Ultimate Neurofeedback Blueprint To Deep Heal, Reset Your Nervous System & Access True Joy

Dr. Amy Albright [00:00:00]:
Science is not God, and data is not actually God either.

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance. Span things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains.

Nick Urban [00:00:54]:
What if anxiety, burnout, brain fog and suboptimal performance aren’t just mental, but electrical imprints your nervous system just never got to clear? Today we’re wading into the world where cutting edge brain technology meets ancient wisdom. You’ll hear how precision sleep, intuitive guidance and nervous system retraining shift more than symptoms. We’ll explore a company called Holon and their unique approach to combining eeg, neurofeedback, Chinese medicine and radical self honesty to rewire the patterns that drive you and bring you to a state of deep clarity and joy. Taking us on this journey is Dr. Amy Albright. She’s a pioneer in human potential, integrating neuroscience, business strategy, health and spirituality to help individuals and organizations thrive. As CEO and co founder of Holon, she partners with Dr. Drew Pearson to deliver cutting edge neurofeedback programs that accelerate code, cognitive, emotional, physical and spiritual growth.

Nick Urban [00:02:15]:
What I like is that she brings the subjective, the qualitative side to the world of biofeedback which is very numbers oriented and quantified. If you like the quantified stuff, go ahead and check out the podcast I recorded with Dr. Drew Pearson, episode number 125. That is his wheelhouse and he has lots of experience quantifying brain states. Dr. Amy nicely balances him out. You can check out the previous episode I recorded with Dr. Drew in the show notes for this episode which will [email protected] 218 there.

Nick Urban [00:02:51]:
I’ve also written up my experience with neurofeedback, the benefits, the different devices and why. I believe the sensei headset, the one they use, is the best one on the market, at least currently. In those show notes I’ll also have a link to their website which is holon experience.com and in a link to their Holon Breath Practice Free tool. Now whether you decide to work with Dr. Amy to attend one of their retreats or not. I’m confident you’ll leave this episode with some new ideas and tips to optimize your mental performance, mental health, and how you can layer all of this into a well balanced holistic bioharmonization program. All right, Enjoy this interview with Dr. Amy.

Nick Urban [00:03:43]:
Dr. Amy, welcome to High Performance Longevity.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:03:45]:
Hi.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:03:46]:
Thank you so much for having me today.

Nick Urban [00:03:48]:
I was looking over your bio to figure out some of the things that you were up to. And I noticed from all your accomplishments and achievements and projects you’re working on that we run in similar circles, we know a lot of the same people. And I want to introduce my audience to some of your work today. And we’ll start off by what are the unusual non negotiables you’ve done for your health, your performance and bioharmony?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:04:16]:
Thanks. Great question. To start with, I like to talk about the most important things are not exactly sexy. So things like sleeping. And then people are like, oh yeah, like my aura data and da da, da, like, yes, I get it. Like, I get it that we all have our ways that we can analyze it. But what I mean by sleeping is sleeping more than what people think we need to sleep. Like on the weekends.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:04:38]:
I actually feel really proud of myself if I can sleep for 10 hours in a particular night. Because I would say that one of the ways that we can stunt our growth, whether it’s spiritual, emotional, intellectual downloads, like whatever it is that we’re looking for, is by not quite getting enough sleep. And I’ve just noticed that for myself, when I want to go through times, when I’m going through great times of change, I need more sleep. And when I want change to happen, when I’m feeling stuck, if I sleep more, it helps. So I think that that’s a non negotiable eating really well. I basically eat very close to the autoimmune paleo diet all the time.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:05:18]:
Why?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:05:18]:
Because kind of I have to, honestly, if I don’t, I feel like crap or I have, you know, I have issues. But I feel like that that’s just part of it being a highly precise, high performance, super, super, you know, supercar or whatever. Like that’s just what it is. And then always living from a place of love and building from places of truth that go beyond what humans believe. Like, what is the truth that is true beyond the veil? What is truth? That’s truth inside of my heart. What’s the real thing here? And being led by the unseen world and my intuition, like, those are, those are Non negotiables. I work for God and I serve the people. And I don’t mean that in a religious way, you know, but like, this is my frame.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:06:03]:
And then from there how I serve, how I show up, I’m kind of willing to do anything that I need to do to be able to serve. So if there’s ego deaths and things that scare the crap out of me, then I’m like, yeah, let’s do it.

Nick Urban [00:06:15]:
One of the things that I love about your work is that you are merging the data driven side with the more esoteric and harder to quantify, the more subjective experiences. Tell me about like what it is that you do to merge those worlds.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:06:32]:
Yeah, I mean they, here’s the crazy thing is they already are merged, right? And so I’m just the translator that’s like, excuse me, these are actually all the same. So When I was 17, 18 years old, I was an atheist. And then I was studying neuro, neurochemistry, neurophysiology, neuropathology as an undergrad. And I was pretty sure if we understood the neurotransmitters that we could understand the human experience. So in my own way, I was an atheist, but yet I was a cosmonaut.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:07:00]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:07:01]:
And like, what happens when we really explore out into those spaces of what is possible and to be able to just really look at that from that lens of the way that I guess that I’ve looked at it over time, it’s been, it’s been a fascinating journey. But what I began to understand is that every state of consciousness that we have ever explored into accidentally or intentionally has a neurological correlate. Like there’s something going on on a neurotransmitter level, there is something going on on a communication level, there’s some change in coherence, there’s some uptick of a certain area. We can measure it, you know, in, in my current work, we measure it with eeg, but there’s other ways to measure the brain blood flow and things like that. Well, okay, so it’s not that I believe that consciousness is contained inside of the brain, but if the brain is speaking to what’s happening for that person’s consciousness, or if the restrictions and the inhibitors of the brain inform what’s possible for that person’s state, right. Can they achieve peak states? Can they achieve flow? Can they achieve bliss and joy? Do they have awareness or are they myopic and caught inside of fear? All of that is definitely dictated by what the brain is able to do. So I feel like, you know, it’s just basically understanding that, you know, there was a huge shift that I had early on that basically was a spiritual awakening and then I was very deeply following a spiritual path and realizing that the mystical world is actually can be partially explained by science and that science can be expanded by the mystical world.

Nick Urban [00:08:40]:
And over time, with more scientific breakthroughs, we’ll be able to explain more and more of it. But the two worlds are not, they don’t appear quite connected even though they are. But over time the connection will become clearer and clearer.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:08:56]:
Yeah, totally. I think one of the most important things that I like to remind people is that science is not God and data is not actually God either. Like, and I, you know, it’s, I think that it’s interesting and I, and I, it’s ironic because I do very data driven, data informed work.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:09:13]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:09:13]:
It is nerdy as all heck, what it is that I’m doing along with my colleague, Dr. Drew Pearson, he’s the real neuroscientist of the team. But we are absolutely, you know, pioneering and also utilizing a lot of the data that’s coming out of major research institutes all the time. And, and everything that we’re doing is measured in these ways.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:09:32]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:09:34]:
But at the same time we can’t be tricked to be because automatically if we believe that the data can represent everything, we’re inside of a reductionistic model. We’re saying we’re measuring everything that’s measurable. And then we’re also being sort of arrogant enough to think that we know what’s actually going on. And so that might sound scary, like, oh, wow, they’re working on people’s brains. But it’s actually, it actually is a deep humility because as clinicians we know that we are understanding part of the miracle of this person that we’re sitting in front of that we’re supporting. And we know how to do that all very safely. But we also know not to restrict what we believe is possible for them.

Nick Urban [00:10:12]:
So you’ve hinted several times at working on brains and research and data. What is it specifically that you do?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:10:19]:
Yeah, there’s a lot to it. A lot of what, what it is that we are known for at Holon is our signature Intensive, which is a five day program. People come on site and we literally hook wires and electrodes and things that look like giant spiders to their scalps and measure what’s going on in their brain electrically, send that into a computer and then the computer basically gives them feedback. So this is neurofeedback therapy. And we do other neurological therapies as well, like microcurrent, basically transcranial microcurrent. That’s very, very low level electricity into the brain at very specific frequencies.

Nick Urban [00:10:59]:
Like stimulation.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:11:00]:
Yeah, Very, very gentle. Not anything wild. There’s a lot of stuff that’s out there that’s a little wild and actually not. I don’t recommend, but. But yeah, we do a host of the most advanced hardware and software and then methodologies, the basis of which comes from, like I was saying, Stanford, Harvard. Like, there are a lot of research institutes that have incredible understandings of neurofeedback therapy. But the way that we’re applying it in our case is in an intensive format, which intensifies the neuroplasticity and therefore the benefit. But it’s also done for wisdom and consciousness, leadership traits, intuition.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:11:45]:
So we’re able to treat things and work with things that are like insomnia, low grade, depression, add. You know, everybody’s got a little something going on under the hood when we look at their brain. Like, nobody’s perfect. But we don’t really want to stay inside of the pathology model. We want to. We really believe that, you know, and we’ve done it. We’ve done this for, gosh, I think between the two of us, we have like 50 years of experience or something like that. Really ridiculous.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:12:12]:
So, you know, in looking into what is that, what is that peak performance? What is that optimum expression? Who is this person at that depth and how do we bring them forward so that they can express themselves, so that they can. Oftentimes people feel like they have a mission that they’re here to accomplish and they feel harnessed. So we’re really here to help unlock that capacity so that they can move into that full expression and in their work and in their. In their lives and their connections or relationships.

Nick Urban [00:12:40]:
One of the things I was discussing when I announced the rebrand for this podcast into high performance longevity, that high performance doesn’t necessarily just mean doing better on the field or even at work. Performance can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Something as simple as being a better parent, that could be considered high performance. If you’re looking at a brain map, how do you help someone reach their level or what they deem to be optimal high performance for their lifestyle if it’s not standardized across the entire population?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:13:13]:
Yeah, it’s so not standardized. So each brain, it’s like the way that you and I look different, our voices sound different. Each brain is Actually extraordinarily unique. And there are still some things that are basic, like let’s say standard operating procedures inside of a brain universally.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:13:27]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:13:27]:
Or like a baseline of health. So similarly to how we’re designed to be different, but we have really similar physiology. Maybe our liver kind of works the same.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:13:36]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:13:36]:
But there’s some differences. So anyways, the brain we can see inside of it, you know, is somebody perpetually overthinking? Do they overthink about the life in general or do they overthink about themselves? Like, are they kind of paranoid about how they’re looking? You know, do they have dyslexia for numbers or letters? And because those actually look different, you know, do they have a propensity to not have enough mitochondrial power? And is that because of sleep architecture and sleep performance, or is that because of potentially like other things that we would maybe speculate on, like mold exposure or whatever, based on their health history? So there’s a huge number of factors that go into kind of looking at what are those impediments. And you know, a lot of the times people are definitely working inside of a fight orf flight mode. A lot of people blame the amygdala. A lot of people think that there’s only one amygdala. There’s actually two, ladies and gentlemen, just to let you know, I love debunking a lot of the like, let’s call it pop science that’s out there.

Nick Urban [00:14:38]:
So let’s do that for a second. Because the amygdala is typically thought of as like the fear control center of the brain. And that’s what I learned when I was first studying this. And then I realized there’s a lot more to it than just that. And this amygdala isn’t only this bad thing that we want to block and shut down as much as possible.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:14:56]:
No, it also is, it helps with things like facial recognition, it helps with us understanding what is important.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:15:03]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:15:03]:
If we don’t have the amygdala working properly, both of them working properly, we may not know how to have threat and risk detection, which is obviously really important. But another thing is that we wouldn’t know how to imprint things into long term memory because amygdala plays a role with what we think is important. And that has a lot to do with what gets stamped as worthy of being in the long term memory. But the amygdala also plays a role in joy and bliss.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:15:32]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:15:32]:
And so it’s that it’s like, which wolf do you feed? I Don’t know if you know, that old. There’s an old parable and the idea of, you know, which wolf do you feed? Do you feed the wolf that is hungry for that lives from fear and wants to, you know, destroy? Or do you. Do you feed the wolf that wants to protect and brings joy? Anyways, it’s an old Native American parable. And I really think of that as seen in the amygdala.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:16:02]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:16:02]:
Because we know that the paradigm that we hold ends up shaping the lens, the schema with which we then perceive reality, including ourselves and the world around us. And then, you know, whether we believe in quantum entanglement or whether we. Whether we believe in, you know, a higher source or whatever it is that our belief structures are, there’s. I think it’s irrefutable to say that, you know, that we are absolutely shaping our own reality with our perception of ourselves and how we frame things. So, yeah, we see that in the amygdala. But what’s interesting is a lot of the information from the amygdala actually is coming from the cerebellum. And the cerebellum, back in the old days, used to be thought for balance and proprioception, like the ability to know where urine space, like, do athletic things or pass that, like, drunk test your. At your nose to your right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:16:50]:
That was an old. You know, it’s still. It’s still a valid test for orthopedic and neurological evaluation of. Of the cerebellum or the brain in general. Well, okay, that’s great. But the cerebellum, in the more recent years, the data has shown that it helps or plays a role in addiction. Okay, well, a lot of the studies are pointing toward alcoholism, but, like, maybe. And this is where we have to sometimes extrapolate as clinicians, like, maybe we can help more than just alcoholics by training their cerebellum.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:17:18]:
Maybe we can help people who are in a constant state of fear, who didn’t have proper attachment when they were a kid. Maybe we can help the workaholics, because aren’t all of the addictions kind of coming from that same root cause? Right. So we started to work with the cerebellum as a means to calm and be able to help the whole brain function and basically burn a lot less energy, like, waste a lot less energy toward fear and just sort of, you know, that. That hamster that’s really spinning the wheel so hard and. And be able to reallocate, you know, those. Those units of. Of energy, it’s Electrical impulses in the brain that then can be, you know, brought over into connection. Intuition, ingenuity, you know, whatever it is that fuels and, and drives that person.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:18:08]:
So, you know, the, it’s an example, for instance, of we take what, you know, these big researchers are finding and they are not necessarily changing people’s brains. And we’re working clinically with something that we know is safe and effective, but we’re saying, okay, it’s, it’s almost like an off label use for, for a pharmacology, like for a, for a drug that an MD uses.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:18:29]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:18:29]:
Like, all right, you know, Ivermectin doesn’t seem to like hurt anybody. Maybe we can try it for this and then next thing you know, it’s actually really super successful and better than maybe what we thought it was originally, you know, like, good for.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:18:42]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:18:43]:
And so it’s a, it’s a good analogy. But yeah, those are some of my favorite myth busting is that we should excise our, our amygdala. It’s, it’s, it shouldn’t just be removed.

Nick Urban [00:18:55]:
One thing I’m curious about this, if you’ve looked into the difference in long term results or consequences of someone who’s to address, say, their addictions via a natural method of going back and figuring out, okay, there was these events previously in life, this attachment was missing whatever it is, and then working through it, doing the inner work, the shadow work, whatever you want to call it, and addressing it from inside versus using technology and tools, which I could also see how that could be like a greenwashing where it’s like, here’s a natural version of thyroid hormone. Have you seen much difference between the results and the long term safety and effects of either?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:19:39]:
Yeah, it’s such a good question. I would say that in my working side by side with Dr. Drew for a lot of the last 13, 14 years, I have definitely seen more than one person that comes in and they’re like, yeah, I’ve been addicted to mdma, thc, you name it. Like, you know, alcohol. And he will do sometimes. It’s one treatment. I’ve seen it in one treatment. I’ve seen it in a series, like a short series of treatments.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:20:05]:
And they no longer can tolerate the substance that they used to be addicted to. Like, their body straight up rejects it. So I am none of nothing in this episode is intended to diagnose, treat or cure. But I’m just saying I’ve seen some stuff clinically that makes no sense and took in that regard very little Engagement. Now, do I think that that’s like everybody. Do I think that that’s the right way or the only way? No, not at all. I think that it’s best if it’s always multimodal. Like people.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:20:35]:
Those same people are still receiving support, although they. In one of the cases, she was actually really pissed off because she couldn’t enjoy the MDMA that was basically ruining her life every weekend. Like, she was going to potentially upend her entire reality and, like, lose everything based on addiction. But she wasn’t quite ready to be done. And so she. She thought that this was going to be a more gradual letting go, and it ended up kind of a sudden letting go. So, you know, there was that, but it was. But I was also working with her and, and coaching and helping her to bring the changes through.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:21:11]:
I would say that there’s another large number of cases. And in general, you know, what we’re providing isn’t. How do I put it? Isn’t like in a laboratory where, like, these gloved hands reach through and you’re just like, you know, being, like, things are happening to your brain. And it’s not. It’s actually an extremely warm and rich and dimensional environment where people are being asked to look at real things, like the truth of who they really are or what did happen with so and so, you know, that parent when you were a kid or all of those things. So the majority of the cases that we’ve seen in this regard are going to be. It’s. It’s almost impossible to sort out how much of it was the.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:21:58]:
The conversation and the clearing of the emotions and the energies and how much of it was the neurology.

Nick Urban [00:22:03]:
Yeah. So you guys, your approach encompasses both sides. You have the component of where you’re working with them and going through their story and figuring out where there might be any hiccups or glitches. And then also you’re using the technology to help them bring about the changes in a faster way.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:22:20]:
Yeah, totally. I think that it’s actually reckless and irresponsible to not bring along the person for the ride. I mean, I know that it can happen. I know that people can receive benefits. It’s not how I would want to practice. It’s not how Dr. Drew wants to have his approach either. We’re both doctors of Chinese medicine, and we understand everything in terms of systems.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:22:41]:
So not only are we not reductionistic or materialistic, just gloved hands reaching in through this little thing and going to change and manipulate, but we’re also deeply Interested in who is this being? Why is this person on a soul level experiencing this problem or this issue right now? And how did they get here and how do we help them with everything from nutrition to neurology to, you know, energetic methods that, you know, that we teach basically that are, that are. That help people to let go of things in a massive way with the speed and efficacy. That’s another mythbuster. Can we just pause on that little mythbuster? I like to talk about all the time that people have this idea that healing has to be truly traumatizing or be really hard or be really like involving a massive amount of tissues or like, I don’t know, whatever the, whatever the paradigms are. And I’m not saying that it’s super straightforward and easy or it doesn’t take investment.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:23:42]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:23:42]:
But that if you work in really skillful formats with really skillful people who also have the paradigm of this doesn’t have to be hard for you. I just want to mention that a lot of the settings, the clinician is actually kind of self fulfilling, that they have an important role because they’re watching somebody go through something that seems really gnarly and hard, you know. And so what is it like as a clinician then when. Because I approach, my approach is much more of like I believe in the power that you have as a timeless soul on an endless journey that you have as basically an alchemist that you don’t even understand that you are. And so inside of that, how do we not candy coat, not greenwash as you put it? We’re not going to just paint a coat of happy over a pile of crap and call it good. This is not real change. But how do we actually get down into that deep change in a way that’s so targeted, so effective that it’s like we can bring out like a. It’s like getting the cosmic tweezers for the exact pain rather than kind of like just randomly digging around in there.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:24:45]:
You know what I mean? Like, it’s a very different approach and that’s modeled in our work both in the neurosciences end and also in the spiritual emotional end of things as well.

Nick Urban [00:24:56]:
Yeah, I can imagine when you’re doing this, there’s a bit of a tightrope that you’re walking. You don’t want at the same time talk to the client and be like, you know what, I know you’re extremely addicted right now, but you’re going to look back on this and you’re going to be so grateful for it. In Five years.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:25:13]:
Yeah.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:25:13]:
And luckily most of the people that we work with aren’t super over into addiction and things like that either. But, you know, we’ve. We’ve had. I. I like to also tell the story of like, there’s. We’ve had a couple of people come through that. One of them was living in active PTSD symptoms like every day of her whole life. And she was over the age of 40, I think, at this time, or around 40.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:25:37]:
And she recollected while she was with us. So we, with neurofeedback therap, we can actually drop people into psychedelic, like, states without medicine. So when she was in one of those states being held inside of this environment where she knows that I’ve got her like, I’m here, I’m a rock, right? And she’s like in this deep state and her neurology is being balanced in a very precise way. It’s being harmonized in very precise ways. So then she had the recollection of what had happened come up, which was early childhood sexual trauma. Okay. Ordinarily, that would put her into an. An heightened ptsd, you know, overload, and then it would be many months or years of process from there.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:26:23]:
She cried for about 10 minutes after she was done. She was like, fine. When she was in the session, she came out and told me about it. She cried. I kind of like wrapped my arm around her. She was talking to me about it. And then from that point until now, which it’s been a couple of years, she has not had any PTSD symptoms. Like, that doesn’t make any sense.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:26:45]:
That completely blows the model. It’s supposed to not happen, but it’s happened more than once. Like, this is the kind of stuff that when we are inside of these spaces, doing the kind of work that we’re doing, we see ridiculous things on a regular basis. We’ve come to expect them. Not in a way that’s like, I don’t know, not grateful, but just like if you can’t, if you’re not looking for miracles, you won’t find them. So we’re looking for them.

Nick Urban [00:27:09]:
The picture I’m drawing, my mind is ironically of like you’re drawing a picture and perhaps you had one too many drinks and it doesn’t look great. So then you go to fix the errors, you erase over parts, and then you draw again. And that erasing and then redrawing straighter lines when you’re sober is kind of like the process of going through your program in terms of like, you’re Getting that support to error, correct your previous mistakes. And with that support you can go through that same, the same pathways you’re going through before totally. And then draw a better picture that persists and you don’t have to worry about it in the future.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:27:51]:
That’s right. That’s a great way to say it. I love that. The way the image that was coming to me when you were saying that is like imagine if you had a whole bunch of wires, almost like Christmas tree lights, like going kind of everywhere. And that represents the electrical of your brain. And this is completely non scientific. It’s just an analogy or an image.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:09]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:09]:
But imagine that you have like a jewel or something like that’s in there that you’re wanting to be able. Or even something that is painful that you’re wanting to be able to remove.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:18]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:19]:
But you can’t quite get it out because of the jangle of the wiring. That’s of the brain.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:24]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:24]:
So as soon as the brain is brought into this precision, then it’s actually fantastically capable. Like you don’t know right now how your heart is beating. I have no idea how mine’s beating. Like what’s going on in our kidneys. We have no idea. We’re not running that either. We think that we’re running our brains and it’s completely bs. Like I can tell you for sure we have no idea.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:28:44]:
And that our brain is doing things, let’s say at 40 milliseconds and we’re, we’re drawing assumptions at the 400th millisecond, right. And so if we allow for the brain, if we encourage and bring the brain into that peak performance, into that non jangled untangled space, right. Then what it can do is ridiculous. It’s just because we’re incredible. It is incredible.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:29:10]:
Right.

Nick Urban [00:29:11]:
I want to double click on something you said in passing earlier and that is the role of the nervous system and specifically downregulating the nervous system for any of these types of changes to be effective. Because that sounds like something we can do at home to help rebalance our not just nervous system, but our mind and outlook on life and everything.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:29:33]:
So downregulating the nervous system, we have no idea as a general population. Like by the way, we’ve all been taught that crazy is normal. Like let’s just baseline a few things, right? So how downregulated do we need our nervous system to be? Like what if we every day lived at the level like we did when we were on our fifth day of a vacation? Like what if that’s the new normal, Right. And what if we can allow for our body and our being to get there? And what would that mean? And how do we really. How do we really achieve that? So going back to kind of my non negotiables about sleep, nutrition, these are things that we can, we can basically traumatize ourselves if we’re not getting not only enough sleep, but good quality sleep. But then I think that, you know, we. There’s sunshine, there’s fresh air, you know, all the things, right. Like, I think that this audience.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:30:27]:
I know you’re hip to it, I know your audience is pretty on point, but then how do we downregulate? Okay, so the majority of the stress that we are under. Well, there’s maybe two. One is environmental toxins and stuff like that. But I would say that the biggest one, the one that matters the most is the mind. And then what is it about the mind? It’s like the story making factory that’s going on about ourselves and about the world around us. That threat, the threat detection stuff like we were talking about for the amygdala, like coming back to that, how do we get out of that loop? How do we change our basic. Found our foundational baseline space so that we’re in day five of vacation mode, because that’s really where we actually are optimally performing. We think that we’re good if we, you know, take that extra shot of whatever caffeine or drink certain nootropic potions, which by the way, I love.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:31:22]:
Like, that’s all great. Um, but ultimately the, the proof of how we’re functioning is seen in our eeg. So I’ve seen a lot of people think that they’re doing okay. And it’s like you, you just need to like, the only thing for you to do right now is rest, right? Or stop. So how do we keep ourselves from kind of like pushing up against the guardrails on the side of the racetrack, you know, or driving the motor without the, the engine having oil in it. And I think that that’s a lot about just actually feeling our bodies and stopping with the pretense of us being something other than we are. Like, I keep on coming back to it, but timeless soul on an endless journey. If that’s what people’s belief structure is like, do you.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:32:05]:
If we really think that our name is whatever and we have whatever our gender is or however we identify and we have this job and these are the things that are important and I, I must buy these things and covet these items and impress these people. And that’s not the it of it.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:32:21]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:32:22]:
And when we’re living inside of the illusion of all those things, what ends up happening is that we’re. Our body is in a state of fight. It’s in a state of like, oh, wait a minute, I am not me. This is, I have to have this.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:32:34]:
It’s.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:32:35]:
It, it’s never happy in that moment. It’s never able to fully settle. And we don’t actually then know who we are. And so as somebody that I’ve been guiding people for like 23ish years, I can say, like, watching people as they’re passing. Because I’ve been bedside, I’ve helped, I’ve helped many people to pass. I’ve helped people to be born, I’ve attended weddings, I mean, officiated weddings. Like, I’ve had a lot of interesting roles. Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:33:00]:
Like, and I would say that the majority of what people place their attention on is completely meaningless. And their body knows it. And then their body is telling them. And their body then gets blamed for not having good HRV or something.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:33:18]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:33:19]:
So the way that we can think about it is like, oh, I should learn how to manage my stress. It’s like, no, what about if we just offload it? What about if we don’t participate inside of that framing? Because if we’re managing it, we’re basically saying, can I compress it down into a small enough container where the symptomology of the stress isn’t flying in my face and being really annoying as I’m trying to pursue the illusion.

Nick Urban [00:33:43]:
Exactly. So how do we actually go about that, Create that reframe so that we’re not just compressing the stress to be smaller and smaller, but we’re actually not even seeing it as stress.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:33:54]:
Yeah. I think it’s living in alignment, right? Like feeling your body knowing where you’re at and living in alignment in every moment. Like, do you actually want to do this thing right now or not do this thing right now? And maybe there’s an element of procrastination or maybe it’s actually your body is. Or your being is like, yeah, you know what? This thing isn’t even for me. And if I career pivot or if I just change my afternoon, depending on the scale of what we’re talking about, maybe I would actually end up with more impact. Maybe I end up with more joy.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:34:23]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:34:24]:
But not fighting those small impulses, those knowings, those intuitions. Our intuition will lead us down that right path. And I Believe that intuition is that gateway to the peak performance that we all desire.

Nick Urban [00:34:36]:
I can already feel some of the pushback here. I am fortunate enough to be able to pivot my schedule on a dime, but a lot of people, it’s going to be a lot harder for them to say, you know what, I’m just going to cancel everything I have going on today and I’m going to just listen to what my body says and it wants to rest, but it’s the middle of the day on a Wednesday. I can’t necessarily rest.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:34:56]:
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Nick Urban [00:34:56]:
So how do you, how do you actually use that, how do you do that routine?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:34:59]:
Yeah, yeah. And so, by the way, I don’t, I don’t coach or work with bliss bunnies that are like, oh, I’ll just do whatever, and like my clients or my employees and, you know, the world can just wait. So, but noticing, like, some days that is the thing to do, honestly, sometimes, sometimes what there is to do is take deep notice because usually people will just keep running over those same signals and doing the same things that aren’t working, working. So it’s more like, can we bring this back and can we workshop it? Like, where do I actually get joy? What actually brings me delight? Where am I more revved up and what’s actually draining me? Even if it, quote, should be the right thing to do, and actually taking the time to look at that and be strategic about our lives, which is different than talking about being strategic with our health goals or our business goals or whatever. Like, how are we doing? Because it’s kind of nothing if we don’t have us along for the ride. Um, but I would say that it, you know, it’s a lot of the times it looks like micro change that adds up to the macro. And sometimes it is important to like, hey, you know, guess what? Maybe you need to change career. Guess what? Maybe AI is going to take your career in a year from now anyways.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:36:08]:
It’s probably better to think about it now when you’re having that feeling of anxiety come up. Maybe the anxiety is there because you on some level actually know that something is not quite right or something is wanting to emerge.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:36:20]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:36:21]:
So if we don’t suppress that, if we don’t suppress that, then we can either release the anxiety in real time. If we actually take the time to feel emotions in a very real way, they can clear very quickly. And I can talk about that in a visual for that in just a moment. But if we either, we either release it because it’s an anxiety, the beast on illusion, or we come down to the root of it, which is super strategic. But we have to be willing to take the 10 seconds or the several minutes or, you know, for me, one of the non negotiables also to go. I have a lot of non negotiables is journaling. And I do that every morning before I look at my phone, before I start moving around. Like, I just sit because I trust what comes out first thing in the morning.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:37:05]:
Then when my mind or the day, the activity of the day gets to take over.

Nick Urban [00:37:09]:
What do you think about or like, what’s your prompt for your journal?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:37:13]:
Oh, it changes. I actually have a document. I could share it with with your listeners if you want. I wrote something one time. There’s like 12 different styles of journaling that I. That I know of and utilize, so.

Nick Urban [00:37:24]:
Oh, use them all.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:37:25]:
Yeah, exactly. So there’s probably many, many more. Sometimes I just freeform. I might write down what was in a dream. I might just write a list of all the things that are kind of like feeling nagging, like in like worries in my mind. It could be small to do list items that I just want to write down. They might already ex of my task management stuff, but I’m just like getting the stress of them out onto the page. Like they leave the stress leaves through the ink on the pen, you know, in the pen.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:37:54]:
And, and writing by hand is really key neurologically, by the way. Typing, journaling does not really count as journaling because it doesn’t access the brain in the same way. But there’s, there’s something to be said for free flow, just like, you know, whatever is in there. I don’t do as much storytelling. Like sometimes if I go on a trip sometimes or I attend a conference, I just like want to debrief myself. I might tell a little bit of a story. But it’s not necessarily that old school, Dear Diary, kind of like, well, and then today I got up and I did my morning routine. Like nobody.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:38:28]:
Like your journal doesn’t care either, right? Like, how do you feel? How do you feel? And what’s actually happening is usually a deeper layer than the, than the 3D transactional aspect of life inside of journal space. But another thing that I like to do is ask a question of my highest self or guidance or however people want to frame that. And then I could just say, I might write the question, what do I need to know today? And then I don’t attempt to do anything with my pen right away. And maybe I close My eyes. And there’s a breath practice that I can share with the audience as well. But maybe I just do a little bit of this really gentle breath practice. Maybe I just, you know, stare out the window and like watch a leaf move on a tree, right? And then when I feel compelled, I put the pen to the page and I let the pen and the paper have a conversation in which I do my best to not interrupt. I’m not like, oh, that’s a dumb word.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:39:24]:
Why am I no quiet and just see what comes out to the answer of what am I to know today? So regardless of people’s belief structure, whether they believe that’s a higher power, higher self, subconscious, like, doesn’t matter. It could be all of the above. In my personal opinion, letting that come out is really, really important because usually we’re just sitting on top of treasure troves of information that we aren’t taking the time or giving the space to.

Nick Urban [00:39:49]:
The intuition is like a muscle too. I found that for when I was first learning to access it, I had a really hard time and I was doubting and questioning whether this was my intuition or I was, it was my conscious mind projecting and like taking over and trying to make it appear like my intuition when it wasn’t really. But then the more I like persisted with the practice, then all of a sudden, okay, I’ve seen enough evidence in my life of these things that were my intuition coming true. A little voice in the back of my mind, the images I see, like these types of things, okay, these actually have some, some merits and validity. And once you develop that skill, as I’m sure you’re well aware, it’s incredible what comes through.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:40:32]:
Totally. And I feel like that, you know, this is how I have to go back to your earlier question just to kind of bring it full circle. How have I done Chinese medicine school but then ended up being like a top level executive coach, strategic advisor that helped businesses to scale? How have I found design plans in a 16 story high rise with knowing nothing about blueprints? How have I figured out where the loss of revenue is? How in, in a business that I don’t fully understand, how have I figured out what was really going on with a patient or client’s health? Just from a feeling in my stomach, of course I have to validate, right? Like I’m not gonna just randomly like, oh, I know what’s wrong with you. But like, then I can, then I know how to send somebody for the right blood test. Then I know, you know, that I wanna See that blueprint, to be able to see what’s going on with that sky, that high rise building. These are the kind of things that it makes no sense at all. And in the way that again, if we pray to science and data, we’re missing this whole entire universe of intuition that can’t currently be describing, or it actually does, but it exists inside of science that’s currently being scrutinized. So I would like to just say that the world of intuition and the place that people think right now of.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:41:48]:
Woo.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:41:48]:
Is actually, in a way it’s like before the, before Newton got his gig on, everybody thought that what we know as gravity now is because God wanted something to fall. Or like it was. It was driven by some like thought construct that is not, you know, it didn’t have a rational formula behind it. But it didn’t mean that gravity wasn’t real. It meant that society couldn’t handle the construct of gravity. They weren’t ready for it. And there are so many constructs that exist outside of standard science. Because over in quantum land, I just heard a podcast the other day where these NASA experts from NASA were all describing, basically they’re able to, they are trying to reverse engineer things that the UAPs, these, you know, foreign objects that are flying around in the sky and when they do that, it dematerializes.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:42:41]:
It won’t allow itself to be reverse engineered. And that got me thinking, like, how many ways are we, are we kind of outsmarting ourselves by not understanding? Maybe UAPS are now part of sort of becoming mainstream because of Congress. Maybe everybody that’s listening was already down and kind of knew it was real. But how many places are we short circuiting or short selling ourselves for what we know? Because intuition, like you were saying, it’s innate, right? Like, how did we get here epigenetically? Because our ancestors had better intuition than the people that died before they could procreate is going to be a lot of it. They knew which food to eat, they knew where the herd was. They listened to the wind. Like indigenous people, whoever lived close to the Earth, on any region of the Earth, lived in harmony with their intuition so that they could survive. And it wasn’t weird, it was just what they did, you know.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:43:40]:
So we’re looking for, you know, how does the quantum physics that is being isolated and in many ways is pooh pooh, just like peak performance medicine might be, right? Like, we’re outliers for the conversation that we’re in. There’s a lot of mainstream medical that would be like, this whole podcast is a load of crap. And so where does the load of crap. What’s actually the load? You know what I mean? Like, what is actually real versus not real? And I would say we’re living in that. We’re living on that fringe. We’re living in that cutting edge. And so when I come to that, that woo and that intuition and, and all of that, it’s like, I think that there’s actually a huge amount of science behind it that has been pushed to the side that is coming forward. There are scientists coming forward now that are, that are willing to talk about it.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:44:31]:
So that’s the intersection that I’ve been living at. Because whether I liked it or not, that was my path for earlier than a lot of people. I had to come out of the spiritual closet earlier than a lot of people.

Nick Urban [00:44:43]:
I don’t really care, like the theories and the methodology. If people get results from doing something, if it’s, if it’s unconventional, so be it. Like, the results speak for themselves. And I don’t know why that’s not the highest value is actually changing lives. Yes. Okay, let’s accept it. We’ll try and explain it and eventually we can explain it, but right now we’re just going to notice that it’s working and we’ll do more research into why it’s working.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:45:06]:
Yeah. The CEO of the multibillion dollar company that had hired me for a project unrele related to finding the flaw in the blueprints wasn’t going to argue with me when I pointed to the exact thing that they had been studying and arguing about for weeks prior. I’m like, well, there’s. This is an error. And he’s like, no, everybody signed off on it. I’m like, trust me, there’s something here. Because I was just, you know, like, I knew exactly which page to open it to. I don’t read blueprints.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:45:35]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:45:35]:
So there’s no way to explain how somebody. And this isn’t about me, this is just a story how we can know things that we’re not supposed to know, but we do.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:45:45]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:45:46]:
And moms kind of have a different relationship sometimes with their kids, right? Like, that’s often that’s like a place that societally we can allow for this sort of thing. But I actually, it’s like, yeah, men can do this too, and we can do it for anything. And that’s really how I’ve been able to bridge all of these different arenas and to be able to really serve in massive Neurosciences engine in innovation without being a neuroscientist, because my colleague has all of the rigor and I have the space to be like, I don’t know, I’m like, I just feel like that this goes with that and this goes with that. And then he’s. And then his brain is resourcing and accessing that, like, huge catalog. His, his mind is so robust. Right. And he knows all of the data.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:46:36]:
He, he’s read thousands of research articles and, and been in neurosciences for close to 30 years as an absolute leader. So I can, I can count on him to tell me if I’m wrong. But it’s also beautiful to be. Be able to reach into what’s possible or what could be right here.

Nick Urban [00:46:53]:
And that Your colleague is Dr. Drew Pearson.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:46:56]:
Dr. Drew Pearson.

Nick Urban [00:46:57]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was back on the podcast, episode number 125. You guys want to check out that and see how he thinks in terms of data and science?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:47:06]:
Yeah.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:47:07]:
Oh, I love it.

Nick Urban [00:47:08]:
You also mentioned peak performance medicine. I think that’s what you said. What falls under that umbrella?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:47:13]:
I think anything that involves brain health really does. I think that a lot of the times, if we want to look at the pinnacle, if we want to look at the most sensitive organ in the brain, I would say, I mean, the body, it would be the brain, you know, so we can, we can detox our livers and we can optimize our gut health and whatever, but the place that we will absolutely see it, because it’s traced down to the millisecond and with thousands of layers of data all kind of concurrently communicating and coordinating with each other, we don’t get that kind of data anywhere but in the brain. It’s just really robust and complex. And, and I think that that’s that access point to the world beyond to intuition, to consciousness, to who we are as a soul. So to me, it’s the peak of all peaks to play in that space.

Nick Urban [00:48:02]:
Dr. Amy I want to push back on that a little bit.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:48:04]:
Do it.

Nick Urban [00:48:04]:
Because if you have, you’re focusing on the brain, you’re imaging the brain, you’re measuring blood flow, all those types of things that can be great. And you can detect issues, say you have lipopolysaccharide issues in the gut, endotoxin issues, and that’s driving a hole or making the blood brain barrier more permeable and allowing like viruses, pathogens, heavy metals, toxins to enter the brain, causing inflammation, reducing blood flow, all these types of things. If you don’t Take into account the whole body, you’re not going to know what’s causing the brain to be underperforming. And you might just like try and throw in some more nootropics, which I love, but they don’t always solve the underlying issues. And it might not even be a brain issue itself. It might be something to do with the rest of the body that’s causing the issue that manifests in the brain.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:48:51]:
Yeah, for sure. No, it’s. We can’t take anything apart from the whole. It’s not possible, you know, But I think that.

Nick Urban [00:48:58]:
What does holon mean?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:48:59]:
That is it. Holon is. Yeah, exactly. Holon is. It’s the same root word as hologram or, you know, holotropic or whatever. It’s. It’s the interconnectedness of all things. So we can’t take gut health away.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:49:12]:
But I do think that even if somebody doesn’t know that they have a particular gut dysfunction, it may be asymptomatic, but they will have brain fog or they will have a lack of a feeling of connection or intuition or something. It’s just. It’s so sensitive. The gut is also super sensitive, for sure. Like, people might have symptomatology, but if the brain is bright and clear, then I’m. If I had no labs, if I have nothing, I would say, tell me about your neurological health in all the ways I could measure it. And then I would say, okay, if this is in check, likely these things are in check, I’m guessing.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:49:49]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:49:50]:
But that’s kind of the way that I would. That I would see that. So, yeah, you’re right.

Nick Urban [00:49:54]:
The brain is like the canary in the coal mine. So if you are firing on all cylinders, you feel great. It probably is indicative of good full body health. What are some of the symptoms or things that you would have people look into or you’d ask them about to make sure that their brain is working the way it should be. Because there’s obviously different things that are going to indicate, say, memory issues. Might be a big one. Perhaps it’s like processing speed. But how do you go about ascertaining whether or not they’re firing off on all cylinders?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:50:27]:
Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely the list of pathologies.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:50:30]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:50:31]:
Like you said, memory processing, things that look like regular intelligence, the ability to connect with people, the ability to make it through their day without fatigue or brain fog, good sleep, you know, all of that kind of a thing. But then I would say, like, if we’re really looking at peak performance, like Neurological peak performance. And we don’t have things available to us like joy, bliss in our body, intuition, really, really amazing sex. I would say we look at the brain and I’m not saying only because I actually look at the whole body. I look at the whole being, I look at. I mean, I’m even over into. I’m a doctor of Chinese medicine. I’m going to look at the meridian systems, I’m going to look at chakra systems, I’m going to look at any kind of early childhood imprints.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:51:17]:
Like it’s, it is completely a hologram the way that we might find or understand or move through to find these solutions. But I would say that a lot of people will stop at like, I’m not having any obvious pathology and I’m like, great, how are your meditations? Are you able to hit transcendent states? You know, or. Because if you’re still having monkey mind, then there’s room for improvement, right? And you don’t. Not everybody’s into it. Like, that’s totally fine. Meditation for meditation sake is not necessarily the game anyways. But if we have the, the predominant wave during meditation is Alpha. If our alpha is really robust and strong, then we have really beautiful theta.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:51:56]:
We also have really amazing Gamma because Gamma forms, Theta forms because of alpha.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:52:03]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:52:03]:
You can’t have that present without that. And gamma is as much a wave as it is a field effect. And the field effect of Gamma is a lot of how we then access the intuitive. And it’s how we access the field of coherence between all humans. It’s not the only thing because there’s waves, all the waves need to be coherent. But how do we, how do we actually understand that, you know, how the brain is working? We can actually talk about, you know, things like this that are not necessarily normal conversations about thinking about brain health.

Nick Urban [00:52:34]:
I haven’t told anyone this, but the other day I was using Sensei, a neurofeedback device and I was doing one of the modes that’s like a dominant gamma, dominant frequency training. And I was sitting in front of my red light panel and I don’t know why, like halfway through the session I decided, I guess intuition, that I wanted to activate the pulsing feature. So I turned up the pulsing to 40 hertz. And then all of a sudden in Sensei, it went. I went from having like a mediocre or poor session to like firing on all cylinders. And like the gamma, I guess was a lot stronger and I guess the entrainment of the light itself worked. And I’ve always heard that you can use light to entrain the brain and I guess audio to different frequencies. But it was interesting to see, like, in real time.

Nick Urban [00:53:23]:
10 minutes of nothing, 10 minutes of changing the light. And it was extremely consistent.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:53:29]:
Yeah, that’s awesome. And how did it feel in your body or in your being that when you have the lights going, well, it’s.

Nick Urban [00:53:36]:
A really intense, like, flicker at 40 hertz with, like, a full body light panel. It was, like, a little uncomfortable to be facing, even though my eyes were closed and I was using.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:53:46]:
Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were doing it from the light panel because there’s also lights in the sensei headset.

Nick Urban [00:53:51]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is. This is an external light panel. It’s like a big full body panel.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:53:56]:
I was like, I didn’t think you could train and do lights at the same time.

Nick Urban [00:53:58]:
No, no, no, no. This was separate.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:54:01]:
Okay. So, I mean, for. So for a lot of folks, that gamma state is transcendent. It is like you become nothing and you become everything. You become the observer, you become the observed and you. And part of the reason. And I. And I didn’t mean to ask you a hard question, but.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:54:18]:
But it’s a fun question for me, because what that state is can change, you know, like people who are familiar with psychedelic medicine, for instance. It’s like the same medicine might end up in a different feeling, you know, a different experience each time. And that’s just part of it.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:54:34]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:54:34]:
And the same thing is true when we’re not working with psychedelics and we’re working with these peak states in the brain. Gamma is definitely a peak state. It can feel so different and it can be wordless. And I feel like that the wordlessness of that is part of what it is that I’m trying to speak to, of, like the person or the being that you thought yourself, that you could identify yourself to be in that moment is. It’s almost like a pattern interrupt or a rewrite for the illusion.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:55:04]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:55:05]:
Like you have access to. There’s. That’s a portal that opened up neurologically, energetically, you know, cosmically, however you want to hold it. That can then show you truth that goes beyond truth. You know, the monks and the meditators were building their alpha with all those decades of meditation so that they could also then open up into their gamma. Because that’s where the bliss, enlightenment and consciousness really, you know, are so, so full. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:55:37]:
Yeah. When I’ve gotten to gamma naturally, not using pulsing, really, really intense, pulsing light, I Definitely feel like a bliss, a oneness. And I think Dr. Dawson Church mentions that like in gamma, the bliss hormone neurotransmitter anandamide is produced in greater quantities which could also help explain that state.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:00]:
That’s awesome because we so focus on the electrical. I’m not as familiar with all of the neurochemical but it’s the electric is, is the efficiency of the electrical tells us how much neurotransmitters we actually need.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:17]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:17]:
Because if we’re. It’s like if we’re driving a car that gets 10 miles to the gallon versus 30 miles to the gallon, you don’t really need as much fuel to do the same thing.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:26]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:27]:
And so with brain it’s so much about efficiency in that regard. But I, so. But as a result of that, to go back to your question, I love to be really clear on what I know. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about neurotransmitters at this phase to be able to talk about that. But I know that there’s gotta be some special soup, you know, that is. And it’s not necessarily going to be the same thing every time. Like people might go to their go tos of like dopamine or oxytocin or whatever.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:56:54]:
And it’s like the part of the thing that’s hard with neurotransmitters is that it’s very difficult to study. You know, you can’t really tell what’s going on in somebody’s brain by looking at their urine. It’s actually a really different study. You know, what’s being released and all of that. It’s different.

Nick Urban [00:57:13]:
Yeah. It seems obvious. There is a test that I like. It’s online, it’s free, and it’s an approximate approximation because it’s not actually measuring anything going on in your brain, it’s measuring behaviors. The phenotypical expression, I guess. And that’s called the Braverman test. Have you ever heard of it?

Dr. Amy Albright [00:57:30]:
No, I haven’t. I’m writing it down.

Nick Urban [00:57:32]:
So it’s like a super long questionnaire and it tells you like what neurotransmitters you’re most likely dominant in and deficient in. And I found that I was dominant. I think it was acetylcholine and deficient in gaba. And lo and behold, when I introduce GABA support into my routine, I feel much more balanced and less moved around, less like taken off my game by.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:01]:
Big stressors, like a deeper resilience kicking in.

Nick Urban [00:58:04]:
Yeah. And antifragility.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:06]:
Almost, I’ll say as framing, I think that it’s an awesome tool because it helps you to find gaba. And then I would say to go back to that intuition, like, for people that don’t feel good, if they were to do that, then don’t take the thing, even though the test said to take the thing. Because what I can say, like, for instance, in Chinese medicine, if we have one diagnosis, let’s say somebody’s having acid reflux, there’s six different ways to get there. And if you use the wrong treatment, you’ll make them worse or give them no benefit.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:34]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:34]:
But if you use the right one based on the pathogenesis, you’ll knock it out of the park and they’ll be better right away.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:41]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:58:41]:
So the same thing would be true in the brain. Somebody might come in and they’re complaining of they feel like they have ADHD, which ADHD, in a way, if you do it from the DSM 5 manual, is a little bit of a junk diagnosis because it’s based on symptomology versus if you look in the brain, you know, if it’s organic ADHD or if it’s distractibility based on other factors, which is it ends up with the same symptom set.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:59:09]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:59:09]:
But how you actually get to the, you know, to where you can balance the brain back out is such a different way of getting there. So. But I love that I’m going to use that quiz that said, I don’t mean it, that I’m not. I’m excited about that because that could be super helpful.

Dr. Amy Albright [00:59:25]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:59:25]:
Yeah. And I agree with you. Like, no matter what it says on paper, the theories, what your genetics say, your epigenetics say, like, at the end of the day, if you use something, whether it’s a supplement, a drug, a lifestyle practice, and you feel worse, and it’s not like the worst in terms of, like, I just exercised and now I feel sore. It’s like actual. I feel like overstimulated from taking methylated vitamins. Perhaps I should stop doing that because, like, everyone talking about MTHFR and a lot of people don’t tolerate methylated vitamins. Well, I’m one of them and I have methylfolate and I’ll take it. And I’m like, huh, that’s interesting.

Nick Urban [00:59:58]:
I feel like I just took a shot of espresso.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:00:00]:
Yeah. For me, I feel like I have a headache and a hangover. So I can’t do the methylfolate either. If I. If I take a shot of methylfolate I can’t get out of bed for a day.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:00:11]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:00:11]:
So it’s pretty, it can be so intense and so different. And I think that that’s the, the humbling part of being a clinical practitioner is that we know that we are going to just do our best to, you know, to take into account all those factors, to educate ourselves at the level that we can, to be attuned to our own intuition, you know, as we’re, we’re offering suggestions to people and then always empowering people. Because not only is science not God, but doctors are not God of any kind, including, you know, the kind that I am. And so how do we, how do we really empower people to listen to their bodies and to know that we can, that we can trust that, that there’s something there?

Nick Urban [01:00:50]:
Let’s dig into that a little bit because that’s an important topic. And this can all feel very tricky. It can feel very up in the sky, in the air. If you don’t actually know how to listen to your body. It sounds very simple. But like when you are working with someone and they have never heard that, let’s just say, are there any practices or techniques that you recommend they look into or you help them understand?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:01:14]:
Totally, yeah. And it’s part of that down regulating because a lot of the times people can’t listen to their body because they’ve just trained themselves to not. I would say that, you know, definitely doing all of the self care things that are more calming. Like if we’re, if we’re looking at being in access with our body and when we struggle with that, maybe cold plunge isn’t the jam, you know what I mean? Like, it could kind of like make that worse because you want to dissociate as a part of it. I would say that the, the hole in breath practice is something that I offer as a free tool that people, if they want to go to the website, they. I have had people that are chronic overthinkers that are like, I don’t feel anything in my body. I don’t even know what I’m, I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t feel any meditation.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:01:55]:
Yeah. And then they’ll do this breath practice which is very, very gentle and they’re like, whoa, something just happened. Or people that have been meditators like in an ashram for years use it and they have a hugely different experience. So I just offer that as a free tool for everybody to go and check out. And what I found is that it helps people to Kind of lose track of the. Of the mind enough and downregulate enough that then they can start to sense their body. So that’s a huge practice. General meditation is a huge practice, exercising, but not from this place of like, trying to be so beast mode.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:02:34]:
Like, go for a gentle walk. Like, you know, be out without distractions too. Yeah, no distractions. Don’t listen to this podcast while you’re walking if you’re wanting that effect, you know, or hit pause and then. And then come back because it’s pretty cool podcast.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:02:49]:
But.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:02:50]:
But it’s, you know, how. How do we link movement? How do. So it’s linking breath to awareness. Linking movement to breath to awareness. So that’s kind of the foundation of yoga, which is obviously effective enough. It’s been around for a long time. There’s something to it. But also we can do that with just like, it could be the tai chi, qigong.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:03:11]:
Go for a very slow walk. And definitely nature is a huge part, because we are actually, this is another one. We’ve been taught that we’re above nature or separate than nature, and we live separate than nature. But actually where we thrive is when we’re closer to nature and we actually belong to nature as a part of that hologram. We are nature. We are mammals. We’re overly intelligent, way overthinking at mammals, and we’re not maybe as smart as some of our other mammal relatives in certain ways. But I would say that those are some key things to get into that space of feeling.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:03:50]:
And then. Oh, and this is one that I wanted to mention earlier. So as a. As a basic tool, and I know that this may be a little abstract for some, and then it’s going to be super on point for others when we feel feelings in our body. I guess because I have the ability with clairvoyant sight, I’ve been watching people and helping people to transform for, like I said, for 23 years. Really early on, in the first year or two, I realized with my vision that people all do the same, like, metabolic process with releasing things, even if they’re thinking different things. Like, ultimately it’s all the same. So I’ll just distill that out really quickly because having a frame for how our energetic sense actually in our emotional processing works optimally can be a really helpful frame.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:04:39]:
So what I’ve noticed is that even if people talk about grounding or a sense of surrendering something to the earth, whether they’re thinking about their heart or whatever it is that they’re thinking, the pain the muck, the things that aren’t them, the things that are not ideal always leave. Up and out, up and out. And when people are having pain, it’s. It literally so. Because energy is not abstract, right? Like, a lot of people think it’s sort of metaphysical or like, I, I think of it like I’m sort of like working inside of like a. Like no heavy equipment in certain ways, but like almost like moving gravel around. Like, if I can just get this. This stuff, like this boulder kind of like made down into smaller rock, and then it can move up and out, then that’s like, it’s as.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:05:23]:
It’s as tangible as that for me.

Nick Urban [01:05:25]:
Let’s walk through an example.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:05:26]:
Okay?

Nick Urban [01:05:26]:
Same thing. Feeling anger. Right now. I feel it. It’s in my chest and it’s rising up to my, say, throat. You’re saying that I would imagine the anger going up my body further and then out.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:05:38]:
Kind of what ends up happening is that that’s what happens. But the way that I like people to do this, because otherwise what can happen is it can actually make it worse. If you try to. Thing is also imagine that you’re standing inside of a vertical pipe, okay? So in one way, I’m a plumber. So right now, if you’re having anger and it’s in your chest and throat, then what that means is that the size of the pipe you’re standing in, your energy pipe is smaller than the size of the rock. Okay? So luckily in energy pipes, we can change the size of the pipe just by deciding, right? It’s easier than physical plumbing pipes. So that’s good. So we can’t force, we can’t make.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:06:17]:
What we do is we actually relax. We can soften through our tailbone, which sends a signal through the entire. Yeah, great. It sends a signal through the entire nervous system because you’re standing. You actually had a wobble when you did that. That’s a very real neurophysiological change that you just tracked, right? So now your body is receptive and it’s already automatically releasing anything that’s in this area. But especially if you just say, it’s okay, I’ll be with you right now. Like, I’m gonna just feel this anger, right? Maybe it only takes 10 seconds in this really open.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:06:48]:
We were talking about this in neurology earlier. You’re basically moving your.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:06:52]:
Your.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:06:53]:
Your whole. Your whole system, your neurology, your biology, your energetic system into a place of alignment. And then that pipe automatically widens because you’ve asked it to, because You’ve brought calm to your body by shifting your tailbone by you, by your presencing yourself and allowing yourself to take the time and the space to feel the anger, right? So then, boom, it’s already lifting up. And when we know that the pipe is big enough is there’s no more pain with it, there’s no more, there’s no more like actual anger feeling to it. And if we sit with it long enough, then it’s almost like a feeling of a layer, a smudge of energy over us. Like a kind of like an icky, darker thought form leaves and we actually come back into optimism because on the other side of pain, grief, sorrow is joy. And it’s an equal amount. So the deeper the pain, the more opportunity for the joy.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:07:52]:
But if we keep the pipe tight and we stay in our heads and we tell ourselves a bunch of lies and we don’t realize how much power we have, then we never actually expand that to be able to have that transmutation happen. But it’s very easy. It’s actually super simple. And, you know, for those that are like, what are we talking about? Just pretend, pretend you’re five years old. Listen to what I said. Just give it a try. And for those of you that are, you know, like fist pumping out there, like, yes, this is awesome, try it. Because, you know, the whole on breath, practice is a.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:08:23]:
It’s related to this in certain ways because it works with energy anatomy. But when we start to really not just take control of our, of our biology in terms of like the, like, let’s say the biochemistry, right? Or in terms of nootropics or in terms of lifestyle, but when we recognize ourselves as these incredible multidimensional beings that can’t be contained or understood in any of those ways, and we start to work with our energy anatomy that we’ve never worked out before. And it’s just been over there atrophied, like hoping that maybe we would like do some bicep curls with that energy anatomy, right? But we haven’t been. As soon as we start to utilize it, we realize how much power we actually have. So, yes, in addition to all of these things, we could do stuff like neurofeedback therapy, which I highly recommend, obviously, but I want to be able to empower people with point of view about remembering the truth, coming down to these basics, and then also just remembering that we have this whole energy anatomy which I think fast forward 10 years from now, we’re going to be like, duh, that was like the Dumbest thing, that we didn’t put all that together, that we ostracized people who talked about it. I think that that’s going to be where we’re at. And for right now, we can just take risks. Because if you’re at home, if we’re on this podcast talking and I’m like, just imagine a pipe.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:09:38]:
Like, you’re not going to hurt anybody.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:09:39]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:09:40]:
Like the worst case scenario, you’ve, quote, wasted a few minutes. But the best case scenario, maybe you just go ahead and learn a whole new way of being.

Nick Urban [01:09:47]:
You’re optimistic to think that’s going to come in 10 years or less. I think it’ll take a little longer than that, but yeah, I’m with you. Could be we’ll start to wrap this one up. Before we do, I want to dig into what you were just saying a minute ago, because that’s also a fascination of mine. And I’m curious what you guys have found effective at Holon for the biochemistry and or nootropic side of things to enhance the adaptation process. Do you guys use anything that you can talk about?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:10:17]:
Oh, yeah. As far as like supplements and things like that, we have a. We have actually a huge supplement protocol that is our standard protocol that we then modify for folks depending on what they have going on, often in terms of adding to making sure that gut health is really much more optimized, for instance. But I would say that some, some, there’s. There’s so many. There’s a particular brand of glutamine that was. That we really love by integrative therapeutics that is called glutamine Forte. That one’s amazing.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:10:50]:
We also, you know, we FL found a lot of evidence recently for creatine and added that in.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:10:57]:
Right.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:10:57]:
So that’s a fun one. I mean, it’s all the, in some ways, it’s probably all the same things that you’re aware of. You know what I mean? Like it’s going to be the epa, dha, vitamin D, zinc, making sure that we’ve got good magnesium. We do magnesium, threonate and magnesium. Well, we do different ones, usually glycinate, but making sure that to cover that 3 and 8, because that often doesn’t get covered. Let’s see.

Nick Urban [01:11:26]:
Do you add any specific nootropics into the mix, though?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:11:31]:
Well, I mean, I’m guess based on your backgrounds.

Nick Urban [01:11:35]:
Okay, I was. Based on your backgrounds, you probably use Chinese herbs.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:11:40]:
That’s what I was going to say. Yeah, for sure.

Nick Urban [01:11:42]:
You mix. You mix. You mix the Chinese herbs. With the rams.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:11:46]:
Yeah, when we can get our hands on rams, which is a silly thing because they’re often very hard to get because they’re so effective that they would probably replace a lot of the pharmacology out there for mental health.

Nick Urban [01:11:58]:
Any of them in particular, because also there’s like a bunch of them. And for example, phenylpiracetam is really good for physical performance, but I’m not sure you want to use that before a brain training session.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:12:11]:
Yeah, I can’t speak too in depth on that, but I don’t think so either. Based on what I do know, I think that, you know, probably the paracetam would be kind of the go to if we’re going to talk about racetams and then definitely Chinese herbs. So, Dr. Drew, you know, we’re both. Our doctorate covers a heavy amount of like massive studies in Chinese herbs and the application of them and in all the different ways. But he took that to a different level by learning, you know, how it really impacts the biochemistry and the neurology. And so he has some formulas that he’s put together of things that have had clinical proof, like the individual ingredients have been shown in studies to boost, you know, growth factors, you know, dendritic connection, you know, times and all of that. So those are really.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:13:01]:
They’re complex formulas with like 14 different ingredients. So I can’t tell you the, like, the one thing.

Nick Urban [01:13:07]:
Do you guys use functional adaptogenic mushrooms at all or like the other type that are probably. Maybe you don’t want to mention them on the show if you do.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:13:15]:
We don’t get into psychedelic mushrooms only because we have too many other things we do and it’s better to keep the lines clean. But that’s not to say that we don’t believe that they have an amazing place, because they do. But inside of our practice, what we do prescribe is Lion’s Mane. And we actually have a specific one that we really like, which is the Lifecycle brand. It’s an Australian company. By the way, these brands that I’m promoting, I don’t get any kickbacks for it. That’s not what we’re about. We just know that if people take Life’s My Life Cycle brand, Lion’s Mane, and it’s cycle with a Y, that often the first night they have lucid dreaming and they have a paper that was published from that particular product on in boosting rem.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:14:03]:
But we also just feel like it’s helpful in ways that probably we don’t have a lot of data for, but we’re seeing it clinically and it’s pretty consistent, so. So lion’s mane is really safe for most people, obviously. So racetams maybe not.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:14:18]:
Right?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:14:18]:
I don’t know if I can say that everybody should go for piracetam. I definitely can’t take it at a normal dose, but yeah, lion’s maneuvered herb. So I feel pretty good about talking about it here for sure. Especially because it’s so amazing.

Nick Urban [01:14:32]:
Well, Dr. Amy, if people have made it this far, any parting words of wisdom or things you want to leave them with?

Dr. Amy Albright [01:14:40]:
Yeah, I think just to echo kind of what’s been said a few times already, we’re more than what we think we are. And no matter how smart we are with our mind, there’s something beyond. And so we can work with the brain and we can work with the body, but to be sure to incorporate this spiritual self, this soul self, the subconscious mind, whatever it is, however, that, however it is that we make meaning beyond the logic, let’s make sure to lean into that because I think that’s where the real, the real miracles are. That’s the undiscovered turf that we’re all wanting to collectively lean into right now.

Nick Urban [01:15:14]:
If people want to work with you to join one of your intensives or to follow along, how do they find you online? Shout out your platforms.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:15:26]:
Yeah, you know, thus far we have a website, holonexperience.com I have a very out of date YouTube and Instagram, which I’m hoping to quickly update. I’ve spent so much time focused on the people that I haven’t been necessarily great at promoting, honestly, but we have actually. I’ve got a decent catalog of other podcasts and free information. And like I said, the Holon Breath Practice is a free download on our website. So that’s something as well that people should definitely check out. That by itself will change people’s lives if they practice it. Practicing it, eyes open as they move through their day and eyes closed for just even a few minutes a day will change people’s lives.

Nick Urban [01:16:07]:
I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Dr. Amy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It’s been a blast chatting with you and discovering the unseen and the seen realms that you play in.

Dr. Amy Albright [01:16:19]:
Yeah, thank you. It’s been awesome, Nick, I appreciate it.

Nick Urban [01:16:23]:
Thanks for tuning in to high performance longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.