Have you ever heard of biohacking? No wonder: this approach to human biology is only gaining momentum. Biohacker Mark Moschel talks about how mobility, awareness, music allow us to better understand our nature, get rid of stress and be closer to ourselves.
Biohacking is a systematic approach to human biology that focuses on all aspects of activity. Its main difference from the practices of self-realization is precisely in the system. Here are 7 tricks that we directionalists use to turn our lives into a more natural and healthy direction.
1. Mobility
We all know that sitting for a long time is harmful — it leads to muscle tension and destroys our physical abilities. Here are a couple of simple exercises that will help restore natural mobility.
Exercise 1: roll on a soft fitness roller for 10 minutes every day. This simple and effective self-massage restores muscle elasticity and relieves tension.
Exercise 2: maintain a neutral back position. To do this, you need to squeeze your buttocks, exhale and pull in your ribs, tighten your abs and bring your head to a neutral position (ears in line with your shoulders — imagine that you are being pulled by the top of your head). Practice the neutral position every hour.
2. Food
An endless number of articles and books have been written about the benefits of proper nutrition, but what kind of nutrition can be considered as such in the end? Nutritionist Dave Asprey says you should eat plenty of vegetables, use vegetable oil, choose natural proteins, and limit your intake of carbohydrates and fruits. He is echoed by nutritionist JJ Virgin, adding that it is extremely important to stop using sugar: it is more addictive and addictive than morphine.
Dr. Tom O’Brien draws attention to the dependence of the stomach-brain. If you have an allergy or sensitivity to a certain food and ignore it, then the brain may react with inflammation, which will affect its work. You can find out if you have food allergies with the help of medical tests.
3. Return to nature
Did you know that any dog is a descendant of a wolf? Oh, and that cute puppy curled up in your lap. He is also a wolf. His distant ancestor would not have rolled over on his back in front of you for you to scratch his tummy — he would have feasted on you for dinner.
Modern man is practically no different from this puppy. We have domesticated ourselves and established a taboo on reasoning about it. We are inferior to our ancestors in physical form, endurance, ability to adapt quickly and are more prone to chronic diseases.
If the problem is domestication, then the way out is to return to nature. Here are some tips to help with this:
• Refuse semi-finished products in favor of «live», natural food: freshly picked vegetables, meat, mushrooms.
• Drink natural water: from a spring or bottled. What we drink is just as important as what we eat.
• Breathe clean air. Trite, but true: the air in the park is healthier than the air in the apartment with dust and mold spores. Get out of the house as often as possible.
• Get out in the sun more often. Sunlight is part of our natural diet, it helps the body to produce useful substances.
• Get out into nature more often.
4. Mindfulness
My great-grandfather came to America without money. He had no family, no plan for how to live on. He felt happy simply because he lived. Low expectations, high resilience. Today in a cafe you can hear complaints that wi-fi does not work. «Life sucks!» High expectations, low sustainability.
What to do with it?
Tip 1: Create discomfort.
Uncomfortable situations will help lower expectations and increase resilience. Start every day with a cold shower, take part in strenuous sports, try rejection therapy. Finally, give up the comforts of home.
Tip 2: Meditate.
To change our point of view, we must understand consciousness. Meditation is a proven path to improved awareness. Today, advanced meditation techniques based on biofeedback have appeared, but you need to start with the simplest practices. The most important rule: the less time you have for meditation, the more often you need to practice it.
5. Music
My personal secret concentration biohack: put on headphones, open a music app, turn on instrumental rock or electronics. When the music plays, the world around ceases to exist, and I can concentrate on work.
Our brain is made up of 100 billion neurons that communicate with each other using electricity. Every second, millions of neurons simultaneously produce electrical activity. This activity is visible on the electroencephalogram in the form of a wavy line — a brain wave. The frequency of the brainwave oscillation depends on what you are doing.
A small educational program on brain waves:
- Beta: (14–30 Hz): active, alert, alert. We spend most of the day in this stage.
- Alpha: (8-14 Hz): meditative state, conscious but relaxed, transitional state between sleep and wakefulness.
- Theta: (4-8 Hz): light sleep state, access to the subconscious.
- Delta (0,1–4 Hz): A state of deep, dreamless sleep.
It has been scientifically proven that a constant sound wave can affect brain activity. Moreover, there is a study confirming that people enter a meditative state 8 times faster just by listening to music. Music, as it were, “imposes” a rhythm on our brain.
6. Flow Consciousness
Flow is the optimal state of consciousness in which we feel best and are most productive. Being in it, we feel that time has slowed down, we have renounced all problems. Remember the moments when you asked the heat and everything was nothing to you? This is the flow.
Bestselling author of Superman Rising1 Stephen Kotler believes that the only category of people who regularly enter the state of flow are extreme athletes. Since extreme sports often put athletes in life-threatening situations, they have little choice: either enter a state of flow or die.
Before we enter the flow, we must feel resistance.
The flow state itself is cyclical. Before entering the flow, we must feel the resistance. This is the learning phase. During this phase, our brain produces beta waves.
Then you need to completely detach yourself from the environment. In this phase, our subconscious can do its magic — process information and relax. The brain produces alpha waves.
Then comes the flow state. The brain generates theta waves, opening access to the subconscious.
Finally, we enter the recovery phase: brain waves fluctuate in a delta rhythm.
If you’re having trouble completing a task, try to force yourself to work on it a little more as hard as possible. Then stop and do something completely different: like yoga. This will be a necessary step away from the problem before entering the flow consciousness. Then, when you return to your business, it will be easier for you to enter a state of flow, and everything will go like clockwork.
7. Thanks
By expressing gratitude, we positively influence the future evaluation of events in our lives. Here are three tricks to help you practice it every day.
1. Diary of gratitude. Every night, write down in your journal 3 things you are grateful for today.
2. Grateful walk. On the way to work, try to feel yourself «here and now», to feel gratitude for everything that you see and experience during the journey.
3. Grateful visit. Write a letter of love and gratitude to someone who is important to you. Make an appointment with this person, take the letter with you and read it.
Feeling gratitude is a daily practice, much like meditation. Like meditation, over time it becomes more and more natural. Moreover, gratitude and meditation complement each other wonderfully, like bread and butter in a sandwich.
Remember, what you put into your body affects what comes out of it. Your thoughts create the world around you, and if you “bring” gratitude into yourself, you will receive it from the world.
1 «Rise of Superman» (Amazon Publishing, 2014).