[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and optimal HRV. Check us
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Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate variability podcast. I am Matt Bennett and I am back today with a very special guest, Doctor Donald Moss. If you haven't heard Doctor Moss's previous interview on the podcast to talk about his journey, I would call Doctor Moss a pioneer. But I kind of think of pioneers as somebody who's gotten somewhere and kind of sets up shop where getting to know Doctor Moss over the years, he's still going, I don't know where he's going to end up, but there's no slowing down. There's no I'm going to plant seeds here. It's continuous innovation. And anytime I get to hear him talk, it's just a joy. And I learned so much. So I'm excited too. And this will be the second episode. There is a previous episode with Patrick Steffen on the book integrating psychotherapy and psychophysiology, a topic that's near and dear to my heart. So if you haven't heard Patrick's episode, you can go back and listen to that as well. And I'm excited. By the time this comes out, the book should be published on Amazon and probably some other places as well. So Doctor Moss, welcome back to the show. Just for our listeners who might not have heard the first podcast, can you just give just a quick introduction of you and your work. I know we spent a whole hour talking about that before, but just a little bit about you and your work.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. I appreciate your enthusiastic opening.
I'm Don Moss. I'm the dean of the College of Integrative Medicine and health sciences at Saybrook University in Pasadena.
There I've been involved in starting a program in mind body medicine, integrative social work, integrative and functional nutrition, and applied psychophysiology. We have programs with hypnosis training, heart rate variability training, biofeedback, neurofeedback.
Wonderful group of students, wonderful group of faculty. I've been interacting with Patrick for many years. Patrick taught at Saybrook, has taught intermittently at Saybrook, teaching heart rate variability.
But I've also known Patrick through the association for Applied Psychophysiology and biofeedback, where both he and I have been presidents.
Patrick is a gifted scholar, and he approached me about two and a half years ago and said, let's do a book on heart rate variability in psychotherapy.
He and I both had a general idea.
Both he and I have done a lot of psychotherapy, and I have always involved people in doing meditation, doing some paced, gentle, mindful breathing at the beginning of a session, doing some biofeedback or hypnosis during the session, and then continuing in psychotherapy. And I've always seen how it deepened the psychotherapy. Well, Patrick's idea was, we know that when you train the body in a variety of mind body practices, but especially heart rate variability, biofeedback, it affects the autonomic nervous system and it affects the central nervous system, and we start to see changes. We see that people regulate their emotions better.
We see that people think more clearly and show more flexibility in their thinking, and people engage better with others. They show more compassion, more empathy, and connection with other human beings. Well, those are all targets of psychotherapy, right? If we could help everybody to manage their emotions, moderate their emotions, regulate them, if we could teach everybody to think flexibly, to see options, and if we could teach everybody to connect with their fellow human beings, you know, their child, their loved ones at home, their coworkers, we wouldn't see so much violence and strife.
So those are all goals of psychotherapy, and they're also effects of these physiological changes that we can. So why aren't we putting them together more often? And that's what the book is about. We gather together a variety of really excellent researchers and teachers and ask them to write about topics related to heart rate variability, psychophysiology, and psychotherapy and counseling, and I'm very happy with the result. The book itself, integrating, integrating psychotherapy and psychophysiology, as Matt said, should be out in mid to late September. Available. It's already out on Kindle. I have my hard copy here on the desk, but it should be available for others soon. And I hope that it will be read by psychotherapists and counselors and that they will start to think about using more mind body practices before they take people into therapy or during therapy, either one, because people will go farther in their psychotherapy case.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: And I would love to hear, because coming out of, and this is why I just had to interview you both about the book is with my background in psychotherapy, I knew technology was around. I had what was a wild divine at one point, and obviously heart math, and just trying to, you know, it was kind of like technology was passing us by in some ways, and, you know, as one that wasn't trained in, you know, sort of traditional biofeedback in my master's in graduate work. And so I'd love to hear from you. If you meet a therapist on the street and you start talking, and they may have been like me and interested in technology, but not really knowing, maybe they heard about heart rate variability, but they're not all that familiar with it, and they know biofeedback is a thing, but might not give a good definition of it. What would be if you were to kind of give them, and you've already started this, obviously, with your first answer, some reasons why they should start to integrate it in? What would be. After working with some of the top experts in the world on this book, I just kind of wonder, what are some of the things that you would encourage them to think about and integrating this into their practice?
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Well, I always want to find out where this person is at.
If I'm talking to a therapist and I find out they're a lifelong meditator, then I'll start talking about meditation and integrating it with psychotherapy. It's always surprising to me that there are a lot of psychotherapists who do yoga or they do meditation, but they never mention it. They never introduce it to their therapy patients. They say, how? Think of that as that's my personal practice. It's different.
And yet we know that if you do meditation, it induces changes physiologically. The vagus nerve becomes more activated, we see more heart, a higher heart rate variability. When you do meditation, and that starts to make changes in all of the ways I talked about, we start to see people living out their emotions differently in a way that's less distressing. We see people connecting better with one another, and we see people using their head more clearly.
So if meditation does that, why not do five minutes of meditation or ten minutes of meditation at the beginning of every psychotherapy session?
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So I try to find out, where are you? I mean, if you know about physiology, then I'll talk about the vagus nerve, the autonomic nervous system. The fact that Steve Porges has told us has shown us that when we activate the vagus, we get better caregiving, we connect socially, we manage our stress better, and we start using our executive, the executive center of the brain. We start using the prefrontal cortex. So if you. If activating the vagal system does all that, then why not activate it at the beginning of every psychotherapy session.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. And so do you feel like, you know, and I'm more, I guess, in the trauma arena of psychotherapy, which I believe is if you're not aware of trauma and you're doing psychotherapy, boy, have you been asleep for maybe two decades now. So I think all of us are there in some way, shape or form. Have you seen the greater awareness around, you know, for me, it was the brain originally.
I got just nerded out for five, six, seven still, because there's no way I'm going to understand that thing before I die. Just, I find it fascinating because everything I learned about my clients, I'm also learning about myself, my family, my friends as well. And then polyvagal theory is catching fire in the trauma world as maybe a little bit more practical, easier to understand. For me, it's exciting because heart rate variability is much cheaper to do than a functional MRI. I know we got the neurofeedback folks that can get us a little lower, but still highly expensive to integrate quality measures in there. I'd love to just get, if you look at just psychotherapy in general, how in your experience, have you seen it evolve, you know, over the last several decades as we sort of come more and more into your world and things you've been interested in studying before, we kind of caught fire with it.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Well, Matt, you started out talking about trauma, so let's talk about trauma. Bessel van der Kolk has been on a mission, running around the world, around the country and around the world, talking to mental health professionals and to lay people.
And one of the things he always says is we've got to get the body involved in the therapeutic process.
Now, there are a lot of different ways to get the body involved in the therapeutic process.
Biofeedback is an excellent one. And people, as you point out today, we have all sorts of toys, tools that are available to the consumer.
I've got my optimal hRV risk sensor, and I've been taking a reading almost every morning. Not every morning, but almost every morning.
And I've got heart math devices, and I do some meditations with heart math.
And the inner balance is a wonderful tool because it's so portable. It goes with you. These tools allow us to send people home to do something with mind and body and to make changes in their, their physiology. And at the same time, it impacts mind and mind and emotion. So the availability of all these tools that weren't there 20 years ago, it's making a big difference.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So, as I like to say, it's like the greatest homework we could ever. I mean, journaling still for some people is a really powerful tool. Like it's, you know, in our world, it's kind of a joke that, you know, you go to therapy, you're going to be journaling. But this is like, gosh, as I understood the nervous system that I was working to heal from the trauma, you know, just resonance, frequency, breathing, coherence, breathing, all these things supporting that, that outcome. And if I could get somebody working on that each and every day, I'm just, I just feel like I can help people now in a totally different way and hopefully speed up that post traumatic growth process or whatever their goals are. Anxiety, ADHD, with just a few minutes of practice each day.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Well, and these things fold together nicely, too. I mean, I've had patients who tell me, yeah, you asked me to journal and I started to journal and I got totally overwhelmed with emotion.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: So then I asked them to do some very gentle, slow, mindful breathing, about six breaths a minute. Use your smartphone to pace yourself, if that helps, and then do your journaling. And if it starts to agitate you, write a little bit more about what's agitating you, and then stop and do some breathing again. Go back to six breaths a minute. And all of a sudden they find that they can journal and they're, they're reaching a new perspective on what they're journaling, which they didn't get to when they felt too overwhelmed. So you put that lovely emotional awareness technique of journaling, which I think is valuable. You put that together with a mind body strategy for self quieting, and suddenly you've got a package.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. I'm curious with the book, it's kind of, in my opinion, at least. I'm sure you're not going to argue this against me. You collected some of the greatest hits, so to speak, of HRV experts, professional psychophysiology friends of mine that I've gotten over the years just a who's who of this field. And I'm curious. I've never edited a book. I've written a couple books, but I've never edited a book. And I know what I love about writing, and I'm sure this happens maybe in a little bit different way with editing, is that you think about things in different ways.
You're putting different people's ideas together in somewhat of a coherent story in some ways for the reader itself. And what I love about having hundreds of pages and multiple chapters floating around is I have to think about things in a different way. I got to put puzzle pieces together that maybe if I'm giving a talk or teaching a class, a little bit different. And I just kind of wonder as you work with, again, the who's who and working with Patrick, who is a who's who, if there is a who's who.
Like, what were some of the things that, you know, you took out of this that, you know, kind of maybe pushed your thinking or just got you to think about something at a little bit of a different angle?
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Well, I have to say this book is, you know, I've edited many books over the years and I've written several books, usually with the co author, Angel McGrady. She and I have a book that just went in this week to the publisher.
This book made me think more often, more frequently than any other book I've ever been involved with.
You said we have the who's who, and we did. But some of them I didn't know. Nicola Petrocchi and Christina Ottaviani are two italian researchers reading their chapter physiology. What goes on physiologically when you do compassion focused therapy?
It was full of little nuggets and I was editing mainly to format things so that the chapters would look like each other. But all of a sudden I'm stopping and thinking and making a few notes of my own and thinking about things in a way different than I had before. Reading Paul Gilbert, he also was writing about compassion focused therapy, but he was also writing about the vagal nerve heart rate variability, the fact that one actually becomes kinder when you cultivate heart rate variability. Well, reading Paul Gilbert, he's brilliant, he's challenging, he's dense. Reading him, I had to go back and reread things, sometimes several times.
It was awakening. It was really awakening. I'm very grateful.
I knew a lot of the people in this book. Richard Gewirtz, Ina Kazan, Paul Air our people, Patrick Stefan are people I've known for years very well. I've taught with them in the US and abroad.
But a number of new people on this, this a very international group of authors as well.
And it was just a joy to read their work and then to put it in a format for publication, that's awesome.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: As you look at this and you're putting the pieces together, letting that story kind of come out, what do you think? If there is a psychotherapist that I convinced to listen to this podcast or, or come across, they're searching YouTube and come across this. You know what? What would be some of the benefits? We've talked about some of them the other, but, you know, it's not a cheap book. I'll throw that out there. Unfortunately, I agree to purchase this book. And so you've got to sell.
We got to sell the audience because I think every psychotherapist counselor should be reading this book. I will be a good ad spokesman for you on that, but I just kind of. Okay, I'm going to invest 100, $140 into a 500 page book, which for me, would take a few weeks at least to get through. What are some of the takeaways that I can expect? Let's say I'm fairly new to psychophysiology. I'm interested. I may have heard about heart math or optimal or this, that and the other, but I. What would be some of the reasons that they're making a good investment by purchasing the book?
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Good question.
I hope that what makes it worthwhile to buy the book or buy the Kindle a little bit cheaper?
I like to have a nice hard copy of a book on my desk and on my shelf.
For me, what makes it worthwhile is that this book is rich and it's open.
The authors aren't just saying, go do heart rate variability, biofeedback. They're saying, what are some of the things that can make a difference in the directions we want? And they're saying, well, slow breathing, hypnosis, meditation, exercise, diet, all of these things.
So taking up some healthy practices that are mind and body, that are holistic can really change what goes on with your patients while they're in psychotherapy. It's life transformative in a way that is going to stay with them when they're done talking to their therapist.
If some of these changes become permanent lifestyle, it will carry them farther than the words alone will.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
And that's what, in your introduction, and obviously it's the first word in the title of the book, too, is integrating, and especially hrv tracking. For me, really, as somebody who entered this knowledgeable about things like exercise, nutrition, and movement, I felt like I, you know, I got convinced that, yeah, I might be doing psychotherapy or my personal residence frequency breathing practice. I know what that's hitting. But if I'm not kind of supporting that with, you know, good anti inflammatory foods, if I'm living a sedentary lifestyle, I'm not getting good sleep, I'm not eating good nutrition, as I like to say, I'm almost setting a ceiling on how much these practices or if I think about my professional work, how much my psychotherapy can help someone, whereas if I do get that integration and buy in, I'm really pushing that forward. I'm working the mind body, and I hate even to separate it that extent, because I think it's all an integrated system. But if we were to do that, getting all that working together, and just in this book, and I know you brought up nutrition and diet, but also just in your work and innovation around integrating, I'd love to just get how you think of how do we bring this stuff together and a way and maybe challenge psychotherapists to talk about things like nutrition and sleep quality that typically have not been in our wheelhouse or in our training for sure.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Well, it's really interesting because I also, as you know, I'm the dean of college of integrative medicine at Saybrook University, and there we're bringing together nutrition and we're bringing together meditation and guided imagery.
And my message to a therapist is that if you're not pract, if you're not doing self care yourself, if you haven't got a set of disciplines that are supporting your life and your well being, you're not going to take your patience as far.
And it comes out in little ways. I remember years ago when I started doing biofeedback with children, I was training a child to warm his hands because he had a vascular headaches. And we know that we can enhance circulation and eliminate a lot of vasoconstriction if we train people to warm their hands. Well, first thing the kids said was, yeah, but can you do it?
Fortunately, I was able to put the sensor on my finger and on the screen on my. I had a thought technology system. I still do. On the screen. I made the sunrise.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: And he said, you can do it. Well, if you could do it, I can do it. And he made the sunrise within about 30 minutes. He was. He was self regulating himself. But if I had not been able to do that myself, he wouldn't have believed it in the same way. And I think that comes out in so many different ways. I can. I can talk about meditation practice. I can talk about years when I was trying to meditate and I couldn't get my mind to settle because of what was happening in my life at that time and how I combined walking at that time. I would walk first and exhaust myself and then come back and meditate.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: But because I have stories like that from my own life, it has. It has more of a grab, more of an attraction for the patient.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I would love to get your thoughts, too, because, I mean, there's several different ways to integrate biofeedback psychophysiology into the work of psychotherapy. And I wonder, and I'm sure there's variation in this per provider. When you think about maybe the psychotherapist office in ten years from now where technologies hopefully just continues to get cheaper, you know, those 10,000, $15,000 machines might be. Might be on. We might be getting that quality on even smartphones at that point. That may be a little ambitious, but it just.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: It easily could happen.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Matt, every time you rewind ten years, I never guessed where we're at today. So as we, as you kind of look ahead and see, you know, and I know it'll be different for different people, how do you think technology, which is still very central to psychophysiology, what do you think the typical psychotherapist office starts to look like?
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Well, I can remember when I started doing biofeedback, I was very fortunate that I worked in a community mental health center that had spent about 40 grand on a variety of large autogenic systems modules. I mean, these things were three by three by four foot cabinets, rolling cabinets with drawers and gauges.
And I had this stuff in my office, and I had to do an emergency psychiatric evaluation, and this big console was there. And immediately the person who was schizophrenic said, you're with them, aren't you? You're the one who's doing this, who's controlling my mind, because I had all this equipment, and, you know, that was dramatic, and I clearly was not the right person and this wasn't the right office to see this human being.
Nevertheless, over the years, I've had a lot of healthy people who were still a little intimidated by the equipment.
I've also had people who were fascinated by it and perhaps became more psychologically open because they could see their body changing on the computer screen.
But I hope that in the future, just like we've gone from those big rolling consoles to right now, a laptop and a little encoder box that's about three by four or five inches, I hope that we'll actually get more like Star Trek and that you'll be able to raise your iPad and see your human figure with a lot of the physiology and no wires.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know. It could easily happen. Yeah, I don't know how it'll happen. Or maybe it'll be that we'll put something on the body in one place, and it'll pick up a lot of the systems and wirelessly send them to an iPad or the 2030 version of an iPad.
So I hope it isn't quite so. Doesn't look quite so technical, but I hope it also becomes easier. So the average psychotherapist can maybe put something on, on the shoulders or on the chest of a person, and then as they're doing psychotherapy, they both can have an iPad or something like it in their hands. And I can say to you, what's happening? It looks like your heart rate is really increasing as we're talking about the workplace. What's. What's going on? And Guy. Guy will say something like, well, I've got a lot more resentment than I've been acknowledging to you.
I mean, because that's what happens when people start to see the physiological and connect it with what's happening inside themselves, with their own thoughts and feelings and their body.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's the. Yeah, that's something. Elm. Yeah. Elmer Green was an early pioneer. Elmer Green was. Was at the Meninger clinic, and he said he developed a principle that he called the psychophysiological principle. And he said, every time something is happening in your body, there's a corresponding process happening in the mind.
And every time something changes in your mind, there's a corresponding change in the body. Well, that's a simple principle, and that's really the story of our book. We're talking about things happen in our body, and it makes a difference. It changes things in our emotions, in our thinking, in how well our body functions, how healthy we are, how our resilience is, how many. How well do I respond to stress?
And I hope that in 2030 or 2040, whenever it is, that the average therapist will find it less intimidating to start tracking those things.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm just fascinated, too, with how the technology, and I. I really believe in probably every chapter author in your book does a fad, knowing a lot of them and being friends of this podcast do a great job of this. But how do we integrate the technology into the relationship as well? Because I think that for, I don't know, traditional psychotherapist, whatever that really means, I think that's part of the fear as well, is we know we've experienced, we've got the data to show the power of the relationship. And I think sometimes the technology, there's a fear that it'll get in the way, and that's where, like, really finding ways where the technology supports the relationship.
I think is going to be a big next step for us, too, is just like, okay, we know that there's something powerful about human relationships and the, the biology, it activates oxytocin and all these amazing chemicals that when we're in a trusting relationship and having the technology really be a relational technology in the therapy room, I don't think that's an easy kind of problem to get over. And again, I know your authors, knowing them, I don't know if there's anything that could happen in that room where I wouldn't establish a good relationship with them. But again, that relational software is something I've been, I've been just thinking a lot about is how does it, how does it really, you know, supplement the relationship in a way that we know supports therapeutic outcomes as well?
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Well, I had to get personally comfortable with asking people for permission to put on some sensors so that I could see what's happening in their body and in their brain when we were talking.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: And sometimes I had already done some basic relaxation training with them, with or without biofeedback. And so they were already becoming comfortable with the recognition that when they breathe slowly and let go of some of the days frustrations, their body changes.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: So for some of them, it was easy. Oh, sure, go ahead, put on us. Put the sensors on. Just tell me what they're doing. Tell me what they're measuring. I want to see it. I also had other people, I remember one woman in particular.
She was happy with me seeing the computer screen, with her wearing the sensors on her brain and body, on her EEG and physiological sensors, but she didn't want to see the screen, she didn't want to try to change them, and she didn't want to see the physiological changes. And periodically, over time, she became more comfortable. And I would say, can I show you what's happening?
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: And in her case, the beginning of one session, there was activity at, a huge amount of activity in the brain at about 28 hz. Yeah, we know that's associated with a lot of anxiety and rumination, worry.
And I did in her case, I was doing some hypnosis, and after a while, I said, josie, can I show you what's happened? And I turned the screen and there was no elevation at that 28. It was all gone.
And she, she cried.
She cried and she said, if what I'm doing can change my brain that much, then maybe there's hope.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: And a good, good podcaster would probably just stop there. But I gotta ask you one more question, because if I was maybe earlier in my twenties, I wish I would have heard about Saybrook and your program. I would love, because I think there's another part of the population and probably overrepresented by people that might be listening to this podcast, is the idea of becoming an expert or a practitioner in biofeedback. Because a lot of this, again, you can use optimal, you can use Heartmath and a lot of other platforms without going and getting, you know, weeks worth of training or certifications in this. However, I know, and again, probably overrepresented in our population, people that might want to become experts in this arena and maybe get the $10,000 equipment as an investment. So I would just love, because I've met some of your students, a lot of your former students. They've been guests of the show. I met them at conferences.
I never heard a bad word about the university or yourself from. In fact, everything's been incredibly positive. So I would just love to hear, just share a little bit about what, like if somebody's interested in going to the next level, yeah, I'm going to buy the book. But yeah, I think I may want to get a degree or a certification. I want to become really competent in biofeedback or neurofeedback. I'd love to talk about, say, Brook and maybe any other advice that you have for folks.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Matt. I'm happy for an opening to talk about my own university, and particularly this college of Integrative medicine and Health Sciences, because I've been involved in creating it since 2008.
Lauren Buchman was the president of Saybrook at that time, and he was a good friend of James Gordon at the center for Mind Body Medicine.
And he and James had a number of conversations. And then I got drawn in and we started creating a curriculum, creating degree programs.
And the good thing about the college is that we've had students come in who were PhD psychologists, PhD social workers, coming in and taking our additional PhD in integrative social work.
But we've also had twins who came in who were petroleum engineers and got PhDs in mind body medicine and became expert energy practitioners.
So we've taken people in from a variety of different directions.
If they come in with a healthcare license, then they can use all of the mind body strategies, whether one woman was already a doctoral level physical therapist and could integrate the mind body strategies with physical therapy.
We had a gynecologist, obstetrician gynecologist, who a male who became with his wife, who was also a gynecologist became a real leader in integrative gynecology, introducing mind body practices to gynecological treatment.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: So on the other hand, a lot of our students become health coaches. It gives, it's a relatively short training process during their degree programs, and it gives them a platform to open a practice as a health coach that's legal in most states. You don't need a license to be a health coach, but they can get certification with one of two different national bodies and then they can integrate their mind body knowledge, their functional nutrition into their health coaching.
So I love the fact that we have this whole field of consumer technology which is available for self help, for self awareness, self growth.
But I also think there's a place for people to develop specialized expertise.
One of my themes when I was president of the national Biofeedback group, AAPB, association for Applied Psychophysiology and biofeedback, one of my themes that year was how can we give away this knowledge? How can we give away self regulation skills? And I've had just a few people say, well, you know, I make my money by this. How much, how much of this should I give away? And I just said in my, in my community, the more I've given away, the busier I've been as a professional.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Because there's always going to be somebody who needs a little more sophisticated level of help and guidance.
But by bringing up the awareness in the community of the possibility of self care practices and lifestyle change impacting on health, we're only going to do good and it's only going to benefit the community and ourselves.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Awesome. I love it. Now, being a halfway smart podcaster, I think that's a great way. And we'll put some links in the show notes as well. I might google it. The fact you said, you know, maybe I just think the work that you're doing, like I said, when I talk to your students, past, present and future, well, I guess not future, but past and present just speak so, so highly of it. And like I said, I wish I would have heard that message back when I was weighing grad school and career pass, because I think it's, you know, in many ways it's the cutting edge, the integration piece is the innovative piece, whether it's healthcare, whether it's mental health. You know, again, we falsely separated this, partly because we have to train people in something, partly, I think because we've had a misconception of the mind body disconnect for way too long. But I just love how that integrative approach with that from an academic intensive perspective, which I think is just fabulous work that you're doing. So I appreciate it.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Matt, I think you just did your closing, but I'm afraid you spurred something and I got to throw it back at you.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: Let's do it. Let's do it.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Okay. I want to thank you and optimal HRV.
We are in an age since the pandemic, increasingly behavioral health work gets done at a distance.
You know, there's enormous value in that. I used to have people who could only come in once a month or twice a month because they were driving 3 hours.
Now they can get on the, on a zoom with the provider and get guidance as often as they need it, weekly if necessary, without that grueling drive. But it's been a challenge for biofeedback practitioners.
The availability of consumer level sensors, devices and software is a real boon. Since we aren't going to see everybody face to face now, maybe I'm going to see people once for evaluation and then try to guide them at a distance.
I regret that I can't yet use my thought technology system and monitor them 120 miles away. Yeah, but one of the, one of the challenges has been, if I'm going to do heart rate variability training, do I train everybody to six breaths a minute? Because I didn't get to see them in person and do a resonance frequency assessment using my optimal HRV wrist sensor and your online software, they can now do a resonance frequency assessment.
Now, I had to do mine with optimal HRV several times before it started coming out consistently well. I was traveling so much and was so jet lagged. That might have contributed, but it's now giving me a pretty consistent 4.5 breaths per minute.
So I can guide people at a distance to do that for themselves. And then using a smartwatch and a breath pacer, they can do pretty good HRV training at a distance without ever coming to my office.
So I have to say, this whole field of consumer electronics, this next generation technology, I don't think it's ever going to replace all the professionals, but it's sure opening up some good possibilities.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Well, thank you. And my hope is that we can be that partner with these professionals. I would totally agree with you. There's, I mean, for some people that this is what they're looking for and to get that. But you know, for those, you know who, again, the professionals, whether it's health coaches, physicians, psychotherapists, like, you know, giving them another tool to help their clients, patients, reach their goals is, it's really a fun journey because it's a lot of partnerships to try to figure out what's going to work. What will people do? We joke. We have a dashboard which is just a big accountability tool to see if they actually practiced or not. So Eden, I have our dev teams done so much work and everybody just gives us feedback as I can see whether or not they actually did their 20 minutes of practice. But hey, even that, if we get, if we get increased consistency, that may be the great gift we give the world.
Well, I appreciate you giving us such huge shoulders to stand upon and doing this work because it, it just feels like, and that's why I love AAPB and, you know, we're not associated with them, but this becomes an unassociated commercial a lot of times. It's just, you know, I can sit in your classes, I can sit, you know, in Gerberts and share and Kazan and all these just great, great people thinking that are pushing this field forward and it's new enough where I feel like I haven't missed out on all the good stuff yet. Like I, oh, there's room. There's, there's still these knowledge walls that we're working to push further and further out as we gain more and more knowledge. And it's, it's just a fun field and group to be with. So I just appreciate the heck out of y'all and are honored you, you come talk to me on this show and to share your work with the world so.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Well, thank you, man. I appreciate the time spent with you today.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, we'll definitely get the link with information and a link to the book. It should be on sale when this publishes. So September 24. We'll get this out in October. So you should be able to go buy yourself a copy and then come to AAPB and get Don and Patrick's signature on it at the next conference.
San Diego, California, I believe is where we're going to be. So it would be a good, good time excuse. Go to San Diego and get that book signed by the editors and I imagine most of the authors will be there.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: A good number of them, yes.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Just go around and get every chapter signed. So.
Well, doctor Moss, thank you so much again, thank you for the book, thank you for your work and thanks for joining and nerding out with me on the podcast today.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Take care. Thank you.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Awesome. As always. You can find show notes and everything
[email protected]. and we will see you next, next week.
