[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 thrilled to have Greg Elliott back on the show.
If you did listen to our first conversation, you just might want to pause this. Go back there. I have so much respect for Greg. Early on in my HRV journey, I found his course.
I bought the course, and for about the next week, I continued to replay it over and over and over and over again. I just wanted to download Greg into my brain because he's one of the great thinkers about heart rate variability. And so I'm thrilled, Greg, to have you back on the show to nerd out with you about what you're currently interested in. But before we jump into that, just if folks are new to your work, just a quick introduction and I would love a little bit update of what you're working on now. It's been a few months since we've talked, so I'll sit back with our audience and get an update on what is Greg doing for us right now.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely, man. It's always great to talk to you, and I love the stuff that you're, you know, keep in touch with you and from a distance, and it's great to see all the work that you're doing as well, to be able to spread the word of how to make impact in people's lives. So, you know, keep going. And I absolutely love it. But quick story about me, an osteopath exercise physiologist dealing with HRV for the last decade, helping individuals, primarily what I say is more the functional illnesses, the chronic pain, the fibromyalgia types, the people that suffer from chronic C syndrome. So a lot of those areas that people are really struggling and even to a point of people that have sleep issues or energy issues and be able to optimize their health and wellbeing. So diving quite deep into that, as I said last decade have been doing it. And so I've done a lot more one on one work with individuals. As we start to be able to do that now, really trying to be able to understand the next level of where we can take this HRV journey and how we can actually impact this. And how, you know, how can we diver, you know, dive pretty deep and start to be the look at, you know, all the levers that we can possibly pull and how to be able to help people live long, healthy, happy lives?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Well, and I love talking to you because you're one of those people, and I feel like a lot of us get there. You've just been there for longer. Like I said, you helped me on my journey of you. You've been working with this biometric for. For so long that we kind of can hit walls with it at times. And, you know, on the podcast talking to some of the best researchers in the world, it's. It's so fun to find because I think this is where we continue to work, is you push up against, you know, either what we know about heart rate variability, what it's telling us, the usefulness of it, or just where our research sort of has left off and where we got more room to grow. So this is why I love talking to folks like yourself with this. So I'm just curious right now, where do you find yourself in your journey, especially with, you know, the amazing work you're doing with folks right now?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the biggest thing is connecting a lot of people in the HRV space and just knowing what they're doing and only that. It's kind of the health and well being space and how that can tie into this. And, you know, you're seeing a lot of phenomenal work on the psychosocial, the emotional side of things around heart rearability and all the work that's being done up there. There's a group of people that are looking in. They're doing some research in Australia right now that looks at, can they start to look at emotional intensity and valence in regards to what's going on? Do we actually have information from our wearables that can give us indications of do we have a more of a positive or negative emotion around to things? We know HRV is great for emotional intensity, but we don't know what our physiological reaction to that or what our mentality around that intensity is. And so there's a lot of phenomenal work that can be done in that space, too. So we're just growing again, this is ahead of some of the stuff that's out there and kind of contradictive to what people think. And so this is where I love research from the standpoint, but it's very much to the point of everything looks in the past. You're looking backwards what did everything say? Not what can we look at and what do we see? And this is the value of people that are in the field like us, that start to see these things that aren't complete, that maybe we can make more sense of things and be able to try and be able to see, hey, is this something we can do on the road and and really impact lives? And may not know the exact mechanisms as to why things change or why things occur, but we can see it on a day to day, a week to week, a month to month basis with the people that we help. And so it's that long of like, well, let me look into this a little bit more and see what I can possibly do to kind of make sense of this. And it may not be crystal clear, but there's something there that can tie it in. And then after a while, eventually the researchers get there. But, I mean, the amount of times that I heard when, you know, that HRV can't be used for concussion management, that HRV isn't a good indication of your overall health status, like, all these things, right? You heard this in the past and not. So research came out to disprove a lot of those things and see the value of all these meta analyses now and research reviews around what it's correlated to and how we can help people is people are starting making noise, and now it's getting to the consumers in that standpoint. But I'm super excited about the future, I think. Again, we're scratching the surface of what this biometric can provide us, and it's only a matter of time before this. It's really transformative to a vast majority of people. Jeff.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's two ways that I wonder how you, because it might be both. You're thinking this way. One is, I think, one of the big challenges for folks like ourselves or that are in the biometric business is what else can we bring in to this? And what does that mean when you do something like, you know, glucose levels and heart rate variability, and what do those show you? We bring those together, or blood pressure, you know, or steps. Steps is an interesting one because does it really tell you anything, kind of question marks in the research that means you're moving, which I think, let's maybe not throw it out if it works for people, you know. So that is kind of, on one hand is what do we, what do we kind of add to learn more about the other one that I'm fascinated with, too, and I wonder if you've thought about is, okay, so RMSSD, SDN might be good for those three minute readings, but what is, like, high frequency telling us there? There's like, all these metrics that we collect and, you know, I don't like, can we put them together in different ways to learn more specifically where we're at? So I kind of wonder, how are you thinking about some of these next few years where you would like to lead the research as one of the progressive thinkers in this area?
[00:07:29] Speaker B: That's actually a really good point in regards to how all these biometrics kind of tied together. We know there's associations between our physiology and what some of these statistics show, but I think it's the combination of these things, of adding these two things together, or adding weighted this higher than that, seems to be the next wave. Again, a lot of these companies that are looking at heart rate variability get a lot of information with their machine learning algorithms. They look at all the statistics and what all the statistics tell them. They may say, hey, these two, at these specific instances, give us indication around a, b and c. Uh, so you start to see the combination of all these things together, because it's not just one metric. Now, I, um. For me, I like to make things a little more simple. I try to make things black and white, and I always kind of talk about, now, about these, I learned it from Don Moxley. I don't know if you, you've met Don, Don Moxley at all. Yeah. So, uh, he always talks about big rocks, right? What are the big rocks? Right. Uh, if you ever heard Don, you gotta listen to some of the stuff. He's, he's a really funny guy. But I always. It really resonated with me, is like, I like to think of big rocks first.
One of the things that I know for sure, that's in my realm, which is what I deal with. Again, the statistic that seems to impact me is talking about the arm SSD. And let's start with that. That's the foundational one, the umbrella one that says, hey, let's start with there and see what we can possibly do and see what influences that specific value.
And let's work on that area. And you dive into, again, my biggest three that I work as a practitioner in is going to be your, your dietary requirements and what necessity, your, your replenishment, your refueling, uh, your physical activity, how much you move, all those type of areas, uh, and all that. And lastly is going to be the sleep and recovery aspect of it all. And so what I've dived in significantly more into now is starting to get more nuance with those approaches, uh, from that. And uh, you talk about, you know, doing this for a long time. I just last week did a webinar with Jason Moore, my long term business partner there from the foundations course.
And it was like a flashback, it was crazy. But the one thing that I noticed for sure, since we've been many years since we did one of those webinars is the fact that sophistication of the questions that are coming in way high level people really understand. I want a more nuanced, hey, specifically this, what is this show? A lot more people are getting way more educated about the, about heartbreak, variability in health and all those interconnected areas in that standpoint. So I love it, the fact that people be way more educated. But the problem with that is the fact, yes, you can be so nuanced in that in regards to saying, hey, does this supplementation improve Harvard variability?
Well, yes, but what does that supplement doing to your physiology? Are you deficient in it that way to be able to actually improve it? Right. I'll never recommend HIV supplements. I'll never recommend.
This is great for sleep or this is great. This specific diet is the only diet in particular. It's way more nuanced necessarily than that. And so it depends how people want to dive in is to all those areas. But I try to dive in super deep into all those areas to get specific advice to be able to improve and then use that umbrella arm SSD to start with from our side of things, not saying that anyone's unvalued, but again, big rock for me is that, but those other markets are absolutely important. And it gives me indications of when to start to be able to have different interventions and different people come and on board when those other statistics are off.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: That's awesome. So like, what do you, how do you do that? Because I find it interesting. I've been thinking a lot about how AI could help. We collect all this data and AI actually gives you really good advice. Like if I put in like, you know, an IOU for RMSSD, that's the, that course was why. It's like, okay, Jason Gregg said RMSSD, best research model, that's where we started with optimal.
And looking at this, and so you throw like, here's my reading, my last week's reading, my last month's average, and it gives you really good advice. It's just if you do the same thing the next day, it gives you the exact same advice, which I think is not a weakness of necessarily the AI one is we got to get customizable inputs in there in some ways, but it's what you should do. You should get 8 hours of sleep tonight. You should eat anti inflammatory food. You should maybe get some zone two activity in. Like it is really actually giving really good advice. It just, it's probably going to be the same. If your HRV is down, you're going to get one set of advice, which is actually really good advice. If it's up, it'll probably give you a little bit something else. So I wonder, like knowing this issue is there, like how do you dive in around things like sleep? I would love to hear, because it's been kind of a theme of the show and my work lately around nutrition, because it's such a tricky thing. Just love to hear how you work with people to dive in deeper on these issues.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah, because it was brought up and this was, you know, Jason and I went back and forth a little bit about this because someone talked about the ketogenic diet and Harvey variability, and it's absolutely no research around, around the benefits of that. But I think if people are drawing different conclusions, uh, as to why that is beneficial, uh, in certain areas, but yeah, each of those areas you, you dive in and obviously, you know, having background exercise physiology, you know, diving in some of the, the exercise performance realms of things like looking at the Vo two max, but, but obviously to the point of the different stages and why things are occurring with those areas, looking at strength and power and speed and measuring those objectively regards to your performance, how well you move your biomechanics, do we, do we move efficiently? Do we not move efficiently? All this is going to tie into Harvard variability in too many different ways. So we look at those and break those down. They have different areas of importance on that stuff. But again, we want to look at red flags into that. So that's where we look at the movement side of things. Do we have the capabilities to be able to be more active? Where are the limitations to be able to implement those limitations? I think people now are very aware of by the time people see me, typically, steps isn't a problem.
Yeah, steps is there. People know about their staffs, they're dialed in. If they're tracking all this type of stuff, they're pretty dialed in. How many steps they do and they know it's quite obvious. Right. So you're looking at a little bit higher level from there.
But people that have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, it's about pacing and all those aspects and so we start to work on those type of things. But again, it's all these data and yes, steps, highly inaccurate, a bunch of devices, but against relative data in my standpoint. Right. Someone said they did, you know, look at the data one day was 2000, the other day, 4000. More likely they just moved more than that. The other day, Evan.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yep.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: That's the big thing. So. So exercise, you know, we've always been a part of my life, been doing it again, you know, since 20, 2011, since all these exercise testing. So I'm very familiar. And we've had that pretty dialed in for a long time, diving into the next big thing, which would be dietary recommendations. That kind of ties into overall health and well being is that with the clinic that we're at, we have naturopathic doctors and medical doctors. We could. We can order a significant amount of blood work. There's a lot of stuff that's not accessible in Canada, uh, comparatively, you know, some of the blood work stuff. But through naturopathic doctors and medical doctors, we can get some. Some pretty good amount of. Of blood work. And we've developed some pretty good algorithms to start to look at, you know, what is going on underneath the hood, um, from. From you. Do we have a protein deficiency, magnesium deficiency? Are we chronically or acutely dehydrated? Do we have digestive inflammation? Do we have bacterial infection or parasites? All this stuff could be drawn for the blood work and biomarkers that we indicate from there that give us more specific needs in regards to an individual, but then it ties into the point of the other areas, which is the other objective data, which is called body composition, and partnering with a local company that does DexA scans and all those areas. And then there's also the tie in the struggle. All this is the contextual information of all those things. If you're dealing with someone that has. Has deficient protein needs and their blood lipids are super low and all bad, but they're. They're vegan and they don't want to change.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: All right, well, you got to work into that area or to the point of like, hey, I just don't. I, you know, I can't eat that food because it just destroys my gut in regards to, you know, I get so bloated or hurts or whatever it may be, then you work on some of those. Those allergies from that standpoint. So you really got to be able to figure out, work with what the objective data says, what the subjective person knows and work within to those in particular, to kind of have a specific plan for those individuals. Then it comes to, I mean, people just don't like the taste of certain foods, so they're not going to do it. Right. And I have to selfishly say with this side of things, and I always hate to say this, but ever since I had a kid, I've been avoidant of anything, a type of seafood, and it's the smell, I don't know what it. And I know, and I know it's phenomenal for you. Absolutely. Many different areas.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: You're in Vancouver, right? I mean, you're.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: I'm beside. Literally, I'm a block away from the, from the ocean. Right. And, and, but I just, I can't. I can't do it. I can't eat it. And so I know. So, you know, a lot of my markers, everything from health history and all the stuff, I'm like, yeah, but I'm not gonna do it. Sorry. Like, I can force myself to do it, but it's just, like, it's such a struggle. And so I try to incorporate as much as I can, but for that way, I gotta be able to supplement other things or whatever it may be able to do. But, yeah, it's, as you know, I'm sure you've had the struggles of the nuances of the dietary recommendations and what to be able to do from, from a health perspective, it's just a real mess. But you really have to, you really have to dive in again, we talk about the big rocks of things and start to make some, some decisions based on that.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: So you're collecting all this data.
I'd love to just see, as you look at it in the context of heart rate, your expertise in heart rate variability, what are some of those things that are popping out at? Is it all individualized? Are you seeing some trends? I'd love to just kind of, as you sit with that and nerd out about the data. So sort of, what are some of the things that you're learning along the way?
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's phenomenal, uh, from that, and it is, it's so true that, like, when you start to dive this deep into a lot of the blood work stuff, it is so specific. Like, I haven't seen trends, really in people. It's, it's, it's crazy that there's not, you know, to a point where it's low because of this and this, that and you. And another difficult part is the fact you don't know how big of an improvement actually has when you actually correct it. Right. You can have two, three people that have, are chronically dehydrated. Right. And so whether the fact that they can absorb water or the fact that they're just under hydrated from their side of things, you'd be able to correct those things. I had someone that literally doubled their HRV because they got to the point where they actually be able to retain water.
Right. Comparatively to where I got someone to hydrate and just, I didn't make any difference. Other markers kind of relatively improved, but it's like, from HRV perspective, uh, it didn't. Right. And, and the reason why I like this aspect, again, a lot of things in health, and I have been saying this a lot. A lot of things in health aren't necessarily about ruling things in. It's about ruling things out.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: And so when you can rule out dehydration, you can rule out these deficiencies and minerals, you can rule out exercises as a problem. You start to realize, okay, well, what's left?
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Right. And this is where I love to have this conversation because, you know, most people are pretty dialed in. There's a couple of these changes that we can possibly make some maybe big difference, but other people, it doesn't make a difference at all. We've. We've had people that biohack like crazy and all type of stuff, and their HRV is super, super low and. And it just agrees. Listen, like, your physiology is phenomenal. Right. The inside is doing great. What about the external stuff now?
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Like, it's time to have a conversation of, like, how do you see the world?
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Right?
[00:19:25] Speaker B: How well do you. Regular emotions, how well is your home life? So to look at these other areas of, like, how they deal with, they're stressed from the outside world rather than internally, which they're so concerned about, and be able to bridge that conversation and be like, all right, it's now time, right. And be able to work with companies like yourself to be able to provide that data and that information, that intervention for them to be able to take the next step, to realize, again, very similar to we go through blood work. I was like, I had no idea that I was a deficient in folate. Right. In regards to that, it's, you know, that's why your testosterone is low. That's why your red blood sound count is low. That's why your hemoglobin is all like, that's why all these things are low. Rather than going one by one to improve them, you just be able to correct the reason as to why that's low.
Work on that. And again, you clear those things off. It's the point of, ok, now it's like you start to work on some of the stress management you have and how you view things and your mindset around your environment. And it's just like, I had no idea that it was this much of a stressful situation.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: JEFF well, that's what I love about this field is, like, so for me, coming from the mental health space, like, folks like yourself have been such great teachers to me, because now, if I don't talk about movement, nutrition and sleep, I like to say I'm setting that ceiling on how much I can help people. I can still help them, but if they're doing things to create inflammation and dysregulate the nervous system, there's a ceiling there that I can help. And again, then I get to talk to an expert like yourself who's like, I hit that ceiling from the mental health perspective. So talking about that and HRV, what I just love is that it gives us a language, a common language, and then the science, the autonomic nervous system and polyvagal theory and all this gives us this great science in which to say, okay, I may need to go to grade for sleep and nutrition and how some of these bio other biometrics connect, whereas looking at stress management and all these things comes from the mental health space. And it's like, oh, wait a minute. There's a whole mind body system here that might be interconnected.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I would love to ask you a question, if that's okay, because this is a big thing for me, because, again, it's for a lot of the kind of people that I deal with, whether it's people that are suffering from chronic diseases or people that are biological high performance. And again, you know, as you. You go into the world, the people that you get kind of. Again, like, you get the same kind of people that kind of come to you. And one of the chronic things for me is that people think that it's a physiological problem.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Right. And so. And then this is why I have, you know, again, start with the approach of dealing with the physiology, and then to the point, like, listen, there's nothing left, right. You know, there's. I don't know how much more, like, in the physiology side, if you're looking at different courses, right. And you have three courses that you're taking a semester, your physiology is at 99%.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Right. But your GPA is not good. So let's take a look at the other areas and the other subjects that you're taking and see what's going on. So that's where that conversation has. Do you have that same, but the other way around where people obviously come to you from a mental health perspective but don't realize the actual impact some of the physical interventions can have in regards to not only Harvard variability but their mental health?
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you see that all the time, you know, so, you know, on one hand, you know, my. The work that I've done historically has been with those with complex trauma. So. So they're sort of coming in, being devastated by what sort of happened to them in their life and just sometimes just absolutely horrific trauma. So coming to me as a therapist and this is where I've had to really educate myself and just really get into the researches. Yeah, I've got tools in my tool belt to help you with that processing of the trauma stuff. We've also got to talk about this. So this is where, you know, in our field, we call it psychoeducational work is. Okay. I'm going to talk to you about pretty early on now, you know, sleep, nutrition, movement.
But I got to talk to you about the why behind that because you don't come to me to talk about nutrition. And, boy, to get into that space.
I've got some feelings that lower my HRV about the history and I'm not an anti capitalist, but I got some problems that I won't bring all those up here. You can go back to past episodes. Listen to me. Been around that. So, yeah, I have to kind of do the justification of why I'm talking to you. And that is where I call. I kind of call it trauma literacy, but that's kind of in our field. I think for you and I conversation, it's more like neuro literacy. It's like I got to give you that baseline understanding. Now I bring how trauma has impacted that and then talk about inflammation and other things about why I need to have these conversations. So let me kind of throw the question back at you in the same way is how do you kind of breach that? Because I think for me, in some ways it's easier because I can, I mean, touching on movement, everybody knows they should move more, everybody knows they should probably eat a little bit better or now even sleep people. I think because of like folks like yourself, people now know that sleep is actually good for you.
It's not a sign of laziness anymore. So I think we got there, my friend. Great work.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: But so I think I have it maybe a little easier. I wonder how, from your perspective, because reaching that it might be a marital issue or a stress management, that seems like you get maybe a little bit more touchier ground coming from it, from that angle, Jeff.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: No, it absolutely is. Right. And so it's one of the things, and the same way in your things is you have to be able to do things to establish trust with the person. Yeah. As quickly as possible.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Right. Not that I'm the know all, be all or I'm this and that. It's like I'm here with you to be able to try to figure out what's going on. Right. And we're going to do this together, um, from that. But, yeah, it's. You do get a little bit of hesitation, I think, obviously, the. The pushes with the mental health understanding, especially with COVID and all type of stuff, I think that's obviously shifted in regards to that. But I think it's almost, people are in denial a little bit that the fact that, that their mind could have as much impact on their body because almost like, I won't let it do it. It's like, yeah, it's a sign of weakness to a degree that's like, hey, my mind can kind of, like, make my body feel a specific way or impact my health and well being in that way. And so, again, it's that quantifiable nature, but very similar to you is that first conversation. You talk about that stuff, and so how I talk about it is obviously, you know, why they're there to see me. What are the kind of symptomology? Give me the story behind it all to get a really deep understanding. It's like a little bit of a work, and you start to go to the things that they feel comfortable and why they're seeing. You talk about their medications they're using and diagnosing the conditions, what their blood work at, what's their physical activity. You start to be able to have a conversation. The way they see, they read and react. And the one thing that I've learned a lot with my mentors is they don't teach this in our areas is how, like, just look at somebody and how they reacted. Like, their body language and what they're the nonverbal cues into what is necessarily going on. And we start talking about stuff that they want to talk about versus stuff that they don't. The shift in mood, posture, tone, all those things. You start to realize, like, oh, this is, this is a big piece of the. The pie that we're going to have to unpack a little bit. And I don't know if they're ready at that point to talk about it or whatever it may be. You kind of have to make that clinic the clinical judgment to the standpoint. But again, you talk to them about stuff that's comfortable at the beginning, stuff they know stuff, the reason why they see you, and you start shifting that conversation of. Of like, what happens? And they're like, again, like, I had a client the other day talking to them about that, and they were making direct eye contact with me the entire time. As soon as I talk about, you know, how stress can impact what's going on, they didn't look at me at all talking away, gazing at the stuff, and you're kind of like, all right, it's sensitive because there was some very sensitive information that they were talking about that was, you know, beyond my pay grade. It's in your pay grade at that point. But at least to the point the conversation is there, it's on the table. We start doing things, and then we can roach that conversation more and more. And then when they're ready to be able to do so, to be able to address it, that's awesome.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: I wonder, just out of curiosity, because one of the things I love about heart rate variability is not only are we tracking, but we also can do HRV, biofeedback, whether they're working with you to be at the highest level of performance for a marathon or me to help heal childhood trauma or anywhere in between, burnout, whatever it might be. So I wonder how you kind of think about that within the work that you do as well.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I always focus on is assessment. I want to have the most unbelievable assessments possible. Right. Talking about to the funnel, I just taught a course with some personal trainers around, exercise prescription and all that. And what everyone wants is the end result.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: All they want is like, all right, show me some cool ankle stretches or, you know, better range of motion. My shoulder. I'm like, what's significantly more important is to be able to find that. That's the problem.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Because I can show you a bunch of shoulder stuff and back stuff and hip stuff and knee stuff, but to the point, if you don't know when to apply those things and you just do whatever all the time, it's like, okay, that's not, that's not the best, because we'll go to a point, we'll break it down to the point that I find that it's like, you know, arm flexion to see the problem of limitation outside, they go, well, what, how do I fix them? Like, there's a million videos on YouTube. Be able to fix that. Thousands. You can pick any of them, right. But it's getting to the problem. And so I'll kind of break this into many, many pieces. But one of the things that once we kind of dial in some of this blood work stuff, this physiology side, the exercise performance and the sleep aspect, I want to be able to be able to incorporate some of this biofeedback regards to the assessment piece, as we start going through these initial sessions of what people can do and when we think about things and do a protocol to look at that side of things, of how much their mind plays in regards to their physiology, I always say that with, you know, with the people do multiple morning readings in the morning, back in the day, right. And they do one reading, then they do it again and do it again. It's like, it's always different. Like, of course it is, right. You're like, your physiology is not stagnant, your mind's not stagnant. Right. Like, to a degree, if I, if I had to do, you know, back in the day, if I do five minute reading and then I want to do it again, like I'm sitting ten minutes in bed here, like I want to get up and get going, like I'm going to be anxious since my scores gonna be all over the place, I might change my breathing or whatever. So its going to be all over. So thats going to be the big piece from biofeedback is I want to be able to start to figure a way to be able to put that into the assessment piece that provides some objectivity around that stress management side to show them to the point like, hey, this is how much were impacting in that side of things in regards to an intervention. Its absolutely phenomenal. And we had this question in a lot of webinars in regards to HRB biofeedback, but I find it very similar in its intervention in other type of interventions, in the fact that it's, it's great to be able to, you know, to do the biofeedback, right. To be able to understand of getting into balance and all that type of stuff. But if you do that and then you go to a board meeting and you start ripping into people and start yelling at them and you're emotionally dysregulated, like literally like minutes afterwards.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Then what's the point of doing that?
[00:31:28] Speaker A: No, right.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: You know what I mean, so it's like, it's understanding. It's getting people to understand what is the purpose of doing this? It's to the point that in under conscious control I can regularly my nervous system and I know what it feels like. I'm in touch with it. I do it continuously. So when I have the recognition that I am dysregulated, I can bring myself back down to that specific area. So that's where I see kind of the values almost to the point of like, oh, you know, I did my 30 minutes of walking today, but you're going eating a million calories in a day. It's like, what's the point of walking?
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Right. Like you're not doing anything else. Right. Then what is an intervention? Granted, it's better than nothing, right? But like, you know, but you're, you're doing this stuff, you're making this effort that you're wasting wasted 30 minutes of your day doing things because everything else is ridiculous. And so that's my hope with biofeedback. This next realm is I completely get the abundance of research of how it's beneficial, which is great, but it's about the education to the piece of like how does this translate to making me healthier and better? And I think it's an understanding of like this is a tool that when you're in that situation of how to best be able to calm down, to regulate, to be in that system. So I'm in a flow state to be able to make better decisions and right decisions and not make it impact my health.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, for me, like again, on the, on the mental side of things, like, and I joke around as if you go to a therapist, they're going to tell you to journal because we love homework. Right. We know, most of us know that the hour enough for most people is not enough. Like maybe great to have 2 hours a week or 3 hours a week or every other day. Like that's especially if you really want to feel better real quick with like an hour. It's like. So we always like fill that gap with homework. It's like, it's just kind of the greatest homework you could give somebody for most people because it doesn't always work. I'm really interested in this research Fred Schaefer's doing around contraction at residence frequency and that you may not be breathing. And I just, I just, I'm really fascinated with where we're going to take some of this and what's going on there. What are we doing? Like really cool stuff. But it's like, to me, it just like, helps to get to the health outcomes, whatever health is to that person. It just supports that for most, most people. And then trying to find, like you mentioned, where can this be a tool throughout your day? You know that. How are you utilizing this? A residence frequency breath before that meeting, maybe, or when you feel, when you feel your stress starting to rise? All that stuff so crucial?
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Well, as I'm saying, like, it's that interceptive ability of being able to feel when that starts to trigger, right? Because a lot of people are so disconnected from what they're trying to do, because they're trying to be able to suppress some of this stuff. It's like, oh, fine, I'm okay, right? And they're, they're boiling over with emotions and it's, to a degree of, like, again, doing it on a, on a routine basis of, okay, what does it mean to actually be in that calm state, right. And when you do that consistently, it's like, again, I don't know if I said this, I don't know if I said this last time on the podcast, but it's like when runners, sometimes you start to be able to track their heart rate when they run, right? And they do it for weeks and weeks and weeks and that type of stuff. And I guarantee you after about a month or so, they wear it on a daily basis, they run a day. You can throw that heart rate monitor out. They know exactly what their heart rate is, right. And it's because that intercept of ability with that task has been done on a routine basis. And HIV biofeedback is the exact same way, is that they understand of, like, this is where I need to feel and breathe and do that. One of the podcasts I was on, we actually had a, it wasn't HRV, because we do that, but it was like a frequency, a breath frequency before we on the podcast. And to be able to feel the mental clarity that he had beforehand and all the like, oh, everything up here, it's like, no, no, no, it's gone. I'm here, I'm present, I'm here, I'm now, I really take it that into a lot of what I do when, whether I go on a podcast or I go to public speak or whatever it may be, you just remember that type of stuff, a couple of those drills in something simple as that. But to have the objective nature of, like, this is where you're at, this is what's going on, and be able to give you tools of like, hey, this is where we need to be again. It's such a critical tool, Jeff.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. So you mentioned a word that I think is for. I wonder if you've been a little obsessed with as well, introspection.
So it seems like, where we're all kind of like, huh, let's. What's.
So I. Maybe you just, like, threw it out there because it was the right word to use, but I was like, I'm, like, obsessed about this, and I know I'm not alone in that. So a word, like, honestly, a few months ago, I had to learn how to pronounce it right. I'm still not sure if I'm doing it because there's a weird set of vowels and consonants mixed in there that don't flow off the tongue naturally for me. So I would love maybe just threw it out because it was the right word to use. But are you, I wonder, is there any thinking about that? Because one of the things that's kind of a fascinating piece of research that kind of combines our two worlds, like the posture of the body. There's a whole segment of research on this and nonverbal, verbal, like, all this stuff. And I wonder, like, getting people to reflect on what their mood is, what's going on inside of themselves, what they're feeling, whether that's pain in their shoulder, like you mentioned, or just a dysregulated stress response system. I wonder if you're chasing this rabbit with some of the rest of us around this concept.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Absolutely right. And so I figured, yeah, you've seen a lot in, people won't call it it that, but you see a lot in some of this physical rehab space where some people are just kind of like, they're just super disconnected from what their capabilities are or what they're doing and where they're in space. Their proprioception of, like, you know, this, they're just very disconnected. It sounds aggressive to say, but disconnected from the reality that's in front of them as to where they're at. Right. And so it's about making that connection and be able to understand those things as things get, you know, so it's easy in a little bit in, you know, my clinical world with people that are in pain, where, to a degree, it starts to be able to feel better, do a movement where things are okay, breathe into it, relax, and twist this, that, and be able to use that concept as people do movements. Where do you feel this? What does your neck feel like? Is it calm? What about your toes and your, you know, your thigh and all that. So to be able to work on that, for a lot of people, it's been super impactful. Just make that physical connection, especially people that are in pain. We know that people that are in pain, the longer they're in pain, the. The less connection they have with their body, because they. They don't want to sense it anymore. So they try to be able to relatively disconnect from it. Um, so that's a, that's a piece into it. But again, there's so many components of their mood and their emotions that it's hard, because, again, above my pay grade where people say, like, hey, are you stressed? Ah, no, great. Yeah, no, great. Don't sleep. You know, my kids don't like me. I, you know, my work sucks, and. But everything's fine. Yeah, I can deal with it well, right. You're kind of like, all right, well, you know, there's a lot to unpack there regards to emotional connection you have into what's going on, but I try to be able to dive into that in regards to the physical aspect, because if we can show that there's a physical disconnect with that, with some of the data that we have, you know, they feel that they're strong or not strong, or they feel that they're flexible, or this is painful, whatever it may be, we start to be able to change that reality. I think people are more open to the idea that, hey, maybe some other things in your life are a little disconnected as well. And, like, you know, let's get you in the right hands to be able to dial in with that.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I think it's, again, kind of fascinating on my end is the somatic therapies have really taken off in trauma work. Like, and it's such a different, like I said, mental health is cool nowadays for anybody out there. Used to be really boring when I got, you sound as C D I sassy. We talked for 55 minutes or whatever it was, and then I tell you to go journal like. But now, like, the movement, the almost release of this is a real cool way to, I think, look at that mind. I even hate to say mind body connection, because it's like, if it's connected, it means it's two separate systems. And we gotta get away from that, though. Everything about your expertise and my expertise, it's fun to, like, cross talk because you're on one side of it, I'm on the other, and to bring that together. And I think interoception is one of the areas that that could be a real powerful bridge to it. But I also find that it can kind of get us into descartes, you know, connection of, oh, the mind is looking at the body as a separate homunculi sort of thing floating out there. So it's like, it's an area where I'm seeing, like, homunculi and stuff coming back. It's like, whoa. Like, like, we gotta be. We gotta keep the learning that we've kind of had here about how do we look at this all as one integrated system? And, you know, I think with introception, it's an, it's a challenge for us to bring, I think, this holistic idea of us as human beings into the. Into that arena.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, it's always a difficulty with learning too, right? Because, you know, how we learn is that we put things into these boxes and these specific structures and what it may be. And I always use the example of, you will throw that out of the window when you start to actually see a cadaver, a human body, in regards to like, oh, activate this muscle. I'm like, yeah, good luck.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: It is literally a big sheath of tissue that. It's so like the textbooks make it look great. Yeah, but you're, underneath, you're like, those are two different things. Yeah, right. And you're. It's. It's the same thing. Like, the amount of things you have to do to be able to make it look that way. And so when people have that idea, because, again, they'll, you know, originally, like, oh, you know, activate this muscle, this or that. It's like, my gosh, like, it's impossible that if this is active, that has to be active. Like, it's. You cannot disconnect these things and put in. Now, I understand it's how we learn and how we do things. But, like, you cannot disconnect anything, right? You pull on this, it pulls all the way over there in regards to that. Right? So. And I think HRv, again, like, that's why I love it so much. It ties all these things together. And I, and I, and I do love it in the fact that it is one of those, as you said, common languages that we can possibly have. They all come back to saying, like, you know, to impact this, like we're doing our job, whatever necessarily is. And it could be, it's part of this, it's a part of that, it's part of here, it's a part of here, but it's all kind of encompassing into that. Um, and that we can all show the value of all of our interventions and all of our expertise by this one specific biomarker. So that's why to me, it's like such an impactful thing because that's why I love it. I'll never, never get rid of it and is crazy. As long as I've been talking about this, uh, you know, topic, it's just. It's still to the point, I think, you know, I think it's the. The understanding is not fully there from a lot of the people of what the potential of this.
And again, it's.
It's not something that's the difficulties. Like, it's not actual. Like, if this is low, you do this or this is how you do this or whatever, maybe. So it's. It's, you know, people think that it's going to tell you exactly what you need to be able to change, and it's like, not so much. Right. It's just this overall umbrella. And else to this day, I would still say this to the point that I don't think there's more of a holistic biomarker that's more important than that. Yes, there's some phenomenal biomarkers, but the fact that it's non invasive, the fact that it's continuous, the fact that the impact by all whole health interventions and has an abundance of research that show that all these things are connected, I just. I'm like, I don't know one other marker that can show you all that.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's still there. And one of the things that I wonder, because you've been in this longer than I have. And I'm like, said, even though, like, we didn't meet each other until after I obsessed about your course over and over. Think about how to bring this into the mental health space. And now, weirdly, we're working with elite athletes, which is like, hey, you know, it's the journey, so thank goodness.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: Thank goodness.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: It's like, okay, it's, you know, but I wonder, is somebody who's been on this journey longer than I have? One of the things I have a little bit of excitement and concern over, and I'd love to just get your take on this. I've seen this happen with trauma is 20 years ago. Nobody was talking about trauma. I went through a whole master's in counseling psychology back in the late nineties. I don't remember trauma being mentioned one time.
And in fairness to my training, we weren't talking about that as a field at that point. The adverse childhood experience study was being done when I was being trained, and now trauma is being thrown around in ways that I get a little scared of at times, too. And as somebody who's watched Yahoo's like me come into the field and this energy around it, I wonder what excitement you have and what concern you have as you see more and more of us.
It is kind of your fault because you did put a course out there, a great course, by the way, that I still think is probably doesn't need updated because I go back and look at those slides all the time, and it's like, yeah, this is still great work. What are your concerns? What are your areas of excitement as more people come to where we're nerding out about?
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've kind of concerned about is the fact, you know, there are some certain things like limitations. I've been talking. We have professional limitations. We also have physical limitations. People can have obsessive over these, you know, I mean, I would classify them as normal heartbreak, variability scores, but because they're not, like, exceptional, they're, like, losing their minds. Right. And I go to the point, it's like, not everyone's gonna be Olympic athlete even. You can try absolutely as hard as you possibly can, but it's just like, you know, to me, if you have a normal heartbeat variability and you've done your blood work, you're seeing people for mental health, you feel pretty good in that side of things. You're addressing these emotional things. You're doing all the right things underneath the book, there's not some hidden thing that's in there that is causing this stuff. It's just to the point that you're going to have these limitations as to where you are. If everything's right as rain, you're feeling great, and your HRV seems to be in the normal range, then your goal is to keep it there for as absolutely as long as possible.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: If you have a vo two max, that's like, you know, 50, which is like, really good type of score. Right. And it's like, oh, I want to be 70. It's like, I don't know what to tell you, man. Like, if you're training to everything like that, I don't think it's possible. Right. But the goal is, I mean, if you. If you keep it at 50 and you stay at 50. Yeah, you're there. I mean, my gosh, like, that is an unbelievable accomplishment to be able to work it. So my one thing is I've actually had to.
I've done a couple introductory calls for clients that want to be able to come on for HRV, that type of stuff. And they're going through what they're doing. And I'm like, listen, I think you're fine.
I couldn't add anything.
Can I take money and just give you some? Yeah, absolutely. But I'm like, listen, keep doing what you're doing, it's fine. I'm not too worried. So that's where my concern is, is the fact that people become hyper obsessed around a normal value and that side of things. But, but as long as you're checking everything else, everything is dialed in, then just keep where you're at. And that's the hope, my big thing, my hope is again, very similar to where you're in, is just the unity around the objective nature of things, to be able to classify or give some insights into different areas of health, well being a little bit more in that assessment tool of that because again, it's a difficult experience for me to be able to try to say, hey, there's no point of really diving your physiology because we got some psychology or past trauma that seems to be president over of that stuff. And my hope is that with the companies like yourself and all the companies in the other spaces, be able to bring that objective nature into what's going on and use the technology we have in how we can expand to different areas to provide that. The biggest thing is I want people to be empowered to be able to kind of create their own changes. I don't want them to feel that I have the problems to fix things, I always say that it's like, listen, I'm not going to fix anything. Yeah, that's it. My job is to be able to figure out where we have limitations and be able to work on those limitations. But you're the whole thing. To be able to create this change and take that ownership. The amount of times I've had to like, you know, people tell them what the people to do and they don't do it.
They go away for a few months to come back and be like, hey, I'm back again. I'm like, listen, you're wasting my time. Honestly, it's not worth the effort that I'm putting in to say the exact same thing that you just haven't done.
And so if you want more of a cheerleader, you can go find them. That's completely fine. But I want people to be able to listen, you got to take ownership over this and be able to put the work in. I'll help guide you and give you the right tools to be able to do that.
So to provide some back to that was a big rant. But back to the fundamental aspect of it all is the hope of the fact that the different areas of health and wellbeing to be able to be under one roof, then have this one goal that we can all communicate together and have this. Thats my big picture when it comes to heart rate variability and these non invasive biometrics that we can get.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: I love it. So I got to ask this question while I have you because. And that that would have been a great piece to just end on if I was a smarter person, but I'm not. I wonder if you see, and I'm. I'm just that I always like to say speculation is fine here, but let's, if we want to call it that, that's good too. You know, as I have gotten in a little bit to the elite performance space and I don't do a ton of that still to the. So I don't claim any. I'm trying to get people. I'm all about the zone two stuff. It's like walk. Because if you're not doing anything that like walking is great and it's actually great. It's not like, oh, it's less than running for a lot of people. It's probably way better than running. So I wonder, because I almost hear that, like some of the folks you might work with, do you think something like the obsession is in some ways, and again, I'm just speculation. We can throw that out there almost like a trauma response is this is a coping skill to be obsessed with because I listen to some of these podcasts and I'm like, when do you have time to do anything else except track your biometrics? Like. And it becomes almost like a weird coping skill or something. Do you have any, like. Again, we can call it speculation. You can call it insight if. If you have some more, you know, clinical insight into it. But like, do you see, do you think you. You are dealing with trauma to some extent when you hit these issues?
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because people just, again, just hyper obsessed about these.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: These hyper vigilant kind of mentality.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And when I started be able to see that, it's where you start to be able to, again, disconnect again. It's about using that again, very similar to the biofeedback. As you get to the space, you understand what it feels like. Okay, now go use it. You got your feedback. It now just implements. Right. You don't need to be happy with sess from day to day now. Like, it's just implemented, blah, blah, blah. If I see it to a point, I'm like, listen, take the strap off, stop measuring it. Like, just go live life, be happy for a bit, and let's get back within three months.
And this is what I'm saying. I like to assess because it gives me exactly the direction, but I don't need to them to continuously monitor all the time. And that's the stuff. Like the day to day. Let's just work on this for a while and see. Maybe give some the first couple of weeks the feedback, hey, things are good. Okay, great. Just keep going what you're doing and kind of ignore the numbers. Just live right even now to the point. Like, I keep measuring stuff in various ways.
I don't think I've checked my data in the last three days. Like, I don't know what it is, but I'll look back and be like, hey, how was, you know, how are things? And I have an idea of what. I'm not obsessed if I got a bad night's sleep. So what if I felt great and it says my sleep is bad? Well, whatever. It is, what it is, right? And so it's about, are things going the right direction overall? And I'll go look back in the last month and in May, and hopefully things are, you know, we're better than the month before, right?
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that. I love that. And that's good advice for everybody out there, too, is like, it gives you a data point. And there's so many things, like, as somebody having to obsess and I know, like, about artifacts. For example, if you burp during a reading, we try the best we can to take that data out, but it's good. Like, you know, it's almost like that seven day average looking at those things, like, so much more. I mean, we're working with optimal to kind of take out because we threw, like, optimal zone in there to tell you you're in low frequency during your training, your biofeedback, and, oh, man. Like, I know the person because I'm one of those that can get there. I've just practiced mindfulness for 15 years, so I can. I can identify when the obsessive Matt is taking over and stop him. But it's just like, okay, we need to turn that off for people because it's hurting their. Their experience, and they need to be in the moment of the breathing and not obsessed of whether or not they're getting an a or a b on their test and it's, it's a fascinating thing, uh, to see for folks.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: I remember that back in the day that was a feature for uh, Bioforce and elite HRV where they have to the point of like you can blind your athletes to the day values. Right? I was like, I'm like, why do people do, and then, and like a couple of months in like, okay, yeah, now I see why they want that going, there you go.
[00:53:54] Speaker A: It's like we're going to measure this. We're just not going to get, oh, human beings, you're human beings. No matter what direction you work with us, we are fascinating. Well, Greg, it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you again.
I'll just say if it's okay with you, we can put it in the show notes. I'm interested in that new course you did with Jason as well where people can keep up with you and your work. And like I said, if you haven't heard Greg teach, he is one of the best teachers.
I get to talk to great folks. Like I get to work with Doctor Eno Hazan and Gerbert and Shaffer and you are right there as one of my great teachers in this field. So I appreciate the time I get to have with you. And we'll put links where people can get to those courses. And I know probably a few people. Their question is, do I have to be in Vancouver to work with Greg? So maybe you can address that to kind of funnel the emails that might, because you did say you work with individuals. So maybe before I let you leave here, what would an individual interested in working with the legend that is Greg, do they have to be in Vancouver? Let's put it that way, yeah.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: No, you don't see Vancouver, Vancouver, we can again, the clinic that I'm working at, you know, we really dive in deep to a lot of these areas and kind of, you know, you know, take the high performance or kind of those people that really need a lot of answers and provide a lot of solutions for them. But I take on, because of the course and all that stuff, I have taken on like a few clients that I, that I do keep it very small. And so if you go to Greg Elliot, CA there, there's a way to apply and I'll kind of let you know that there's opportunities when you do that and when things come through, it's small part of what I do, mainly because people just want answers. And so if people are really diligent in it, and they really want to be able to work. I'll obviously do it, but it's a small group of people. Typically it's about five people at a time that I take over on a month to month basis. It's kind of what I limit myself to. But yeah, anything from there you'll find there's ebooks there, there's links to the courses, link to the place in regards to see me in Vancouver, but that, so you can find me online there and more stuff coming out very soon.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Sounds good. Well, my friend, I can't wait for our next conversation. Keep up your amazing work and just appreciate you.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Matt and Zach, same to you. Obviously I'm falling in love with you. I love what you're doing. Keep it up. It's such a refreshing sight to see you do all the phenomenal work that you do in a parallel kind of field as me. Not the same, but to see all the growth and achievement of that area and what you're doing there, man, I'm so proud of you. And keep it up.
[00:56:53] Speaker A: Thank you so much, my friend. And as always, you can find show notes, everything
[email protected]. dot Greg, appreciate you, appreciate our listeners, and we'll see you next week.
