 What's happened over the last five years is really diving into what we know about the brain in meditative states and understanding that they're not all the same, that it depends on how you're using your attention and what your intention is. And those two things change what brain waves are involved and what brain regions. And so when we understand that information, then we can be much more directed about what we're actually trying to do. Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sackian. We are at Consciousness Hackings Awaken Futures Conference. We are now gonna be talking to Jeff Tarrant. Hello. Hey. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, very excited. So you're the founder of the NeuroMeditation Institute. Yes. And NeuroMeditation is the application of brain-based principles to meditation practices. And you interestingly have taught me that all meditations generally fall into one or more of four categories. Focus, mindfulness, quiet mind and open heart. I love learning about this and it definitely resonated with me. I'm excited to learn more about this. So why don't you give us a bit on who you are and what you represent? Sure. So my background is actually as a counseling psychologist but most of the work that I've done has been with neurofeedback. So measuring the brain, monitoring the brain and feeding back information to teach people's brains to be more flexible and adaptive. But then I also have a background in meditation. And so it's not a big stretch to see how those two things could go together. They're both technologies in a way to influence states of consciousness. And so what's happened over the last five years is really diving into what we know about the brain in meditative states and understanding that they're not all the same. It depends on how you're using your attention and what your intention is. And those two things change what brain waves are involved and what brain regions. And so when we understand that information, then we can be much more directed about what we're actually trying to do. Okay, so when did you first have the aha moment of, okay, attention and intention and how this applies to meditation or feedback? Yeah, interesting question. The reality of what happened was I was just minding my own business, doing my thing and was invited to write a book chapter and a neurofeedback book. And I of course said yes. And my second question was, what do you want me to write about? And the editor said, well, whatever you wanna write about. And I just spontaneously said, how about neuromeditation? It just came out of my mouth without me thinking about it. And he said, great. And so then I was like, oh, I guess I need to figure this out. And so it really became looking at the research that's been done in the field of neuroimaging and meditation and there's just mountains of it. And it didn't take long to figure out that, other researchers have already figured out that really you can isolate different styles of meditation into a few different categories. They call them different things in the research literature than what we call them. We tried to pick names that were a little bit more user friendly. But when you start to look at it, it's pretty clear that if you direct, and it makes sense, if you direct your attention in different ways, it's gonna affect the brain differently. And so in some ways it's very obvious when you sort of break it down, it's like, well, of course, of course all meditations aren't the same because if you're doing a concentration practice versus something like Zen, well, that's very different. You're using your attention in very different ways. So it's gonna affect the brain differently. Okay, so then even after that chapter, you were like, I'm gonna start an institute about this. Right, yeah. It wasn't an immediate jump to there, but yeah, so I wrote the book chapter and initially my focus was on using neurofeedback as a tool to help people find these states of meditation. And I still do a lot of that. You can hook somebody up, give them an auditory signal that lets them know when their brain is in the right meditative state. So it's kind of a super coach. And so that's what I started with. And then very quickly figured out that the principles apply way beyond just people who do neurofeedback. And so I started teaching a workshop for a company called Pessie that they send people around the country to do continuing education workshops. And so my initial idea became this day-long workshop which then became a book. And then at some point it was like, okay, you know, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and now it's an institute. I feel as though so many people that have practiced any form of this inward practice meditation have felt these differences with a focus or maybe a heart-centric exercise. So start unpacking some of this for us. Sure, yeah. And so the four styles, I think you mentioned, but that we work with are focus, mindfulness, open heart and quiet mind. And so the focus practices, almost everyone who's done any kind of meditation is familiar with that because so many practices involve focusing on the breath when your mind wanders, recognize that it wandered and bring it back on track or a mantra or an image of the Buddha. And so what we know is that if the whole goal is to hold your attention on a specific target and don't let the mind wander and when it wanders, get it back, well the brain is pretty much doing the exact same thing whether it's a word or a phrase or an image or the breath, it's the intention. I'm holding my attention on one thing. And that's actually a very active process. We think of meditation as being this quiet inward state but the reality is that in some cases it's not. To sustain your attention on one target, you have to activate attention circuits in your brain. So it's not all quiet. Some parts are quiet, some parts are very active. Sometimes it can be that battle with the monkey mind of stop racing away, I'm coming back to the focus. Well, right, and actually so to give an example of the brain regions, focus is a good one because it's fairly straightforward. The frontal lobe and especially the anterior cingulate needs to be engaged for a focus meditation. It's involved in sustaining attention and also discriminating between thoughts and emotions. So the anterior cingulate is actually going to be active during a focus meditation but the default mode network in the back of the brain which is the monkey mind has to be quiet. So you have to have both of those things happening at the same time. This has to be active, this has to be quiet in order to be in a focused state. And so this is where it's important to sort of look at the different brain regions and what's actually happening. And are you usually using an EEG to view this? Yeah, so if I'm working with somebody individually or studying it, we use a 19 channel EEG and then some specialized software called Esloreta that allows us to extrapolate from the surface into deeper brain regions, kind of like an MRI. Yeah. Okay, so you can successfully take the biosignals and process them to extrapolate to the deeper areas. Right. Okay, and that's how you can tell like an anterior cingulate. Exactly. Okay, interesting. And so then with that you see with focus that there needs to be a focus as well as a quieting of the monkey mind, okay. And then there's so many other ones as well. Okay, mindfulness, quiet mind and open heart. Does it, there's some overlap with that focus and quiet mind a little bit? Actually it's interesting that you went to that. Well, there is. So this is what I've found really interesting. You know, the more you look at this you start to see how they work together and the similarities and the differences. So with focus you're holding your attention on one thing. With quiet mind you're holding your attention on no things. And so it's basically the same. So with focus this is active, this is quiet. With quiet mind this is quiet and this is quiet. So you basically drop this. You keep this, drop this. And so a lot of traditional transcendental meditation practices start with a focus. They start with a mantra as a focus meditation to settle the mind and quiet things down and over the course of the meditation you let that focus go and you end up in this quiet, spacious awareness. So what they're doing is starting with focus, starting here and then dropping that out over the course of the meditation. It's brilliant, it's very clever. Yeah, you get really good at just being with your breath or with just being. Just being, right. Yeah, just sort of that sort of spacious awareness where there's kind of not much going on internally. You know, sometimes I, when I'm in that space sometimes it's almost like blackness. Like you're aware that there's some little thoughts or images floating around out here but you're not really tuning into any of them. And so it's just this big openness, you know. Interesting, so it's almost as though all of the thought potentials exist but you're not collapsing any of those. You're just staying in this. Yeah, I like that. You know, kind of quantum kind of way of talking about it. You know, I was like, yeah, you know you're not engaging with any of them. They're kind of all floating out there but you're not giving them any energy. Interesting, and then when you, so you see on the neurofeedback side there's, what does the activity look like on a completely quiet level? For a quiet mind practice, the brain pattern you see is significant increases of alpha one. So eight to 10 hertz specifically. So a lot of times, so it's funny because traditionally we've talked about meditation being an alpha state. And the reality is that the other meditation styles don't really engage alpha much. It's really the quiet mind. And it's not the whole band of alpha. It's just the low band of alpha, eight to 10 hertz. And you know, that is a very, when there's a lot of eight to 10 hertz the brain is kind of like at rest. There's nothing really active going on. And so it makes sense. When you get into the faster frequencies of alpha the brain can actually be, it's in a more alert stage where it's kind of looking for something to do. And so it's not quite the same in terms of being in just a rested open awareness. And then is the focus state more towards that higher alpha or a beta or where is the focus state? Focus is actually gamma. It's gamma. Okay, great. Gamma up in the front and then alpha one in the back. So this is quiet and this is engaged. At its most profound flow state. Right, which is where you see that gamma. Sometimes if people are efforting too hard. So you see this with a lot of beginning meditators where they're doing a focus meditation and they're trying really hard. It's like, I'm focused on my breath. And then it's not gamma. Then it's more like a beta or a beta two where they're kind of pushing a little bit. And you'll see that in the research too. Sometimes they'll see beta two rather than gamma. And my theory is that that's what's happening is people are pushing. But when you're in that effortless attention holding your attention on one thing but you're not forcing it. More like you'll see in an expert. That's where you got that gamma. So that's why we wanna encourage that because you're not pushing so hard. Okay, and then in general, I'm curious from a neuroscientific perspective as we go into open heart and mindfulness. Is this just an overall, would we say a decrease in neural activity versus actually doing like a task where you're deeply engaged? Like if we were to stand up and move these chairs out of the room right now, there would be, would we be engaging significantly more or even the conversation we're having right now where we'd be engaging significantly more neural infrastructure than when we are simply in a process of doing the quiet mind? Yeah, in quiet mind pretty much in a perfect quiet mind state, pretty much nothing is engaged. Now, that's hard to get into and it's really hard to sustain. And so that's one of the things we try to help people. We also take a very practical approach to try to help people understand what these states are like because people have a lot of myths and false ideas about what it means to meditate and what it means to be in these states to a point that it's unachievable when they give up. The reality is that for most people they can get into a quiet mind state but it's for just microseconds. And so to help people understand that it's like you can do this, the idea is to learn how to sort of expand that state. So yes, there's moments where it's quiet and there's nothing going on. So can you learn to kind of move into that space and just be there? And yeah, thoughts are gonna come up and your mind's gonna go do something else and that's normal. It's just like a focused meditation. You're focused on something and then the mind gets distracted and so you learn to go back. Well in quiet mind it's like the mind can be quiet and empty and then it gets distracted and you go back. And so, but in that state, yeah, not much is going on. The whole brain is pretty darn quiet. We frequently mention that it's critical to take things from perspective we don't just walk out and start shooting three pointers and draining all of them right away, right? It takes a long time to become really good. So when you get the very small taste of a window of quiet mind, then we practice more and more and we get better at it. Is there also a like a visible reduction in the amount of glucose that the brain is consuming as well? Yeah, and I haven't looked as carefully at the studies with the glucose metabolism or brain blood flow patterns, things like that, mostly because my area is in EEG. Yeah, okay. But yes, in general, when you have an increase of alpha, especially alpha one, you have a decreased brain blood flow, you have decreased glucose metabolism. And so, yeah. It's probably healthy to stretch our minds into these extremes on the spectrum of so that they can return to homeostasis, but it's, yeah. And just to experience different states of awareness in general rather than just a simple 99.99% of the time just being in that state of I'm engaged with something all the time. Right, yeah. Okay, so let's unpack some of the other states, mindfulness, okay, so. And so mindfulness, obviously that's a hot term at the moment and sort of everybody's talking about mindfulness. And so we're very careful about how we talk about it because everybody's using that term to mean anything, everything. And so we define it very carefully to talk about, you know, you're still paying attention, but you're paying attention in a very gentle, soft way to whatever's happening in the present moment. So you're tuning into your thoughts and your emotions and your bodily sensations in a way that you're not grasping for anything, you're not pushing anything away. You're tuning into it, allowing whatever it is to be there without judgment. You know, so when you start to define it, you can see it's actually a very specific way of paying attention. It's not just this random, it doesn't mean relaxation, it doesn't mean quiet mind, it doesn't mean focus. And so, you know, we use the definition that John Kabat-Zen uses who, you know, founder of mindfulness based stress reduction. And it's also consistent with the research that they define it as open monitoring. In the research, you'll often hear them use that term, open monitoring, same thing. And this is another problem. You look at the research and people are using all kinds of terms to mean kind of the same thing. And so you have to really dive in to see, well, what does that mean when they say open monitoring? And when they define it, it's like, well, that's mindfulness. So we are using the term mindfulness, but we're very careful to define what that means. I feel like how you said gentle. So you said so, keeping this gentle sort of pace with each moment that's coming and being with feelings that emerge and just being aware and gentle with them. Right, yeah, acknowledging them, letting them be there, giving them some space, and then letting them go. Which is of course the trick. Rather than the dwelling. Rather than dwelling and kind of turning it into a story, getting hooked into it. Sure, sure. So it's very much this observer mode of shifting into a state where you're simply observing what's happening with yourself and around you and your interactions. Interesting, okay. Could one say that a focus state could be something like if we were to be in conversation right now, is this a focus state? If we were to say, hey, let's move these chairs out of the room, is that a focus state if we're eating food and just focus on eating food? If those focus states? It depends. It depends, okay. It depends a little bit, and this is where it gets tricky because a lot of meditations, whatever they call them, whatever they're called, will often kind of go back and forth between a focus and a mindfulness pattern. So most meditations aren't pure. Now some of them are. If you're just sitting watching your breath and that's it, that's the only thing that exists in the world, that's clearly a focus meditation. Okay. If you're doing something like a body scan, right? That's clearly falls into more of a mindfulness kind of a category. Okay, interesting. But there's elements of focus with a body scan. You're paying attention to your toes, but it's kind of the way you're paying attention to it. So this is where that, how you're directing your attention and what your intention is that those two things become really critical and there's some soft lines between those different states. In fact, what a lot of people will do with a mindfulness meditation is they begin with the breath and then when the mind wanders, they go and kind of explore that, oh, interesting, my thoughts are doing this, oh, interesting, my body's doing this. And then they go back to the breath. That's usually what I don't do either. Yeah. I try and play across all of those though. Right. And there's the heart, that one's very interesting. And yeah, and even the absolute quiet mind, it's fun to be able to play across all of these. It's fun actually being able to take, you've made a taxonomy where most of the time it's either mindfulness, baby, or meditation and it's just done like that. And then it's like, what do you mean? It's so hard. Sometimes we have that similar thing happen on the show when we're talking about a specific field of biology or of AI or of when we ask it for an assimilation. Sometimes people feel like, what do you mean by that? So it's really great to have a taxonomy and break down of these things. What's the neural feedback that you're mapping during the mindfulness state? So that's an interesting one. We've recently kind of upgraded the way that we use neural feedback with mindfulness. That was always the trickiest one. And partially because some of the research literature shows opposing things with mindfulness. And so it took me a while of scratching my head and reading through this and going like, this makes no sense. Some of them would talk about a decrease in gamma. Some would talk about an increase in gamma. And it's like, this doesn't make any sense. So I finally sort of got to a point of understanding that there's actually kind of a couple of subdivisions of mindfulness. And one, I'm starting to use the term sort of a thought less awareness versus a thought full awareness. So for example, a body scan, it's a thought full awareness, right? You're directing your attention. You're saying, go to my toes, go to the bottom of my feet, go to my ankles. But you're noticing what's happening in the moment but it's a guided, you're guiding your attention on the course. And so the brain does something a little bit different. As opposed to I'm just sitting back, total observer mode, just whatever floats through my awareness, that's what I notice. The whole thing about the clouds floating across the sky, right? Like you're noticing your thoughts as if they're clouds. And it's like, oh, that's interesting. There's a thought, oh, okay, see you later. Are the leaves floating down a stream? Like that's more of a thought less awareness. You're not guiding it. You're just allowing whatever emerges to be there for a moment and then letting it go. And so it's a slightly different pattern. And so we've designed two different approaches based on what way you're kind of engaging with mindfulness. And are both thought less awareness and thoughtful awareness, mindfulness? I think so. And thoughtful awareness may be more focus? There's definitely a little bit more of a focus involved because you're directing your attention, but it's not on one thing. You're shifting it. You're moving it around and you're allowing space for things, but with focus you're not. There's no room for anything. If you're not focused on that one target, then you're off track. What are you seeing then with the neural feedback? What are you seeing? Right, with the mindfulness? Yeah. Yeah, so there's a couple of patterns that will emerge. So one is you'll see something called frontal midline theta. So back to that anterior singulate, instead of gamma, like we see with focus, you see theta. But it's a special form of theta called frontal midline theta. And so it is involved in some cognitive processes, but in a very soft, gentle way, which again makes perfect sense. You're paying attention, but you're paying attention to this very easy, soft, it's not this kind of laser focus. You'll also see the salience network of the brain get involved because the salience network, of course, is involved in paying attention to what's important right now. So the salience network, that'll be gamma. Is that also an anterior singulate? No, that's gonna be the salience. We usually look, well, the anterior singulate is part of the salience network, but the insula is also part of this. Those two are the biggies for the salience network. So there's a communication that's constantly determining what's most salient to pay most attention to. Correct. So sometimes we bring that in, and then we bring the default mode network in, and that's the one that gets a little tricky with thoughtful versus thoughtless because if you're actually, if you're doing a thoughtful meditation, you're actually activating the default mode network because you're paying attention to yourself, which is what the default mode network does. It's like a reflective awareness. So you'll actually activate the default mode network, whereas a thoughtless, it quiets it down. That's why you see those, sometimes it increases gamma, sometimes it decreases gamma. Is this like, well, how are you using the default mode network? Is it, are you engaging it in sort of a reflective awareness, or are you like so passive that you're not even engaging with anything, if that makes sense? Yeah, this is, you're starting to really showcase the complexity when you're getting into that. Yeah, you're getting into, you brought it up. Yeah, I know. Well, that's what we're interested in. We want to know about the complexities. But now we're really in the weeds of how these things can have some Venn diagram overlaps, but how they're also, like you said, when you're reading this literature, some say that you have a gamma activation, gamma decrease versus gamma decrease, and it's just like, well, which one is it? And as the tools, the neurofeedback tools get better, hopefully non-invasively, maybe even invasively, but in a way that doesn't actually penetrate the cranium. There's so many ways things to explore. Maybe we can talk about that at the end. Let's do the open heart as well. Open heart, yeah. My favorite probably. Yeah, this one's fascinating. Actually, does this have any electrocardiogram ECG involved? We have not brought that in. I can't, I shouldn't say that exactly. So even though I focus on neurofeedback, we use other tech as well. And sometimes I'll actually just use heart rate variability biofeedback as a tool with these. You can actually use heart rate variability biofeedback like heart math. You can actually use that with focus, with mindfulness, and with open heart. And it works great for all of them. If you're familiar with the heart math and what they're up to, they focus on positive emotional states. They focus on appreciation as a way to get the heart into a coherent pattern. And so it's like, well, guess what? If you do a loving kindness, compassion, meditation, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna shift into a more coherent heart space. So we do use heart rate variability. We usually don't tie them together because it's just a lot of information. And it's hard for people as it is to use the information in a way without getting kind of hooked into it. Use it as a support rather than pulling them out of state. That's a whole learning process in and of itself. And so adding too many things makes it too tricky for people because the logical part of the brain wants to understand what's going on and wants to think about it and wants to analyze it instead of just being in the meditation. But to answer your original question, so the open heart meditation, there's a couple of patterns involved there. One of them is frontal asymmetry. Maybe pre-neurofeedback, let's also open heart. Teach us some compassion, love, gratitude, these types of things. Exactly. And that's why we decided to go with that term instead of calling it loving kindness, compassion, which again is what most of the research literature, that's what they focus on. And you'll see it even abbreviated LK-C in the research, loving kindness, compassion. And that's what most of it is around. But again, that's still a huge category. And there's a lot of ways you can do loving kindness and compassion. Most of them are kind of like the Buddhist kind of meta kind of practice, where you're imagining a loved one, let's say, and you're sending them loving kindness phrases. May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be filled with joy, whatever. And so, but we wanted to also include things like gratitude and forgiveness and other positive emotional states that are used in different meditations, because the reality is, again, if the intention of the meditation is to activate a positive emotional state and then do something with it, send it to you, send it to myself, send it to the world, the brain pretty much is doing the same thing. And so we don't have to get so specific and say, oh, well, meta is different than gratitude. It's like, not really. Like we can actually target a couple of different patterns and they're all gonna do a similar thing. So open heart is our umbrella term. It's an umbrella term. Okay, cool. And then when, and this one is definitely one of the favorites, it's just, it definitely raises the vibes. It feels so good. And it's actually a critical thing to do when we wake up in the morning, when we go to bed at night and even throughout the day. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then what are we seeing on the neurofeedback side of things? So there's two patterns that we really look at. One is the frontal asymmetry. And so it's a well-known pattern. Richie Davidson actually was a pioneer with this and he's at the University of Wisconsin and has done a lot of brain imaging with the Tibetan monks. Works with the Dalai Lama. And some of his earlier work was focused on looking at activation patterns, left versus right in the front. And when people are in a more positive approach state, the left side's more active. And when people are in a more negative, pessimistic withdrawal state, the right side's more active. Interesting. And so we can measure, that's a very easy thing to measure. We're actually doing that with the Muse headband. We're using the Muse headband and we reprogrammed it to look at that frontal asymmetry. It's an easy way to kind of do that. But so that's one thing we want to look at. What's up with that? How long we've known that for a while? It's just... 30, 40 years. And just in this asymmetry in the... In the... Frontal lobe. In the frontal lobe. That just the left side, when you are doing gratitude and compassion, kind of just active. And when you're feeling not that, the right side becomes more active. Yeah. Well, and so everybody's got a different baseline. So you can measure somebody's baseline and if they tend to be more depressed, you're gonna see that right side just at baseline be more high. Yeah, sure, sure. And people who are always happy, if you measure them, they're gonna be hanging out on the left. But state situations change that. So if you think about Golden State beating Portland, probably your left side's gonna light up. Or you think about chocolate chip cookies. The left side's gonna light up. But it's gonna be temporary, right? While you're thinking of something happy, the left side lights up, but then when you stop, you're gonna go back to your baseline. And then when you maybe get in more an anxious thought or something than the right side. Exactly. So what we're trying to do is kind of almost retrain the brain. And so in a similar way with neurofeedback, in fact, that's how I learned about this, was in neurofeedback land. Because this is the standard protocol for somebody with depression. Is to reward the left side and inhibit the right side. Wow, and that can be done now with transcranial stimulation as well. Right, exactly. Transcranial direct current, that's one of the main protocols. You put the A-node on the left, you put the cathode on the right, and it's doing exactly the same thing. So yeah, there's a lot of different technologies that can do that. Is this becoming more and more mainstream to figure out ways to suppress that right side and activate that left side of the frontal lobe? Yeah, and for me what's important is that, now there is research showing that simply activating the left can have positive effects. For me it's important to tie it to a gratitude practice or a loving kindness because this is the issue I think we get into sometimes with tech, using tech with meditation is making the mistake of thinking that just because you're increasing gamma, for example, that that's putting you in a higher state. And it's like, well, you know, elevated gamma is also associated with Alzheimer's. So it's like, just cause you're raising your gamma doesn't necessarily mean you're an expert meditator. You know, it's like, it has to be in the context. It has to be in the right context. Tie it in with some of the open heart. Exactly. Umbrella. So even though the research does show activating the left seems to be a positive thing, think about it this way. So the left side can also be activated for any kind of approach motivation. So moving towards something. So if you think about it that way, actually being angry and aggressive could actually activate the left. Cause you're moving towards something. You're approaching something. For me, it feels really important to tie them together. That the tech isn't a substitute. It's a tool. It's a supplement to assist in the process, but you still have to get your own mind in the right place. Okay, a couple power round thoughts. First is, what else did you see on neurofeedback on open heart? Yeah, the right insula. So we talked about the salience network, but the insula is also involved in emotion, as well as empathy. And especially the right side, cause the right side is more body-based. So when you feel something in your body, so when your heart is activated and you feel it in your heart, that's the right insula. The left side's more cognitive. The left side's more like you're thinking about a feeling. The right side's more like you're feeling a feeling. So I usually want that right side. That's where the magic happens. If people can activate that right side, I mean, I've had this happen many times in workshops where people are just like crying and I'm like, I always feel, I'm like, uh-oh, are you okay? And they're just like filled with joy and they're like feeling it. And so it's really intense. And so if you can get that going and then keep it going, so that's the other biggie. It's keeping it going. Is it really that, this kind of black and white between right insula being more on the feeling, the deep emotion and empathy and the left side being more about thinking to the left insula? I mean, I've seen it pretty much clear as day. It's so crazy thinking about something as complex as the billions of neurons in the brain being so black and white potentially on a left insula versus a right insula. That's so crazy. I'm sure there's wiggle room, but literally if I'm monitoring somebody's brain while they're doing a meditation and I'm monitoring the two insula at the same time and you see what's happening there, I can pretty much tell. If the left side's lit up and the right's not and I interrupt them and I go, what's going on? And they describe what's going on. It's a cognitive process. Yeah, yeah. And if the right side's lit up, you know they're into it. They're in the body. They're in the body. Yeah, yeah, feeling deep, yeah. Right. Okay, okay, some other power thoughts on the way is, okay, what are you doing with the Neural Meditation Institute? So people come in to a physical location and then work with you, teach us about that. What's happening? Sure. Actually, we do a few different things. We're doing a lot of classes and workshops. At your physical location? Some of them are in our physical location. We also do them in Eugene, Oregon. In Eugene, Oregon. Right. Okay, cool. We also do workshops at other places. So I just got back from Mallorca. We did a workshop there. Where is that? It's in Spain. It's an island off the coast of Spain. Sweet. Yeah. So you do kind of workshops in different places around the world that people come to as well. Exactly. Okay. We're going in San Francisco soon. Cool. Let's make happen. Right. Let's do it. You know, going to Germany in October. So we do a lot of classes and workshops and then, yes, work with individuals. And so the individual work can take a lot of different forms. Typically, it will involve some form of EEG monitoring and coaching. So for me, it's a two-step process. Like, yes, we're using technology, but I'm also kind of serving as a meditation coach at the same time. So it's like, they're getting information, but then I have to find out like, so what's going on? And connect it to what I'm saying from the EEG so that I can say, try this. It seems like you're getting stuck on this thing over here. Try this. Let's see if this works better. So the idea is not that they have to come in and get hooked up every time they meditate. The idea is for them to learn what it feels like to be in the right state, the state they're trying to get into so that when they go home and practice, they kind of know what they're looking for. And then to come back and refine that. You act as the closed loop feedback that they're getting to make the iterative change that they need to get to the states that they wanna get to. And then what about the feedback that comes in for them to potentially take you also out of the equation that they can then have a feedback like the MUSE system where they have a visual cure and audio cue that shows them, oh, you have the thunder is striking. The birds are doing their thing. Yeah, and it tells you if you're focused or if you're not on the parts that you're supposed to be. Right, so let me just clarify. Are you asking what kind of feedback I give in session or what they can use at home? Let's do both. Okay, yeah. So I use, predominantly I use a music track as feedback so I can link the volume of the music to their success. So we'll play some ambient background meditation music that's not overpowering, it doesn't have a strong rhythm but it's kind of supportive of a meditative state kind of like we just did this morning in the cacao ceremony, right? There's this, certain music can kind of help you but then, so it's always playing but if your mind's wandering and you're off track, the volume's really low. And so that's your cue like, oh, I'm not on track. And once you get into the correct state, the volume increases to a certain level. So again, it's your cue like, oh, I'm there. And so what happens then is as soon as the mind wanders, for example, that music drops out and that's an instant cue. They're like, oh, what happened? And then are you manually doing this or have you already made the algorithms that can just detect it and then cue the music to go down or up in volume? Right, it's a little bit of both. So I have to determine where to put the thresholds for whatever I'm monitoring. And so that I have to do manually because everybody's different. You know, if we looked at your brain versus my brain, they're gonna behave differently because we're different people. So usually in the first couple of minutes, I can figure out where to put the thresholds and then I can just leave it alone because really what we're wanting the person to do is learn how to get into those states. So I don't wanna keep moving the thresholds around. You know, I wanna get them set where I think it's going to give them accurate information about their internal state and then let them find it. And so I've had it at times where people are sit there for three minutes and get no feedback. And from a traditional neurofeedback perspective, that makes no sense. And in fact, neurofeedback people have a hard time with this. They're like, you're not giving them any feedback. And I'm like, right, because they're not in the right state. Why would I give you positive feedback? Why would I be saying you're doing it right when you're not doing it right? So instead what I want to do, like if they're not finding it, then that's where the coaching comes in. You know, to stop them and go, I'm watching what's happening in their brain and to stop and go like, tell me what's going on. Let me give you, let's try a couple of other things because it seems like you're kind of struggling with this. And so I give them some ideas, some suggestions, some tips, some tools, they try it again. And you know, we help them kind of find it on their own. Okay, and then when they go back home, then they're able to, what's the feedback mechanism that they use? Right, so when they, so partially, hopefully what we want to happen is that they don't actually need something external that it becomes an internal barometer. Excellent. So again, kind of like using the heart rate variability. If you do it enough, you know if you're in a state of coherence, you don't need the equipment anymore. That's right. You know, you just go, oh, I'm there. Yeah. And so that's what we want is. You can tell when you're sinking through. You can tell when you're sinking or not. You know, that's what we want is people to have that internal sensitivity. But there's lots of, you know, we use audio visual entrainment, we use transcranial direct current, we use photobiomodulation, you know, we use Vibroacoustic stuff. So we use a lot of other technologies that are, many of them are much more affordable and consumer friendly. That if they need additional support, then you know, that's something that they could use at home, you know, as a supplement to kind of help them get going. And NeuroMeditationInstitute.com is the website. Yes. NeuroMeditationInstitute.com is the website. Couple of last thoughts on the way out. Let's ask you, if you think we're in a simulation. Do I think we're in a simulation? Wow, I wasn't expecting that question. I don't, I don't think we're in a simulation, but it wouldn't really shock me if I found out we were. You know, honestly, I kind of don't know, I'm kind of agnostic on a lot of those kind of big issues because even sort of around spirituality and things like that, you know, I feel like I kind of have the attitude at the moment could change tomorrow, but that everything is possible, that it's all true. It's sort of what element do you want to tune into? So people who are into Ascended Masters, you know, it's like, is that real? It's like, yeah, that's real. Is that real for me? Well, not really, but that's not how I'm oriented, but that doesn't mean that that's not true. I mean, the universe is a big place. Yeah, which angle you look at. Which angle do you want to look at? And so I don't know, I have no idea. I don't even know how to answer your question. How about what's the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh, wow, the most beautiful thing in the world. Yeah, I can feel it for myself. Putting words to it is a whole nother issue, right? You know, I would say sort of that feeling of boundless love, you know? So it's not a thing, right? But the moments that I've been able to touch that everything else becomes almost irrelevant. And so, you know, you sort of understand, you know, for that moment, you sort of see it all, you know? And it's like, oh, this isn't that hard. Now staying in that space, of course, is quite difficult. I'd have to say that's the most beautiful thing of all, of being able to sort of touch that space. The boundless love. Boundless love. Hello, Jeff, this has been such a pleasure. Yeah, yeah, thanks so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We really appreciate it. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Also, go and check out Jeff's links below the NeuroMeditationInstitute.com. And also, check out the links below to Consciousness Hacking. Check out the links below to Simulation as well. Support the artists, the organizations, the entrepreneurs around the world that you believe in. And talk more with your friends, your family, your coworkers online and social media about epic things like mindfulness, quiet mind, open heart, focus meditations, the differences between them. Go and practice these yourselves throughout the day. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon. That's it, my brother. Good job. Thanks.