Nervous System Regulation: Why Capacity Beats Calm

Nick Urban [00:00:01]:
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. We’re taught that our nervous system exists to protect us. My guest today says that that’s backwards. He says it’s your body’s energy manager, deciding where your fuel goes every second of the day.

Nick Urban [00:01:06]:
Cameron Allen has spent 16 years in brain imaging and nervous system training. He founded a company called NeuroProgeny. He co-founded a brain health clinic in Asheville, and he builds tools that measure your nervous system and then train it. Cameron, welcome to the show.

Cameron Allen [00:01:23]:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m glad to be here today, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:01:26]:
Glad to have you. You were telling me offline a minute ago, and we didn’t get to go into the details of what your work has found so far when it comes to the nervous system and neurobiology, as someone goes through different life stages, say premenopause to menopause, what are you finding is actually changing?

Cameron Allen [00:01:46]:
That’s a great question. You know, there’s, there’s so many different layers to it. And I think the easiest way to break it down is that when we look at, you know, the nervous system, as you mentioned in the intro there, that the nervous system, certainly part of its job is to protect us and all of that, but more so not just from, not on a safety level, it’s about protecting our resources. And so as part of that job, our brain is wired to predict what’s next. And if our baseline, which is generally about 4 minutes to 15 minutes, and then some long-term memory brought into that, if there’s a difference between what we experienced between 4 and 15 minutes ago compared to now, then our brain says, wait a minute, I don’t know what’s coming. And it actually starts, the amygdala kicks up and says, nope, something’s coming. It’s unsafe. Things are going to go sideways.

Cameron Allen [00:02:40]:
And so our brain comes up with all kinds of scenarios and predictions. So why is that important when we’re looking at perimenopause and menopause? Well, you know, let’s just take the 2 dominant chemicals, hormones that are shifting of progesterone and estrogen. And in perimenopause, now we’re getting this wild flux fluctuation in the estrogen signaling. Estrogen is involved in energy production. It actually helps convert the glucose into energy that the brain can use. So when that is swinging more wildly, Energy reserves are now swinging more wildly. It also is directly connected with turning up or down the volume on our neurotransmitters. So if you’re used to, you know, a certain level of dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, norepinephrine, all of these things that allow you to learn, to focus, to have memory, to pay attention, and all of that drops back, now the brain is scrambling and saying, wait a minute, what’s there? I’m missing something right now.

Cameron Allen [00:03:42]:
And then on top of that, estrogen is so closely linked with oxytocin signaling and oxytocin is all about how do we connect with ourselves? How do we connect with others? Bonding, connection, love, all of these things. And when that shifts, now I’ve lost access to myself. I don’t trust myself nearly as much. I don’t trust my experience. And so now we’ve got essentially our energy levels drop or a woman’s energy levels drop. Then I have… they’ve lost access to feeling grounded and connected. And then the mind now is saying, wait, I can’t even predict what’s coming next. So now we’ve just turned the noise up on all of the thinking, the processing, the rumination, the internal narratives, trying to figure out what’s coming next.

Cameron Allen [00:04:31]:
So resources drop, the kind of the figuring it out resources amp up, and now Everything just feels like a fog. And so that’s where, you know, a lot of the emotional reactivity can come up. Memory, walking into another room and forgetting why they walked into the other room. And I hear this from so many of the women that I work with of just, I feel like I’ve lost access to myself. And all of it makes perfect sense when we look at the chemistry that shifts, that it really is this wild experience. And And so, you know, a lot of those fundamental resources are shifting. And on top of that, there’s not a ton of really good information out there to say that there’s anything other than hormones to actually, you know, provide a solution. But the cool thing is, is that the nervous system is a backup system that when you strengthen the nervous system, it acts on this little part of the brain called the hypothalamus that is, you know, directly connected to the estrogen cycling, but when that quiets down by increasing vagal nerve tone, you actually can activate the hypothalamus in a similar way that creates that oxytocin that helps to actually calm down a lot of the internal looping.

Cameron Allen [00:05:51]:
And because the brain operates on whatever screams the loudest wins, as that comes down, even if the other resources are a little bit more muted during this initial time period of going through perimenopause and menopause, now they can still be the dominant signal, then individuals can feel that reconnection with themselves and can have access to themselves and their resources in a very different way. So I think it’s so important to kind of look at the fact that there is this backup system and that there are some other ways to approach kind of what’s happening during that time period when it is so uncertain and there’s not a lot of great answers.

Nick Urban [00:06:29]:
The traditional approach when it comes to menopause, perimenopause, premenopause, or even the male equivalent, andropause, is just to administer hormones. And like, of course, all like the traditional classic lifestyle things that people know of, but like the bioidentical hormone replacement is where most people go. They usually notice some kind of relief. But what it sounds like you’re saying is that the nervous system is kind of like a central banker. And so it’s deciding what departments, what companies, what areas of the body get resources. And one of those departments might be your neurotransmitters. So, if you artificially override your neurotransmitters or neurohormones or hormones by administering it exogenously, what happens there? Is it as effective? What’s the difference?

Cameron Allen [00:07:16]:
That’s a great question. And there’s so much variation for each individual. And overall, I think bioidentical hormones are fantastic. I think that, you know, some of the pellets that they’re using now that are actually embedded and are injected under the, in kind of intramuscular that those really create a very stable baseline for up to about 6 months at a time for a lot of folks. And then there’s others that, you know, are bioidentical or not quite bioidentical that the body ends up converting to a lot of other kind of hormone parallels. And so some other pieces that actually end up being kind of more difficult for the body to assimilate, to use, or create adverse reactions. And so I think that it’s really so individualized. And I want to say that I’m a proponent.

Cameron Allen [00:08:09]:
I think that using, you know, using bioidentical hormones for the right person and for the right purpose is fantastic. It’s incredible how many folks that I work with that both men and women who, you know, whether it’s because they are post-cancer treatment or in the middle of cancer treatment and hormones are actually going to disturb the treatment or due to, you know, just barrier of cost for, I mean, when you think about it, it can be thousands of dollars a year to be able to kind of maintain a lot of the hormonal cycle. And so I think there’s so many good things that can happen with that. But then if your body does end up, you know, taking some of the testosterone and converting it to estradiol and you’re not sure why that’s happening. And so you’re just continuing to increase the dose of testosterone, that estradiol is going to come way up. And now there’s going to be kind of the physiological changes that come with that, the emotional changes that come with that, the cognitive performance that comes with that. But in general, it’s amazing to see that those sex hormones play such a huge role on our focus, attention, ability for emotional regulation, for our ability for memory and just in general to be able to stay in more of a regulated state. And we, we grow so accustomed to that being the primary thing that’s modulating and actually regulating our system that when they come out of our system, we haven’t spent a ton of time throughout our life actually managing and building and strengthening our nervous system.

Cameron Allen [00:09:59]:
And so that’s where, you know, if we think about it from an evolutionary standpoint and we didn’t have access to all of these hormones, like what people do back in the day? Like, how did people age gracefully into a time period? And what did falling hormones actually provide in somebody’s system? And as the volume kind of turned down on all of the hormones, and now we’re sitting with a lot of the discomfort, we’re sitting with a lot of the emotions, we’re not able to white-knuckle our way through or power through. Now it’s really like, What did we actually learn to process, to deal with, to handle? What did we use for willpower to actually overcome circumstances in our life? How strengthened was our kind of ventral medial anterior cingulate for willpower and for our ability to kind of push through? And then the other thing that comes up is when our, when hormones drop back later on in life, that’s a really good time for us to move into self-reflection. To move into what were the lessons of life rather than figuring it out in this moment, reflecting back on what actually worked and moving from a place of knowledge and a place of performance into grounded wisdom. And so there’s this balance that I hold, and this is just my personal preference around it, that there is something around that where naturally moving into utilizing the resources that our nervous system has, strengthening what’s there, bringing about and kind of increased nervous system capacity to hold more rather than tolerating life. How do we actually have more capacity for the life we want to build and choose? And it’s interesting for most people that as the hormones dip, this is also a time in life where it’s like, I’m not willing to tolerate or to accept a life that I’m not choosing. Up until that point, so many people can rationalize and justify why they’ve continued to live the life and to tolerate the crap that they’ve tolerated in life. But then they’re finally ready to say, uh-uh, no, I can’t keep on deluding myself into thinking that one day the conditions are going to be met. I will be able to travel when, or I could do this thing, or I could be myself, but this thing needs to be met first.

Cameron Allen [00:12:25]:
And instead, getting to that place where they’re just ready for it now, and let’s go ahead and address that. Find the life you want, your purpose, what you want to actually use these hormones for, use this nervous system for, and do that now. And I think that’s the piece that so many people are like and start feeling discomfort and they stop at the, what’s going to fix this discomfort? What’s going to allow me to perform? But why the hell do you want to perform? What are you actually moving towards that is authentically in alignment with who you are, in alignment with what you want to create in this world and do that. And so many people haven’t stopped to even figure that out because they’re just caught up in the overwhelm or just kind of rolling with what life is throwing at them. So long-winded rant for, for a great question.

Nick Urban [00:13:21]:
So if we merge the post-hormone fluctuations and the pre-hormone fluctuations, those 2 worlds, Either way, it sounds like they’re going to be experiencing benefits from working on the ability to understand the nervous system and work on the nervous system. However you want to define that, perhaps nervous system regulation, perhaps more. And even if you’re younger, let’s say if your hypothalamus and brain and body knows how to best divert resources, best allocate energy, perhaps you’ll see hormonal improvements there, but perhaps you’ll see More clarity on life decisions, other areas that matter to you. So what is the gamut of possibilities that people experience when they start deciding that nervous system work is worth it?

Cameron Allen [00:14:09]:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, when we think about if our nervous system is in a place of regulation, and I think it’s important to define a little bit of what that means as we, as we talk about this, because nervous system regulation doesn’t mean calm. It doesn’t mean that everything in life is easy. It doesn’t mean that we’re unaffected. Actually, nervous system regulation at its essence just means that when life happens, when things come up, we have shock absorbers. We have higher heart rate variability, which is really just the idea that, you know, if you’re in a car, you’re riding down the road and your shocks are blown out, you’re going to feel every vibration, every bump, every pothole, and you get out of the car. car and you’re aching and your, your, your back feels like it’s broken from the ride, or you got great shock absorbers, you’ve had high heart rate variability, your LF/HF ratio has more ability to fluctuate so you can shift between the thinking, ruminating mind into intuition and felt sense and then back into analysis.

Nick Urban [00:15:22]:
People have probably heard of heart rate variability at this point. I’ve talked about it many, many times. They haven’t heard about the LF/HF ratio that you were just talking about. What is that?

Cameron Allen [00:15:31]:
Yeah. So the best way to think about that is really just the idea that how much time are you spending in your cognitive mind, in your thinking mind, or in your ruminating mind? And so this is when we’re attached to an idea. If I say that I really want some chocolate ice cream, now my brain is sitting there saying, any moment that I’m not getting chocolate ice cream is a problem. I am attached and anything other than what I said I want is now a judgment. And it’s saying, this is no longer good enough. This circumstance, this event that I’m in right now is not good enough because the distance between what I want and what I have is telling me that I can’t have the dopamine that I’m looking for. And every time that happens, that ends up… we get the expectation for dopamine. When I say I want chocolate ice cream, great.

Cameron Allen [00:16:21]:
There’s this hope. There’s this like, yes, I’m going to get it. That comes up, lasts for roughly 90 seconds, then it bottoms out into norepinephrine, adrenaline, and cortisol. What that does is it spikes the signaling to your body saying something’s wrong. Your body sends a signal back to your brain saying, I don’t know what it is. I’m not feeling anything. Your brain says, oh shoot, something’s missing and I don’t even know what it is. Now I really have to worry about this.

Cameron Allen [00:16:46]:
And it spikes a second thought loop. And so now I’m thinking I want chocolate ice cream and I can’t have it. And I’m thinking about, I don’t know what I’m not, what I’m missing in my body. And then the next signal, the next signal. So The LF/HF ratio is how much time are you recycling thoughts and spiking that norepinephrine, adrenaline, and cortisol versus dropping into your body, being able to access your enteric nervous system, the hundreds of millions of neurons in your gut, and actually noticing what is actually there. If I said I would like some chocolate ice cream, I wonder If I could get some chocolate ice cream. Now, I didn’t say I have to have chocolate ice cream, so I didn’t close the loop. I didn’t go into a judgment in my mind.

Cameron Allen [00:17:35]:
I actually just said, I’m open to the intention that if chocolate ice cream shows up in my life, I will eat that. And so now I’m actually feeling my experience with intention, but I’m not going through the pass-fail judgment of I either have it or I don’t. And so LF/HF ratio. is basically, am I in that closed-loop system of my mind or that open-loop system of trusting my body’s ability to respond to when opportunity presents itself to me? And so that is a metric that is well underused when we look at heart rate variability. I mean, there’s 20-plus metrics. Yeah. And the main one we look at is heart rate variability. But heart rate variability is fascinating because it can be very, very high.

Cameron Allen [00:18:25]:
While we’re in an intense stress state. And when we drop into a parasympathetic state and we’re in a rest-digest state, it plummets because our nervous system is fragile when we’re in a relaxed state most of the time, because most of us feel like we’re going to get caught off guard. Something’s going to come at us. Something’s going to get us when we’re not looking. And so if we stay more in a place of alertness and we’re watching for just a few possibilities, That feels warm and cozy. We can go ahead and stay there and we can actually have a lot of resilience in that state. But when we’re working in the virtual reality biofeedback, we’re training both the… to lower that LF/HF ratio initially while increasing heart rate variability. And then it’s about state shifting because there are times you want to be in a cognitive analytical mind.

Cameron Allen [00:19:15]:
Then there’s times where you need to drop back and just trust and have faith and humility and know that your nervous system’s got you and that you’re covered no matter what comes at you. And that is authentic capacity. And so when we have that authentic capacity, that is more of what I think people are referring to as nervous system regulation. That’s that desired state where the life can be coming at you and it can bounce off and you get to choose what you want to pick up, what you want to do. There’s a woman that I worked with who, incredible lady, ran a whole bunch of nonprofits and for-profit companies and She got to the place where she had experienced a lot of intense stress. There was a natural disaster here when Helene came through and flooded western North Carolina, and she was involved in a lot of the recovery work. And, and it just got to a point where she was like, I’m juggling 10 balls and I’m dropping them all the time. And I’m just constantly beating myself up for not being able to keep up the way that I used to.

Cameron Allen [00:20:21]:
And she’d been a practicing Buddhist for 40 years, meditation, everything else, and just could not drop back into her body. And after about 7 to 10 sessions of doing the virtual reality biofeedback, she was able to come into one of our calls and she’s like, you know what? All the balls are laying on a table now. I can pick the one up that I want, look at it, do what I want with it, put it back down, pick the next one up. And she said, I’ve never been more productive in my life. I’ve never had so much energy and I’m not beating myself up all the time. And so that space, that spaciousness that comes from capacity is really the regulation I think that a lot of people are looking for. And so going back to your question around like, how does this interplay? That if we’re able to be in that place of capacity and our default mode network is not in a place of constantly ruminating, releasing a bunch of norepinephrine and re-causing the stress cycle, well, now we’re not burning through our hormones. And the more stress we have, the faster we burn through our hormones.

Cameron Allen [00:21:25]:
The more stress we have, the faster we burn through our acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is that thing that helps us keep our, our kind of vagal cap on our heart rate. So if our heart rate normally without any vagal nerve tone is going to run at 100 to 110 beats per minute, and we’re going to be in this very activated state, acetylcholine is the thing that comes in and says, yep, All right, let’s put the cap back on. And it allows us to calm our heart rate back down. It allows us to slow back down and gain perspective. We no longer have to stay in that cortisol, norepinephrine, adrenaline state where our prefrontal cortex goes offline, our memory systems are being damaged, our, you know, our overall focus is far more sustainable. And then the other downstream effect of this is if we can drop into that parasympathetic nervous system state because we have more capacity, more perspective, we see more opportunities rather than having to just force and effort things in our life. Now we’re no longer dropping all of that chemistry into our body that’s saying, go into locked-on activated mode, mobilize all the muscles for defense, build the lactic acid up in our system, create acidity in our gut that actually causes our stomach lining to degrade over time and ends up causing us to not be able to make those micronutrients in our gut Bioavailable to turn them into neurotransmitters that then actually give the resources to our brain.

Cameron Allen [00:22:56]:
So when we look at this whole concept of going into having a switch over from nervous system regulation to having nervous system capacity, that, that allows the whole body to go into that rest digest. It allows the gut to have the opportunity to heal. It allows the nervous system, or pardon, the body to come out of that acidic state. And it also allows us to stop Resignaling all of the norepinephrine receptors in our body that actually go into creating cells that are built off of stress chemicals, which research shows downstream ends up mutating more frequently than cells that are built by oxytocin and by some of the other peptides of kind of these more rest-digest chemicals. So if we’ve got more cellular mutation, there is a correlation with higher cancer rates, all of that kind of thing. So Really the whole nervous system regulation thing has far-reaching effects throughout our entire body and entire life.

Nick Urban [00:24:01]:
Hmm. I find it interesting, helpful as a reminder that when you think certain things, that’s able to cause different biological cascades. For example, you think something that’s stressful and all of a sudden you’re burning through your acetylcholine faster. You’re also increasing levels of the stress hormones, noradrenaline, norepinephrine. What was the other one? Cortisol, perhaps, things like that. And that is literally just having a thought and that thought turns into a biological response that impairs your body from doing, living in balance.

Cameron Allen [00:24:34]:
Yes. I mean, it’s wild. If you think about those stress chemicals only last in your system roughly for about 4 minutes at a time. But if you’re driving down the street you slam on your brakes, nearly hit somebody, and you feel that flood of chemistry through your body, you feel the adrenaline start pumping, or you’re in an interpersonal relationship with your significant other and you get into a big fight and you argue, that you get that same dump through your whole body, slightly different feeling, but same dump through your body. Why is it that it doesn’t just purge out of your system in 4 minutes? And that’s like you said, because now your mind is replaying the scenario, re-releasing that chemical constantly. And the crazy thing is that it ends up releasing dopamine every time we replay that chemistry and we replay that story. And in our nucleus accumbens, the kind of reward circuitry of our brain, we’ve got this sausage-shaped thing and the outside’s packed with dopamine. The inside has a whole bunch of glutamate.

Cameron Allen [00:25:39]:
And so glutamate is really the addictive thing. Glutamate is a thing that actually tells us, you know, it’s involved in perception and learning. And so the more dopamine we release, the more that thing says, yeah, do that thing again. That’s going to keep you alive. And so every time we have a loop and we get dopamine for that cognitive loop or replaying the scenario in our mind, now we get that dopamine, then the glutamate says, yes, do that again. And then our amygdala says, that’s the thing that’s going to keep me alive for the next 4 seconds. And so then we end up telling our anterior cingulate and our default mode network, yeah, keep playing these loops over and over again, even though we know cognitively it causes stress in our system. But that’s where we get so addicted to it because we have this perceived sense of safety.

Cameron Allen [00:26:27]:
And if we stop hyperthinking and hyperanalyzing, We could die. Our amygdala is sitting there saying, what’s going to keep you alive for the next 4 seconds? And so it’s very… our survival, or our belief that our survival is so attached to trying to control that we end up buying into the narrative of these thoughts in the movie theater of our mind rather than just being able to watch it on the screen and let it go.

Nick Urban [00:26:52]:
Yeah, we’ll double-click into that in a minute. But something that you said earlier stuck with me, and that is that When your brain has an expectation, oh, I want the ice cream, I’m going to get the ice cream. And then a little bit of time goes by, say 90 seconds, was it? Then you don’t get that. And as a result, you have that, you had the peak and then you have the trough. And in that valley you have right there that you have a little bump in stress hormones. Is that what you said?

Cameron Allen [00:27:15]:
That’s right. So for as high as the peak is, equally will be the trough. And so in that trough, you’ve got your norepinephrine, your cortisol, your adrenaline, a number of other parallel chemicals that end up activating and cause loneliness, isolation, sadness, guilt, shame. All of those chemistry, all those chemicals that are released end up being paired oftentimes with those particular emotional experiences. And so it’s really interesting that when you think about, and just to use a much larger example, that when we have that expectation and we get that dopamine, it’s not terribly different than when we experience a craving for a substance. And, you know, the idea of going out and drinking one night, nothing wrong with that necessarily. For some people that works out fine. Other people not necessarily so well.

Cameron Allen [00:28:17]:
But having that increased spike, it’s kind of borrowing joy from tomorrow. And that spike happens. And then as that chemistry comes out of your system, there’s the like, what did I say in that conversation? What happened last night? What, how did I behave? How did I show up? There’s all of that kind of self-analysis and self-judgment that comes, not because necessarily even did anything wrong, but just because in that trough, all of a sudden introspection comes in and self-judgment comes up because we’re depleted in our, our a lot of our serotonin’s blocked. A lot of our other chemistry that’s involved in confidence and kind of knowing ourselves ends up being suppressed in the trough. So even if it’s just kind of a micro expectation, like I want this chocolate ice cream, I should have this chocolate ice cream. And then I get into that trough and I don’t have it. I’m going to feel a little bit agitated. I’m going to feel a little bit annoyed.

Cameron Allen [00:29:21]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:29:21]:
Is that a problem though? Because if you were to imagine that like every time your brain expects or wants something and it doesn’t get it, that like that’s going to happen in life. And conversely, if you get everything, so you get the ice cream and you want a Twinkie after that, then you want something else. You want a Big Mac. If you get all these things, it’s not conducive to your overall health. And even if you’re blunt, you’re keeping the stress response blunted. That’s not going to be overall a good outcome.

Cameron Allen [00:29:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think it really comes back to some of what we were talking about earlier. Like, I don’t, I believe firmly in life. There’s actually a Bible verse that I like a whole lot that’s in 2 Thessalonians that says, you know, everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. And so there’s this idea that You can do, and you can pick your adventure in life, choose your own adventure. When we think about what a meaningful life is for each of us, I think it comes back more to really anchoring into what are your core values? What do you want to experience? And if something that you really want to experience is going after a lot of novel things, a lot of new things, And constantly going into what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. That is fantastic.

Cameron Allen [00:30:47]:
Do it. See how that turns out. And the more we stay in that place where we’re in phasic dopamine, so we’re in that oscillating dopamine, that’s cool. But because we’re increasing the dopamine so frequently, increasing the stress chemicals so frequently, we’re actually creating a neurotoxin that’s burning through our resources that’s not sustainable over time. And so when that happens, eventually we move towards burnout. And when we hit burnout, then what resources do we have? We can rely on hate as a motivator, fear as a motivator, anger as a motivator. We can rely on kind of all of these other things that do come out of a burnout state and a depleted state. Or there’s this other path where we can actually raise the tonic dopamine.

Cameron Allen [00:31:43]:
And so raising the Tonic dopamine means that we’ve got a bunch of motivation. We’ve got a bunch of curiosity, a bunch of excitement. We can go out and test and try and figure out all kinds of new things. We can be an adventurer. But in order for us to actually raise that tonic dopamine state, that’s where we’re operating out of these core values. We’re operating out of being in alignment with our gut, with our enteric nervous system. And when we have our brain and our body having a positive feedback loop, and we’re coming from that place of really our chosen values, then we’re releasing oxytocin. And oxytocin actually modifies those receptor sites in the phasic dopamine system that actually allow those signals to be a little bit more muted.

Cameron Allen [00:32:36]:
And phasic dopamine oftentimes is associated with kind of, you know, Towards and away type of behaviors. So I’m feeling something I don’t want to feel. So I’m going to move towards this shiny object. Now that shiny object wasn’t as shiny as I thought it was going to be. And so now, as soon as it depleted, I’m back into feeling like shit and I’m back into feeling low. I’m back into feeling angry or isolated or depressed or sad or less than or not good enough, not worthy. And then I go back and I try and get dopamine again. I isolate, I use a substance, I control somebody, I go into hyperanalysis.

Cameron Allen [00:33:19]:
I do all of these things that try to give me that dopamine again, but then I’m burnt again and I come back in. But if we actually move towards something that’s authentically in alignment with who we are as a person, and so thinking about like, As a super simple and often so simple it’s dismissed type of an experience. Think about when you are at your best, when you are authentically like, yes, this is me. This is who I want to be every single day of my life. What are those 3 primary descriptors? What are those 3 primary words that you feel that are authentically you? And so if you do that for just a second, you think, okay, for me personally, As an aging man at this point, I am, I, you know, I value deeply curiosity, adventure, and empathy. Mm-hmm. That if those things are, and I am showing up with those as my primary every single day, then I can feel that warmth down through my system. I feel that deep connection.

Cameron Allen [00:34:31]:
And that is oxytocin, that feeling that you have when you think, think about those 3 descriptors. That is really who you are. And if you make a decision to say, you know what, I want chocolate ice cream and I’m holding on to that feeling. And I could say, you know, I’d really like chocolate ice cream. That feeling can stay. If I say I need that chocolate ice cream or else, that feeling goes away. A more powerful example of the contrast of this is if you think about those descriptors of yourself and pick them for yourself, and then you think about, okay, I’m with somebody I really care about. I’m in alignment.

Cameron Allen [00:35:12]:
And now I just lied to that person. Notice what just happened in your nervous system, even though, again, not real, our mind just believed it and spiked an emotional response. And most everybody just probably felt a little bit more cold run through their body or felt a little bit more emptiness. Again, not even true, but your brain bought it before your mind could catch up. And so that is the type of thing that when we are living in alignment and we are aware of that interoceptive capacity that we have in our nervous system, we know if we’re on the right path. So going back to your question, no, there is nothing wrong with seeking things that are exciting. But if you can seek those exciting things and still feel that alignment in your system, you’re totally on your path. Do it.

Cameron Allen [00:36:01]:
The moment that you have to start rationalizing and being like, no, I’m not feeling it, but it’ll be okay because when I get there, that feeling’s going to come back. No, it’s not the way our journeys work.

Nick Urban [00:36:13]:
Yeah. So raising the baseline, I agree. It’s a really important thing to do and it really, it’s hard to understate the benefits of it. For someone who’s in the break glass in case of emergency kind of situation where it’s like, hey, you’re asking them to dedicate X amount of time when they’re already struggling, they’re already burnt out. That’s really difficult for them. They can’t think of the descriptors because they’re not in a place where it comes to them. How do you recommend that they approach it in that case?

Cameron Allen [00:36:42]:
Yeah. So I find it’s interesting that with pretty much everybody that I work with, That when we drop in and we look for those descriptors, they can feel the descriptors initially, but very quickly they end up going to, yeah, but I couldn’t do this if I was on my own. I couldn’t do this unless other, but except for the fact that you’re leading me through this, or, or they feel it and then they go into the paradoxical effect of, but I don’t deserve this. And so then they feel uncomfortable because they felt some level of groundedness. So So when we’re in that type of nervous system place, I think, you know, there’s, there is a lot to, there’s a lot to look at there that when we are saying, I don’t have enough time in my day to do this thing, I think it’s important to recognize the neuroscience that that is your executive network in your brain basically saying, I need to act busy. I need to perceive that I’m busy in order to feel like I’m making forward movement so that I don’t have to sit with the discomfort of feeling out of control within my nervous system. Or, you know, the other piece of it is when we’re starting to say, I’ll do, I will do this type of work when, you know, these conditions are met, when my kids are out of the house, when I’m done with this project, when I’m done with this time period of my life. That’s really a strong indicator of both the salience network, the area of your brain that’s spotlighting evidence for what you believe, and your default mode network working together to say, no, if I can come up with a really good excuse for why I’m not doing this work right now, then I’m not likely going to fail at it.

Cameron Allen [00:38:38]:
And so I can rationalize my way out of having to commit to that. And then And the salience network and the reticular activating system, part of the similar network, that area of your brain that’s, you know, you buy a new car, you learn a new word, and you see that car everywhere. You see that word everywhere. That now your brain is going to say, hey, default mode network, I got you. I’m going to come up with evidence in my world to only look for reasons why you can’t change. Because Because if we change, that is uncertain. We can sit in the discomfort that we know and feel so much happier and so much more capable and like everything’s going to be fine, even though we know it sucks. We stay in crappy relationships for how long? Because the fear of getting out of it and the unknown is more uncomfortable than what we’re sitting in every single day.

Nick Urban [00:39:33]:
Hmm.

Cameron Allen [00:39:35]:
When we’re at that point, I think it gets to a place where you got to go a little bit deeper and you end up having to kind of drop into a little bit more faith that if you don’t have 7 to 10 minutes a day to do a virtual reality biofeedback program that over 21 days shifts your brain by 78% on average, then, you know, cool, don’t do it. And then if it’s going to add more stress to your life, don’t do it. But if you want to do something a little bit more simple, now you have to replace, you know, the fear with faith and drop in and say, okay, I am going to look for 3 wins for today, 3 things that I want to experience today. So I want to experience sunshine on my face. I want to experience, you know, for my, in my case, I want to see my kiddos laugh today. I want to have a really good conversation and feel connected to somebody today. Cool. End of the day, go ahead and look back over the day.

Cameron Allen [00:40:37]:
What did I experience today? I had a fantastic conversation with Nick today. That was great. I had the opportunity to be able to talk about a subject that I absolutely love. I had the opportunity to, you know, show up and hang out with my kiddos. Those types of things for 21 days of just looking at, you know, what are the 3 wins you want to experience for the day and what are the 3 wins that you did experience that day for the first week, people in a depleted state will not likely be able to find anything. And then that’s a really cool opportunity because what’s going to happen next is your mind is going to start coming up with these really fun narratives and you’re going to be very aware of it because now your reticular activating system heard me say that your brain is going to beat you up every time you You can’t actually find a win. And now rather than buying into that storyline, you’re likely actually going to be able to say, huh, look at that, that thing happened. I didn’t expect that to happen.

Cameron Allen [00:41:44]:
And just by that awareness, now you’re shifting over into curiosity. What does curiosity do? Well, it ends up breaking the norepinephrine, adrenaline, and cortisol loop. allows you to drop into oxytocin and starts modifying those receptor sites and turns down the volume when you experience curiosity. And so by setting your intentions in your mind towards these wins and to notice the internal narrative and story without the judgment, that allows your whole nervous system to turn down the volume just that much, maybe that much, but that gap is where choice lives. That’s when you actually get to make a choice rather than just reacting to the life you are tolerating.

Nick Urban [00:42:34]:
So talk me through biofeedback. I’ve also talked about that on the podcast a number of times, heart rate variability biofeedback, and then neurofeedback. How you mentioned virtual reality biofeedback. I have never experienced virtual reality biofeedback. What is that? How’s… first of all, what is biofeedback? What is VR biofeedback and how are they different?

Cameron Allen [00:42:55]:
Cool. Yeah. So biofeedback is very simple. It is essentially that you are looking at one of your numbers. You can have skin temperature, galvanic skin response, looking at the sweat response on your skin. You can look at heart rate. You can look at a number of different things. And if you do something, what happens to those numbers? And that’s essentially all it is.

Cameron Allen [00:43:20]:
So in most traditional biofeedback, you’re watching a screen, whether it’s a movie, a game, whatever. And when your heart rate variability goes down, the screen generally gets darker. The volume gets lower. When your heart rate variability goes up, then the screen gets clearer and the volume gets louder. And so that’s just feedback of saying, hey, You’re in the state that we want you to be in, essentially. And so over time, that operant conditioning just trains your brain to stay there over and over and over again. And that’s really, really effective for some people. I strongly encourage people to do it because it brings so much awareness to the internal state.

Cameron Allen [00:44:07]:
It allows you to know, oh, look at that. I’m now in a stress state. I am in a more reactive, defensive state. I am in a more connected, aligned state. you can get some really good feedback. And when I was doing a lot of group work and family systems work, I would hook up couples and I would have them both do biofeedback at the same time. And when they were talking and they were trying to perform in the relationship, the screen would go black. When they would just show up and just be raw and authentic and be very clear of, this is what I’m feeling right now, and embrace the vulnerability and fear in the relationship, boom, the screen went clear.

Cameron Allen [00:44:47]:
And it was so fascinating that But does that mean that they were comfortable and calm and relaxed? Hell no. They were actually in a really stressed state during that time. They were feeling a lot of discomfort, but because they were in alignment, their heart rate variability could go up. So that was cool. Now, the problem is, so I’ve been working in neurofeedback, biofeedback, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, doing tons of neuroimaging over the years. And I found that, you know, heart rate variability biofeedback again didn’t necessarily mean shifting states. You could have very high heart rate variability and stay pretty well in a sympathetic nervous system state overall. You could find the trick to stay there.

Cameron Allen [00:45:34]:
So what I looked at is taking all of these different metrics of respiration, heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, skin temperature, pupillometry, eye tracking, all these things and looking and saying, okay, well, if I measure all of them together, I compare them to each other, which metrics actually are able to show me when the default mode network, the salience network, and the executive network are actually desynchronized and fighting with each other or working in concert together? And so the 2 that ended up standing out as the most durable metrics were using heart rate variability, which we just talked about, and that’s really just the shock absorber of the system, and then using this LF/HF ratio. And so the way that we’ve set it up is you’re in the virtual reality headset, you’re looking out over a lake, you’ve got a little rock next to you with a fire pit sitting on top of it, and you reach down and you light a match, you light your fire, and it starts crackling and growing. You’re wearing a heart rate variability monitor, And as your heart rate variability goes up, the campfire gets bigger. As the heart rate variability goes down, the campfire starts to smolder and gets much smaller. Now, if you’re in your mind and you’re hypercognitive and in that judgmental state of rumination and playing out the scenarios, fog rolls in across the lake in front of you. And so as you actually drop into that felt sense, fog rolls back. And so the goal initially, and I say goal very loosely, I mean it more as intention, is initially just watch. What state are you in when the fog comes in? What do you experience through your body? Most of the time there’s a reaction.

Cameron Allen [00:47:23]:
It’s like, ugh, I don’t want the fog here. And so you try and push it out. Well, that works really well at making the fog get thicker and it just kind of keeps coming in. And so So then you’re watching the fire rise and fall and you’re saying, okay, what am I experiencing when I’m in those states? And what’s really, really cool is that rather than being in a place of performance and trying to shoot for a number, now it’s just a matter of fluidity. What do I notice my nervous system doing that actually lets the fog roll out? What happens when I’ve gotten to a place where I’ve learned how to put the fog out and kind of keep the fog out? How do I intentionally bring the fog back in and then drift it back out? How do I raise and lower the fire? Can I have the fire low and the fog out at the same time? Can I have the fog in and the fire high at the same time? And so now you’re taking 2 parts of the nervous system that if you look at the independent research, those numbers shouldn’t actually work. You shouldn’t… basically, you’re supposed to be in one breath frequency for your heart rate variability to be high, and you’re supposed to be in another breath frequency for the most part for the LF/HF ratio to be high. But when we’re doing this training, somehow by just noticing the nervous system and dropping in into this humility and surrender and trusting the nervous system, both metrics can be met pretty easily.

Nick Urban [00:48:54]:
And

Cameron Allen [00:48:55]:
it takes some, some, some work. And, and we’ll talk about kind of the mechanics of that in a little bit, perhaps. But the other piece of the question…

Nick Urban [00:49:04]:
Before we do, I’m curious, I’m curious if you know what are the different breath rates. I know on average, the resonant frequency breath rate for people is around 5.5 in and out, but that’s on average. Like, everyone’s a little bit different from there. And then, the LF/HF ratio, what would that be approximately or the range if you know it?

Cameron Allen [00:49:23]:
So, generally speaking, below 1.3 is kind of the ideal state. So, somewhere around 1.3 or less. But for everybody, it’s very different because if, if there’s much more, because it’s not necessarily a direct ratio of sympathetic to parasympathetic tone.

Nick Urban [00:49:43]:
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Allen [00:49:43]:
The LF is very much a sympathetic tone, but the, but the HF is this whole other metric that research has a really hard time understanding, like, what is that measuring? And it’s measuring kind of the complexity of how the interplay between coherence in the nervous system, how much is the breath and the brain working together or against each other is basically kind of what that’s measuring for the most part. And so when that happens, technically, a lower LF/HF ratio also means that the brain and the body are in a higher coherent state. So what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking, or what I’m feeling and what I’m expressing, are actually in alignment. And that even if I’m angry, but I’m also communicating like I’m really frustrated and I’m angry right now. And what I’m feeling is this, and I’m owning my emotions. I can still be in a very low LF/HF ratio. It’s funny, the moment that you start turning it and you start saying, you did this, you’re the problem, all of a sudden the LF/HF ratio goes high.

Nick Urban [00:50:50]:
I wonder if LF/HF ratio could be used for polygraphs as like lie detectors.

Cameron Allen [00:50:57]:
I think so. Honestly, I think that it, that there, when I’ve done some research on it, there is some, there have been some tests around that. But then when you end up having folks that are more on the sociopathic side of things that authentically believe what they’re saying, I have a feeling that there would be, it would be an interesting interplay with that metric.

Nick Urban [00:51:19]:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I interrupted you. I’m curious.

Cameron Allen [00:51:21]:
That’s okay.

Nick Urban [00:51:21]:
Okay.

Cameron Allen [00:51:22]:
So just dropping into the other part of the question around, you know, what is the virtual reality portion of this? Like, why? And something that I found over the last, you know, 18 years is that I love neurofeedback. If you’ve heard about neurofeedback, it’s really great. You’re basically able to put sensors on the scalp and actually train particular brainwaves that are part of different networks of the brain and really change a lot of behaviors, a lot of internal experience, a lot of the anxiety experience or symptoms of depression, lots of different things, focus, attention, all that. And it also, in my experience, was not terribly effective for most people, that it either worked really well up front and then kind of tapered off, or it didn’t work really that great at all. But there’s this other issue where The physiology of the brain can change very, very quickly. You can actually rewire your brain really quickly, but it takes roughly 3 months for perception to catch up with physiology. And so by that point, it’s kind of like, well, what actually changed the behavior? And I couldn’t actually use that optimal window of that change in order to also shift my internal beliefs and thoughts and beliefs and thoughts, as we touched on earlier, that every time we go into a belief, we reinforce a state, we reinforce a certain chemistry drop. So in virtual reality, it ended up hitting on something that I found that when you do things like a vibe plate or a balance board while you’re doing something like neurofeedback, now you’re actually getting not necessarily at the same time, but during the same session, you’re actually getting a positive feedback loop between the brain and the body.

Cameron Allen [00:53:14]:
And when that happens, now it becomes self-reinforcing and we see rather than progress going at kind of a linear line, we see this hockey stick. And even after the course of care is done, you’ll see at a 3-month, 6-month, 1-year follow-up, now it’s continued to actually get better and better and better. So I needed to find a way of being able to pull the sensory system into the biofeedback. And I worked with this really brilliant neurosurgeon and she had done thousands of brain surgeries. And after her brain surgery, She would send people to Disney. This was down in Florida. She’d send people to Disney to go and ride virtual reality rides after, after their surgery and they’re healed up and all that. And I said, why is that? And she was like, well, there’s this paper that was published a long time ago that showed that people, when you’re in virtual reality, the hypothalamus, that small area of your brain that’s involved in kind of releasing oxytocin and also kind of a switchboard, it works on some of the timing and But really, it’s also monitoring heavily what’s happening in the brain, what’s happening in the body.

Cameron Allen [00:54:28]:
And so it has a hyperconnected link to the insular cortex, which is part of our identity. It also, in default mode network, the rumination, the overthinking, the anterior cingulate, where we overplay a lot of our thoughts, the prefrontal cortex, all of these areas, it has this kind of superhighway to each one of those areas, as well as to the cerebellum, which is involved in kind of the reset of our entire brain when we get into an activated state. And it also is directly connected to our body. And so when we’re in virtual reality and our eyes and our ears are in that experience, but our body is not, now we are hyper-scanning between our brain and our body and saying, why am I not experiencing the sensory information that’s associated with the scene that I’m in?

Nick Urban [00:55:15]:
Yeah.

Cameron Allen [00:55:15]:
And what’s cool about that is that it takes off a lot of the fear-based filtering of sensory information that’s coming in. And so now, rather than people who have had trauma in their body experiencing this block, this information comes through, but it’s not taken in as a threat. And so now we can actually get that vagal nerve tone to come up and we get this kind of positive feedback loop between the brain and the body, very similarly to when we did balance board and vibe plate. And a really weird and cool finding that we’ve come up with is that, that we’ve discovered in this is that you can do just virtual reality biofeedback. back and not any other modalities with it. And the vestibular scores on the balance test, the proprioceptive scores, the vision, how the vision and the balance systems play, primitive reflexes, all those reflexes that allow for early childhood development, if they’re not integrated, they all actually integrate. All of these things change. And the brain itself, when we do pre and post neuroimaging, imaging, it will improve by an average of 78%, which is higher than I could ever get with neurofeedback.

Cameron Allen [00:56:28]:
And that’s when I was training the brain. So if I’m training the nervous system through heart rate variability, now the brain regulates. And in 6 months and 1-year follow-up, they still look better than the neurofeedback did. And so it’s wild how, you know, by working the sensory system, working on kind of that oxytocin circuitry, working with the brain timing and, and then also just kind of working with those primary networks through these 2 heart rate variability metrics, it brings the whole nervous system into alignment and drops you into more of this state of openness, capacity. And there’s… everybody just reports there’s more spaciousness there.

Nick Urban [00:57:11]:
Hmm.

Cameron Allen [00:57:11]:
And so that’s where the virtual reality piece really comes in. And And because we’re not just dimming and brightening the screen, there’s dimensionality to it. Now we have peripheral vision, we have long-term vision, we have, you know, fields of vision where now we can be, we can have feedback that’s higher in the screen or lower in the screen. And why that matters is wherever your eyes are looking, it actually is activating, you know, temporal lobes versus parietal lobes. And so we can actually be targeting particular brain areas as we’re doing overall nervous system regulation. And then the other pieces, and that when we think about kind of strengthening and building capacity in the nervous system, there’s a number of pieces that really have to come together. One is kind of being able to turn down the volume of that narrative in our, in the default mode network. We also have to be able to map in and notice and have that interoceptive awareness of what am I feeling in my body? So that we can start attuning to that, what people call intuition, which is really just the enteric nervous system that’s saying, hey, I have learned all of this information.

Cameron Allen [00:58:22]:
I’ve taken in all this information from your environment that you’ve not even been thinking about. And I am helping you formulate ideas and thoughts and giving you access to opportunity in your life. And you don’t even have to think about it. And so by building that connection with the body, Now we’re catching perception up with the physiological change in the brain. And then the other really key piece is repetition. And in a 7 to 10 minute session, now we’re getting the brain to see itself and we’re seeing its rumination patterns and stopping them. They’re not getting a reward for it because more fog just comes in whenever it happens. And so you’re getting hundreds of feedback sessions or feedback moments in a 7 to 10 minute session compared to traditional coaching or compared to A lot of the other modalities that I’ve done that you might get a few in each session and they may be meaningful, but it’s more about reframing experience or rethinking it or recontextualizing experience rather than actually getting the physiology to see itself clearly and in real time.

Cameron Allen [00:59:28]:
So that’s kind of why I landed on the virtual reality biofeedback piece.

Nick Urban [00:59:33]:
Interesting. Yeah, that’s a whole different dimension. And, I don’t think I’ve told you this, but I started looking into how to build something simple and primitive that lets you do heart-brain coherence, basically iPhone app that connects to hardware. And, as I started looking into it, brain-heart coherence, that alone, it’s like… Huge. You have heart rate variability, then you have the EEG measurements around the brain. But, the coherence there, it’s not super well understood. Like, you need this exact thing, you need that exact thing, they need to match here. I thought the algorithm to design would be super easy to build.

Nick Urban [01:00:08]:
And then, I started having to do a bunch of research into how do you actually do this. So, what you’re building is really cool and I think it’s a missing component of neurofeedback because I’ve done hundreds, maybe even thousands of sessions at this point with at-home devices, a couple different ones.

Cameron Allen [01:00:23]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [01:00:23]:
And, I’ve had mixed results with them.

Cameron Allen [01:00:25]:
Yep.

Nick Urban [01:00:26]:
And, like you said, The initial results with some of them were really good and they kind of tapered off. And you’re spot on that there’s dimensions missing from here. Like I started realizing, you know what, they’re only measuring certain parts of the brain because they only have a couple of electrodes. And like the brain, there’s a lot to measure in the brain.

Cameron Allen [01:00:44]:
There is a lot to measure in the brain.

Nick Urban [01:00:45]:
And they’re also, you’re not also able to access and train certain lobes and regions because you’re not doing certain things. But even, Like, I know that the traditional wisdom is that you don’t want to train certain things with eyes open or eyes closed. I think it’s, uh, I think alpha or theta. You want to train with your… yeah, you want to train with your eyes closed. How do you, like, do you have that in your virtual reality? I assume you wouldn’t.

Cameron Allen [01:01:13]:
It’s so interesting because, okay, so when we’re in virtual reality, and I’ve done group work, I’ve done family systems work, I’ve worked one-on-one with folks for years. In every single other tool that I ever used, that even something as simple as like the Safe and Sound protocol that Stephen Porges had worked with Integrated Listening Systems on, you get to, you know, track 3 in that one, and all of a sudden a whole bunch of emotion comes up and you get this paradoxical effect where you go from feeling relaxed into that relaxation actually feels really unsafe. And you can run the risk of opening up people too quickly with so many different tools. But with the virtual reality biofeedback, because the whole system is first and foremost scanning itself and looking for internal resources, that even when things shift, it’s fascinating. There’s a woman that I’ve been working with who has had central sensitivity. So the whole nervous system, of course, has gotten more reactive to any input that comes in. I a whole bunch of other diagnoses that she has adopted along the way and, uh, and rejection sensitivity, all of these different things. And, you know, her internal narrative is, I always respond this way.

Cameron Allen [01:02:34]:
I can never relax. I am, no matter what, this is going to be my outcome. And for her, she had actually had to get out of, you know, a number of other modalities because she got to a place where she was just too reactive. It would get to a place where she would, end up kind of rebounding. And with this, it was fascinating because she was like, I can’t handle this. This intensity is just way too big. I don’t even know what to do with it. Well, what did you do this weekend? Oh, I went to the farmer’s market and I went and did this and I went and hung out with some friends and oh my gosh, it was amazing.

Cameron Allen [01:03:10]:
We got to laugh and we got to… and I was like, okay. So you’re telling me that this thing is like really intense for you, which I believe, and that’s true, and you’re also experiencing authentic connection and you’re actually engaging in life in a really beautiful and meaningful way. That’s interesting. What do you think about that? And then there’s the like, oh, yeah, that was just the identity that I was carrying. But the nervous system itself is no longer collapsing around that identity. And so for so many people, it It is that same experience where I believe that I should not be able to handle this moment. I had a young lady who called me. It was a Monday, I believe, and she said, you won’t believe what happened.

Cameron Allen [01:03:58]:
And she was so socially anxious. She hadn’t been out of her house in years for anything other than essentials. And she said, you know, last weekend I ended up at a party and I was halfway through the party that I realized I’m supposed to be anxious right now. And I tried it and it didn’t feel good. So I just went about the party and I was able to engage and play and be there. And it was no longer a thing. And so it’s one of the first modalities that I’ve used where it builds the capacity at the same time that it’s allowing the nervous system to kind of integrate. And so when you think about like the core curve of hormesis,

Nick Urban [01:04:38]:
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Allen [01:04:38]:
that where you have to give a little bit of pressure to the nervous system in order for it to grow, you give it too much, and now you’re in that stress state where it can’t grow. And so it seems to be giving all of those resources that are needed at the same time that it’s applying stressors. And most people experience intense emotions, but the emotions that they’re experiencing are both positive and joy as well as sadness. And it’s almost the, the full spectrum of emotion that they’re experiencing that actually brings about the most intensity for them. But it’s not something that, again, the nervous system collapses around. And I think part of it also is in the program, we’ve got coaches. And so there’s a weekly coaching call. And then there’s also the online community aspect where as you’re going through, you can kind of jump into the chat and talk about what’s coming up.

Cameron Allen [01:05:31]:
And it’s so cool to see people say, hey, this was my experience. This is what’s coming up for me. Nobody’s there to fix anything. Nobody’s trying to. They’re just like, wow, that’s incredible. This is what came up for me. This is what my experience has been. And it’s so that part of it’s really cool that, you know, community and more oxytocin, always a good thing to help bring some regulation to the nervous system.

Cameron Allen [01:05:53]:
And then there’s also kind of the daily reflections and then those daily wins in journaling. And I think bringing all those aspects together into one comprehensive program has just been really cool to see how people are responding.

Nick Urban [01:06:10]:
For those that want to kick the tires, where do you want to send them?

Cameron Allen [01:06:14]:
Yeah, so you could check out neuroprogeny.com and I’m in a beta launch of a site that is currently called university.neuroprogeny.com. It will soon be rebranded, but it is currently university.neuroprogeny.com. And, you know, speaking to that whole resonant breath frequency piece that you were talking about earlier, I’ve created an app that’s in there that you can use with or without an armband. So if you want to purchase the armband, and there’s an introductory thing, I think it’s $169, where you get the armband and you have access to the app for a year and a coaching call with me after you get your assessment results back. And in there, it looks at coherence, it looks at entropy, it looks at your normal heart rate variability. You’re looking at your LF/HF ratio. But what’s really cool is it also, you’ve got rating scales as well as wearing the armband while you’re doing the resonant breath frequency assessment. So it’s able to show, okay, what is your biological resonant breath frequency that is ideal for you? And for me, it’s 4.5 breaths.

Cameron Allen [01:07:30]:
For my wife, it’s actually at 6.5. And then you can also look at based on your rating scales, like, what’s my interoceptive awareness? Because you will notice a difference generally when you’re at that resonant breath frequency. And for some people, they’re spot on, they get it, they notice it. For others, it’s something that takes a little bit more awareness. And so, you know, every 12 sessions, it prompts you to retake the assessment to kind of see what your progress is. And then in there, we’ve got 36 different breathwork protocols with guided visualizations, meditations, all kinds of things that it’ll show you what your score is during that session against your baseline. So you can see, is this moving me towards increased coherence? Is it moving me more towards whatever the desired state is that you’re shooting for? It’s all defined by you, not by some norm baseline. And so I So that’s, that’s going to be coming out here very soon.

Cameron Allen [01:08:32]:
So folks want to try that out. And then there’s some other free experiences, including kind of an intro to the nervous system, a practical guide to the nervous system. And I’ll be continuing to put free courses in there as well as some interactive tools where if you want to kind of, you know, cut to the core and look at what is is kind of your why. What is it that you are genuinely wanting to shift and change in your life? If you’re wanting kind of to help sort out some of the values that you’re, that you really want to live by and understand like what you’ve been trying to get away from that’s uncomfortable, how you’ve been doing that versus how can you shift to moving towards what’s important to you? There’s some tools in there to do that. And then of course, there’s, you can always book a discovery call and happy to talk with y’all about anything that’s coming up and answer any questions.

Nick Urban [01:09:27]:
Cool. Well, I will put everything that you’ve mentioned in the show notes for this episode. Couple of quick rapid-fire questions before we part ways for today.

Cameron Allen [01:09:35]:
Awesome.

Nick Urban [01:09:36]:
If and when you and your partner breathe together for coherence, since you both have different coherent resonant coherence breath rates, what do you choose as the rhythm to go by?

Cameron Allen [01:09:47]:
So for us, we go by our own. We go ahead and do our own breath rate. And, and that works really, really well. If we were going to do an eye gaze meditation and we want to match, then we’ll go in between. And then that way there’s more nervous system synchrony between the two of us. But it all depends on, are you looking for synchrony? Are you looking for both systems to just drop into their ideal state, which is really cool to watch and we could get into that for a long time.

Nick Urban [01:10:16]:
What are the What are the biggest neuroscience myths that upset you?

Cameron Allen [01:10:25]:
Ooh. So, hmm, that’s a really good question. So I think one that is really important, that’s subtle but is important, is that the brain doesn’t actually communicate much between the hemispheres. Only about 2% of information actually passes between hemispheres. It’s more about one turning on and that blocking the other, and then the other one turning on and blocking the other. And why that’s really important is that we need to be able to be in kind of the accumulation of resources, logical, and kind of, and kind of looking for ways of protecting ourselves side of the brain. We need to be in the relational brain and that they don’t communicate a whole lot, but we allow ourselves to kind of believe that our personalities are defined by one state or the other when it’s actually far more of a reflection of what nervous system load we’ve been experiencing. through most of our life.

Nick Urban [01:11:21]:
Uh-huh.

Cameron Allen [01:11:22]:
So I think that’s, that’s a really big one. I think the other one is that most people put too much weight on the fact that the, what the brain does. The brain doesn’t do much. And I know I’m going to get a lot of whiplash on that or backlash on that one. The brain is just processing the information that it’s actually given. So if your sensory system, if your cranial nerves, if the, if any of the body’s signaling to the body, to the brain is dirty or is incomplete, It’s only handing a picture up to the brain of whatever data it’s picking up. And the brain is just responding to that. And wherever there are gaps in the information that your body is sending about the world around you, your brain’s going to make up the stories and the narratives and make up what’s missing.

Cameron Allen [01:12:12]:
And so if your brain naturally has stopped allowing that sensory information through and it’s blocking a lot of it because your nervous system’s in a state of overwhelm and it’s like, I can’t take it anymore, guess what? Your brain is constructing your reality, and it’s all just a simulation of your mind at that point. And so have some humility, drop back, recognize that it all doesn’t have to be real. And there can become a lot of freedom in that whole kind of recognition and a lot more spaciousness.

Nick Urban [01:12:38]:
Since we’ve already discussed it, aside from breathwork, what is the cheapest thing that someone can do to get their nervous system into a better state?

Cameron Allen [01:12:48]:
Go to bed consistently every night at the same time. Don’t look at your phone 90 minutes before you go to bed. Get up and within the first 15 minutes of being awake, move, bounce, drink water, have electrolytes. As soon as sunlight is available in the morning, go outside, be outside in sunlight, experiencing it on your face. And get as close to whatever your body needs for sleep every single night Because quite literally, that’s the only time that it’s repairing. The rest of the time you are degenerating your system. So those are all very inexpensive ways to just allow the system to reset. And then the other thing is lock your phone in a drawer and go sit outside, whether it’s in the woods or your yard or just outdoors, or even if it is in indoors, sit, and don’t allow yourself to mess with anything or do anything for 20 minutes a day.

Nick Urban [01:13:53]:
What’s your favorite, most treasured piece of gear or tool in your clinic that you would keep if you had to get rid of everything else? And of course, it can’t be anything neurofeedback directly related.

Cameron Allen [01:14:06]:
Okay. There’s 2. One is my hyperbaric oxygen chamber. That one is incredible. And it just is life-changing. The other is the red light therapy bed. That one is incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Cameron Allen [01:14:25]:
And, you know, in 12 minutes of being in there, you get, I get more restoration from that than what I feel like through most anything else in my life. It is really powerful.

Nick Urban [01:14:40]:
Your favorite place in Asheville to let your own nervous system downshift?

Cameron Allen [01:14:46]:
Ooh, okay, so I’m gonna have to kind of cheat on this one. I get out of Asheville to let my nervous system reset, and where I go is this house that I built with my dad and my son back in 2015. We dug the footers, built the whole thing, and it is this little cabin cabin up at 4,000 feet elevation and spring-fed. It was built to be off-grid and you cannot see another neighbor. You can’t hear any roads. There is nothing. And to go and sit by the springhead on the property that feeds the house, there’s a little spot, a spot where you can sit and hear all the little waterfalls. And oftentimes when I’m sitting there, we’ve got elk and bear and deer and, you know, foxes and all kinds of other animals that will actually just come as you’re sitting there and just meander on their way.

Cameron Allen [01:15:40]:
And so that is the place that my nervous system finds the most peace here.

Nick Urban [01:15:45]:
Yeah, sounds nice. Final one for you today. If people made it this far, what do you want to leave them with? What do you hope they take away from this?

Cameron Allen [01:15:54]:
That’s really a profound question. And I would say, if you’re listening to this, most likely you’re searching. You’re searching for something to be able to shift your internal state and your experience and your commitment your self-care or to just, you know, be more attuned to a meaningful life. And before you go down the road of trying to change what you’re feeling, identify why you want to change it. Not like, what are you getting away from, but what is a meaningful life to you? What do you actually want to experience? And as an example of that, for For me, I’ve always wanted a life of simplicity and I’ve had a farm and I’ve had, you know, raised animals and I’ve done all kinds of things. And then at some point in my life, I thought, you know, I need to go out and do more. I need to go and get a job. I need to go and I never actually got a job.

Cameron Allen [01:16:50]:
I always had my own companies, but I had to do more in order to get to a place to where I could get back to that place with financial security or whatever it is. And then I stopped having the experiences that I loved every single day. And so returning back to looking at, I want to spend time baking with my kids. I want to plant flowers. I want to, you know, teach them how to, to see their face when they grow something of their own or they create something of their own. And that so many people forget that they can have that now while they are also regulating nervous system, while they’re also finding this path. But get to core of what it is that you are authentically looking for and is in alignment and why you’re doing this work. What is the life that it will buy for you or you believe it will buy for you? Start there and then look beneath that because what that is is a symptom of what you authentically want underneath.

Cameron Allen [01:17:55]:
And I would go deeper and look to see what place do you want to come from? What is it in order to have the house you want, the car you want, the life you want, the spouse you want, relationships you want, whatever it is, that all of those things are to buy you a feeling that you already have access to internally. And so when you can believe yourself that you deserve it, that you have it and you have access to it, then those things will happen out of that place. You can’t force those things and then

Nick Urban [01:18:31]:
Cameron Allen, great way to end it. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today.

Cameron Allen [01:18:37]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Nick. It was good to be on with you.

Nick Urban [01:18:39]:
Yeah, you as well. And thank you all for tuning in and sharing your time, your energy, and your attention with us. Until next time. 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 mentioned at outliyr.com. Until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.