Healer Q&A: Integrating technology into holistic healing with Daniel Sears
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
Can technology really elevate your holistic healing journey? Join us on the Healist Podcast as we uncover the answer with our extraordinary guest, Daniel Sears, a retired Air Force veteran turned brain training and longevity coach. Discover Daniel's transformative "aha" moment with the Muse headband, a neural feedback tool that revolutionized his meditation practice and inspired him to help others do the same. You'll learn how meditation, breathwork, and somatic practices can be significantly enhanced with innovative tech solutions, particularly for those who struggle with traditional techniques.
We'll take you through the diverse array of wellness tech devices, from headbands and headphones to immersive beds, shedding light on their categorization into passive and active groups. Sharing our personal experiences, we discuss how these tools can hack meditative states and soothe the nervous system. We also tackle the crucial balance between leveraging technology for mindfulness and avoiding dependency on it, emphasizing the importance of fostering awareness and achieving peaceful states even without these devices. Biohacking methods such as red light therapy, oxygen therapy, and theta chambers are also explored for their potential to magnify meditative experiences and enhance well-being.
The journey continues as we delve into heart-brain coherence and heart rate variability (HRV), with Daniel offering insights on managing the vast data from devices like the Muse headband, Oura ring, and HeartMath technology. Learn how to make this information actionable for better mental and physical health. We also explore the profound impact of combining Reiki with integrative technologies, sharing powerful stories of personal transformation through energy healing. Lastly, we emphasize the significance of physical and mental flexibility, showing how movement and bodywork can be key to holistic health. This episode is brimming with transformative insights and practical advice, making it a must-listen for anyone looking to integrate technology into their holistic healing practices.
Learn more about Daniel's work at https://neuroenergycoaching.com/
Explore the tech featured in the episode:
Muse EEG headband - https://choosemuse.com/
Mendi headband - https://www.mendi.io/
NeoRhythm PMF device
Myndlift headset - https://www.myndlift.com/
Opus vibroacoustic bed -https://feelopus.com/
Neuralink brain-computer interface - https://neuralink.com/
inHarmony vibrational bed - https://iaminharmony.com/
Theta chamber - https://aliveinnovations.com/products/theta-chamber
HeartMath - https://www.heartmath.com/
Integration of Technology and Holistic Health and Wellness
Yuli Ziv: I'm most curious to know about your magic moment with tech. Do you remember your experience when you first tried to infuse technology right into your practice and this amazing “Aha” moment that you felt like this is something that truly transforms everything I do.
Daniel Sears: I didn't know what I was doing. I was trying it and couldn't quiet the crazy mind. I got right in and thought, "Tech to help meditation," and I found the Muse headband. That was the quickest, easiest, and most affordable way for me to get something that gave me the actual neural feedback of what was happening.
I bought the headband. I started using it right away and started using it with friends, mentoring them on how to get deeper in their mindset and where to go. This tech was life-changing for me.
You have Muse and the Mendi, which is a headband. There are a few different neurological things that influence the brain in different ways. Some of them are neurofeedback, or they're passive, and some of them are active.
Other tech that I really love are vibroacoustic beds and meditative beds. There's one coming out, the Opus, which is a really cool bed. It's vibroacoustic, so it gives you sound and vibrations in the bed with magnetic transducers. Those stimulate the body and the nervous system at the same time, which is a really amazing thing.
Yuli Ziv: We're talking about devices themselves that are measuring different brain activity. They are divided into different groups. The two main groups are passive, which are just measuring the activity, and active, which provide simulations or interventions that actually help you improve. On top of that, we have the ecosystem of all the apps. Some of them are connected to the devices, but some are built on top of different devices and can work with their data, providing this extra layer of coaching.
Daniel Sears: They all are doing a lot of the same thing. They are calming our nervous system, teaching us to calm our nervous system, or influencing the body in some way that requires more depth to feel and to notice.
Addressing Technology Dependency in Meditation
Yuli Ziv: Are we becoming dependent now on this technology? It's like if I don't have my magic bed, can I get to this equal state of flow, like you described?
Daniel Sears: Yes, we can rely on just about anything. It's important to use these things for what they really are. They're tools in our toolbox and we don't carry around a toolbox every day in life. In the meditative world, we have to remember that we don't need that toolbox too but it's great when we do have the tools. I talk a lot about tools and use my analogies about tools because when I was in the Air Force, I was a specialist on C5s and C17s that worked in maintenance and aerospace repair. We used a lot of specialty tools and carried a toolbox around, but when we didn't have that toolbox and had to get something done, we would figure it out and get it done.
Meditation is kind of the same way. You're like, “Man, I have these tools and it's really great. But today I don't have one and I need it.” These tools are just to set us up, strengthen us, so that when we don't have the tools, we're still able to access our peace, our heart. When we're in the thick of things, when we're in the throes and getting tossed around by the world, in a relationship, at work, or whatever, we've set ourselves up with a little bit of a landslide to come through on the other end unscathed. It's important to have that awareness.
What's really cool about these tools is that they are unlocking awareness. Most of the ones we're talking about today are biohacking tools like red light therapy, oxygen therapy, vibrational therapy, and theta chambers. There's a theta chamber. This big, huge bed that spins around and does some incredible things, making you feel like you're floating and putting you in a state of bliss, a state of deep meditation.
When we think about what we really need, we know that we just need the states that these things are putting us in, and they help us unlock awareness. When we start to be aware, like, “Oh, I'm only meditating when I have this headgear that I can put on.” Then what are you really chasing? You're not chasing the peace, the calm, the benefits that meditation gives you. You're chasing this one specific thing that this tool is really geared towards.
It's almost hard to rely too much on them because they invoke awareness that tells us, oh man, am I balancing today the best way that I could? I know some people rely on them, but most people use them for what they are, which is the map. Then they're like, “Oh, I don't need the map today. I know how and where to go to find this.”
Understanding Brainwave States and Meditation Feedback
Daniel Sears: When we're rational thinking, cognitive, or just operating in a doer mode, we're in a beta brainwave. Then you have alpha brainwaves, which are more present when your eyes are closed and are associated with executive functioning. You have theta waves, which are deep, meditative waves with a very flow state, very calm brainwaves. Then you have delta, which is a deep sleep, deep rest wave, and gamma, which is a very high functioning, also very peaceful state.
Our beta brainwave is when we're thinking and talking. If we calm down, close our eyes, take a few deep breaths, and start to really dive into our body, we would start to drop more into an alpha brainwave, and it would show in the app. It has feedback in your headphones.
I set clients up with the rain, one of their main ones. So, you're in a rainstorm, you're thinking, and the rain is falling. The more you think and try, the heavier the rainfall gets. The more you calm your mind and allow your thoughts to just pass over, the rain starts to subside, so you're getting that feedback of it getting calmer and your thoughts getting calmer.
Once you're in an alpha brainwave for four seconds or longer, you get a bird that chirps. It's measuring your mental pushup, and that bird chirping is like, “Wow, you really finally did this mental pushup.”
The Impact of Meditation on HRV and Mental States
Yuli Ziv: I'm still investigating the connection of HRV and that particular metric with heart-brain coherence. What I've seen in my meditations—and I'm just using Oura—not necessarily the headband, so I'm not sure how accurate that data is because it doesn't measure the brainwaves.
The higher my HRV, which is supposed to be the healthier metric, in my meditation actually drops down to a very low number. It's almost like a scary number that puts me in a biological age of 80.
I'm always curious, and I can't get this answer from anyone that I ask who is in that space. What correlation are you seeing between HRV and heart-brain coherence? Can talk in general about the metrics that measure heart-brain coherence?
Daniel Sears: There are a lot of studies coming out about HeartMath and HRV. HeartMath and the global coherence have some apps that you can download. You can use the flashlight on your camera to measure your HRV or your coherence. The Aura, the Apple Watch. It's a powerful thing.
Basically, what HeartMath is showing is that the reverberations of your heartbeats can travel away from the body at great distances. Many people studying this knew this for a long time but couldn't prove it. With advancements in technology, we can measure a person's heart frequency from the other side of the room.
Some people I talk to about this say, “That's all BS.” If you're standing next to a muscle car and they rev the engine, you feel it in your body. Why is the heart any different? We have this powerful living thing inside of us, and it's beating. Of course, you could feel it, and of course, it's measurable somewhere else outside of the body.
But I think that HRV is really interesting because it tells you where your coherence is with your brainwaves. The Muse and a lot of things measure the heart rate along with your brainwaves. I've seen some people, and I had the pleasure of working with some professional tennis athletes. They had incredibly sharp minds, and tennis is such a mindset game.
You have to be able to act quickly and get rid of things very quickly, offload stresses, pass points, mess-ups, failures, whatever. You have to process those very quickly and then hit another hundred-mile-an-hour tennis ball coming at you.
It was really interesting because both of these women had very consistent heart rates. The new Muse makes it more user-friendly to look at, whereas the old style was more raw data. Since I had seen a lot of the data, I could compare it. It was interesting because in some of the meditations, their heart rate variability was almost just like what you're saying. There were no variations in the heart.
They were really in their body in those times. They were in their senses. They were in their aura, like they could explain what was happening around them. As I was talking to them afterward, I was doing energy work on them with the headband on, and that was really a cool thing because they did a meditation and then kept the headband on after the meditation while I did energy work on them.
As I was doing the energy work, her heart rate variability went all the way down. It was like a clock, “Tick, tick, tick,” but she could describe everything that was happening in her senses, and her brainwaves were extremely coherent.
But then in the meditation before that, it was very different. Her heart rate variability was very high and sporadic all over the place, and her brain was very coherent at the same time. She had a moment that was out of her body, out of this universe, that connected her to the source, and she spoke about it with me. It was really interesting.
The Importance of Physical and Mental Flexibility
Daniel Sears: The somatic approach to healing is in the body; our body is this hard drive, and we have to stay flexible. We have to move the energy through our body, and that's through movement. Movement is medicine. By staying flexible, we push ourselves to the ends of our range of motion and then go past it for that flexibility.
There's something that happens with our emotional resilience, our cognitive performance, and the way our body stays healthy with that flexibility. Continuing to stay flexible in the body and mind helps shed the emotional baggage we're all carrying and lets it out in a somatic way.
To pair any kind of therapy, any kind of talk therapy, any kind of meditation, any kind of practice that anybody's doing out there, pair it with some body work. Whether you're doing some percussion, fist pounding, stretching, or some movement, keep the body moving and drop as much of that stress and emotional baggage that we're carrying in that process. Just know that you're doing it, identify that you're doing it. It's powerful.
