on and so forth so just you know google it there's tons of great information out there but there is another thing I want to mention about our visual sense and light in particular which is that there's different types of lights as well okay a lot of times people will be like they'll get the blue light you know orange red light thing that cool I'm optimizing for that I'm wearing my my blue blocker sunglasses so I'm good but the truth is is that's not really ideal and that's not really enough and there's different types of lighting that we want to ideally just replace the lights so that their flow they're creating flow enhancing brainwave states right and the ideal lights are incandescent right the ideal ideal lights to support flow enhancing brainwave states are incandescent lighting okay because this lighting is actually much more on the orange and yellow and even red wavelength spectrum right and this is what we used to have this was like what was going on this was like the only type of lighting that we had up until somewhat recently when fluorescent lights and led lights even more recently started to come online and replace incandescent lights and on some level there's an environmental reason for that because you know those lights are much more energy efficient but at the same time if that energy efficiency is coming at the cost of our health and causing us to be in these stressed out state all the time because these lights actually create you know stress in the body and stress in the brain and sabotage our flow it's not worth it and you know I'll just get up on my soapbox for a minute with the advent of renewable energy coming online in greater and greater quantities where we don't actually have to you know practice extractive drilling or you know use nuclear power or whatever to get our energy we can have the best of both worlds we can continue to use incandescent lights and not have to worry that the extra energy that they use is also destroying the environment but at the end of the day I have a personal bias towards optimizing for health and wellness first and then also environment second ideally because if we're sick and we're unhealthy we're gonna have a hard time saving the environment so we need to be healthy first we can worry about the environment second but ideally we do both at the same time ideally we do both at the same time okay you know if and plus there's many many environmental problems with fluorescent lights and led lights too so it's not like they're infinitely better so anyways fluorescent lights are the worst they're the absolute worst they have a really they actually flicker really intensely it happens so fast that you can't always see it with your eyes but your brain senses it and it just causes so much stress in your brain because it's a really high frequency flicker meaning that it actually causes your brain to tune to beta waves because the flicker rate of the those bulbs is at actually a beta resonance so fluorescent bulbs actually like a tune your brain to beta waves they they're terrible led lights are better but they're also very bright and the lighting spectrum is not natural sometimes you can get led lights it's possible to get led lights that are tuned to better wavelength spectrums but still incandescent is actually the the most similar to the sun which is what we want and then at night you can switch to like a red led or a red or orange tinted incandescent you can have a lamp in the corner that is tuned that way okay so that in a nutshell is how to optimize your visual field for flow okay the next thing that we have on deck to talk about is the olfactory sense our sense of smell right and this is this is like totally esoteric you're never gonna hear anybody talking about this as it relates to flow but i am and it's actually hugely hugely important because um our sense of smell what we're smelling uh at any given moment is either natural or synthetic and even there are some natural smells that you want to avoid for various reasons like i would not go i would not recommend taking a deep breath of a natural tar seep somewhere because there are toxic smells in the natural environment nevertheless the vast majority again of natural smells are going to be health enhancing for the human body and the vast majority of synthetic or human-made smells are going to be really really bad for the human body in fact human mates human made sense or essentially volatile organic compounds are horrific for your health they're horrific for your consciousness they're horrific for your brain they're horrific for flow they're really really bad so basically the problem with with synthetic or man-made sense is that they well they're synthetic and they're they're basically you know lab-created chemical concoctions that are not ever found in nature typically and um and have side effects and we know this right you know all kinds of man-made sense have warnings on them to not breathe them too much to use them in a well-ventilated space because they're dangerous we know this we know that they're dangerous i mean there's a you know there's a huge environmental medicine movement functional medicine movement that is really birthing a lot of great data and research into how bad a lot of these man-made scent toxins are for us and the reason for that is because they have what are called volatile organic compounds and these are basically you know organic chemical compounds that are released from the paint from your perfume from your deodorant anything that's scented and anything that's created from chemicals basically has some kind of off-gassing that it releases into the environment and if it's man-made and synthetic 90% of the time or more it's going to be bad for you and it's bad for you because these volatile organic compounds you breathe them in and then they're basically they're basically free radicals and they go into your system and they cause oxidation in your system and they cause inflammation in your system they cause many other things too they cause hormone disruption endocrine system disruption they cause all kinds of problems but in particular the main culprit is inflammation so they go into your system and they create inflammation in your nervous system and when your brain is inflamed your cells are literally freaking out they're literally using all kinds of chemicals and molecules that cause you to go into a beta state because you need to be in alertness to deal with whatever this pollution is that's coming into your environment like your brain is tuned for natural sense so when something comes in that's not natural your brain goes alert this is not natural it's probably bad for me I'm experiencing inflammation right now from this scent your brain you know your body just starts experiencing inflammation from the same whenever your body experiences inflammation your your body starts to go into a fight-or-flight response because inflammation is dangerous right it actually is destroying yourselves and so it can actually kill you if left unchecked and create pain in the body so anytime you go into pain or anything that's that's related to inflammation or stress you're gonna be in beta so anytime a volatile organic compound is coming in from some kind of synthetic chemical it's causing you to go into beta into beta brainwave state and sabotaging your flow on some level and even if you don't realize this is happening you think oh I'm still in flow I'm breathing in these things all time and I feel great it's like you don't even know how good you can feel you don't even really know what's possible with flow what you think is flow is a fraction of flow what you think is feeling great is a fraction of feeling great you won't know how great you can feel until you make the adjustments that I'm talking about right and this goes for all of the things that I'm talking about today but in particular the olfactory sense on the other hand natural sense for example like essential oils right or I mean that's really like pretty much all natural sense are you know the scent of evaporating water from the ocean right when you're near a body of water a lot of times that water will evaporate and has a particular scent to it that scent is loaded with negative ions which actually reduce inflammation in the body and send you into an alpha wave and data wave state go figure right so the smell of aerated water right that you that you might smell it at the beach or at the lake or something that's really good for you and otherwise what else are you smelling potentially smelling dirt again dirt and and soil is loaded with beneficial micro bacteria that and is super good for your microbiome there's been a lot of studies that show like being in nature and breathing in dirt you know dirt is loaded with bacteria like really what are called soil based organisms which are really healthy for your gut microbrips when you're breathing in dirt even a little bit obviously you don't want to go to town with it can be bad if you're breathing in mouthfuls of dirt and some kind of you know sandstorm or something like that you don't want that but i mean for all intents and purposes what you'd experience in a normal setting 98 of the time that level of dirt inhalation is actually really good for your body and your microbiome okay what else is what else are you smelling in nature flowers you're smelling flowers in natural sense maybe fruit if you're next to a fruit tree right most of the smells that you're going to have in nature are going to be really beneficial for your body essential oils are extremely beneficial for us on a lot of different levels there's some great research into essential oils showing that these scents send us into blissful states they make us happy they make us calm they make us relax all the things that correlate with alpha theta and gamma brainwave states and even delta to some degree are caused by essential oils and these are natural sets right so just wearing essential oils where being around uh flowers being near a garden being in nature is going to bombard your body with substances and chemicals and scents that cause you to have flow enhancing brainwave states so really cool flow hack just from being in nature so a quick run through that you can do to start optimizing for this it's like go through all of your natural care products and look at them are they made with organic natural you know scents and oils or are they sent are they full of synthetic chemicals you know does it say fragrance if it says fragrance or perfume or perfume on the label if it's a fragrance or perfume it's synthetic nine times out of ten and it's totally totally debasing your flow and it's absolutely destroying your brain cells and creating inflammation in your system your deodorants your toothpaste your shampoos anything you put on or in your body needs to ideally be from nature it needs to be organic it needs to be non-synthetic and then it's going to be infinitely better for you and support support flow and support you know flow enhancing brainwave states okay so pay attention paints house cleaners right the things you use to clean your dishes or the floor whatever anything that you have you want it to be made from natural organic products if you want to supercharge your flow if it's not organic or natural chances are it's going to decrease your flow especially when it comes to your sense of smell and scent right because of the volatile organic compounds that are present in these things okay so that is our sense of smell now we got a couple more to get through here the next up is the kinesthetic and the energetic okay so kinesthetic is really our sense of touch right it's it's for me it's it's everything that has to do with feeling right just our somatic sense of feeling our environment so for me that also you know conceptually goes over into what I would call the energetic dimension okay and again we want to be in environments that are natural anytime that we're in a man-made environment we start to get chaotic energies that are present in that space unless the space is really well optimized for what I would call bio harmony or our bioenergetics if it's not well optimized for that which is 98 of spaces then you're going to have problems and so the kinesthetic environment and our energetic environment for all intents and purposes for this talk there's a whole you know I could say a lot about feng shui and architecture and I'm not going to go into that because it's just way beyond the scope of this talk but for all intents and purposes what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the kinesthetic and energetic environment is really man-made electric fields electromagnetic radiation and emfs right in nature they're actually so this is really interesting so in nature nature produces what are called scalar waves and scalar waves are a type of electromagnetic wave that are generally beneficial for the body there's certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that scalar waves bridge into that are not beneficial for the human body but again 95% of what nature produces sometimes even more is in the beneficial scalar wave spectrum on the other hand 95% or more of you know man-made electromagnetic radiation is not in the beneficial end of the spectrum and there's a lot of great research into this if you want to dive into this but basically when anyone especially in the modern day and age where almost all buildings in the world have a have electricity and almost all spaces and buildings in the world either have a cell phone present in them or and or you know a modem or some kind of Wi-Fi that's present in them you're gonna have problems because basically none of these devices are tuned to be in the beneficial range of the spectrum it's kind of like the engines that we were talking about the sounds from the engines I was talking about at the beginning you know they're not tuned they're not that when they're built they're not thinking okay let's make these also sound pleasant for humans they're just saying like hey we need to make the most efficient engine possible the same thing is happening with electromagnetic radiation they're saying okay what produces the strongest Wi-Fi signal that's what we want to do but they're not taking into account oh that might also create you know severely disruptive electromagnetic frequencies that interact and interfere with how the human body is supposed to properly function right so now you're sitting now we're surrounded we're in a field of cell phones and Wi-Fi routers and all these different things that are basically producing frequencies that are not optimized for the human body or really life in general and so we're now sitting in a kinesthetic space and a kinesthetic energetic environment that is not optimized for flow and it's not optimized for our you know the ideal brainwave states and you know there's a really great book by Robert Becker called the body electric and he did some of the pioneering research into bioelectricity and bioenergetics and what he showed and through his research and his and you know his writing is that the body our nervous system is electric it actually communicates with through electric energy with electrons literally that's part of how our nervous system works in signals and so it's susceptible to electromagnetic fields you don't put a magnet next to your computer screen because it totally messes up the computer screen it can actually you know destroy some of the electronics that create the images on your computer screen and create a permanent distortion in your field because it's a strong electromagnetic field it's a strong magnetic field it's not even electromagnetics half the time it's just strong magnetic field will cause distortion in the electronics right and so the same the same principle is operating in your body your body is a biocomputer literally it runs on electricity to a certain degree and so if it's exposed to strong electromagnetic fields it also doesn't function properly and the electromagnetic fields that are being emitted from our cell phones and from our wi-fi and so on are the exact spectrum that causes disharmony in the human body and there's all kinds of research showing this to be the case with animals with humans with plants I mean it's coming out in droves both from independent researchers from the government I mean there's a plane to sink your teeth into if you want to explore that nonetheless the point is is that in a man-made environments in this day and age they are not optimized for flow enhancing brainwave states because they basically constantly saturate the field and the space that we're in with harmful disruptive electromagnetic frequencies that interrupt how our nervous system functions and cause us to go into beta wave state these EMFs actually cause inflammation in our body they cause information in ourselves and our nervous system all over our body and as you know from what we talked about in the last piece about smell inflammation in the body is going to create a ton of disruption and totally knock you out of flow because it basically keeps your body in a fight-or-flight response which is a tune to beta wave consciousness not good okay so the more in nature you can be in your in your living environment the better right and just in general how and where you spend your time you want to be in as much of a natural environment as possible or at the very least an environment where EMFs are mitigated through special technologies or the way that the building is built that reduce the effects or either eliminate the effects of EMFs now there's tons of different technologies that do this a lot of them are very affordable and there's lots of different ways to control for this I'm not going to get into it here it's a whole nother topic but it is something to think about and something to pay attention and optimize for you know don't leave your cell phone on when you're sleeping right next to your head like turn it off when you're sleeping like if your cell phones in your pocket you know and your cell phone doesn't have some kind of case on it that protects it protects you from EMFs it's beaming EMFs into your leg all the time or wherever you have it you know a lot of times I see women running with it in their in their bras and it's like they have it right over their heart and I'm like oh my god don't do that not good you know your heart is one of the strongest electromagnetic fields in your body and it's intimately related to your brainwave states and when they put it there it's just not not ideal so anyways all that to say think about how you might be sitting in electromagnetic fields in your environment and start to optimize for that do the research figure it out okay the next thing that we've got on deck here is taste right and taste is much more than just what something tastes like for me taste is really about what goes into your body so this is the domain of things that go into your body in some to some degree what goes on your skin and that relates to olfactory and kinesthetic to some degree but you know 60% of what you put on your skin goes in through your pores into your bloodstream so on some level you're tasting whatever you put on your body as well so taste in my mind encompasses that so taste for me is anything that goes into the body right anything that gets put onto or goes into the body is encompassed by taste and this is an extremely deep area there's a lot of different things to cover and really covering the full spectrum of what's possible and talking about you know optimizing our brainwave states with taste and what we're putting into our body this encompasses diet nutrition supplementation there's special supplements that can knock you into special brainwave states you know this encompasses you know psychedelics to some degree i mean this this is a huge field so i just way way way way way more than i can go into here and so i'm not going to do an exhaustive survey i am going to give a little bit of a plug to one of the trainings that i co-created with a good friend of mine the limitless codex and also a training that i run with my colleague jackie neck towel the flow consciousness it's institute our flow level two training these go super deep into optimizing what you're putting in your body for flow and for flow enhancing brainwave states and there's all kinds of incredible things that we found and that we talk about there it's just way more than we can go into here i mean literally we have an entire seven week course devoted to it okay but for all intents and purposes for this kind of you know meta survey that we're doing of enhancing your consciousness and your brainwaves is for flow basically again the key distinction you're probably noticing this principle applying into this field is organic or nature made versus synthetic the more organic and natural something is the more it's going to enhance your flow and your brainwave states and more synthetic something is the more it's going to sabotage your flow and your brainwave states so when you're putting things into your body ask yourself is this organic is it biodynamic is it natural is it unprocessed is it or processed just enough with that in natural ways to make it in the ideal form for my body if so great it's going to generally support your flow enhancing brainwave states and if not it's going to sabotage them now there's a lot more nuance there because it's not just like okay well you know i'm just going to eat organic cheetos all day or you know or organic candy all day and i'm good because it's organic and it's made with all natural ingredients there's way more subtlety and nuance and that's why you know if you want to really dive into that take one of our courses because we really unpack it there and help you optimize that for flow states and flow consciousness and your brainwave states but for all intents and purposes just keep in mind that for taste again we want to we want to be biased towards nature when you're unsure just look to nature and you're going to get a really good clue about what supports the ideal brainwave states alpha theta and gamma okay now the last thing that we're going to talk about today is the sixth sense which i would consider the mental environment right our consciousness right the sixth sense is basically our internal perception i mean the sixth sense literally is our intuition our intuition is an internal experience that that bridges the external with the internal so the mental environment our consciousness this is the domain of the sixth and final sense and we're going to approach this one a little bit differently there's a lot of layers to this as well you know what you feed into your consciousness is going to have an effect on your brainwave state so watching you know binging t on tv and watching you know things that are really violent and so on and so forth going to put you in beta of course it's going to stress you out makes you scared you know and watching things that are really mind expanding and uplifting and positive going to put you into alpha theta gamma but i want to go much deeper than that that's actually a surface level treatment of that but it's something to pay attention to again this is something we explore a lot more in the different courses we offer but i want to talk about three practices that are really really important to keeping you in the gamma alpha and theta spectrum and probably some uh and i also want to mention a few different things you probably haven't heard of in related in relation to these things it's also really important for keeping you locked into these expanded brainwave states okay so the three things that i want to talk about here are meditation to a slightly lesser degree breath work and also plant medicines and second psychedelics to a slightly lesser degree even because meditation is really you know uh the winner here meditation is really the the most important and essential practice for priming the mental environment for priming your brainwave states i mean everything that i've shared today is really really important and has an effect but if you did nothing else that i mentioned today but you meditate consistently and you you um you know do it along the lines i'm about to discuss here you will experience an extraordinary increase in the amount of gamma waves alpha waves and theta waves that you experience and not only that you will actually permanently tune your brain to experience those states to actually be locked into those states and this is really what we want this is this is the end goal and the end game here is not to be at the behest of our environment where we're constantly being like well i'm not in nature today i guess my brainwave states out of gamma theta and alpha i'm screwed i'm just in beta because i'm in the city right no we don't want to be dependent on our external environment right of course we want to optimize for that because why not you know why not make our lives as great as we possibly can but at the same time we don't want to be dependent on our external environment that's not where we want to have our locus of control we want our locus of control to be internal we want to be you know uh pillars of transcendental awareness in whatever situation we find ourselves in this is the end goal and you do that with meditation this is the you know the gold medal winner time tested tried and true proven practice to really dialing you into the most exalted and flow enhancing brainwave states possible now i'll say a little bit more about breath work and plant medicine later okay but what's important to understand about meditation i'm not really gonna i'll mention a couple different practices i like but what i'm really gonna hone in on here is that meditation the reason that it is so important for the brainwave states is because first of all it's just the quickest practice to get you into theta alpha and gamma spectrum it's just period like the second that you close your eyes and start to focus on any kind of internal awareness or your breath you already start to go into alpha like immediately and theta to some degree if you have some kind of consistent meditative practice background you'll immediately start to go into alpha and theta right so it's like anytime you need that you just close your eyes and start breathing deeply and you start to already go into that okay but that's the 101 level the 102 or the 201 level is where you practice meditation consistently okay so there's two there's basically two factors and elements with meditation that are really important is basically consistency of practice and length of practice okay because basically the longer you practice the longer you meditate in a given meditation session okay so let's let's not talk about like meditation over time so i'm not talking about the longer you meditate in terms of the amount of years or months or whatever they've been meditating i'm just talking about one session of meditation okay the longer you meditate the deeper you go into the alpha theta gamma spectrum now certain meditations will produce certain brain wave states more than others but if you do a good form of meditation you'll ideally start to have peaks in the gamma wave spectrum the alpha wave spectrum and the theta wave spectrum which is really what we want because those are then you get the benefits of all of those instead of just one particular band so you'll get into a higher level of flow so the longer you meditate as long as you have good practice in good form and you're not just you know your mind's not just racing all the time your mind's racing all the time you're not actually meditating you're just thinking rapidly with your eyes closed okay but when you're actually meditating the longer you meditate the more potent your theta alpha and gamma wave spectrum is typically the more the more the great excuse me the greater the peak in alpha theta and gamma wave brainwave spectrums okay which means the deeper in flow that you go and the longer that you spend the length of time you were in a state causes corresponding changes in the neural networks networks of the brain okay there's a there's a saying by uh it's called the hebbian principle in neuroscience is basically that neurons that fire together wire together right so basically the longer you stay in a meditative state and hence the longer you stay in theta alpha or gamma brainwave state the more deeply your neurology the neural networks in your brain change in such a way that that state actually gets locked in right and so there's been a lot of research that's been done into what are called advanced meditators right these are like you know buddhist monks that have meditated for hours a day every day for 20 years they're basically in permanent gamma alpha theta like they're permanently in transcendental consciousness like because they've meditated so long that basically the neurons that are firing when they're in those brainwave states have been firing so consistently for so long that they wire together and the entire structure of the brain changes such that it gets locked into those brainwave states right and this has been observed genetically it's been observed in the neural networks of the brain it's been observed by just hooking them up to an EEG to measure their brainwave states and this can be observed i mean it happens it's a fact okay now i talked about consistency and i also talked about um the length of time you practice in a given session so there's basically what i called the rate of decay of the brainwave state post meditation so the longer you spend meditating the longer it takes for you to return to beta consciousness right bit to the beta brainwave state so basically if you spend and this is a little this is getting a little bit heady now but i would say there's a ratio of about like one to thirty to one to fifty on average okay meaning that for every minute of meditation you do you get 30 minutes of persistence or a 30 x length of persistence of the brainwave state that you enter into per unit of time of meditation right let me give you another example like let's say that you meditate for one hour and you get into a beautiful you know alpha theta state then for 30 hours that alpha theta state is going to persist for 30 hours approximately and over time it will slowly start to decay until you return back to whatever you know your resting brainwave state is based on how your consciousness is tuned based on the environments that you've been exposed to in your lifestyle habits over your entire lives right if you're a monk meditating every day well your baseline is going to be alpha theta so it doesn't matter as much if you're meditating in that moment or not okay but if you've been if you've grown up in a city and you've just started meditating and you've basically been attuned to beta wave enhancing frequencies your entire life and in beta wave enhancing environments your entire life if you meditate for an hour you go into alpha theta wave spectrum it'll last for about 30 hours and then you'll start to come back down and if you don't keep meditating consistently eventually you'll return back to beta wave consciousness and then that's where you'll you will rest because that's what your brain is wired to at its default and one hour of meditation once is not necessarily going to make substantial changes to your brain that are permanent there may be some little level that's a permanency there but it's not going to be the same as meditating an hour a day for a month or even a week or a year or many many years okay so another interesting thing is that the longer you meditate the higher that ratio goes right so if you meditate for example for an hour the persistence of the brainwave states might be 30 hours but if you meditate for two hours the persistence of the brainwave state isn't 30 hours now it's 60 hours right if you meditate for three hours now it's a hundred hours it's actually an exponential increase if the longer you're meditating there's an exponential increase in the time that the brainwave the positive brainwave state is going to persist after you finish meditating okay i've experienced this i've been meditating almost every day for 16 years now and so i've i've experienced i've had a conversation with other meditators this is a trickier thing to the track because it requires people to wear sophisticated you know uh brainwave instrumentation over time but i've noticed it in myself and it's it's undeniable for any you know experienced meditating that this happens so the longer you meditate in one session and the better the quality of that meditation is those two factors cause an exponential increase of the amount of time that that positive brainwave state state persists over time okay so that's really cool okay and so that's just from one session now think about if you're meditating for for one hour a day every day so if you meditate for one hour a day and the the decay rate of that brainwave state is 30 hours and that means that every 24 hours which is six hours less than the decay of that brainwave state you're basically resetting that clock every single time so what happens is when you meditate every single day over time you're constantly resetting that clock so instead of going like this where you're like at beta and then you pop up into alpha gamma gamma theta and then you pop back down into beta because you stop meditating now every day you're meditating so you go up into the the positive area and before you have a chance to go back down you meditate again and then you go back up and then you meditate again and you go back up and then you meditate again and you go back up and what happens is because you're constantly in some level of alpha gamma theta spectrum over a consistent period of time then your brain starts to really rewire itself because again those neurons are firing constantly every single day now because you're meditating every single day they're they're constantly firing together and that starts to cause there to be enough time where they're in that state where you know your brains and your your cells are constantly regenerating themselves okay that they actually start when they regenerate themselves they they actually regenerate themselves into new configurations the epigenetic switches that are activated the positive epigenetic switches that are activated when you meditate are activated through the cell replication life cycle such that the new cells that are born are programmed to be in and support that brainwave state more than they were previously so basically the takeaway from all this i know it's a little bit heady is that the more consistently you meditate over time and the longer you meditate for each individual meditation session the more deeply you wire yourself to be in permanent flow enhancing brainwave states okay so basically you want to meditate as long as possible as often as possible and the more you do that the more deeply you will wire in a baseline level of theta alpha and gamma and people often ask us how to you know activate their intuition and do these things that are really you know bordering on the level of like superhuman capacity and it's like well one of the core things to do is to practice meditation a good form of meditation every single day or as often as possible because that's going to support you long term in developing a really powerful intuition because intuition is strongly associated with alpha theta and gamma wave brainwave states so if you're constantly in those brainwave states and your intuition is going to be constantly better and intuition is a key access point for flow so you can see how all these things stack on top of each other there's way more to intuition than just that but if you did nothing else this is like one of the most incredible things you can do for expanding your intuition and your flow okay so let's talk about breath work for a second breath work also can get you into these different brainwave states that are that are flow enhancing really easily as well okay but the thing about breath work is is that it's not always good to be doing a lot of breath work for extended periods of time every day especially if it's some of the more intense form of breath work like there can be problems with that there are dangers and risks to doing different types of breath work over time more gentle forms of breath work what you would call pranayama in you know in in hindu philosophy or in yogic philosophy is usually fine but again it's more active breath works typically breath work is typically more active meaning that you have to be more aware of what you're doing and so it tends to lend itself more to beta beta wave it's like anytime that you have to really be super aware super conscious of what you're doing there's typically part of your consciousness that's going to err towards alpha waves and and beta waves in particular and so breath work is not quite as ideal as meditation plus good meditation will naturally have like a strong breath work component but a really mellow form where it doesn't require you to have like that hyper vigilance of your conscious mind and so breath work is not as ideal but let's say you've only got three minutes and you know you're trying to figure out whether meditation is better or breath work is better if you have a really short amount of time then sometimes breath work can be better because it's more intense and it's more mind-altering typically and so it has a higher chance of throwing you into one of these exalted brainwave states that we're looking for for flow okay so breath work can be useful in that capacity and in general it's a great supportive practice to meditation but meditation is definitely the superstar okay and the next thing I'm going to talk about though is plant medicine and psychedelics and I'm on one level I recommend these but I do not recommend them for the sole purpose of getting into flow enhancing brainwave states they will do that however in my opinion that's the wrong reason to do them because you're going to get way more than you bargained for if you're using plant medicine or psychedelics just for the brainwave effects okay they offer way more than that and that's part and parcel for using these plants and medicines you cannot escape the fact that you're going to be can potentially confronted with things that you may not be ready to be confronted with or you're going to be sent into altered states of awareness that you know may not be safe to be in you know when you're just operating your normal everyday life and also can be you know really disorienting and unpleasant if you're not prepared for that now that's not to say that that's part and parcel for the course of plant medicines or psychedelics that they're always going to take you into an uncomfortable place a lot of times they don't do that but the point is is that we're talking about things here that are really ideal for like practical everyday use however there is something to be said about how plant medicine and psychedelics in general affect the brain there's been a lot of brain research like fMRI research and EEG research into the brains of people who take psychedelics even once and especially those that take them often and there are noticeable and important and significant changes in the structure of the brain that create you know neural networks that are supportive of flow in general and especially you know the theta alpha gamma and delta spectrum which is really the you know the juicy brain waves that we want here right so there's been research that shows that people that use these plant medicines over times have similar brain structures to advanced meditators and definitely when they're on the medicine but especially if they if they've used it over time as well a lot of the the different formations that occur between the neural networks in the brain and the neurons in the brain will produce higher levels of alpha gamma and theta brain wave states and will continue to be in those over time they're such extreme experiences plant medicine and psychedelics unless you're microdosing are such extreme experiences they cause the brain to go into a highly neuroplastic state and so they cause the brain to go in a highly neuroplastic state which means that it becomes very jelly-like and easily imprintable and they also cause you to go into alpha theta and gamma wave brain wave states at the same time and so what happens is your brain's highly impressionable and it's also in an alpha theta gamma wave spectrum brain wave state and so those brain wave states imprint on the neural networks of your brain when you're on the medicines and then when you come off the medicines your brain kind of reforms in this new configuration that's locking those in to some degree and I've had really interesting experiences doing multiple day ceremonies with different plant medicines two in particular where I've had this experience of lasting alpha theta gamma spectrum brain wave states that persisted for months afterwards because I took plant medicines day after day after day as part of a multi-day ceremony so if you think about what was happening I was for example I was in San Pedro ceremony and I was taking San Pedro for two days two and a half days and San Pedro also has a really long half-life so that medicine is in your system for a really long time so what's happening is I went into these brainwave states and because I was in this highly neuroplastic state in these brainwave states and I continued drinking the medicine over a couple of days what ended up happening is that it was the equivalent of like meditating for 20 you know what I'm thinking if you think about it in terms of meditation it was equivalent for meditating for 24 hours a day for two or three days in a row and so if you think about the time decay like I was talking about beforehand from being in that level of brainwave state for essentially what's the equivalent of like you know potentially two months of meditation if you're meditating for an hour a day then you know you can imagine how lasting that that theta alpha gamma brainwave state was so for the next month I felt like I was in this peak state of this peak flow state after drinking these medicines like every day all day because they had primed my brain to be in that state for such a long consistent period of time okay and I had the same thing when I drank ayahuasca for four days in a row earlier in 2016 in Costa Rica excuse me in 2019 in Costa Rica I drank ayahuasca for four days in a row I had the same experience ayahuasca lasts the the half life of that medicine is much shorter than San Pedro but nevertheless I still experience like about a month and a half or so of being in this peak brainwave state afterwards as a result of doing that because again I spent four days that time of being you know having that medicine in my system plus you know the lag of it leaving your system afterwards so it really primed me for that so so all of that to say that you know there's something to be said about this you know ancient indigenous technology of consciousness which which are these plant medicines and not and beyond even indigenous peoples you know this is really nature's medicine right what what has been the theme throughout this entire talk that basically nature supports flow that nature is flow that anything that nature produces tends to put you in these brainwave states that support flow so these medicines of course as extensions of nature tend to do that as well they're priming you to be in that flow state now you may have heard me just say that and like awesome I cannot wait to go do these medicines because I want to get in this brainwave state but again remember really heed my words here there's far more that comes with that experience than just the brainwave states and so you really need to be psychologically prepared and in the right place with the right facilitation and the right kind of medicine to to have a good experience and to you know not have it be way more than you bargained for okay so that's my it's my little moral plea there for you okay so we just covered a ton of ground I've been talking probably for a solid hour at this point and there's been a lot of different ways offered for you to prime your brainwave states to get into flow and the best benefit you'll have is when you start stacking these up right this is when you really start to optimize your reality for these brainwave states and for flow and when you really start to have that ongoing experience now I will say that beyond meditation we didn't really talk about a ton about flow consciousness right with flow consciousness there is a lot of layers that have to do with beliefs and emotional state right like flow consciousness is in some ways really dealing in this in this last layer the mental environment the conscious environment the sixth sense environment and so that layer there's a lot of different practices that we need to do and a lot of different things we need to optimize for the ideal brainwave states internally which really includes reprogramming our our minds in particular okay psychologically right if we have limiting beliefs about our selves if we have you know deep embedded fear and trauma stuck in our body from past experiences what a fear and trauma do they put you in fight-or-flight mode you know they put your nervous system in fight-or-flight mode they put your mind in fight-or-flight mode they cause you to have rapid anxious thoughts all of that puts you in beta right so if you don't deal with your book you're limiting beliefs if you don't deal with your emotional trauma if you don't deal with these deeper fears and anxieties good luck trying to get into persistent extended theta alpha and gamma wave states it can be really tricky good luck trying to get into flow you'll be able to have moments where you get into flow you know and if you meditate a lot you'll definitely get into flow but you'll only be at a fraction of your potential because you didn't optimize you know kind of the final frontier here which is your psychology and your mind for flow and that's what flow consciousness really deals with and beyond that flow consciousness really deals with intuition and and on our perceptual awareness how we perceive reality itself this also absolutely has an effect on our flow how we interpret reality are we seeing the silver lining and everything we experience or are we seeing that everything is you know that life is trying to pull the rug out from under us right a lot of people are in victim consciousness where they experience life as happening to them you know they they use external circumstances to justify why they feel bad okay that is going to take you out of flow that is going to put you in beta wave consciousness right and the beta wave brainwave state because it's going to reinforce why you feel bad and when you feel bad you're not an alpha theta and gamma okay on the other hand when you enter into transcendental non-dual awareness and you are you know seeing life is conspiring in your favor when you take on that perceptual filter all of a sudden you see the beauty even in difficult experiences and you have gratitude for it when you're in gratitude gratitude is scientifically correlated with these expanded brainwave states and flow right so these are just little tasters of the depth that you get into with flow conscious and optimizing your internal environment optimizing your consciousness for flow and optimizing your consciousness for brainwave states right I want to speak to it a little bit just to have the the awareness of what's required there but for that I would point you once again it's way more than we can go into here and we've talked a lot about things that relate to flow consciousness here as well so it's not like we didn't talk about it but there's way more to it and for that if you want to go deeper into flow conscious go back to our website the flow conscious Institute or check out my personal website justinferman.
Com where I write all about these different things and I break down the art and science of living in flow consciousness living in flow living in flow states and a lot of other things that are related to that and on this same wavelength spectrum so thank you so much for joining me I hope that was super helpful I know this is a lot and I want to listen to it again to unpack some of the different suggestions and if you have any questions or comments please reach out to me you can leave them below or shoot me a message or an email and we'll chat.
