Greg Voisen
Well welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And all of you out there in podcast land know me, but you don't know the other gentleman either on the other side of the screen, or he's going to speak to you on the audio side, if you're listening audio only, and his name is Bruce Cryer. Good at Inverness, how you doing?

Bruce Cryer
Good to see you, Greg. I'm doing really good today.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's good to see you. And we're playing formality here. But I've known Bruce for at least 15 years, introduced to me through Gary Malkin, for many of you who know him, and I'm gonna let you know a bit about Bruce. He's been called the renaissance man because of his four decade career as a singer, actor, dancer, publisher, author, marketing executive CEO, board member, consultant, mentor and coach for leaders in diverse fields. He now brings his expertise and passionate for Renaissance living and working to a select group of clients each year. He is diverse and fascinating background leading successful companies and performing for large audiences blends beautifully to create powerful, creatively rich and results driven approach with all those that he chooses to work with. Music, Dance, meditation, and fun will definitely be involved. So if you want to know more about Bruce, because he's got a very, very long bio, I'm gonna say, go to bruce cryer, cryer.com, to learn more about him. And in the process, he said he was an author, we're going to be speaking about a book that he wrote back in 2000, but then got reprinted a couple of times, one in 2008. And the book is as timely today, as it was in 2008. So for all of you, Bruce was the former CEO of Heart Math, Inc, we will put a link to that on the blog, so that you know who HeartMath is, many of you who are listening already know who Heart Math is. But he was the CEO of the company. So Bruce, if you would tell the listeners a bit about your history with Heart Math, which they think is important, and why you and Doc children wrote, from chaos to coherence. And again, for my listeners, we'll put a link to the book. You can get it on Amazon for 1799. And we'll have a link to the book up there.

Bruce Cryer
Great, Greg? Well, HeartMath began in 1991. As a nonprofit research institute, the founder is a man named doc children who I met in 1980. So 11 years before HeartMath, officially began as an organization. I met him in California where I was living at the time, I was very intrigued with his ideas of humanity and the heart and whatnot. But didn't know there was an organization he was thinking of establishing at some point. I lost track of him as you did back in those days when there was no email, no cell phones, no text messages, no nothing. It's hard to believe that Bureau existed. So he was just gone for like six years. And I had to take care

Greg Voisen
of our own GPS system. We knew how to find them again, you know what, you know what I mean? It was kind of like, I know where this person would hang out. He'll be over here, this coffee shop.

Bruce Cryer
All I knew is somewhere in North Carolina is where he lived. So that wasn't up to me. I was not I was not your North Carolina. But anyway, he had been working for years, on himself and then with a small group of people developing ideas about the heart and had had had an intention at a certain point to establish an institute all around the study of the heart, and Fort fortunately for me, the town I was living in, in the bay area of Northern California was the town he wanted to start the organization. And so I already lived there. Yay on me. And there were a number of others of us in the original starting found that Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Mountains there's a little town where HeartMath still based called Boulder Creek, California. Yep, yep, I

Greg Voisen
know. Well, yeah. And gorgeous

Bruce Cryer
paradise kind of place in Redwood Forest and meandering rivers and only 30 minutes from the Pacific Ocean. So it's a unique and wonderful place to live, as I did for a long time. But the vision of HeartMath back then was that we wanted to use mainstream science to validate theories about human the human condition that had been known for centuries, millennia by religious systems, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, spiritual systems that revered the heart and every ancient system. It was only the last 150 years, that the MC the mechanist the industrialists, the Reductionists of the of Europe decided everything's just a machine a fantastic machine in the hearts nothing more than a pump, a fantastical pump at that. But that was it. And so we felt there was this huge disconnect humanity. Knowing intuitively the heart was essential, not just because it was a pump. And yet science coming along and saying it's just a pump, don't get don't the ancients were cute. They were we can, we can revere some of what they said. But they clearly did. They clearly got it wrong when it came to the heart. So that was sort of the attitude and science and we knew that was wrong. We just knew, you know, you, when you when you're when you're not putting your heart and your job you don't do well, when you're not putting your heart into a relationship. You're not you don't do well, when you're as a kid, your parents say, hey, Bruce, go back out there and just sing with your heart this time. They didn't mean sing with your pump, as opposed to my kneecap. You know, they meant the essence of me that the courage of me the strength, the beauty of me, you know, so we knew there was something really off. But we also knew if we didn't take a mainstream scientific approach to this, we would have no more credibility than every other self-help system coming out of California, which like the world needed another one, right? So mainstream science was the route. And that was not easy. But we were getting quite successful through the decade of the 90s. So the intention was to be able to use mainstream science to validate kind of ancient spiritual principles, but at the same time, develop very simple techniques that weren't about spirituality, but could help a single mother, who's dealing with how do you do rent and working two jobs and caring for the two kids? And what how can you help that person deal with the stress of their life and live from the heart with that, that sending just idealistic or poetic and so simple, practical tools that anyone could use and apply in their in their world without a conflicting with whatever their beliefs about spirituality, or religion or non-religion they may have. So this was just a doctor, I loosely love the phrase HeartMath is a friendly facilitator. If you're an atheist, you tried

Greg Voisen
to take more of the Hayward pay neutral approach, even though you know it, there is a lot of spirituality in this, there's a lot of science in it. There's a lot of, as you call it, mind, body, or mind, gut and heart. Right. And, you know, in this book, you're bringing about coherence out of what increasingly seems what I'm gonna say, it seems crazy chaotic times right now, you know, it's like this world since 2008, where you and I and everybody else in it has changed, and it will continue to change. And it will be about our ability to thrive during this constant change. And we know that all can affect our heart. It affects our heart and affects our gut exir. Mind that affects our emotions. But it doesn't seem like as I said, a lot has changed. You wrote this book, and they look at it, and the things you were writing about are things that are still happening today. So what in your mind has changed or in your estimation, about the way we view healthy, high performing individuals? Now, for anybody out there listening? You could say, oh, well, that's only for an executive. Now, that's for everybody. We want everybody to be a healthy, high performing individual. And we want the organizations in which you work to be healthy in high performing organizations. And what is the new research because Bruce didn't just stay stagnant. He evolved to since 2008, may not have been 100% with Heart Math, but you really have evolved a lot. What would you want to tell the listeners about from chaos? decoherence?

Bruce Cryer
Wow, that's a great question. That's a that's also a big question. Well, the book was written at a time when and as you as you say, things were highly stressful, partly because the internet was still relatively new, tremendous disruption was happening. Do is only about a year or so after the book was first published that the.com meltdown happened, which, which meant for those of you really young listening, you know, there'd been this explosion of all everybody going online web companies galore being built, and we didn't really know what the business was gonna be like. It was kind of a crazy period. But things were exploding, exploding and expanding in ways you couldn't have predicted. Suddenly, email was a regular thing, let alone having a website. What do you mean, you don't have a website? What are you talking about there? You've Of course, you have to have a website 10 years earlier, you never even heard of the term website. And so things were rapidly changing. And it was around that same time that The World Health Organization declared that stress had become a global epidemic. And that was in 1991. A global epidemic it was so out of control and that we started learning words like corrosion, which meant death by overwork. And stories of, of Japanese middle level managers or workers literally dying at their desk, they couldn't quit, they couldn't go home until the boss went home with Boston, go home to midnight, some were actually dying at their, at their desk, it was just like horrific sounding stuff. And, and then, of course, we went through the 2008, the subprime home meltdown, that was a whole nother huge inflection point for business. But I think what we see today, which is so interesting is we now have an entire generation Gen Z's who grew up knowing the world of a smartphone, and grew up with apps grew up with social media as the way that they did business. And I think one of the biggest changes now not just about Gen Z, but about our how our how our lifestyle has changed. Now, of course, I'm on meetings on Zoom, way, way, way more often than I am meeting in person, the number of times I've seen people keep their screen off the screen, they keep their camera off the entire time. So in that meeting, they can be multitasking. And that wasn't nearly as easy. In the old days, when you were always in person, you would you'd get called out like, Greg, can you please put your computer down? You know, we need to stay focused here in the meeting. Well, now, we're multitasking all the time. And the attention spans are shorter and shorter and shorter. And so now 12 second video is considered that's great content, what can you give to me in 12 seconds, you know, and I used to do to date and that book was published, we're doing two day retreats on a regular basis. And it's kind of crazy. And I think the level of very high speed superficial, dealing with things is at an all-time high. And that's incredibly unsatisfying. When you're only at this level, you know, all the time, would you say,

Greg Voisen
would you say this feels more like, you know, when the internet came along, these are Greg's voices words, but we had a lot of breath. Because we could reach a lot of people through our website and our emails, everything else. But we kind of seem to have lost depth, meaning those personal relationships, so you know, talk about isolation. And you one of the biggest challenges as we went through COVID, you hadn't even mentioned COVID yet, but I'm going to bring it up was the fact that, you know, we've all spent like our two and a half year period here, hibernating behind these screens, this zoom in really didn't even exist very big until, you know, like the credit pandemic came along. And then it just escalated, so incredible. You know, it is a different world in that respect. And so I'd like for you to address as it relates to the heart, because there are lots of studies, what isolation is doing. And the fact that people aren't making as many deep meaningful connections?

Bruce Cryer
Well, I think one of the most profound markers of how that our attitudes have shifted, and it's and it's good is that the term mental health has lost a lot of its stigma. It's like all of a sudden, you're taking a mental health day, that's a sign that you're smart. All of a sudden, organizations, hospitals, corporations are dealing with mental health, not for the people that are extreme, or extremely, like almost suicidal, but for the average person, who thanks to COVID Thanks to the recession in high inflation, thanks to all the climate change the severity of storms, thanks to wars, thanks to having every day. Now let's shoot down something from the sky. Some Chinese are sending every day we're shooting them down now. Like what's going on?

Greg Voisen
Those aren't UFOs

Bruce Cryer
whatever they are shooting them down. I'm not sure which is worse than a UFO or Chinese spy. Yeah, even the pyramid Chinese spy balloon, it sounds kind of like a cartoon. Yes.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, that sounds that way. But at the essence of all this, because it does seem chaotic to so many people who maybe the coping mechanisms with inside them have not developed, you know, it's not like they read they intentionally retarded, but they had no way to really kind of figure it out and navigate. And so you know, we talk about this, these gaps between the classes, the uneducated or less educated, very well educated. What in your framework, do you believe could be done to close that? gap. And to close this divisive gap that exists not only politically, but racially, you know, I didn't really think or so I'm sitting out here in California and kind of a bubble sometimes that this racial division was so massive. And it still seems to be a real challenge.

Bruce Cryer
That's for sure. And I think with every new case of on, too often, it's of innocence, or an unarmed black man being mowed down by police. And that type of thing has happened so many times arrested for being black, you know, that that expression which every black child has heard, because they know that is absolutely possible that you could be walking down the street, you could be driving your car with nothing going on and arrested while being for being black. And, and so I think in all these cases, have reminded us just how deep seated so much of these habits and attitudes really aren't. I mean, I feel like I grew up in a very progressive home we were my father was a liberal Republican that at times such a thing actually existed. Yeah, he was socially, very socially, very progressive, but economically conservative. So he's all for government restrain fiscal restraint, but he was about all people, we're all we're all family here, not just not just whites. So I grew up in believing that and aspiring to be an example of that in my life. And yet, from time to time, I still find myself you know, if I see a young black guy in a hood, you're kind of walking a certain way, like, a little bit scared, like automatically assuming he's out to get me instead of he may have he may have lost his grandmother and his hers up because he's, he's, he's grieving me, you don't know, you have no idea. So I think we all even those of us raised believing we were not like all the other racists, we have, we have habits, we have underlying beliefs that can kind of rear their head from time to time, too. So I think it's a big issue at the core of the HeartMath work and something that, as you mentioned, I did leave as CEO back in 2011, and have always stayed connected. And I teach about it all the time. And I'm interviewed about it all the time, as I am again today. But at the core of Heart Math is this belief that love is the most important force in the universe. And we just wanted to try to prove that out scientifically. So we didn't just sound the sound like somebody on their on their little soapbox in in Central Park here, you know, we're no, no, this there's this grounded knowledge about why this is true,

Greg Voisen
I think is I think love is a great word. But I also believe compassion is, is maybe more encompassing word too, because, you know, if we're going to heal the challenges and ills of the world, it's going to require that people learn how to develop more compassion. And I think HeartMath actually gives us a way to do that. And, you know, you mentioned that our knowledge of human intelligence continues to deepen the fact that intelligence is distributed throughout the human system. Now, here's where this kind of shifts for my listeners. And at the heart, is the intelligent system profoundly affecting the brain processes now? Okay. You're saying it reversed what many people believe many people believe that it's the brain that's affecting the heart, not the heart, it's affecting the brain. Speak with the listeners about this connection? And what the studies of Heart Math revealed about the mind the gut, and the heart, the interconnectedness?

Bruce Cryer
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, just to acknowledge, I appreciate you making the distinction of compassion, not just love. And I was about to say that actually, because love is the is the ultimate forcement. To me there. There are hues of love and compassion is extremely important and, and is absolutely at the core of the Heart Math system. And

Greg Voisen
as we do this podcast on Valentine's Day. Exactly, exactly. So you're doing this podcast on the right day.

Bruce Cryer
We are the so yeah, the whole notion of the heart centrality to the system is as I mentioned earlier, it's revered as the core of us, in every major culture of the world, every spiritual system, religious system, but especially in the West, especially in the last 100 years or so. The premise, the primacy of the brain has become the thing right? And we're all completely enamored with the brain because it is an incredible computer to see even to call it a computer is dissing it. Because it's so much more advanced than any possible computer that humans could ever build. As much as we want to romanticize about how amazing AI is, it's still not at any bringing close to what the human brain is capable of. But yeah, it's the old model we had of intelligence was smart computer, like the brain was the mainframe. And the rest of the body was kind of dumb. Just following commands the body, just like 40 years ago, smart, the mainframe computer was the only thing smart about an IT system and that lived in the basement of the company. And then on your desk, you just had terminals that could access certain bits of information from that mainframe, but it was the mainframe That was smart, the terminals were just TV screens. Gradually intelligent the research into intelligence revealed a gigantic nervous system called the gut brain in the gut 100 million or so neurons in constant dialogue between the gut intestinal tract and the brain upstairs. And then in the early 90s, another nervous system was discovered in the heart, having 10s of 1000s of what are called sensory neurites neurons, cardiac neurons in the heart, processing information locally for the heart, a little brain, it qualifies as a little brain, managing the affairs of the heart. And I don't mean that a romantic says, in a biological sense. And then when it was when the pathways of inflammation were looked at carefully, it was discovered that the heart is sending four times more information north to the brain than the brain is sending down to the heart. Because the heart is doing all kinds of things, is processing information. It's producing electrical signal, it's a sensory system, responding to sensory information from the environment that could be smells, temperature, light, all kinds of things getting registered in the heart, hearts, also hormonal gland. We've heard a lot over the last decade or so about oxytocin, also known as the love hormone to the mothering hormone, guess where that's produced, not only the brain produced in the heart. So suddenly, over the last 30 years, the heart sort of began to come out of its shell, in our awareness, like, oh my god, this is an incredible Oregon This is not just a pump, those doctors that wanted to dumb everything down to a just a machine, like the humans being it's just a machine. Sorry, that analogy isn't this not working. And then, of course, it was discovered that the intelligence of all kinds exists all through the body. And even memories aren't just storing memories doesn't happen just in the in the brain. Like, we want to neatly believe, Oh, that's the section of the brain where you store memories. And that's, you know, when heart transplant started happening, and doctors started reporting more and more and more and more, and these are all well documented examples in many, many books and articles, that when you get a transplanted heart, for a period of time, could even be years, some of the memories of the donor come into the recipient. So wild stories of that have emerged where the actual memories have come over. And suddenly that person who loved Big Macs and Slurpee as their favorite food has a craving for wine and, and oysters and like what you want what honey?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, no, no, no, no,

Bruce Cryer
I feel like white wine and fulfill me. And they jack it down, and the donor loved that and they want all this juice, some classical music, classical music. What about Johnny Cash? That's

Greg Voisen
What rockin’? Yeah, what? Well, you know, it all makes sense, because this web of cells and intelligence that are part of our body are all interrelated. And you refer to Heart Math, as the inner quality management, you know, I wanted to kind of make sure we speak about that. And it always it comes down to this inner quality they would have, what would you or can you address these four interdependent and integrated dynamic? What you were referred at HeartMath to IQ M. And why it's the cornerstone for this what's what you referred to in the book again, as internal self-management, right? Because, look, we, we perceive things through our eyes and our retina, we feel things we taste things. We take these in through all these various senses. And the sensory can be an overload when we're when we get stressed, right. And we don't know how to like, maybe deal with it. I know that there are days that I get there, like I'm like, oh my god, one day One thing, I don't really need one more thing. So I encourage you to share with our listeners is Air Quality Management and afford dynamics?

Bruce Cryer
Yeah, sure. Well, it's something that we've used a lot for, for many years now as in working with organizations who are intent to become more profitable, and intent to give two new tools to their employees to work more efficiently and work more effectively. And more and more, that is also meant you got to you can't ignore the health of the of the individual employee. This is where COVID has done us a big favor. Like I said earlier, mental health has come out of the dungeon. It's not just a term for the people who can't hack it. This is now everybody. This is now major Olympic athletes saying I can't compete in the Olympics. And I'm stepping down from my mental health world champion tennis players saying the same actors saying the same, acknowledging I'm overloaded, I can't, I can't go on like this, I have to stop and take care of myself. And luckily, that has seeped into corporations and realizing well, we all went through COVID together all a billion of us. So it's no wonder that a lot of us would be feeling pretty frickin’ overwhelmed. And some of us are excited to be going back from the office, and not all and others are not, you know, that's overwhelming. And now I gotta go back. And I gotta commute every day, on top of everything else. So there's overwhelming significance. So we've always believed that, for any organization to get healthier long term, you have to focus on the individual health of the individual. And the individual coherence, the term Heart Math has loved and is used for almost 30 years now, the coherence of the individual, the degree to which that person feels aligned between their mind their emotions, why they're even at work, why they're even doing the job they have the reader, which you feel aligned, is a lot about dispersed dynamic we call internal self-management. So we're saying, to get to be effective in your job to, for a leader to say for my team to be effective for my company to be effective, my hospital to be effective, we've got to make sure my team, our front, our front, people have the tools to manage themselves in these crazy and challenging times. So that's a set of techniques and scientific research, comprising that module we call an internal self-management. In every dynamic of any of life today, communication is more challenging than ever. I haven't any number of friends who prefer to do only texting. They don't even they say I don't speak on the phone, I don't use the phone. You don't speak on the phone, like ever. Oh, no, no, I don't I prefer texting, I prefer to feeling the depth that of a text and think wow, that is like upside down world compared to me to me gotta be on fours or is like at Texas just feels so inadequate. But the point is, it is more challenging than ever for communication to be coherent. And so we were our view is that just as an individual needs to feel aligned, in order to be authentic and be the most effective version that can be at themselves, you've got to bring that to every conversation as well. So skills to be in a coherent enough state, you can truly listen, which is why the constant multitasking that every button and not everybody that so many people are doing these days is so inefficient. I was in a meeting that long ago, where I was talking about a decision that was made in a meeting with myself and two other people. And it was it was a maybe 15 minute conversation, that meeting and one person denied we'd even never talked about that, let alone have we come to a decision. I thought oh my god. I mean, I remember at the time thinking I wasn't sure she was really in the conversation, she would she seemed to be typing and looking kind of away from her camera most of the time. But sure enough, she hadn't been present at all, she completely missed 15 minutes of a conversation while seemingly being there. So that's super incoherent communication that had just that gap. And her had significant consequences for the organization that she had no memory of that even happening. That's just one tiny example of the incoherence that goes on. And it's more challenging than ever, because we're in a world of 12 second videos now. And so if it can't be said, super quick in chat shorthand, yeah, I don't have time for it is the attitude. And so that leads to mistakes, that leads to misunderstandings that leads to hard feelings. And so coherent communication is a whole module of kind of retraining ourselves to these relationships at work, let alone at home are meaningful to different degrees.

Greg Voisen
Well, when you look at you look, Bruce kind of on that if somebody is working in the corporate world, or they're working for themselves, it doesn't matter, but they're working and then they have their personal life. And they look at the, quote, demands they put on themselves because they're an achiever. You know, what I find is, you know, between balancing aiming for everything from balancing the checkbook to balancing the kids to balancing the work the reason I use three balanced things and that is because the body itself this this Mind, Body Spirit wants to seek more homeostasis I Four I find and more people who are out of balance. You know, we used to call it work life balance right? wasn't that long ago. Now it's not really being referred to as much as work life balance. There's, there's a new term today it's like getting in touch with your, your emotions, what would you say because you state putting the emphasis on learning how to deal effectively with workplace and personal problems will create more coherence in the individual. Okay? You state that coherence is efficiency in action. I agree. If you would speak to listeners about the importance of coherence, and how this affects us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, because you know, you, you are saying, hey, if this imbalance happens to be chaos, and um, for many people listening, they have plenty of days of chaos, right. And when they come home at night, they're hoping for this refuge of some way to balance to bring back some peace and harmony and, and whatever, and then to sleep so that they can, so they can wake up the next day and do it all over again, right. So address a coherence thing as it relates to that.

Bruce Cryer
Well, first of all, just to give a little bit of a definition. coherence in physics, is a word that describes how a laser can take a light source and turn it into a beam that is incredibly tiny and incredibly precise enough to repair a retina of your eye. So that's coherent light, so that the light that emits from a laser, the particles and waves are completely coherent, they're completely lined up, there's nothing distracted, there's nothing disrupted or disordered about that light source. So it's incredibly focused. A regular light, like there's a light illuminating me and in the room, all of these are considered incoherent light. So a physicist would look at the light itself comes out, and it's kind of bouncing into each other. It's not focused, it does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is not to try to repair retinas just illuminate the room, that's, that's fine. That's your job, just like the room to be to be a retina repair. That's a whole another qualification. That's it a lot of extra years and a lot of extra ability to focus. So we started looking at human physiology and emotional states, and hormonal and immune system, all these fun systems. And realize that coherence analogy was an excellent one to apply to us as people that we are capable of being in a coherent state. And psychologists like to call that flow, where you're in this beautiful flow state, everything is just kind of in a flow, and it feels super efficient. Time seems to stretch out like, great, that was three hours. That's crazy. It seemed like 20 minutes. And but you're also very effective and efficient. And athletes when they're in the zone. I'm Barry guy, a huge fan of Steph Curry, that guy, you know, he's just like, how was he able to do this, but he is so in a coherent state, that he pulls off the most miraculous moves and shots. And just like this, like effortless, it's not doesn't look like it's the hard work for him. Like, how is this humanly possible. But that's high level of coherence try analogy is that most of us are walking around, not like that. We're not operating like lasers, we're lighting a room. That's okay, that's better than nothing. We're not completely all the lights are turned out. But we're not even close to what we could be. And we've all had those moments. When we were in the zone, we were in a flow state. And so the work of hard math was to say that's a physiologically possible state to achieve. It's not that it takes practice, and it takes routine. And it's not just

Greg Voisen
not to interrupt you, but I've had Steven Kotler on here so many times the guy that founded flow Genome Project, and he's written all kinds of books on below and wonderful guy, but you know, I remember what he said while you're speaking right now, it always pops up. You know, he talks about the elements associated around getting into a state of flow because people are trying to hack flow. So he calls it hacking flow, but how can you really hack well? So people use Was I Alaska to hack flow is all kinds of things to try and get to this flow state. But one of the things he said that I think is important here is he said, focus is for free. Purpose, right. And so he has a whole list of things that really help your goals, your mission, all the things that you're trying to achieve. But when you have those in line, the focus literally comes in. And I think many people out there and this is also to relate to Heart Math. The reason that they feel like they're so chaotic, and me included, is if you're really curious, which I am, and then you start all these projects, and you get five or six different projects going because you're very curious and you're in it. It's good to be curious. The downfall of curiosity is the loss of focus. Okay. But until you find something you're curious about the generic passionate about the job and purpose aligned with that, you know, where you're headed that you've defined some goals in, it's very challenging. So if you would maybe address that, because I think at the heart of much of this is probably got a lot of people out there listening today, they're super curious. They might have five or six things going. And they're like juggling plates. And to get to that focus, they can't get to that focus, because they've got to spread too much energy in between four or five different things. Any comment on that?

Bruce Cryer
I'm sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. I My mind was drifting a lot of places. What was the point? Again? I'm joking.

Greg Voisen
It's okay. Sometimes my questions, sometimes my questions or comments, but the statement from Stephen again. You

Bruce Cryer
know, I was joking, Greg, I was joking, Greg, play on me talking about how I can't keep talking, but that was a joke. I got Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a great, great questions when I deal with all the time, too. And one, one quick story to illustrate. I was told several years ago, about 667 years ago, I had my human design chart done, which I won't go. Well, that means but it sounds like you're somewhat familiar. I'm very familiar with this gentleman. And he was telling me about my chart. And he said, and he's showing me this this chart, which was meaningless to me and all these numbers and symbols and all that stuff. They didn't know what any of it. They said, just look at it here. You're the most open person I've ever seen. I said, Okay, what is what is that? Is that good? Is that bad? And he's pointing out all these places where most people would have a certain way they would have to handle something. He said, You're wide open there. Look at this one right here. Most people would have been blah, blah, blah. He said, you are so open. And I said, okay, that that makes sense. To me. I do feel like I'm extremely open. I'm very curious. And I'm not afraid to be curious. I'm not afraid to explore something that has some level of interest for me. And if you look at my career, it's all over the place. I started out as a musical theater guy in New York City. And now for the last 25 years, I've been teaching on stress and performance and creativity at Stanford doesn't sound that linked, you know, wrote an article on executive health and stress for Harvard Business Review, is after the sound that connected, you know, so themes kind of all, it seems to others is kind of all over the place. And to me, there is a thread of all of it, I was all of it was related to the human the human condition, and how we can improve ourselves as humans. And I got a chance to explore that side of myself as an actor. But I think a challenge today for people who are genuinely curious, is to not just let that turn into mind fascination with as my friend get, as our friend Gary used often refers to as the next shiny object, you're only having interest long enough with something until the next shiny object comes along. Oh, let's check this one out over here. So it can what you refer, the downside of what you're talking about is a dilettante ism that just can't ever land on one thing. But I think I think there's, it's very important as I've grown spiritually, as I've just gone through more and more life, the importance of being open. That doesn't mean just buying everything either but it means receiving information from all kinds of sources, including weird ones that you can explain, like, where did that thought come from? And being open to maybe there's truth in that maybe that voice I don't, I don't hear voices, maybe that voice that I heard, had something I really need to pay attention to. And but guided with that is because of the nature of our society of kind of tossing us around, you know, and we get lost in scrolling on Instagram or lost on Tik Tok. I don't use tick, tick, or lost doing whatever that is. We don't have a core of some kind of daily practices, rituals that are anchoring us back to just us without trying to do anything. But just us, the being that is trying to grow and evolve, I am a curious person, I will always be that way that's going to help keep me humble always going to be that way that's gonna keep me young. But if I don't meditate in the morning, if I don't do practices to quieten that part of me that can get pulled into this and pull it into that and thinking, man for your age, you're awfully cool with today's culture, I say, Yeah, cuz I'm curious. And there's a lot of good stuff out there. There's a lot of BS, too, of course, but I stay curious. So but, but the curiosity and all that energy without a core to help sort it out and help get the guidance of well, what of all these possibilities makes the most sense for me, at this stage of my life? Well, and that's what I take,

Greg Voisen
I think meditation, yoga, gratefulness, practice, all there's a lot of things you can do. But all of those are grounding practices to keep Bruce and Greg where they need to be, you know, I find a lot of similarities and, and, and who we are as individuals. Exactly. And, you know, part of the book addresses this freeze frame technique, and it was developed while at Heart Math, tell the listeners, what it is, and give us an example of how it can be used daily to help us control stressful issues in our life. Because, you know, the listeners right now have been hearing us talk, they're still dealing with their shit. And they're saying, Well, if you have something for me to ground, give me something that will ground me. And I guess reframe would be it, right?

Bruce Cryer
Yeah. Yeah, freeze frame, as the name implies, is a stopping of the action. So part of the idea we realized in trying to help people deal with stress is, the problem was stress is the reaction you're having to it, the stress or is could stress you out, might not stress somebody else out the issue is yours is your reaction to it. So with the idea of spraying, our belief was if you can stop yourself enough to recognize what you're feeling right now, like, I'm pissed off right now. I'm super freaked out right now, I'm really worried, right? acknowledged the stress and recognize the stressful feeling. And then take some action, like imagine you could stop and just pause it. And then step back. And then you take some breaths it with a Heart Math Practice, it's always breathing as though you could breathe through your heart. And we'd found out through our research that around a 10 second rhythm around five seconds as you breathe in, and around five seconds, as you breathe out, is an optimal rhythm for your body, your body loves that rhythm, it's a really comfortable, if you're older, that may be a little too slow, four and four is fine, three and three is fine. But the idea is to regulate your breath. So you're drawing it in through the heart and then letting it go out through the heart. And this action of just stopping and starting to breathe is starting to already sort of neutralize what the reaction that you just had. And then. So our view is you got to kind of stop, you got to take some action, or you got to have enough awareness in the moment. Or even if it's after the fact, to stop, stop the reaction, pause, breathe through the heart, and then try to find any positive feeling. Gratitude, compassion, fun, joy, peacefulness, any, anyone which can shift your state even more so out of the reaction. And then from that standpoint, this all happens pretty quickly as you as you practice this, this is not a drawn out five minute process, right? Then then you allow your mind to kind of scan or what are some options here? Oh, I need to talk to this person. We need to have an actual conversation, not because we're just screaming at each other right now. Or, you know what, wow, I'm doing something that's that keeps irritating this other person. I need to look at myself right now. I need to you know, so the process of First of all, recognizing the stressful feeling you're having, and being honest about what are you feeling right now? I'm feeling this is very unfair, feeling very irritated. Then saying, okay, breathe right now. Right now. Breathe. Oh, and by the way, part of that HeartMath research is in that moment, that you're feeling a stress reaction, a research study in the early 90s that somebody else did not even Heart Math, showed that that reaction by his biochemically produces a chain reaction of 1400 biochemical events, just from that initial moment of I'm pissed off and worried I'm freaked whatever it is. So that's what you're stopping. You're saying well, I

Greg Voisen
guess I don't know that you know, as a result of us getting in that state of anger, frustration rage. You know, we do stupid things, right, we can do stupid things, we'll say things we may act inappropriately, we may do all kinds of things, which could have some long term lasting effects on us as individuals. And I think the freeze frame technique, and for all of you, definitely look it up, just type it in Google, you're gonna find it, you can also reference it in this book, The technique is outlined, Bruce just outlined it really well. It's more than just taking a deep breath, as Bruce is explaining, because it's also repositioning yourself as to what how you could respond or take some action, right. And that's one of the keys here. But again, from chaos to coke coherence, the coherence is really going to be brought about by you taking these actions with freeze frame, and other tools you can use, whether it's meditation, or yoga, or freeze frame or, or, or heart rate variability, it's looking at it on your phone, whatever it says you can actually measure what's going on and really determine what you're doing here. So I remember going way back, I was having anxiety attacks that were very debilitating. And I ended up going to Scripps Clinic, and we're way out. And they put electrodes on my head. And I always thought it was something outside myself it was causing it until I actually saw the brainwaves being measured about what I was doing to myself. And I think what this allows you to do is take a deep look at what you're doing to yourself, nobody outside of you did this the person who made the created the angry remark, it was your reaction to that angry remark that got you upset, you know, you have to let go of that. And that being said, I want to talk about two more things before we wrap up this interview. What is this thing called perception and out people in life that have learned how to successfully manage their emotions RIA reactiveness can neutralize and transform the negative emotions because that's exactly what we're talking about negative emotions, and this perception? How do we rewire our brains to better manage stress? Well, one of the key or humbles

Bruce Cryer
question? Yeah, how do we rewire our brainstem? Yes, that's a small question, I can answer that in five words.

Greg Voisen
Freeze Frame.

Bruce Cryer
With a lot of practice, that was six words. The one important thing for you to understand. So while we said earlier that heart is sending way more inflammation north to the brain than the other way around. That's not to say the brain isn't still managing a massive amount of the of the body. That's its job. And one of the key ways it does that is through the autonomic nervous system, also called ans, autonomic meaning automatic. And so the brain has the system that can regulate heart rate, it can control respiration, it can control secretions in your GI tract, it can control basically 90% of the processes in your body. That's where the autonomic system does, and you never have to consciously think about it. So the autonomic system, autonomic nervous system is literally your subconscious mind. Right? So when we have any kind of trauma, I had no abuse as a child, I had a few things happen to me as a child, but not abuse by a human those things stored and they get stored in the memory associated with the subconscious, the autonomic system, which is which is designed to prevent death from happening, you know, the fight flight response is, is to protect you. However, every time we are traumatized by anything, even a fear with no justification whatsoever, it's still stored unless it somehow gets released, that chemical reaction that was so intense in our body does get stored doesn't just evaporate, unfortunately. And so that's why trauma is so hard to get through. And but when we start to realize, wait a minute, this is actually our subconscious mind. So that's still the mind. And so we have to build new circuitry. This is the work of Heart Math, but also people like Dr. Joe Dispenza, that we have to build kind of the positive neural circuitry of enough positive experiences of gratitude of appreciation of joy to help counteract the negative loop that perception loop that it's easy to get stuck in. Because if we just have something that vaguely reminds us of that trauma that happened five or 10, or 15 years ago, there we go getting triggered again, there's the 1400 biochemical responses again, our body is being flooded in the biochemistry of fight flight, this is a danger to my existence, even though it was an email, only write the word then living with the consequences of that. And that colors, our reaction to the next event that happens, and we bring that, that into the next meeting that we're about to have. And then something happens in the meeting. And we're extra angry, because we never dealt with the thing that happened in the phone call before the meeting. And so it becomes this loop, where we stay stuck feeling victimized by that guy, and that guy, and her, and oh, and my Oh, and my father, oh my god, you know, so all these things keep keeping us locked over there. In that negative cycle, when it escalates. In order to get out of that you need to you need to have a way of stopping that that picture. That's what freeze frame is designed to do. So we can start to build the new habits and new circuitry, of hopefulness of being grateful for all the good things you do have in your life, in spite of that one awful person who, who is the bane of your existence?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you, you have a tendency, and I know I've done this, everybody out there listening has done it, you start to focus on one small little thing that can escalate into something very large, because it now is dominating your whole system, because you have a belief that it's not right or something is you can't justify it, because your systems don't know how to justify it, it's kind of in the best way, I would say that, then you allow that to manifest itself into a chaos, not coherence chaos. Because if you address it, and you address it correctly, through coherence, with focus, and get it resolved, and get it out of the way, it doesn't dominate the mind for more and more stress. And I think that's what you need to look at this book, this is what you do. Look, let's wrap up the interview, leave the listeners with some words and tips of wisdom and advice for you from chaos to coherence, what can they immediately apply to their lives to make this journey that you and I had been talking about, from chaos to coherence. I don't want to use the word simpler, but make it a learning experience that can be repeated over and over and over again, so that they don't have to go down that what I want to call the challenging path. We've already got them challenges in their life. So don't what would you what three tips would you give our listeners as we wrap up this interview?

Bruce Cryer
Sure. Thank you for that question. Well, first of all, I would come back to that brief technique that we did earlier that the simple practice of bringing one's attention to the area of your heart, and just breathing that can happen during the phone call that can happen in the five minutes before you're about to start your next meeting. That can be happen that can happen when you step outside, oh my god feel that sunshine. And instead of just sitting there, breathe in and out for five seconds each way. Science determined research determined that that rhythm scald respiratory sinus arrhythmia is optimal for the human system. It's not just something Heart, heart math, arbitrarily said, Oh, want to try five seconds in five seconds out kind of works. For us. This is based on human physiology. So that practice of bringing the attention to the heart and then breathing gently in and out through the heart is very calming. And it can dissipate those 1400 mile chemicals quite a lot. If people just do that, and walk back inside like Wow, I feel a whole lot better. That hasn't solved the fact that you're still a reactive person reacting maybe too much. But it's starting to build new circuitry. I can take charge of this, I don't have to be victimized by the events of my day. So that's number one, the Heart Math calls at heart focus breathing, just bring the attention. They're trying to hold the attention there. And then we know that that does things biochemically into the heart to draw attention to it as drawing attention to any part of your body would also do. So that's number one. Secondly, I would say I have a line that I that I use called there can never be too much peace and love in a world starving for both. And it's my opinion in life and my mission in life, to be putting out as much peace and be loving as much as I possibly can. that sometimes that means compassion. So somebody was fired today at the University where I work. And it was somebody that was not a friend to me. I don't feel joy today, I'm relieved that I don't have that in my in my way anymore. But I wonder what she's going through. I wonder what her life is going to be like, no one wants to be terminated, no one wants that to have happen. So I instead of feeling joy, that that happened, I felt like compassion for what's good. What does this now mean? For her and her family, etc. And so think the ability to say I want to try to put love out even though it's hard, I want to feel compassion, even though I've I felt unjustly affected by that person for X reason or for X period of time. We all have our reasons for not being the highest version of ourselves. But if we try to do the good, act, be kind when it's not easy to be loving, when it's hard to be compassionate when you feel like well, no one's being compassionate for me. Well, try it anyhow. And who knows if that won't start to bring more back to you at the same time?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I echo that, you know, an angry heart is not a good thing to have, and to have. And to have any kind of addiction towards somebody because of what may have come between the two of you or whatever, is not a good spot. I mean, to actually heal that. So that she's released, from the position with the opportunity to progress and send those kinds of thoughts and feelings to her is really important for you. Because then, you know, you haven't released her with malice.

Bruce Cryer
Right, exactly. Right. Exactly.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think if everybody did that, I know, it probably doesn't happen enough. But because people get into people's crawls, and they just don't know how to deal with it that way. Yeah. But I always echo back to I always echo back, very simply to, there's a banner on my wall over here. And the Dalai Lama says, In the end, you'll be remembered by how much you loved. How many people loved you, and how much you let go. And I look at that simple little statement, and I maybe got it wrong. I didn’t maybe get it exactly right. But my point is, you talk you started this podcast with love. I said, compassion. You said, it's the overarching part of compassion. And if we are going to heal as individuals and heal the world, it is about how much we love on this great Valentine's Day that we've got here. 2023 it's about how much others love us. And it's a how much we're able to let go as you just said, there's three, the malice that you might have, or the unforgiving attitude that you may carry about somebody into your own DNA that it affects your heart rhythms. Right.

Bruce Cryer
Yeah, all of that.

Greg Voisen
Anything to add on that? Or?

Bruce Cryer
Well, I'll just I love everything you just said thank you for the recap and how you essence that the only thing I would add is that the spirit of playfulness, I feel for us as individuals, let alone us as a species is essential that if we line up all the existential threats we have right now, it's pretty damn daunting. Just what any one of them. You know, it's like how we are going to get through that when and then we got all these others, and then we're shooting down Chinese spy balloons. You shouldn't be we're probably

Greg Voisen
Chinese.

Bruce Cryer
Doesn't sound like an idiot cartoon. It means Chinese spy.

Greg Voisen
Does. Well, Bruce anyways, tines day and every day I love you. Namaste to you. Thank you for being on inside personal growth. Thank you for sharing about a book which is timeless from a chaos to coherence. It's Bruce Cryer and Doc children, we'll put a link you can still get this book even though he said it's kind of out of print but at Amazon it's still up there. An excellent book for you to get also just go to Bruce Cryer cry er.com. To learn more about Bruce and what he's doing, Bruce, always an honor to speak Have you and a pleasure to have you on the show and have you share some of your many years of experiences at Heart Math and things that you've learned and the wisdom you've imparted upon our audience? And namaste to you, my friend.

Bruce Cryer
Namaste, Greg, I appreciate seeing you again. It's been great to reconnect lately and thanks so much. This is a great conversation.