Brain Shaman

Faye Sahai is the managing director at Telosity Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in digital wellness and mental health startups. In this interview, you will learn all about current trends in mental health and the some of the latest technologies and solutions striving to improve it. We discuss this from various angles: cultural factors, human connection, trust, autonomy, agency, personalization, etc. We also talk about the causes of the rise in mental health disorders (especially in youth), the role of technology (such as smartphones, social media, sensors, data, VR, and AI), assessment tools, environment, nutrition, behavior, and more.

For those of you interested in creating or investing in mental health startups, you will also get advice on how to build or identify a great company. As a teaser, some of the things we touch on include: user engagement, determining how well the product/service truly helps people, and diversity.

This is also a nice chance to get to know Faye's story - her upbringing, career journey, motivations, memories, pains, sensitivities, influences, family, hopes, and beyond.

We delve into some darker topics such as suicide, depression, dementia, and social isolation. But there is light at the end of this conversational tunnel.


**CONNECT & LEARN MORE**
website: telosity.co
LinkedIn: /telosity-co
Telosity Report (Market Guide): telosity.co/mkt-guide

RESOURCES

COMPANIES
- Daybreak Health
- Flipd
- Ksana Health
- Manatee
- Maslo
- MindRight Health
- Neolth

PEOPLE
- Andrew Huberman
- David Eagleman
- David and Jan Baszucki
- Dylan Fox

PODCASTS
- Huberman Lab
- Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

TELEVISION
- Alive Inside (documentary)
- It's Okay to Not Be Okay (TV series)
- The Brain with David Eagleman (documentary series)

**CONNECT & LEARN MORE**
website: telosity.co
LinkedIn: /telosity-co
Telosity Report (Market Guide): telosity.co/mkt-guide

This is an episode about finding balance between our two main modes of perception: interoception (the inner world) and exteroception (the outer world). Sometimes we get stuck too far in one direction, either internally within our body-mind or externally out there in the world of other objects and things. We are always dancing between these two realities, struggling to keep our balance with a foot in each world. Often, we pull both feet into one extreme - perceiving too much of the inside and not enough outside, or vice versa. Today, let's talk about how to fine tune that dance, how to build ourselves a home between both worlds, so that we can feel happy and alive both on the inside and the outside.

We also discuss various tools for altering our balance between interoception and exteroception, including: our visual environment, visual exercises, clothing, breathing, food, and more.

Compliments of suno.ai for the semi-sweet song at the end.

Michael Morin Nissen is a psychologist, body-oriented psychotherapist, and TRE trainer. In this episode, we talk about various trauma therapies such as Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), bioenergetics, and body-oriented psychotherapy.  We discuss the history behind such therapies as well as how they can be used to help people with, for example, multiple sclerosis (MS), depression, or childhood trauma. The conversation largely centers around the role of the eyes and face in understanding and releasing such trauma. By the end of the episode, you will have a greater understanding of trauma as a whole-body phenomenon, TRE and other therapies, and the connection between trauma and the eyes. This will hopefully help you better understand your own bodily, facial, and ocular habits, and how to return your nervous system to a safe and regulated state.

**Connect with Michael Morin Nissen**
website: www.morin-nissen.com
LinkedIn: /michael-morin-nissen-0b6a90114
YouTube: @tredanmark8689

RESOURCES

PEOPLE
- Alexander Lowen
- Bruno Adler
- David Berceli
- Sigmund Freud
- Stephen Porges
- Wilhelm Reich
- Will Davis

THERAPIES
- bioenergetics
- body-oriented psychotherapy
- brainspotting
- EMDR
- Emotional Core Perception (ECP)
- functional analysis
- grounding
- Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE)


CONNECT WITH MICHAEL:
website: www.morin-nissen.com
LinkedIn: /michael-morin-nissen-0b6a90114
YouTube: @tredanmark8689

This is an episode about distraction, busyness, to-do lists, dreams, goals, pleasures, and how all such things are preventing you from seeing yourself and living your authentic life. Stop adding noise, drop whatever it is you think you need or want to do, and roll with the true spirit hidden inside. Time is disappearing as you cover it up with things that do not really matter. We keep ourselves busy running around because we are scared to start living.  

This is your brain on Christmas. Hop on this wild neurochemical sleigh ride through the brain. Learn how things like serotonin and dopamine affect your behavior during the holidays. More importantly, learn how to optimize them to ensure that you will indeed have a very merry Christmas. Life is a battle between connection and solitude, a see-saw between having and wanting, being and becoming, present and future. This episode explores such themes through the lenses of biology, culture, and psychology. 

This is an interview with Kirill Krasnogir, the CEO of Cleverpoint, which combines VR with physiological sensors (such as EEG, EMG, and ECG) to analyze and assess your mental health state.
It helps people determine and track the state of their nervous system - levels of stress, fatigue, anxiety, risk of burnout, and more. Get to know your unique psychophysiology through emerging technology.

We discuss topics including: heart rate variability (HRV), electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), electrocardiography (ECG), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), brain computer interface (BCI), artificial intelligence (AI), fitness trackers, psychological tests (such as the Stroop Test and Schulte Table Test), and more.

A recurrent theme throughout this episode is the idea that we each have our own unique psychophysiology. Health data must therefore be interpreted according to each individual and the numerous variables in their life. For example, stress levels or HRV can be either adapative or maladaptive, depending on the person and various other factors. So, we need to collect and analyze physiological data (e.g. from the brain and heart) from each person so that we can provide more individualized and effective solutions, tools, and protocols. Not every tool will work for every person. So we need to learn the reality of our own body-mind and thereby find our own solutions. 

Know thy body and brain. The unexamined mind is not easily treated.

**CONNECT**
  Cleverpoint website: cleverpoint.pro
  Stressonika website: stressonika.com
  LinkedIn: /cleverpoint-neuro,  /kirillkrasnogir,  /aleksandr-smirnov-1000-b1733327
  Facebook: /CleverPointNeuro

This episode is all about traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Our guest is Adrian Harel, the founder and CEO of Medicortex, a Finnish company that is developing a non-invasive TBI diagnostic tool that detects the biomarker through saliva and urine. Together we explore various aspects of traumatic brain injuries: definitions, types, causes, signs, symptoms, diagnostic tools, technologies, treatments, recovery protocols, access to care, risks, ways to protect yourself, and more. 

RESOURCES

PEOPLE, PLACES, & MOVIES
 - Barack Obama
- Concussion (movie)
- Turku, Finland

VOCABULARY
- biodegradation
- blood-brain barrier (BBB)
- cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
- CT scan
- Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)
- magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- monoclonal antibodies


**CONNECT & LEARN MORE**
Facebook: /medicortex
LinkedIn: /medicortexfinlandoyj
PowerPoint presentations: www.medicortex.fi/eng/investors/reports-and-presentations
website: medicortex.fi

David Hardy is a functional neurologist and the host of The Hardy Brain podcast.  In this episode, he provides a sort of crash course on the brain and nervous system. Specifically, you will learn how to use certain bodily movements (e.g. with the eyes, breath, mouth, and jaw) to both interpret and alter your brain state. A dual theme running throughout this episode is concussions, head trauma, and sports. However, this is an episode for anyone with a human nervous system. The simple behavioral tools that we discuss trace back to our early and pre-human roots and therefore can be used by anyone to quickly change how they think, feel, and act. Try some of them out, play around with them, and find the ones that work best for you. Along the way, you just might also discover some new ones or learn something new about yourself.

The first 30 minutes or so of the conversation focuses primarily on concussions, head traumas, and David's life journey. Then we start digging deeper into neurology and how our overall brain and nervous system functions. We talk about how to detect problems in our nervous system and reprogram it via behavior protocols including: breathing exercises, eye, neck, head, mouth, jaw, & vocal movements, smells, and more. The direction (vertical, horizontal, rotational, etc.) engages different parts of the brain, and we talk about that. These movements can also be used in careful combinations with one another to produce various effects. We tie all this back to sports, music, dance, communication, life, and more. By the end of this, you should have a better understanding of your brain-body and how to consciously change it through action.

RESOURCES

EXERCISES
 - box breathing (used by Navy SEALs)
- breath holding (used by biathletes)
- circular breathing
- EMDR
- holotropic breathwork
- lion's breath
- smooth pursuit exercises
- Wim Hof breathing

NEUROSCIENCE TERMS
- brainstem
- cerebellum
- midbrain (mesencephalon)
- midline musculature
- mirror neurons
- optic nerve
- pons
- proprioception
- trigeminal nerve
- vestibular system

 ***CONNECT WITH DAVID HARDY***
 LinkedIn: /dr-david-hardy-brain  and  /the-hardy-brain
podcast: The Hardy Brain (available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.)
website: thehardybrain.ca

This is a solo episode is a reminder that we are 3D omnidirectional organisms. We move in a multitude of directions (along the x, y, and z axis, etc.) through this world. Today we will talk about how we can use different bodily movements (with the eyes, neck, mouth, arms, legs, etc.) to re-enter all of those different planes of reality - the horizontal, vertical, sagittal, and beyond. By doing so, we can reawaken to new possibilities in our body, mind, and world, becoming happier, healthier, more free and alive. Listen in an escape the limits of 2D.

In this episode, we explore the intimate connection between your voice, nervous system, and overall well-being. Our guest, Angela Clarke, is a voice specialist, embodiment practitioner, and educator based out of Australia. Join us in our lovely conversation about the voice, movement, touch, the nervous system, and more. This episode is packed full of fun practical vocal exercises that you can use to change your brain and bodily state at anytime - to increase focus, calm, connection, etc. "We are a song in the universe," and today we will practice how to sing. 

You will learn about: 

• what the voice is
• how sound (and everything) is omnidirectional
• Alexander technique
• Body-Mind Centering
• Social Presencing Theater 
• voice in connection with the head and neck
• how to gain freedom over your voice (and entire organism)
• how your nervous system state affects your voice
• vocal toning
• humming
• touch and voice
• bones and voice
• somatic imagination
• how to re-guide your attention
• connection (with our body, ourselves, others, the environment, and planet)
• how to use your voice to calm down and relax, decrease anxiety, etc.
• how we can use voice to increase care and empathy
• how to use voice and movement to alter your focus and alertness
• singing as therapy
• benefits of communal singing
• how to change your voice (tone, prosody, speed, etc.)
• the value of listening and silence
• how the nostrils affect your voice
• physiology of technology - smartphones, computers, and your nervous system
• eye movement and voice
• how to move "horizontally" 
• trauma and voice

RESOURCES

PEOPLE
- Arawana Hayashi
- Astrid Jorgensen
- Bessel van der Kolk
- Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
- Frederick Matthias Alexander
-  Moshé Feldenkrais
- Stephen Porges

VOICE & EMBODIMENT PRACTICES
- Alexander Technique
- Body-Mind Centering
- Feldenkrais
- Pub Choir
- Social Presencing Theater

**CONNECT AND LEARN MORE**
Angela Clarke's website: liveparticle.com.au
Adventures in the Field: adventuresinthefield.com