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 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.  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 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.  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.  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?  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.  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.  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.  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.   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.  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.  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.  Let me give you, let's try a couple of other things because it seems like you're kind of struggling with this.  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 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.


Hello, Columbia. Welcome to our edition of Telling Our Story Exploring the Parks. I am your host, Wanda Austin Herndon. Join us as we explore our parks. Hello, Columbia, and welcome to our current episode of Telling Our Story Exploring the Parks. Today, come join us at beautiful Saluda Riverwalk out on Candie Lane. Come take a walk on the trails with us and enjoy the view. The Saluda Riverwalk at 650 Candie Lane opened in June of 2021. With three miles of trail beside the lower Saluda River, this park features awe-inspiring scenery, whitewater rapids, and valuable natural habitat with an outstanding fishery. It's the only place you can see deer, turkey, birds, all kinds of wildlife, and I mean we are in a urban setting. I mean it's just fantastic down here. Birds for everybody.  It's super exciting and then what's a real treat to see are the river otter. They're very rare, not very often seen, but they like to swim in the water and they'll pop their heads up and look and maybe even make a little squeak. They're super cool, exciting when you get to see a river otter. The diversity, the more diverse the plant life is, the more diverse the animals are that live here. More caterpillars and things that are able to munch on your plants, that means you have more food for birds or songbirds that are passing through and that's all supported by the plant life that's here and the insects that feed off of those plants are the protein for everything else in the food chain. It's also special that you have two rivers coming together. You've got the Saluda River which is cold, you've got the Broad River which is warmer, and so where they come together you have kind of a mix of species that like the two different specific things, but we're lucky because we get to see them all in one spot here at the Confluence. City staff became involved with the park soon after Richland Penny team began construction in July of 2017. The city did a soft opening to accommodate public demand. The Saluda River Walk opened officially on Monday August the 30th, 2021. With the recent completion of the connection to Board Island Sanctuary, phase one of the River Walk is finished. The river has done a lot for myself and my life you know kind of helping me go where I want to go and teach me many different things and so having access to this fabulous resource for other people who don't know it like I know it is awesome. Board Island is the thing that people come for so anybody who would enjoy a pretty spot just it's exciting to walk across the bridge and go to an island in the middle of the river that would otherwise not be accessible to you that's very exciting. Lots of friendly people, nice park rangers who are excited to talk to you and answer your questions. We've been coming down here two years we walk and we sit and take our breaks and mollygag some. The convenience and it being so pretty and clean we just we like it a lot. If you don't like to get outside because it's too hot come to Saluda River Walk to get outside because the cool water off that river our river is about 58 degrees year round it's coming off the bottom of Lake Murray it stays cool you get these cool breezes that come up. If you find yourself on the river you should be properly prepared with the right equipment whether it's a life jacket helmet the proper watercraft the Saluda River is very popular for tubing and entering in the river at designated points is pretty important so you don't find yourself in trouble. In the future phase two of the project will connect this park to riverfront park by way of a pedestrian bridge across the broad river upstream of I-126. Additionally plans for Irmo Chapin recreation to expand the Saluda Shoals trails systems down river to make it possible for the Greenway trails network will expand across Mississippi. I think it's well overdue people are going to remember Columbia when they come down here and walk. I like the thing is the crown jewel of Columbia you know it's like a hidden secret that more more people are finding out about. Thank you for joining us today please stay tuned for our next episode of telling our story exploring the park. As with all our parks our mission here at the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation is to change lives through a cultural of transformational leadership innovation and phenomenal customer service. Thank you for joining us today and please join us in the future for more episodes of telling our story exploring the parks and remember we are columbia.


Hello everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is Camilo Bravo. I come from Ecuador and I'm here to tell you about the time I organized the Drupal camp. So let's start. So the first motivation for me was I actually wanted to practice speaking and you know talks such as this one and and Back home there are not many camps or you know events of this kind So of course the next logical step is to create one Which seemed like a good idea at the time But as you'll see it involves more than you might initially think about Anyway, it happened and this is it This is kind of the image of and name of the event. This is 2017 in October and I will tell you about a bunch of the aspects that organizing this involved From me From the perspective of a first-time, you know organizer of any kind of such thing So, let's let me just preface this By quoting a quote that I'm sure many of you are familiar with I won't repeat it because last time I gave this talk You know the computer crashed right after this slide. So let's just keep it so here's Kind of the subjects that we're gonna cover. It's a lot. Don't worry about Reading all of this for now We're gonna go somewhat chronologically Starting in May, this is five months or so before the actual event and So the next the first step for me was you know before Coming up with even the theme for the event the name or you know Program or anything like that The first step was getting a team together So the team is what you know without a team you don't have anything you cannot do this by yourself So a team for an event like this Which was more ambitious than not needed to have more than a few people and The way we organize this and I'm sure Many teams that do things like this do the same way is We have a core team of three or less people Or ideally three There are the people that Care enough for the event to make it happen no matter what and then extend the team That is the people that will by be assigned roles But don't really have to know about every aspect of of the thing That way, you know we have a the core team is is a You know really motivated to make this happen And this structure worked well for us We actually put it to the test when one of the core team members left Shortly before the event and was replaced by another from the extended team So, yeah, it works Another idea to keep in mind is as with everything around soft words good to have a backup Ideally for each member of the extended team that handles one specific thing You would have more than just one person Realistically, this doesn't always happen, but you know, it's always good to have a goal in mind Next question is when to do this exactly For us the question was between September and October and there were a bunch of considerations Locally we had well, I think maybe the biggest one was the Qualification rounds for the World Cup football, which I didn't know much about so I had to do some research and Yes, you don't want your event near the dates of you know the games Other triple events that might conflict with yours Even though in hindsight, maybe it would have been a good idea to do it at the same time as triple con Vienna But, you know, it's something to keep in mind also Universities have their schedule midterms and whatnot So you don't want to do it at the same time that students have to you know study and Of course things like local holidays that kind of thing so once you set a date then you can start thinking about a Schedule and for that you do what composer does you create a dependency graph and That will give you kind of Organically a schedule We created a sort of Gantt chart for you know timeline of things that need to happen and in which order and There are some things here that are obvious, you know You can't publish a program if you don't have a website that kind of thing so just At this stage just prepare and anticipate for things give yourself enough time enough resources people and such to Actually do what you're planning to do or you know cut down on on scope the Next step is venue without a venue you don't have anything For us this was a university But it took a while to get approved. This is kind of a timeline with Specific events the left column the red column is the number of days until the event so you can see to More than a third of the time to get the venue approved which was stressful to save it is We were denied officially before that But we really really wanted to get that place so we Went back and back again until they said yes So sometimes you have to do that Once the venue secured We wanted to start working on design first step is creating a logo We took some time with this. We wanted to get it right. We had a couple of rounds With someone from the extended team who handled designing general So with the logo you don't have to have a website to start sending like for example a Google form for measuring interest in the in the event or Taking control of the Facebook page for the community and just putting the logo there and letting people know that hey Something's gonna happen But of course you do need more design work and designers tell me this is called a style tile Which will give you guidelines typography scholars and whatnot for how everything will look And from this it explodes into a million different things that You'll need to do probably Well, we probably did More than we needed to but you know you have fun doing these things By the way at the end if you have a question you can grab some of the stuff that that is left That is here on the table taking a step back We've covered a couple of the topics We're doing good time wise I think And it's June Four or so months until the event Let's talk about the website So of course being a Drupal event we wanted to do this in Drupal 8 We got a platform that sh to give us hosting for free since this is a community website Which was awesome? It worked really well And the other thing we used for the website is something called pattern lab this led us split the work between front-end and back-end and You just have to agree on a JSON format for the data and you can build Widgets or blocks or entire pages in this way So it's something that we were able to adapt to Drupal 8 And it's useful This is What the website looks like? There were some stages in the development of the site We defined these in detail when we started This was important because you don't want to be working on something that you don't need yet You do need certain other things like for example, you don't even have speakers for a program So you don't need to build a calendar functionality yet That kind of thing so it's good to plan ahead of it We decided to make this an organization level website Drupal Ecuador Partly because we wanted to To do a couple of fancier things than if it was just a website for the event Arguably superfluous superfluous functionality like Attendance could upload photos into the site and you had a gallery that kind of thing so structurally the the event is a content type in Drupal and we had the group module where sessions or groups and Attendance are members of that group And that way, I think we will be able to use the website in the future But I will stop there with the website To say this I Shouldn't Spend all day talking about this even though this is actually my area of expertise And if you're doing an event like this, you shouldn't spend all your time working on the website Even though it's tempting There are a million other things that need to happen and You can always improve the website and you can always Find excuses to be working on that So as a back-end developer myself, I need to get To restrain myself a bit and work on things like promotion That's a big thing that was very new to me There were a couple of camps in keto before and I was lucky to to be working with some of the people that that organized those So we collected all of the media photos videos Design contacts everything that they had and use that as a starting point You know if you create everything from scratch Then it's it's much much harder You need to do a lot of email and it's useful to use You know the tools that we have For example MailChimp will help you do this help you with the templates and everything so you don't spend Hours and hours designing emails, which is not a great use of your time There is some work on social media that you need to do a lot of its manual Contacting groups because contacting people in other communities I'm trying to you know Promote your event trying to get people to come and to speak All of that is very manual it helps if you actually talk to them face-to-face or at least on the phone Even though you know for us It's kind of a weird thing But It's it's you know, it's how it works we did Some paid promotion manual Facebook this helped it was not too expensive in a quarter to do this and You know you get a fair amount of clicks for your page and whatever We use Twitter also we had an account with some some account you know followers and We were able to to get a couple of tweets from the Drupal Association from the official Drupal account that helps a lot and Of course, don't forget to submit your event to Drupal Call to any other Drupal sites that You know collect and display these events Also, don't forget about traditional media Newspapers are happy to have something to put on their text sections So that's always helpful too. Let's evaluate We're halfway through And it's July Let's talk about sponsors So the previous event had an overly complicated in my opinion A structure of sponsorships for this one we decided to just have two tiers Both were relatively cheap and simple rules and I think this worked well We created an actual dead tree document that we Showed companies This is also useful Because you know companies need to see things on paper so Don't underestimate that And this is kind of a timeline of each sponsor that we got again on the left It's the number of days until the event happened So you can imagine how stressful this is Our first sponsor technically which was the venue Was 97 days before the event the next one came almost one month after that and With that we decided the event was possible and we're just going to do that Month after that we got the second gold sponsor to provide actual money and We were confident Of course a week before the event one of the sponsors changed from gold to silver Which is not great, but it wasn't the end of the world and Takes us to budget So as you can see the event was fairly cheap and This is roughly how much money went in from gold silver sponsorships and our pockets and How it was spent? There was a lot of printing food We had t-shirts and we had a workshop. Let's put a pin on that and a tiny Piece of social media So let's talk about losses Not a lot not the end of the world again, but not exactly ideal either As for what we spend the money on You can see this chart didn't include venue, of course, which is a sponsor It didn't include recording of the sessions, which we did as another sponsorship It doesn't include design Which I would have loved to To pay actually because it was a lot of work Also logistics and organizers Those people didn't get anything Not ideal again if you want to make your event sustainable as for what money comes in You might have noticed that there is no ticket sales section of this pie chart that's because they went the event was free and Couple of reasons why? first one, it's well It's free. So that's always a good thing It's you don't need to explain that We wanted to give a boost to the local community, which I think we did But On the downside And I've heard this a couple of times in in this Drupal con Is when you make something free You can't expect everyone to show up in our case 185 people registered and only 83 showed up. So not great The other downside big one is all of your money depends on sponsorships, which Again, not great We're almost there and it's September one month until the event Let's talk about speakers Rough timeline of things we did let's go through each one The first one Sure, you're familiar with We had a form on the website basically a ad group page And we had a couple of types of sessions that we wanted to cover The first one is talk, of course. The second one is remote talk. We did one of these The hangouts Which was really fun it worked But also you need to spend some time setting it up testing and making sure everything works Wi-Fi what not We had discussion groups Something like birds of feather We wanted to have a panel In the end we couldn't make that happen We had one keynote and we had workshops basically training sessions and That was it The second thing we did for speakers is as I'm sure you know or have noticed We are not known for our presentation skills So we organized a Workshop half-day workshop This was done by a local NGO in keto run by my wife and They do human rights and a lot of training so for them it was easy to to do a workshop on effective presentations You know everything from how to set up your PowerPoint to General speaking skills We did this three weeks before the event We didn't make this mandatory of course But it helped us as organizers to you know get a sense of the people and I think it helped the speakers to you know Become a part of the of the group and you know knowing each other before the event. I think it's very helpful The third thing I selection and this involves spreadsheets We're not gonna zoom in on that It's actually kind of boring, but I will explain a bit how the process worked And I should have said this at the beginning all of this is my our personal experience You know it depends on Your culture even or your level of Comfort with these things so I Will just explain What we did here? We had 38 session proposals and the three people on the core team We wanted to select the sessions We decided to Each one feel one of four buckets with each lesson either strong or a weak yes or no and In the end this this worked very well We coincided in most of the sessions and only had to discuss a couple What I did personally I had a system of Points where I would add or subtract a point based on a certain criteria Like if it's a special type of session for example panels would get a point If there was more than one speaker on the session, which was rare For the speakers themselves if they were foreign or they had good experience that kind of thing and For the session itself if you had clear objectives if the topic was relevant we had a I remember one of the Proposals what was something about? PHP nuke something something that I haven't seen in ages So that kind of thing is not really relevant We only have a few more topics to cover It's October And I think this is somewhat relevant Let's talk about logistics So we had in the end after selection we had 19 talks three workshops two discussion groups a Remote talk and a keynote. That's 26 sections in three days in up to four rooms which Changed each day because that's just what the university could give us We had a big keynote room and We had the main university hall where we set up our registration table and sponsor booths So that's that's a lot to cover And to organize we had volunteers we had you know all the speakers For each of the speakers, you know, you need to make sure everything works for them That they know where to go For the recording team that everyone showed up and did it you know a good job at Recording and managing their equipment and all that The food you need to look at special meal requirements You need to check each room make sure it's ready before each session You need to set up the registration table have people there welcome attendants You need to manage the volunteers Give them tasks Manage where someone doesn't show up You need to keep track of your cables and adapters and whatnot Wi-Fi is always a problem We had a group photo This by the way is designed to look horrible And it is and the main takeaway here is You shouldn't be doing this yourself You should get someone to help you with this Even if it's a small event It's it frees you up to actually attend the sessions and talk to the people which is the whole point of doing something like this So we called that the head of logistics and that was Again my wife She helped a lot and Yeah, this is the group photo Not everyone is here because it was three days, but Everything turned out fine last two topics. Let's put them together Recording and social media again best if done by someone else so you don't have to you know Be tweeting about the companies that sponsor you and you know keeping up with everything during the event so Yeah, luckily we did have one of the sponsors just take care of that and the event happened so What happens later? Well Actually a bunch of things immediately after the event. We had another sponsor. They gave us Was a restaurant they gave us room Somewhere to wind down after the event, you know make those precious social connections We also needed to update the website the Facebook page You know remove everything to sign up for the event because it already happened After a few days we needed to send emails we needed to We had on each session sheet of paper for attendance to write their names So we had to enter that data into the website We had to send the feedback forms to the attendance. That's how we set it up I Bloating session recordings Did not happen after a few days, but you know it happened eventually More updates on the website Social media All of that the main idea is you need to prepare for all of these before the event even starts And just make yourself at least this is trailer word with just a plain list of checkboxes Because after the event you Won't have much capacity to think about these things So a couple of other random lessons We did try to prepare as much as we could But no matter how much you do it's always going to be crazy during the event. So just embrace that it's not that bad if Or I should say when I do this again, I will look for stronger support from companies and universities not just sponsorships, you know cash, but You know, maybe get creative with it and get other kinds of help. Maybe companies can bring their people and You know, there's there's a million things that you can do That I wish had done The other thing is We had a couple of sessions with really low attendance And that's because we had too many rooms at the same time and not enough people to fill them all so that that's not great and That was the event in keto now what if we had So I wish I had all of these things when I start started doing the Drupal camp I wish I had resources That I could look up for things that I wasn't familiar with I wish there was a Community of you know organizers which there is but Now it is actually official as I'm sure you heard this morning it's called the event organizers working group and You have a URL here through all that org slash community slash event dash organizers and You can get involved in this you can join the meetings You can join the slack. This is by the way a separate slack from the main Drupal one I'm sure everything's linked from here There's a newsletter and there's an issue queue as with every thing in Drupal so As an organizer or as an aspiring organizer you can benefit by attending these calls and getting involved in this group We were just set up so we'll start working on getting resources ready and And you know you can reach out to us and we can share our Hard earned knowledge of how things work That's all. Thank you. Any questions? Yes Ask Great, yes, please use slack while it's still free So if anyone has a question And if it's a great question you can grab some of the Some of the stuff that we printed that we never Distributed so there's a small notebook and a t-shirt That might fit you Yes You mentioned that the the main team was three Are there specific rules for these three? We just wanted to have Okay, so obviously more than one person right in charge of the event because that Screams burnout, right? and two people Well, maybe you won't Agree on everything so it helps to have a third person to You know have a vote about certain things. I think three is a good number just because of that But mainly it's just as few people as possible that that really care about the event So that that's I Heard someone talking about yeah this organizing the I Forget which Drupal camp and they also said yeah, we have three people and you know, of course you have more Dedicated to other things, but I think three is a good number to you know If anything happens with anything they are all aware they've been to every you know Meeting and everything and they they will be able to solve any problem I think it's really important to to have that from the start Yes Because from outside So this I think it's a good question is So is it worth it to to call people from the outside to speak at your event? And I think this depends a lot of Your location and your history, you know your local communities and everything In in Ecuador we It was kind of obvious to that we needed to do this in in Spanish, right? so Obviously that restricts a bit of the of the speakers that that you can bring We also wanted to to give local speakers, you know a chance to to do the thing and That's another reason that we didn't do much of that Also, if you bring someone from even a neighboring country you should really pay for you know Transportation and that kind of thing and we didn't have the money to do that So we decided not to do that that said we had this remote talk with someone that that speaks Spanish and that is relatively well known and And and it's great because it does give you, you know Kind of credibility to have someone that you know this is really good and known in the Drupal community and all that But I think it depends. I mean you have to evaluate and decide, you know, what you want to do, obviously But yeah for us it it was also it was just a bit too much we already did I think more than we Needed to than we should have So yeah, that is an extra thing that would have been stressful Yes Yes Not yet So I have two answers for that Question is what where I do differently that I did another one I Would do things differently. This was my first one, right? I wouldn't try to do as much. I wouldn't print t-shirts. I wouldn't You know have so many rooms. I would restrict the schedule more And also I would have charged at least, you know five dollars for for a ticket It seemed like a good idea at the time It was just the decision that we took but you know, it's really hard to manage Everything else when you don't really know how many people would be there But yes, it will happen eventually we'll do another one, but You know the bar is set so it doesn't really make sense to do a lot less Next time I don't think it's a good idea there. So yeah, I think As I said, I would reach out to companies and universities sooner We have a lot more to show now, of course We made a point of recording a session and taking a bunch of pictures and all that so we have a lot of material So it's definitely going to be easier next time But yeah, if you're doing the first one just just don't do all this It's it's a lot Yes Thank you, thank you very much. All right, so as always please feedback it's important and Thank you