 Thank you so much for being here with us, Sagru. It's lovely to be here with you again. Yes, and also Horacio de Iglesia. Thank you so much for being with us today. We want to talk about, set the stage a little bit about what we're here to do today. The idea is that the lunar cycle, the moon, can influence people's behavior. This idea dates back thousands of years, but it's been largely dismissed by modern science and medicine. Yet the lunar cycle is clearly impacting cycles like human reproduction. I think it's very accepted that it influences the menstrual cycle and fertility in that way, but there are other behaviors that have also been found to vary depending on the lunar cycle, but that are slightly less believable. Admittance to hospitals and emergency rooms have been shown to vary. Frequency of conditions like heart attacks and stroke and even the social interactions and human behaviors of things like traffic accidents or crime, suicide have all been reported to be correlated with the phase of the moon. Yet whether moonlight or the gravitational forces that accompany this massive space rock and whether it can influence human activity at all remains controversial. So let me make some introductions and then we'll get right into the discussion. My name is David Vago. I am a research associate professor of psychology at the Vanderbilt Brain Institute, Vanderbilt University. I maintain a research appointment at Brigham a Women's Hospital where I collaborate with the Department of Psychiatry and I have more recently become the research lead for Round Blast, a global health and well-being company where I am building research infrastructure and curating evidence-based content. So today we have this opportunity to discuss the wisdom of contemplative traditions that are thousands of years mature, not old, mature and modern science which is providing new evidence describing the relationship between this big rock in the sky and our planet earth. So we're going to have this dialogue how historical yoga sutras and philosophy describe the relationship between these two planetary orbs and how they influence each other also from the perspective of modern science and it turns out that there is evidence indeed that the moon can influence aspects of our mood or decision-making and our behaviors and so over the next hour I will try to moderate a discussion while I introduce some of the science from contemporary sources from the research lab of Dr. Delia Glacia and from the wisdom of contemplative traditions like yoga that Sadhguru will share with us. So just to give you a sense of who is speaking today, Dr. Horacio Delia Glacia finished his undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He got his PhD in neuroscience and behavior at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he studied the neuroanatomy of the master circadian clock of animals and the brain centers that control reproduction and the interactions between the anatomy and reproduction. He then continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and later joined the University of Washington in the Department of Biology in 2003. His laboratory is interested in understanding how the neural systems encode time and generate rhythmic physiological and behavioral outputs to adapt to the temporal structure of our environment. We are going to only have an hour together today because Horacio will be receiving a prestigious award from your... Oh, congratulations. Ministry of Science and Technology are acknowledging him and his work so we will have to say goodbye a little early but we're so excited to have you with us. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Delia Glacia. Thank you, David and Saguru for having me. And while Dr. Delia Glacia raises the volume, I'm just going to introduce Saguru, a man who really doesn't need much introduction but he is a yogi, a mystic, a visionary named one of India's 50 most influential people. Saguru's work has touched the lives of millions worldwide through his transformational programs. Saguru has a unique ability to make the ancient yoga science relevant to contemporary minds. He's an internationally renowned speaker. He engages with scientists fairly often and has been an influential voice at major global forums including the United Nations and the World Economic Forum addressing issues as diverse as socio-economic development, leadership and spirituality. He's been invited to speak at leading educational institutions including Oxford, London Business School, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, all the big institution. So we're really fortunate to have this group of people today and I will do my best to moderate the discussion. So thank you, Saguru, for being here and being with us today. Thank you on a day like this when you're having an award, having this conversation wonderful and congratulations once again. I thought I'd start the conversation off with a from a paper that Dr. Dela Garcia recently wrote about synchronization of human sleep with the moon cycle under different conditions. And he says in the introduction and I will read that and then I'd love to hear your comments. Moonlight is so bright to the human eye that it's entirely reasonable to imagine that in the absence of other sources of light this source of nocturnal light could have had a role in modulating human nocturnal activity and sleep. However, whether the moon cycle can modulate human nocturnal activity and sleep really at all remains a matter of controversy. I thought maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what is this controversy? Why is it not clear? Yeah, so it turns out that there have been some studies looking at sleep recordings from sleep laboratories in which they had found an effect of the lunar cycle on the electrophilographic recordings of sleep. However, you know, that was a retrospective analysis of sleep stages in people that happened to be in the sleep lab at different times of the lunar cycle. So it wasn't what we call a longitudinal study of the same individuals throughout the lunar cycle. And there was controversy because other studies emerged that said, well, this is not a real effect. And the jury was still out in terms of whether the moon faces could really modulate sleep. And I guess what our study added to that is that we did exactly that. We followed single individuals for at least one month and up to two months recording their sleep, at least their sleep timing. And that allowed us to really answer the question of whether sleep was modulated by moon faces at the single person or individual level. Okay. And in fact, we found that it did. So I think the controversy was around the fact that the studies had not been designed to detect this. That's fascinating. So how do you know it's not the light itself of the moon coming into the remote? Okay. So we started, you know, when we started these studies, I've been studying sleep in indigenous communities in Argentina for over almost nine years now. And I remember one day I was chatting with Miguelito, one of the leaders of the families. And he said, oh, you know, a couple of nights ago, it was very, it was a hot night and it was a very bright moon. And I went swimming in the river with my wife. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. So he asked him, well, what else goes on on moonlit nights? And he was full of stories, right? Moonlit nights were nights for fishing, for hunting, for social activity, for more sexual activity. And I thought, wow, that's fascinating. Let's see whether we can capture this by measuring sleep. And that's how the story started, right? So in these communities, we still have single communities that have no access to electricity whatsoever. So we started with the idea that if we did find an effect, it would be present only in the communities that did not have artificial light, right? Because we thought, well, there you can, you really can take advantage of the moonlight because you have no other sources, right? For, of nocturnal light. But we started looking at the data and we found the effect, not only in the communities that had no electricity, but also in the communities that had 247 access to electricity. And even in some communities that live in a relatively urbanized area of Northern Argentina. So we thought, oh, that's, that's really interesting, right? That the effect persists, even if people have the ability to control whenever the lights are on in the evening. And that was followed by yet another study that we did here in Seattle, where I live currently, where we studied university students, and we saw the same effect of the lunar cycle. And these are students that are very much unaware of what moon phase they're going through. So it's not like they're looking at the moon and say, oh, this is full moon or new moon. And therefore they are responding to to the lunar light, right? To the moonlight. In fact, light pollution in Seattle is way above the levels of full moonlight intensity. So they could not be responding to to moonlight itself. So that's why we're currently thinking and trying to start testing the hypothesis that maybe other physical changes associated with the lunar cycle may modify our sensitivity to light. And that light could be moonlight if you're living in a natural environment, or artificial light if you live in an environment where you can switch it on and off. So that's the general idea that I have now in mind. It's so fascinating that that so you're saying that the controversy has been whether or not the moon can influence sleep, right? And that's the country. Yes. And your your research has shown, definitively, that at least in Argentinians and in students at University of Washington, maybe, yes, that the cycle may actually have an influence on how we're sensitive to light. And the light may be the mechanism by which it's influencing how the efficiency in which we sleep. But the gravitational force may also have some sort of implication. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how there's a mass, right, that the moon carries and a mass of the Earth carries, and that all objects have a mass and carries some force. Is there something related to the the force by the just the mass of the two objects that is causing a change in human physiology? Well, you know, we're all familiar with tides, right? And actually, we pay attention to to tidal levels. It turns out that every 15 days, right, around the time of full moon and around the time of new moon, those tides get maximally high and maximum low. So it's what we call the spring tides. So they are the and the reason for that is that on those on those days, the moon, the sun and the Earth are aligned on the same axis. So the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon are added. And you experience maximally high daily tides. There's so far no evidence whatsoever that humans can detect those changes in gravity, right? I mean, we still don't have that. We love to have that, right? But on the other hand, there's no other we don't have at hand any other way to explain why in a place like Seattle, right, where you have no ability to sense the moonlight, you can still respond to the cycle of the moon in that way. So our idea is that on the nights previous to the full moon, because what's interesting is that what we found is that sleep starts later and is shorter on the few nights leading to the full moon, not around the full moon, but on the nights, you know, the shortest sleep duration takes place three to five days before the full moon. And it's what's interesting about those nights is that those are the nights in which moonlight is available at the end of the day. So it's available in the late evening and early night. And if you think about the utility of moonlight, right, in terms of our, you know, ancestors that were, you know, hunter-gatherers, it's interesting to think that in fact, it's much more useful to extend the daytime activity with the moonlight, right, than wake up in the middle of the night by the effect of the moonlight. In other words, if the moonlight comes out at 3 a.m., you're probably already fast asleep and you will not respond to that, you will not wake up. However, if you're planning to go to bed around 8 p.m. in the evening and you suddenly see this bright source of light, you may actually stay up and continue whatever you're doing. And it's interesting because that's exactly what we do nowadays with our artificial light. Whenever you use artificial light to advance the activity of the morning, we typically use it to extend the evening activity. So we think that in a way, artificial light has tapped into this ancestral effect of the moon on our sleep. But going back to your question of gravity, so the only explanation that we have so far is that probably that perception of gravity makes you more sensitive to that effect of evening light on keeping you awake. But the data is not clear, right? How gravity can... No, no, because we still, you know, as far as we know, there's no physiological data that shows that humans can respond to the subtle changes in gravity because, you know, they're not huge changes. And of course, animals that live in the intertidal zone, right, that are very well adapted to the tides, their whole life is very much in synchrony with these tides, right? But so far, nobody has been able to show that humans could respond to these gravity changes. So maybe, Satguru, you could provide some light from the yogic perspective. Clearly, there's a large history of descriptions of how the moon can influence our physiology. But there's no evidence from modern science to show that gravity, at least gravity, specifically the forces that bring two masses together can influence how our body and mind function. So I'm really curious about what the Hindu scriptures will say and how it can maybe motivate, inspire some more research. Namaskaram. Sivan, from the yogic perspective, if you look at it, one important arm of yoga, which is called as hatha yoga, simply means haa means the sun, thaa means the moon. Hatha means to bring a balance between these two forces. So essentially, approximately seven to eight planets and the moon and the sun together have a significant influence on the making of life on this planet. This is how it is seen. In this, the sun, moon and the planet has the maximum impact. Well, as well the male population may be confused about it, I think the female population in the world, human population, has always been very much in sync with the cycles of the moon and that's the basis of our birth and our existence right now. But apart from that, we do not see moon as, what to say, just having some gravitational impact on us in its extra reflected light like this. We see moon as the basic element which holds earth in its trajectory of rotation or the revolution around the sun. In the yogic sciences, we see that I think today modern sciences are confirming this that, you know, the moon as a satellite is moving away about twenty millimeters every year and when it moves beyond a certain point, it will start its impact on the life on this planet will recede. Out of that, human reproductive cycles will go off the… see it's normal cycle and that is how humanity will end. That is how human beings will slowly go away. But above all, if the moon goes away, which inevitably it is supposed to do after many million or billion years, whatever that is, when it goes away, we see that the earth cannot hold its track of revolution around the sun. It will lose its balance and it will also break up into pieces. This is how the yogic system looks at it, about its impact on our daily life. Well, I'm sure you are aware of this. India uses largely the Hindu calendar is either a lunar calendar in some parts of the country, wherever there is matriarchy, there there will be lunar calendar, wherever there is patriarchy, there there is what is called as luni solar calendar, which is a combination of lunar cycles and solar cycles. Why this calendar is important is, see today we are looking at calendar as just a number game of measuring how many days in a month, how many days in a year or how many years in our life like this. Here we are not looking at calendar as just a numerical record of things, but we are looking at it as how we experience the calendar within ourselves, how the body responds to it at different times. Our callingly various traditions, practices, rituals were crafted so that in those times you can make the best use of what is around you in the form of earth's energy, in the form of earth's trajectory, how it is moving, how it's northern face of the earth, where it is pointed towards, its closeness to the sun, all these things are taken into effect as to what sort of practices you do. When I say hatha yoga, this sun and moon, well this 4,356 days is considered as one solar cycle. This is segmented in different ways for different people, for householders it's segmented one way, for the yogis it's segmented different ways, for the ascetics one way and people who are into regular worldly life another way because their bodies are tuned and they need to function differently. Accordingly the calendar is used depending upon the moon faces and the the planets position in relation to the sun. Well as we know the moon is constantly showing only one face to us, it is its rotation is synchronized with planet's rotation so we're seeing only one face of the moon. This also is significant because the way the moon responds or the way the planet responds to the moon, there are very wonderful stories how they're always looking at each other, the moon never turns its back upon the planet. The day moon turns its back on us we are finished. You know in case the moon turns its back on us that means human reproductive system will go away and it's over that means when the moon's rotation goes beyond a certain certain radii or certain circumference rather then it will start showing the other face to you when it shows the other face that means the end of humanity has come in a few years it will go down. So what impact it has on a daily basis? Well it is not the moon light alone, it is a whole today people are talking in scientific terms of electrical chargers, electromagnetic impact and other things. Well I don't want to talk about it that I'm not an expert in that but in the yogic system we have a lot of significance to full moon and new moon days because those two days there are different types of practices we do. Assetics usually do practices during new moon days, people in the family way of life, they will do all their practices during the full moon night because the impact is very different. There are variety of devices that we created at one time where you know like through the full moon night how to expose your spine to the moon not allowing the moon to fall on the other parts of the body, a device so that an arrow crack which allows moon light to fall only upon your spine and how it reorganizes your system. Three moon full moon nights like that could completely reorganize your system from ill health to health, from foreign women it was seen as from baroness to fertility and various other aspects and also in the mystical world various levels of perception were always you know connected with the moon. As you might have seen images Adiyogi the first yogi wears moon a crescent moon in his in his you know upon his head like a jewel this is to indicate that he is at the highest level of perception because human perception and moon are very connected. Well today in terms of medical terms you I mean the doctors you must translate this but I'm saying in medical terms we may see it as there is a certain level of neurological stimulus. When I say neurological stimulus why I'm talking about this is see as in the evolutionary process of life on this planet of all the things we are not the strongest creature on this planet but we have the most complex and sophisticated neurological system that's what renders us as really on top of the pile of the evolutionary system. So this neurological development is the most significant aspect of who we are and the neurological development of the human being and how stimulated it is and how active activities and how balanced it is is in many ways directly related to the faces of the moon and there are very many ways in which people can make use of it to handle their various mental fluctuations and sloshings that they have you know many human beings go into tides themselves within their system because the whole oceans are going up but seventy-two percent of our body is also water so there is fluctuation in the system it is just that generally I know there are some studies saying on this day people tend to become more imbalanced or those who have anxiety and manic depressions go off control this kind of things I would like to say the moon is not causing madness I'm saying this so that moon is liberated from this word lunar means if you say loony people think you're mad all right so moon does not cause madness moon just pushes up your energy in a certain way if your quality is joy you will become more joyful if your quality is love you will become more loving if you are meditative you will become more meditative if you have mental illnesses that also gets enhanced whatever is your quality gets enhanced because of full moon it is not causing any one particular quality in us it definitely does not bring about madness it is just that it enhances who you are on that day whatever is your quality finds a larger manifestation because of that maybe in the medical institutions mental and other kinds of institutions people may find some kind of exaggeration on those days well thank you for that that that so that there's clear description of yoga's influence or at least the influence of the moon the relationship between the moon and human physiology is clear in in yoga philosophy right and so and almost even more intimately connected into our everyday lives than we would ever think right most of our at least in north american culture most people will hardly recognize that there's a moon outside thanks no that's because they went to the moon you're right that's a problem maybe when you're traveling to the moon it's like a i don't know it's for for for leisure it'll be more in its mind which is the importance of it but you you also mentioned in your writings that practices from the yogic tradition that specifically are meant for maybe spiritual practices tying your behaviors on this planet if your spiritual practice how can a spiritual practice on this planet be influenced by a rock in the sky up there is that really a possibility and if so how is it interacting with your physiology at least from the yogic perspective right there's 11 day cycles where there's fasting it's related to that kind of practice of doing working with you know your your gut so i'm really curious about how that it relates to a spiritual experiences well uh david we are all all this life including you and me are living on a rock here which we call as planet earth isn't it it's just a rock for somebody else who is looking at us from elsewhere so about how it influences i i do not know what is the direction of studies which are going on but i think from what i have heard from people people are largely trying to measure changes in the brain activity and stuff like that but it would be helpful because from my experience i know that the maximum amount of change happens in your belly in this region which you call as the gut because that is where the real change happens and it has consequences in the brain and the rest of the body so one important aspect of taking in the moon there are practices in yoga where you can live like every day in your experience it's like full moon the same full moon impact is on in your body on a daily basis there's a whole lot of practices like that so we say this is a somebody has become like an eternal moon within himself that he's like a full moon always because certain things can be done in the system the impact that the full moon has on various aspects of your body the cellular behavior in the system this can be replicated on a daily basis simply by activating this dimension well to give some background to that see who we are as life is a consequence of how this planet functions the how this planet functions is a consequence of its position in the solar system and definitely the sun is a major powerhouse which fires everything and the moon which is a satellite by our understanding but it has a significant impact on the production of life on this planet so what kind of life we are is essentially determined by these two aspects sun and moon playing their influence upon the planet at various levels there are other planets which have influences on you but their impact is much lower and they are significant only to certain people not for everybody but fundamentally sun moon and the planet are the three celestial objects these celestial objects moon there is so much romance about moon david just killed it saying that it's just a rock in the sky so many people have fallen in love on that David David now you just made the rock in the sky why is this rock so so special you know compared to you know other stars in the sky it is close so we see it we engage with it a little bit more but is there something unique about the moon itself or is it really just a you know just an organic sort of artifact of the of this influence of two massive rocks influence it is not that the rocks it is not the influence of the rock upon us it is not the content or the mineral content of the rock which is making the difference maybe that also could be making but essentially it is a geometric placement of the moon in relation to the planet that it's making the difference for example you know the there are numbers like this I am not very good with mathematics but let me tell you something the distance between planet earth and and moon and the distance between planet earth and sun is 108 times more and the diameter is similarly 108 times more there's a geometric proportion to this you can look it up I am not very good with these numbers but essentially there is a geometric relationship which is more important that's why I was telling you as the circumference increases its influence will decrease and about 3700 years ago a certain yogi made a calculation that in 28000 years time the influence of moon upon the planet will become so feeble and slowly the moon will start turning its back upon you that is when human race will go down well now about 3700 years are gone so we still have 24300 years according to that calculation so as this 20 millimeter excess of the radius that is happening year on year which has been confirmed by scientific scientific measurements if this continues for another 28 years or 28000 years or so then they say the influence of moon will become so minimal on the planet that it may not be able to help us to regenerate so this regeneration process is not in the brain it is in this region which is very important so the influence of the moon maximum is on your gut so this is the reason on in India there is a whole tradition on full moon day how you should eat on a new moon day how you should eat for every face of the moon how you should eat on that day in terms both in terms of quality of food and the quantity of food what you should do so that you can get maximum benefit of the moon face of that time so one important thing is in India this was the practice traditionally in the Hindu calendar that for all activity that we are doing the there were no weekly holidays there was three days break for full moon and two days break for new moon but there was no Sunday Monday kind of holidays so now we've just come to this because these numbers are easy to calculate you don't have to look up at the sky as you said most people who live in cities don't even know there is a moon that exists they only read about it somewhere they've never looked up in the sky at least every month they're not looking up definitely not every day even the full moon nights they're missing it completely because the lights are all bright and blazing so where will they ever like professor or has suggested that you know the the light pollution in Seattle city is much more than the moon so where will they notice it they will not notice it unless they're out in the open somewhere generally people notice it if they're in the wild or especially if they're on the ocean then you cannot ignore the moon you understand what kind of significance it has today all our you know marine vessels are powered otherwise in ancient times tides and mariners are like you know inseparable there is no way so their full moon new moon and their expeditions were so very connected it definitely has more impact than just causing minor differences where we were talking about how the sleep quality changes i would like to see that scientists like you focus on how our life quality changes with the moon faces how our wakefulness changes why are we talking about sleep because i see there is a kind of a fetish about sleep in this country to sleep well to sleep well not to live well is more important than to sleep well if you live well you will sleep well that's a really good point harassing comment on some of what sagru has been alluding to at least from the from not only from the yogic scriptures of a more intimate relationship that humans have with the moon on a daily basis they different behaviors of fasting of how they you know bring in food depending on the phases do you see the phases of the moon influencing any other aspect of human physiology in your research so um well other than than you know corona activity and sleep there have been several reports particularly in relation to mental health right and and and this is really interesting because of what sagru was saying that any character that you have will be enhanced at given phases so the moon cycle right and of course if you think for instance of about a psychotic patient right um if you think about our sleep wake cycles right that are modulated by the moon cycle then if you are going to stay up later on the nights that are leading to the full moon then you'd have more of an opportunity to exceed your psychotic symptoms right and this could be perceived by other people as an enhancement of the psychotic symptoms but it turns out that there's some literature that really suggests that there may be a real enhancement of those symptoms and this is particularly in bipolar patients that um you know I don't know to what extent the audience knows about this but bipolar patients are characterized by the cycling between depressive and manic states right and it turns out that it's very well characterized that you know bipolar patients if you shorten the sleep whether spontaneously or you you you force this for environmental influences they will get more manic whereas if you lengthen sleep that's associated with more depressive symptoms and it turns out that there's been several publications showing that bipolar patients had a very striking synchronization some bipolar patients right um with the moon phases and in turn that seems to be related with symptom with symptoms of the disease and this this would make sense right if you're going to shorten your sleep around the nights before the new moon that sorry before the full moon that could lead to more manic expression of the disease whereas if you're going to lengthen it before the new moon that could lead to um to more depressive symptoms of the of the disease um you know what I I find really fascinating um this idea that that you know any any um any personal character that you have you know will be enhanced by the moon cycle and I I guess you know one one question that I was thinking about is is there any is there something special about the nights leading to the full moon in terms of preparation for that night of a full moon in the in the yoga culture right because that's when we find that main effect right that that sleep is more severely affected on the nights previous to the full moon not on the night of the full moon itself so I wonder whether there are some practices that are associated with those nights specifically right or or with those days in general um so anyway I don't know if I answer your question David but but uh well yeah no this is it it's you're alluding to this uh the question really is still unknown how and as I proposed the question how how does the moon really influence you know behavior we don't really understand that at least the gravitational mechanism the light sensitivity one's interesting in the sense that so you said that the light that's produced by the moon is not even as bright as the the pollution you get from the city yeah so why would you be more sensitive to that light even through another mechanism like the gravitational force yeah yeah of course we don't we don't know what the mechanism is but but it's it's a fascinating question and it it goes back to um what Satguru is saying that yes we live in an environment where we're completely unaware of what the moon is doing in terms of the lunar month right but yet you know there may be inescapable influences of the moon on our physiology right that even if you live in a completely isolated built environment with thick curtains you know turning the artificial light whenever you want you may still be under that influence and that's suggested by our research in these highly organized environments like Seattle that's that's fascinating so I was involved in some research actually a Brigham Owens hospital that looked at circadian rhythms and Charles Sizler who is one of the world renowned experts in this area he showed that you can you can use a light cue as small as a spot of light maybe the size of a nickel on the back of your knee to actually influence your circadian rhythm to to change the rhythm so if light that small actually yeah you know I think that the the story on the the light on the back of the knee was finally not it was it wasn't from Chuck Sizler's lab but but I think that didn't eventually hold that story was from another lab but in any case but yeah but but I guess the point which is very important is that very dim light can influence your circadian system and with much dimmer than we used to think about and a question would be do you think that the spectrum of light from the moon is something unique compared to say other you know artificial light so you know it likely is but we don't think that that's probably how that was probably the the most important if you want throughout evolution the most important selective pressure for nocturnal activity again going back to our ancestors right if you think about somebody living in Europe 30 000 years ago where you know throughout the fall that the days are getting shorter and shorter and you need to gather food for the whole winter well you know any extra little bit of light that you could get in the evening you take advantage of it right if you think from that perspective that that must have been a tremendous influence and you know we have the the latest records indicates that we have 300 000 years of human evolution on earth right that effect of the moon has been there for 300 000 years and and it's to me it's almost entwitted that there may have been selective pressures from the moon throughout evolution to actually influence our physiology right is there is there anything from the sciences to suggest that because that's what's i grew was was alluding to also was that the moon is shifting on its axis and so is you know so is our magnetic poles and we know that that is also influencing um rhythms uh biologically and um you know on earth seasonally so i'm wondering it from your perspective do you see any any changes maybe over the last 30 years or so since you started doing this work uh and how the moons change in its spatial orientation is maybe influencing no not that i know and and and i think 30 years would probably be very short you know if we think about the timeline that said we were was talking about we're talking about almost 30 000 years right so half a lifetime probably will not capture that right but but you know at least as far as i know i i don't know of any studies that can look at that specifically but do you see an um a cautious kind of uh interpretation of of what's happening with uh you know in astronomy like how these how the moon is actually shifting is going to affect um maybe some of the work that you're doing in circadian well i guess you know eventually if the the moon cycle changes in its period right we should expect that our response to it will also change accordingly right um you know even even if it is small changes that would be a prediction that that could be tested but again i don't know how um how big those differences will be you know in in our testable life right i mean at least in my life i don't think i'll i'll see those changes that that i understood that that's probably well said i i would ask though given our limited amount of time together that segura had alluded also to the the the relationship of mysticism or spirituality and the moon with humans and i know you've done some work with animals um and melatonin i'm wondering if you could you know in in the best way possible to summarize that work and i only bring it up because melatonin is this precursor to um uh it was a dimethyl tryptamine which is a psychedelic as produced in the in the pineal gland and it has all these implications for mysticism so i'm wondering if if you could talk a little bit about some of the work you've seen in that yeah so you know we've done some studies in in animals and one study specifically where we studied the moon cycle in animals is with um monkeys monkeys that are actually nocturnal which are very rare they live throughout south america this is the only genus of monkeys that are truly nocturnal and amazingly you know these animals are heavily dependent on the lunar cycle right so it's kind of going back to what segura was saying that you know people that are connected with nature are very well aware right of what the moon does to them and how they depend on the moon even for agriculture you know i mean people are timing when they plant on the and when they collect based on lunar cycles um well for animals it's even more and i don't think there's probably any any single species that lives in a while that is not somehow connected in its sleep and and and circadian ethnicity with the lunar cycle right it would be very unlikely that that's the case um i'm talking about animals right um i guess going to melatonin melatonin of course is this this amazing signal for the brain of where your biological night is and one of the things that we're trying to determine now is where the the lunar phase has the ability of changing that biological night signal which is melatonin melatonin is the most important signal for the brain in terms of when is it that it's a biological night right um and we think that maybe one of the mechanisms by which the moon may change the timing of your sleep is by changing that that nocturnal signal right that marks the beginning of the night but there's still no evidence neither from from animal models nor from human models who are kind of moving towards that in the next phases of these these studies but melatonin in general is a um you know as produced by the pineal gland could you be comment on it's controversial in the sense that it's been thought of as like a mystical chemical yeah you know i i i don't know how strong that that evidence is i you know it's clearly you know an extreme important signal for the brain to know where your night your internal night is and of course you know part of the problem is that artificial light can acutely inhibit the release of melatonin so we are every single day we're tampering with that natural nocturnal signal signal by by getting exposed to even very deep levels of light you know the light that you use to read a book next year you know next to your bed is sufficient to inhibit melatonin so we're always sending the brain the signal that the night has not started when in fact it has right yeah that's that's very helpful just to give a sense of of how you know the body has this internal endogenous clock right that helps keep our time within the same period of this periodicity of a day right day yes hours but our natural rhythm is around 25 hours right yes yeah exactly and then there's this chemical in the brain that's released from you know what Descartes referred to as the seat of the soul and yes the Egyptians you know referred to as the the eye of Boris the only unilateral structure in the brain is in the brain then it seems like a very interesting structure and it's been implicated in well mystical states only because it has there is some limited data like Horacio is alluding to that if the state is not very convincing but it is a it is the data that does exist it shows that it's a precursor to a chemical that's naturally occurring in the brain and is a DMT it's a it's a psychedelic that's used for very short intense psychedelic experiences and so that's why I was thinking with said guru you've been referring to the moon and and working with the moment the the the cycle of the moon specifically for spiritual purposes you have shown Horacio that that birds have daily variations in melatonin that disappear on full moon days is that right is that no no that's not my work okay but I was actually not aware of that well there is some data that's showing that the flux okay melatonin vary on the on the lunar cycle is that something that you have observed in your work not not yet no and we are actually gearing to do those experiments those studies in in human subjects but we need to do that under laboratory conditions because of the fact that humans are very bad at exposing themselves to artificial light and erasing the natural signal of the night which is melatonin so in order to capture that you need to put them in a lab where they remain very relaxed and they're very dim light and then then you can really see where is the natural melatonin signal sitting at David the thing is see in the yogic system there are simple processes with which particularly on full moon nights where you can get totally stoned out just on moonlight there are processes to do that and as you can see I don't know what the DMT is you can see I am on it all the time no substance from outside it's from within it is in some way on one level in the physiological level the significance of yoga is to stay in tune with the sun and moon cycles in relation to the planet that is the only way this life can be in balance and with least amount of friction within itself because then the life's experience as I mean whatever the chemicals you're discussing serotonin melatonin all this stuff essentially you're saying chemistry determines the nature of your experience of life itself so to maintain that chemistry which is always blissful and ecstatic moon and being aligned with the moon is a very important part of it so there are various practices associated with that one thing I would like to request professor Horace is if they can invest a certain amount of attention towards what is happening in the gut with the full moon new moon I think it may be far more easily measurable than what is happening in the brain because what is happening in the brain we see it only as a consequence the real thing is happening in the gut you may see certain effects in the brain what is a consequence is one thing but the process the changes that are happening within the gut region is very big and it is probably more easily measurable in in my limited understanding of science I am saying because what is happening is there more solid kind of stuff it is more tangible that maybe it is more easily measurable than what's happening in the brain yeah that's a great idea and there's a lot of research emerging on the importance of the gut not just in general in general physiology and neuroscience but particularly in circadian rhythm so and it is there are definitely some physiological outputs that we can look at in our study so that's a great suggestion well I think there are implications for this work and this kind of dialogue and collaboration is really great we are limited in our time to get it today so in in closing are there any reflections that you want to reflect upon at this at this time Horacio maybe we could start with you and then we can end with some group well I guess you know the main reflection is that we tend to think that we humans are very good at isolating ourselves from nature and I think our research clearly shows that there are some aspects of natures that that are unavoidable right like for instance maybe we're all all under the influence of the moon even when we're not paying any attention to it so that that'll be my message too thank you for that yeah that clearly there's things happening in our environment that we're not aware of right that we don't register in our sensory stores but that have very strong influence on us and they only manifest or we only see it when you know for you for example in a female reproductive system has a very clear rhythm to it and when there's one rhythm in one by a lot one biological system and another rhythm in a you know very strong physical system they're going to influence each other so that makes a total intuitive sense said guru please I'd love to hear what I think I think all of the audience would love to hear your reflections on how you think we scientists continue to work with yogis and yogi philosophy to better understand the influence of moon on on behavior and moon say I mean I'm not with all due respect I'm saying this see there are many instruments which are being used to analyze this data or that you gather but well it's at least in my perception it is well established the most sophisticated instrument on this planet is the human mechanism itself so what is happening in the human mechanism to measure that do we have instruments which are sophisticated enough to what's happening there so why can't we do experiments where people who are in different at least at a certain level of sadhana their body itself is treated as an instrument of measurement what is happening there not necessarily taking their blood samples or neurological impulses and saying this and that yes that is important at one level but I'm saying beyond that why don't we prepare people who the very body can be treated as an instrument what it is saying that is more important because ultimately that is human experience also so if we want this the efforts of scientists to become a practical implementable process I think if we I know this may be deflecting or deviating from how science has been till now but I feel a time has come for that because in the modern sciences they're clearly clearly recognized there cannot be another gadget on this planet which is more sensitive more sophisticated than human body itself so how to use that if scientists can arrive at that I think what is going at a snail space could leaps could go leaps and bounds and this generation could benefit not some other future generation that's a great idea so so now and I apologize for having to leave early but I really need to go to that thank you Dr thank you very much everybody and it's been a great experience to to hear you Sadhguru and all your with some ideas you know I already have at least a couple of ideas that are that may actually change how we go over our studies so thanks a lot. Namaskaram thank you very much. Thank you so much both of you for participating today and thank you all for listening and participating wherever you may be may the moon have good influences on you all. Thanks a lot David. Thank you very much and don't call it a rock. Okay. Namaskaram. Namaskaram.