All right, welcome back everybody. It is the top of the hour. It is 1 p.m. Central time here in Lincoln, Nebraska And this is big talk for small libraries 2014 our third annual conference Where we hear from lots of small libraries from across the country and the amazing things that they are doing Our next presenter is Rachel Reynolds Lester the librarian at the Murrow Library in Missouri She's here to speak about the people's library Rebuilding the collection of one rural library in the Ozarks and just to tell you a little bit about Rachel She is a folklorist fiddler librarian and community organizer and her work focuses Addressing the holistic health of her own community through land-based cultural and economic initiatives Rachel. Go ahead Thanks, Michael I'd like to say hi to everyone and as Michael said my name is Rachel Reynolds Lester And I'm the librarian at the public my library in Murdoin, Missouri It's a small town in the Ozarks along the Missouri and Arkansas line and I'm just gonna share some images here kind of randomly but most of them were taken by Journalists who came to visit the library and contributed To what our library has become so I will click through those as I as I talk about the library I'm actually sort of an accidental librarian as Michael mentioned my academic training is in folklore and also history and The majority of my professional life has been spent documenting and interpreting and presenting vernacular culture Which are the things that we learn from one another ironically It's really those things that we don't learn from books but always have had a love of books and From my earliest childhood memories some of my most vivid memories are especially with bookmobiles as a kid I Created a position as an undergraduate working at the University of Arkansas Library with a folksong collection of one of my heroes and when I began graduate school because of that experience I was asked to work in the library's special collections department to fulfill my graduate assistant The next thing I knew I found myself with ten years of library experience under my belt and My graduate school and the library I was working at is two hours away from my home But it was it's the nearest program So when the position became available in Myrtle I jumped I jumped at the opportunity to become the library in here And we'll say that I have approached this position as an extension of other community oriented rural cultural Sustainability issues that I work on I feel that it is the responsibility of community members to lend whatever talents and abilities they have to Contributing to the strength of their community Not only for themselves and their neighbors, but also for the for generations to come Libraries in my opinion play one of the most pivotal roles in community life, especially in small communities The story that follows is one of work love and a whole lot of luck. I Would like to share with you my adventures here at the Myrtle library since I began my work eight months ago And share with you how local patrons people from across the country and across the pond And my fellow librarians rule and urban have contributed to making the Myrtle library the people's library I've been asked In addition to journalists coming here to interview me about the library and that airing I was asked to write a piece last week about this conference and why I thought it was important and why Rule or small libraries are important in general for It's a online news service for rural America called the Daily Yonder So I thought I would share it was really gave me an opportunity to Concisely think about What's happened here in the last few months and so I thought I would just share a piece of that Story here. I didn't even hear the story when it aired I always listened to national public radio in the morning But for some reason I had the radio off on my 15 mile commute from home to my little library in Myrtle, Missouri When I opened the door the phone was ringing and it continued to ring for the next two months It still rings every once in a while. I think you probably just heard it The calls were the result of a story by Jennifer Davidson a regional reporter for the NPR station out of West Plains, Missouri She produced a piece on my library for the national series on libraries in the 21st century Jennifer found me two weeks after I started working at the Myrtle library She had seen a post that I made on Facebook Saying that we needed a variety of materials. I really thought when I Put this post up. I have lots of friends and they they all almost all of them love to read and a lot of them are in Academic fields or writers themselves and I thought that people might share some of their books that they'd either written or Classics for a great need here So I thought if I put this on Facebook that my friends would send me books I didn't have any idea that Jennifer was going to call and It was just minutes after I put that post up that she Called me here at the library and I had just been here two weeks and She said that she wanted to do a radio piece for the local NPR station about my quest for books and materials I guess and I agreed and she said I will be there in an hour and She showed up at the library and we had a really great visit And the story was up that night So the time frame on all of this is a very quick turnaround But her initial story aired in several towns and cities in Missouri Shortly after books started rolling in hundreds of books and lots of letters and phone calls And that was just from the regionally distributed story just to give you kind of a perspective of What I'm talking about I guess out for Quite some time at least a month. I would receive about four Boxes of books a day at the post office, which is right next door to us of books from all over the story aired in Some smaller towns in southern Missouri, but it also aired outside of Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri, which is the big college town and so lots of people were very generous and The donations started coming in real frequently When I took the position of librarian, I realized we needed a broader collection About one third of our holdings were Harlequin paperback romance serials. We had 15 years worth and Now refer to this period of culling and processing as training for the marathon I would not have had the wherewithal to handle what would come after the national story aired Had it not been for this first regional run and the last eight months of process nearly 4,000 new library holdings the overwhelming majority of those came from donations from locals urbanites and other libraries Along the way there have been many interesting conversations with folks from around the world Not only about our little library in a sleepy town of a hundred or so But about the larger issue of the importance of rural libraries in our cultural landscape We've had people so moved by the stories that aired that they drove across the country in their RV to visit and bring Us books or checks. I found myself setting up lodging and meal arrangements for those who wanted to visit Along with recreational activities. I would plan trips. I even joked at one point that I was gonna Start up a bibliotourism business. I didn't know The first story had highlighted the fact that I was really bothered that our library In fact, none of the libraries in our county system had a copy of Homer's the Odyssey I can't tell you how many copies of the Odyssey and the Iliad I received Along with boxes of books in Greek and Latin Unfortunately, we didn't have room for all the Greek and Latin books because our library is only 632 square feet. I had a wonderful conversation with an attorney in New Jersey He had grown up in a small town where he spent hours dreaming and reading in the library as a child Over the phone he called out all the titles on his bookshelf that he thought I might need or want for our library Willing to ship them to us Some wonderful ladies in Kansas City, Missouri Organized a book drive on our behalf The Dallas Public Library sent us literally a truckload of brand new books We've been able to use most of the donations Extras are distributed to other libraries in our system The local school library are sold in book sales to help increase our budget Public libraries are important anywhere, but in places like ours. They are critical to community life Along with books. We also have a selection of films and music however limited and just to offer some perspective Myrtle Is about 25 miles from the nearest red box And there are no other movie stores around and two hours away from the nearest Barnes and Noble and We're probably About 55 miles from the nearest used bookstore. So We have public access computers with broadband available in our library We're the only publicly accessible broadband within about 25 miles Many places in our county either do not have broadband access at all or the options available cost too much for our population And I will just say and I think that this is common too that there are a number of socioeconomic issues that make the library critically important in small communities for instance Over a quarter of the people in our county live below the national poverty line and There is an issue with broadband access The options here in Myrtle for broadband access range around 80 to a hundred dollars a month so that makes it near impossible for a lot of the population to have that access other than our public library and This is a story that's too common all too common in rural America We live near a beautiful wild river the 11 point but otherwise there are few businesses or public spaces for recreation or gathering The library along with the post office and gas station are where people come together to talk about everything from the weather to local election News and where to get hay We're lucky to share building with the post office So we're a community hub and are able to offer activities for our young people Totally forgot about the pictures. So This is this is our library this is our half and as you'll notice on It is Flagstone it's a native stone and it's really a duplex where this line is over here. The post office is connected Since we're connected to the post office We're really kind of a sort of community hub and we have activities for young people here to participate in We serve several unincorporated communities in Oregon County Plus communities across the state line in Arkansas We do all this with one employee, which is me in 20 hours a week with about $200 a month allowance for acquisitions, that's Books and periodicals that sort of thing and then hourly pay scales slightly above minimum wage Still we're crafty My patrons work with me to think about free programming activities We do a variety of things and tried to since I've started Get more Meetings held here. So for instance the parent teacher organization at the local school Held meetings here. We've had the Boy Scout troop And then we have community information pamphlets from different community organizations here as well And luckily for me I have a network of friends across the country who dream with me about what we can achieve through Strengthening this library as a hub of community and culture Got a shop window that I love to create displays in here. I'll fast forward because oh Here we go. This is the whole library Over here and then the post office connected to it Up there was one This is one of my windows displays For fall this is the fall one But for Christmas, I did a tree made out of books A tree made out of books and Lit reindeer with some quilt bedding for snow and a disco ball and laser light show Which is one of the other pictures, but we have no street lights or anything So as you can imagine this became a great source of local conversation. It's fun Most recently I added a puppet theater for kids and we're working with our regional office of the Missouri Department of Conservation to start a fishing pole and tackle loaner program next month and that is where the Department of Conservation provides fishing poles We process them as we would have booked so they'll have a barcode on them and children five to fifteen which Allows access without having to have a fishing license Those those children can check out or their parents can check out these fishing poles for up to two weeks at a time just as they could have booked and all first time Checker routers are provided with a terminal tackle box with all the materials that they would need to fish and they get to keep fat and as part of the program the Department of Conservation Organizes a fishing day with the kids and their parents to kick off the program at a local Stocked pond teaches the kids how to fish in an environment where they're pretty ensured that they will catch a fish So that'll encourage them, but just one more way that we can Provide a service to our community The patrons are instrumental in helping to shape the library and how it is used It's a pleasure to work in a library so small that I know all my patrons by name and what they like to read for the most part Our library board has also been very supportive and enthusiastic about all the energy and changes And they've given me money to paint and get new furniture and Create a welcoming environment for all that use the library I'm going to go through some of these other pictures now We have a Facebook page which For the Friends of the Myrtle Library and so I try to do fun pictures that Engage people and wanting to come to the library. This was one kind of everybody in town knew my situation with the books We don't have really storage, but they're Behind the post office that we're connected to there's an abandoned barber shop and I have in our restroom and I had the books From all the donations stored back there as I process them as quickly as I possibly could And there are mountains of books Down to two boxes. So that's good But this this picture was kind of poking fun I took my elf on the shelf and had him helping me process books around Christmas time This was a story time that we did we did polar express and had silver bells for the kids and some Christmas cookies and hot cocoa and I Started there wasn't a story time when I began the library here at the library and I've been doing those every Saturday and They've they've been pretty good attendance varies, but I've been pretty satisfied with how those are going This is one of the images we have another story coming out in rural, Missouri, which is a Publication a magazine that comes out to all the electric cooperative members in our state And and this is a photograph from that upcoming story and this is one of my my patrons Courtney and She has a slight learning disability and her mother and Siblings are frequent. They're all frequent patrons at the library, but her mother kind of has worked with me to find books that interest Peak Courtney's curiosity and interest So that she will read more the family all reads a whole lot and We've been able to get some of the books that were donations into Courtney's hands and Especially the Aragon series. She really loved that. She read Those books are very large and she read all four of them in about two weeks This is also from the rural, Missouri shoot and This has one of our newest additions. I got a little puppet theater with about 40 puppets And so I've been alternating story times and trying to do Stories with the puppets which the kids really love I think we were doing Jack the beanstalk this day and I Don't know if you can see this was our beanstalk over here, which Owen My oldest son had the idea. He said mom. You you forgot your beanstalk And I said I just didn't get around to getting that together and he pointed to one of the plants Which this is a fig tree. I think that was donated by one of the patrons. He said that could be our beanstalk. So The kids really enjoyed it another Clip from this week and this book was sent by the author we have many books that were sent by authors and autographed with Dedications to the library and to the patrons the young patrons especially These are some of our movies as I mentioned in the daily yonderpiece Access a lot of people including myself don't have Satellite is our only option. We don't have a cable company Then satellite is is too expensive. So a lot of people and we have no reception really to Broadcast television so movies are kind of our only option and we're 25 miles away from a Redbuzz so movies played a really important role the librarian before me was here 36 years and She as I mentioned referenced to in that early article. She loved paperback romance novels. There were a lot of those but she also was really attentive to The need for movies especially kids movies. So This is one of our Young youngest patrons Caitlyn looking at the movies Here's the kid after I did the story time with the puppets I always move them in the back and let the kids play and they generally Re-enact the story that I've done here. They're re-enacting the story. I did the week before they're doing Billy Goats growth It's more the kids playing And that's what the disc. This is the window display with the disco ball laser light show I Tell you I had to work on putting this together after hours and I think that The local residents of Myrtle had as much fun watching me try to build this tree and fail and try again as they did With the finished product. These are just some more all pretty much all of these are new books that have been added This is Jennifer the day she came to Do the first story and this is the picture she ran with the story Again, all of these are new books Some donations from patrons these are all gently used Well, some of them are new some of the poetry books are new and lots of Really interesting I'll I'll get into Why the patron donation why the donations that came in were so interesting but we got we didn't have any local regional history books at all and We got quite a few of those and those are kind of rare books But I went ahead and put them in circulation But some of those are in here as well some more of those and as Eric writers anthology You can really kind of see the variety and I think that this Kind of I'm gonna kind of go deeper into it, but I think that The way that people found out about our library Kind of Dictates the collection here. It's really contributions from all over and for different types of reasons This is Blake he and his family are also really frequent Patrons they live right down the road from the library and sometimes the kids get off the school bus here and Frequently walk down together the siblings do but the first The will know this the yeah the first story that was done on MPR kind of featured Blake and he's a really avid reader and I had ordered the copy of the Hobbit with him in mind and He happened to be there and and I got to get let him check that book out that day It's him looking through it And this is the rest of his family I've started a bin. You can see it down here. This was you know right after I started it's a rather large bin now and I actually have to rotate out but Another thing about donations is they allow for You know, I can give these books away. I'm not giving away resources necessarily that our County library board is invested in so every kid that comes to the library every young person gets to pick out a book from our Tub there and taking home with them every time they come These kids probably have a whole bookshelf at this point full of books that they've picked up here on their visits Okay, I think that's all the images Let's find a good one to Hold on Okay So I wanted to Share some of the letters as I mentioned and as a folklorist It I really was interested in the phone calls that I received. I got so many phone calls from All over literally all over the world from people who had heard the story about our small library and We are only open 20 hours a week. So there were a great number of Messages left on our answering machine of people and they felt compelled to tell me their personal connection with Rule libraries or small libraries and how meaningful they had been in their lives and some of the stories were so touching but you know what I took away from it was that These are life-changing environments for young people in particular and Whether a young person moves to an urban area where there's you know state-of-the-art large libraries That these small libraries hold a special place in their part in their heart and really shape who they are as human beings and and these people carry that with them and also how much people love their books had a lot of stories and a lot of letters of people sending me books and You know pouring out on the page how important these books were to them, but that they felt it really important that they Be available to our patrons, which was really moving But I thought I would read you Just a snippet of some of the letters that I got I have saved them all and Regrettably have been so busy processing that haven't had a chance to respond to them all yet But I plan on taking especially the cards and all of that and creating some sort of visual piece to hang in the library to remind us all of this great time that we've had but This letter is from Joan Acety and she's One of the late it was she's the lady from Kansas City that Organized the book drive for us It says hi Rachel. I hope these books are useful make them part of your collection or sell them to raise money Whatever you need. I'm really excited to be supporting your library Libraries have always been a big part of my life when I was a little girl We lived just two blocks from the library and I was allowed to walk there on my own feeling so grown up I've just joined a book club and I intend to invite the members to help support your library as well We just read Big Stone Gap by Adriana Tragiani It's set in a very small mountain town and the bookmobile is very important to the heroine We had a long discussion of small-town life and the importance of the library. I Suggested we do a book exchange for December But I would like to further ask if each member will bring a book to donate to Myrtle I'll let them know about your Amazon wish list also Finally, I was wondering if you have any interest in e-readers such as Kendall. We got my dad at Kendall and Basically, she's offering to give me a Kindle for the library which I hadn't figured out how we would use but those ladies Let's see She set it up where they would through a Mobius bus go to a library in West Plains which is kind of the closest larger town and Then I picked them up and brought them here But in the librarians, they were so good to let me store the books there until I could come get them Because there were a lot of books. I think I ended up with probably 25 large boxes from those ladies Here's another one from Susan Campbell I'm from Web City, Missouri, and I'd be nothing without my local library Please take this and use it as you see fit We had a lot of donation financial donations some of them Larger and some of them smaller and all are really meaningful and then people also Small ways in which we could Extend our services to help our local patrons and had suggestions and Collaborative ideas, so here's one from oh, I'm not gonna be able to pronounce this last name but Kathleen Butch at grocery I think Dear Rachel, thank you for talking with me yesterday. I was very impressed by your story on NPR morning edition The interview indicated that the library is a rare spot in town connected to the internet It made me think of how the people in town would access health care information and get online to find out about the insurance exchange I appreciate the time you took to discuss health care with me And then she offered some links that I could use and I actually did that and also reached out to local kind of political groups and also insurance exchanges and have Information available for people that are needing to sign up for the health care website government health care website and This one from Lisa Goodman I was listening to morning edition on NPR the other day and heard the story turning a page inside one rural library I was quite moved by it as I'm sure many were Running to say I'm running you to say hooray for the work you're doing and also to ask if you might be willing to offer me your advice I'm interested in finding ways to improve education for those without a lot of means or access Seems to me that supporting libraries such as yours would be a great way to do so. Would you be willing to offer your input on this? So I'm still in contact with a lot of these people In fact one one of the authors Nominated me for I think it what is it called? It's really funny the Lemony Snicket Award for honorable librarians under adverse conditions something really funny, but also Have offered to do online programs for our young patrons and different activities In one last one and this is from a library science student I love I loved it. She sent a small donation and Asked it says hi Rachel. I just read the story about you on the NPR website. Keep up the good work I grew up in a small town with a great library and it made such a huge difference in my life It's not much, but if you could use then clothes to get some good sci-fi Enders game or the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy maybe yours in library science cadence atchison And I did I got the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy with her donation So that's just kind of an excerpt of some of the letters that came in and As I mentioned my background isn't actually in library science. It's more in the humanities and so I Took the position knowing that the library was important and that it was a way that I could use my skills that I had gotten to Help contribute to having this place stay open for the community to use and When I got in here There were some parts of the collection that needed a lot a lot of love and so I began to think about How I wanted to approach this activity and I really kind of took a Curator curatorial approach to what I wanted to do so I began thinking about and making lists and the first thing Immediately that came to my mind was books every library should have and so I made a running list of those That we didn't have and we didn't we didn't have a lot of books that you would kind of expect to see in a library like the Odyssey or Tom Sawyer or to kill a mockingbird or any of these kind of great books and So I started making a list of those and then very shortly after I started doing that really the Children section became my highest priority In part because I have I have two little boys three and five And my oldest son is just learning to read and I'm also the PTO president at the local school and Again thinking about What resources are available to the young people in our communities? They're very limited and the holdings and our children's collection From board books to 18 year olds really Were all on Three shelves that are about Three feet high and And that wasn't full so I thought we should really kind of make that the first focus and Then also our nonfiction section adult nonfiction section The offerings there were were really limited and as a folklorist historian, I thought it was really important to Especially have local and regional history and cultural materials which people are very interested in the patrons have really responded and To those coming in the library, but also to offer a broader context. I think it's You know really good to have historical and cultural context so that We can learn from the past and build on our future. So I wanted to really grow those sections And so that was kind of what I asked for and then initial Facebook post And I had no idea how well people would respond I Also Work with patrons to develop what materials we add to the library One of the kind of first exercises for me when I took the job was along with learning everybody's name and Just kind of paying attention was asking Patrons or telling patrons, you know, I have a little bit of money in my book budget If there's ever any Book or type of book that you'd like to see in the library, please let me know and I'll try to give that for you and that really gave me a good sense of who my patrons were and The types of materials that they like to read as well as you know following circulation After the first story Aired I got all of these phone calls asking or emails asking What books we had or didn't have or All this so I decided that a good way to create it rather than individually answering these questions that I would Create an Amazon wishlist That worked for me not Only could people purchase books off of that wish list and send them to us But it was a good way for me to have a list that I could direct people to Even as a sorted guide of the material kinds of materials that we needed or were looking for And I would tell people that you know, don't feel like You have to but if someone called me and they were thinking about donating some of their own books or They could kind of get a sense of the materials that we were looking for but a lot of people did purchase books off of that site and send them to us as well and The patrons helped me develop that list. So it's not just me putting items on the list but The patrons were aware that we have this ongoing list and they could add to it So they just make a request and I I add it to the list and The donations that came in I'm going to try to touch on this briefly because it's been the most fascinating part to me and it's what has really shaped Our collection I think it's pretty unique but We had a combination of things we had You know kind of a changing of the guard and local Community members finding out that I was at the library and hearing the story and Coming and bringing books that they that meant something to them that they wanted to see in this library for this area, you know, they have a Intimate knowledge of Who who the other patrons are and what people might want or find useful and It was really nice to see those donations come in and they were different from the other donations and Then from the story you get a combination of People in rule places Sending books that they think that we might need and a combination of people in urban places Sending books that they Think that our little library might need and those are very different things from one another and Also, as I mentioned people buying off the list, which is a tailored thing that the patrons and I have worked on and Then also authors Sending in their books And people just sending in books that are meaningful to them. We have We have had a lot of nonfiction donated and Our nonfiction section is Completely different than it was when I began when I started the majority of the nonfiction section were cookbooks and many of them You know, not necessarily classic cookbooks like the joy of cooking or but more Really time-dated microwave desserts or Totally Southern oriented casserole cookbooks that sort of thing and now we have quite a collection of biographies we have Presidential biographies from almost all of the presidents We have a lot of how-to materials do it yourself materials materials dealing with animal husbandry and gardening and crafts such as knitting and Those have been added and are getting really good circulation But and then the kids books The Dallas Public Library sent us. I was actually planning on applying for a Libri Foundation grant to expand our children's Collection and was kind of on the waiting list in our county system to do that But we had so many donations of brand new Everything from board books to young adult books donated by the Dallas Public Library Free of charge with no shipping and brand new books I can't tell you how much it is meant to me and to the young people Here and we shared those that we couldn't use or Were duplicates with our local school library, which also faces many of the budget issues that we have so They're really spreading around I think I will open it up for questions if anyone has questions for me Great Rachel that was wonderful and love love the photos. That's that's great They were a great illustration of what you were talking about. I do believe we've gotten some comments and questions in from the audience Yes, we hit we have Our first question is have you encountered any issues from community members concerning Which books and movies should be in or should not be in the library? That's a really good question Not really not really as many as I expected given the expansion of materials Especially with the movies and most of the films I did kind of Start labeling the films by their rating So that people Were able to be more aware because there are some materials that are more offensive to some people than others But I really have had really great response from the patrons in the expansion of materials Someone suggesting if you haven't tried at TechSoup Offers donations of a popular software to public libraries or for small fees and she said she had a similar situation in her town in Connecticut And they've got some help from TechSoup, that's really good. I'll have to check that out the plan for This winter our county library system is set up where there are two larger libraries that Are open 40 hours a week and And then there are three rule outposts Although we're all very full but there are three rule outposts Libraries and the three smaller libraries are actually doing technology upgrades So we're hoping to be able to add Wi-Fi which would be a really great addition and then to software updates and Equipment updates here How do you plan to sustain your collection? Is is there Are there funds in the future? Has has the budget increased at all or anything? The budget for My library has increased because of the donations We get to those donations get to be earmarked for our library. They don't go into our general book fund we do have Monthly, you know kind of stipend to add new materials But as I mentioned the library is 632 square feet and at this point with 4,000 new Holdings the library and I've deleted some of the out-of-date materials or materials in bad shape that sort of thing But we're getting we're getting pretty pretty full. So I think I'm just Weeding and the small And then we can always, you know look for grants and things but right now I feel like we're in pretty good shape All right One more comment Just one question so much know if you guys have a website or if you're on Facebook where they can follow you I'm sorry. I couldn't hear that You have a website or something on Facebook. Was that mentioned? We do I can pull that up here. Can I? Yeah well, I Could get out of this gallery It would be the the X in the upper right corner. I don't want to do that Don't want to do that. Oh, I can't seem to air Sorry We have a friends of the Myrtle library page Which should be up right now. Yep, we can see it and Sorry, my internet connection is very slow There we go. Yeah, and so yeah, we post Different things this is from one of the authors that's been really great at supporting us sending us books and and Also offering to do online Programming with the with the kids and activities on here and We post different little things fun things Announcements like when we're gonna be closed or reminders about story time and what's coming up on the Facebook page And we'd love for everybody to kind of follow us and as I said to we've got the It was on wishlist page as well that that just kind of as I use as a guide for people that are wanting to make donations All right, well Rachel, thank you very much for that presentation I'm glad we were able to find you and and get you to submit something to present for us today. It's it's Inspirational to say the least and it looks like one of our co-workers just liked your page So there you go. All right Emily works here at the Commission So again Rachel, thank you very much and that is going to end this our this presentation from Big talk for small libraries We are gonna take about a ten minute break here and we will be back with you at the top of the hour. Thanks a lot


I have to be with this, so I focus on the statement, think and feel your response. I am able to effectively respond to the stress in my life. I swipe and then I whip and I whip three times and then it processes the sensor data. No one's using it yet, so it's going to take a second for the signal, but if it'll show up in about a second or two, it's got to turn the servers on. There it is. Feeling stressed. I'm a little nervous when I do public speaking, so. Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sockian. We are still on site at Consciousness Hacking's Awaken Future Summit. We are now going to be talking to Mike Danheim. Hello. How's it going? Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Very excited to talk to you about Sensei.  Founder? Ah, co-founder. Co-founder of Sensei, which is the easiest way to measure how you feel and identify sources of stress you might be unaware of with smartphone sensors. Yes. All right. So let's unpack this. Who are you? Who are you representing? That's a good question to start with. So Mike Danheim, I've been building tech startups for about 10 years now. I am a consciousness junkie. I had a concussion with Retrograde Amnesia 15 years ago where I had an out-of-body experience and just got obsessed with consciousness and how was that experience possible? Let's get to that experience. Tell us about that experience. Right into the habit. Yeah. I actually had two. I had one in high school from a sports injury, but then I had a second one in college from a car accident. And the car accident one was an out-of-body experience. The first one, it wasn't an out-of-body experience. But I got in this really bad car accident. It was a pile up in Philadelphia. There was a bunch of cars and my friend pulled me out of the car. I was unconscious. And as I got out of the car, I sort of came back into awareness. And the vantage point was from the back of the top of my head, but I was out of the body and I could see down. And when the police on this that were on the scene would speak to me, I would toggle back in. And then when they'd stop speaking, they would go out. And it was... Oh, and the most important part was when I was out, wherever I was or whatever the seat was that I was in was just, it was beautiful. And it was peaceful. And it was perfect. And there was so much chaos. But wherever I was in that moment, and even when I toggled in, it was still very still. But when I was there, it was just like... Whoa. And it left me very, very... I would do hell for the next year and a half after that accident in the recovery, but I was still left with a deep mark of like, what was that? And also how was the body operating? Because the body was operating without my involvement. And that left me deeply curious about this organism and how it's doing, whatever it's doing. Yeah. How was it that we somehow found ourselves outside of us? Right. And you said you were kind of going into the body to engage with the situation, the chaos, but then out. And when you were out, you said that it was this feeling of just... Just... Perfectness. Perfectness. Whoa. So perfect. Whoa. So perfect. And another curious thing that was really strange was that when I toggled in, there wasn't... Hearing was off for me for some reason. You ever see like those movies where a bomb goes off and someone's like talking to the guy who was nearer to the bomb and he can see what's going on, but he can't really hear it? Yeah. But there's a version of it that he's hearing. That was sort of what I was hearing was like when I toggled back in and then when I was out, it was... Perfect. Yeah, just perfect. Yeah. Well, how old are you? 20... 21. Damn. Yeah. Damn. And you had a year and half of crazy recovery. Yeah. I struggled really badly with memory recall, really badly. So who I was and my family and like those memories started coming back within 24 hours. I didn't know who I was for about 24 hours. But then everything else started coming back. The problem I had was that you would, for about eight months, was that you would speak to me and I couldn't remember what you just said. And the worst part about it was that there was two versions of me. There was the version of me that was in it, it was just kind of like... And then there was this other version of me that was sort of somewhat out of the body still and was aware that what was happening wasn't right and was like very ashamed. And so there was just like a ton of depression and anxiety and stress. It was dark. It was dark. It was dark. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With people but not remember what they just said, to make social interactions miserable. Humiliate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Humiliate. Wow. And then finally after eight months it started coming to where somehow the brain maybe came back to the homeostasis, potentially. I met a hippie guy who taught me... We saw some neuroscientists and they thought that there was like some blood on the brain and they thought that I was going to be pretty much screwed for life. And then I met a hippie guy who taught me how to meditate and this was like, oh yeah, meditation. Six months, man. Six months and all of a sudden it was like, whoa, it better than it was before. Two months in or eight months in is when... So I met him. This is weird, right? Because I'm reflecting back now. So I met a guy on the timeframe off. I had to have been... So I had been four months in and then I met him and then it was his name's Martin and then after I worked with Martin it was about six months journey of meditation. Whoa. And then it started coming back. Yeah. Okay. What was he teaching you? The most simple technique. Just this very simple mindfulness meditation of being aware of my breath. And you know, he used some pretty simple tactics of like if thoughts come just use a little hook. That practice alone? Very simple. Very simple. That's so crazy. Oh, he first told me? Yeah. Yeah. A thousand year old, a thousand years old practice could potentially, yeah, rescue. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, it also probably helped that I stopped doing drugs and alcohol at the time too. I was self-medicating pretty heavily. Oh, yeah. That helped. I was doing that. Yeah. I wonder how much we weigh each variable in that scenario because probably a good amount is the stopping of the... Yeah. Getting that out of the way. When you can't socialize with people, the medication self-medicating is... Yeah. It was all, it was like my only shelter, you know, it's hard, man. Damn. But... This is like 22-ish then. 22. Yeah. It was, that accident happened about a month after I was 22. And then you're all then kind of like after 10 months, you're like, whoa, this is cool. I'm back in this... Then you kind of end up dedicating your life to... Oh, yeah. Well, it's so passionate, man. I mean, if you would look at my bookshelf, it's all just like consciousness, healing books, psychology books, awareness books, all of it. I'm very curious. So we can now resume post the 10-month period and you're getting it back and you've been curious, reading, and we take us to the, you said, 10 years of tech startups. Yeah. Okay. That led you to Sensei. Yeah. I started to apply in tech to the conchi space that's been in the last four years. But I started, I had a social media promotion platform back in 2010 and 11 and I rolled that into Groupon in the early days and I helped lead the international expansion for Groupon throughout Asia and the Middle East, which was really fun in India and that was awesome. And then after that one, I had, I was part of a Y Combinator startup called Grupper Social Club, which was really cool as well. I got a group thing going on, I don't know, but it was a high growth startup that was fun to be a part of and then I built, I was with a team, we helped build a biometric payment solution for one of the large cruise lines in Miami where you could transact to the blink of an eye. And that's notable because when I was working on that, I met my partner, Thomas Gerstin, who was the AI product lead for Xbox Connect. Damn. Yeah. And he was the one, what we were doing in our free time when we were working on that payment solution, we would always talk about spirituality and how spirituality had helped us so much in terms of our own healing and personal development. And a question that came up was why aren't more people interested in it? And language was sort of the answer that showed up in between us. And so we asked the next question, which was like, well, how can we create a direct experience with it, without there having to be language, so someone can actually experience some of these things that we're talking about with spiritual language, right? And that led us to muscle testing, which is what we're doing, which is how to adjust here. Yeah. Whoa. Okay, so I'm not going to use words anymore to dive into these spiritual experiences. I'm going to use muscle. Yeah. And an embodied experience. An embodied experience. And coming into my feelings. And I think a very sage mystic once said, Bob Marley is the mystic that I'm referring to. If I'm to quote him, I hope this is right. It was something in the lines of those who feel it know it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great one. Right? And like the feelings. It's a great way to put it. Bob nailed that one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What are we talking about? What are we feeling? Those who feel it know it. I know we're putting words on it. Is it this unity, the interconnectedness, the unbounded loveless that, yeah, yeah. I suppose so. Right? What I think that's, I like the way that you framed it as a question, because it does seem to be really personal. Right? And it's like, wait, what are you experiencing? Yeah. You know? Embracing that. Yeah. And it's okay if what you're experiencing is different than what I'm experiencing. Like that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. I could just sit there for a couple of seconds, man. Yeah. Like, wow. Just being with that is, yeah. So how is it that we can deliver this through Sensei? Yeah. So, you know, it's so funny, it depends on like the audience I'm talking to, and which path I normally explain it, and I'm guessing this is a broader audience. Yes. Yeah. So there's a very scientific path, which we can go deep on, and then there's the original path, and what, we'll start with the original, and then we can go science at work. Yes, please. Chinese medicine for thousands of years has said that the body has wisdom, and you can consult the body to understand what's going on and be precise with healing modalities. Right? So acupuncture and chiropractor type work, they do that, they do these little muscle tests. Would it help to do an example for, so a traditional muscle test is, they extend, you can put this arm down, I put my hand here to ground me, and then the doctor, chiropractor acupuncture will press, and you have to resist up. Oh, I'm going to resist. Yeah, you should press up just a little bit, and it's a very light press like that. So what they're doing is they're looking at the recoil of the deltoid. And they ask questions. Oh, you should see the deltoid kind of flex? Exactly. If there's stress. So if there's stress, there's like a wiggle. And if there's no stress, it's firm. And then in this way, you're working with the energy of the body to tailor a diagnostic. And what do you want the deltoid to do? That's an interesting question, right, because I think it would be a mixed response in who you're talking to, but from the people who I work closest with, it tends to be you don't necessarily want it to do anything. You want to observe. You just want to observe what happens. But then is there an ideal that the body is in the healthy shape? That if the deltoid is doing something, it's healthy? Right, okay. I see where you're going. Yeah, so let's go back one step, because actually I missed something that was really important. Yes, please. Sorry about that. One of the things I love about muscle testing in an individual doing it is your question was really good, which was, what do you want it to do? And so much of our lives, we're trying to optimize and we're like, I want this outcome. And muscle testing really requires this like surrender and openness to what is. Yeah, that's good. And yeah, and I feel like that can help a lot, will help me a lot of just like letting go of my optimized outcomes. And then your next question, which is also a good one. And I think if I understood it correctly, are they in a healthy state? Yeah. Do they need to be? Yeah. And it would help. I don't know if it's necessary. I don't have enough research there to speak to that, but... These thousands of years of... Yeah. Okay. But in those thousands of years, what they say is that if it isn't a non-healthy state, we can still muscle test. We can use it to identify what is at the root of that. So if you're feeling anxiety or depressed, we can ask questions and identify the actual emotional stressor associated with the depressed feeling or anxious feeling. And then by identifying that, awareness in itself is a healing mechanism, but also with it we can take action that's very specific to what's been identified, right? Okay. Okay. So there could potentially be some other sorts of anxieties or other stuff that's buried in the body, and you can potentially tell by doing these body exercises that you can start unpacking what could be buried in some of the muscle. Right. Well, and it ties into that common statement of the body doesn't lie. Yeah. Everyone's... The body holds the score. Yeah. Yeah. I heard that's a really good book. I haven't read it yet. I heard it's really good. Yeah. The body holds the score. The body doesn't lie. You can relatively know and all kind of speak to you, but it's real. It's like, yeah, it's very real and you can apply that. So, yeah, so keep walking us down the story, you know, yes. Yeah. Well, so you can apply that and to help facilitate your own healing. I was just in the opening ceremony for this conference and Josh Field said, feeling is healing, and that couldn't be more appropriately true for our technology, which is like, yeah, we've got to embrace our feelings. Yes. And allow them to help us see the truth, you know, what's really going on. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's always the, we can get, we can dwell on feelings and then we can take ourselves potentially out of some of our most actualized states as well. So it's kind of a difficult, nuanced... Right. Yeah. Yeah. Conversation. Yeah. It really is. But it's a really good point. And I think it'd be more appropriate with a question, which is like, when we embrace something, do we obsess over it? Where does obsession occur? I don't know the answer to that, but I wonder, when we embrace and integrate something, do we continue to obsess or is it now a part of, right? Let's say the thought arises, a thought that may be one that makes us feel uncomfortable, and that we embrace that thought for a little bit, and then we see maybe where it goes for a little bit. But then we kind of want to return back to being in our, maybe our focused state of doing what we were doing before. Yeah. Yeah. But so that is cool, I think. Many people can get behind that. But then sometimes I think we can too often find ourselves going into, why did I just think that? I just, this is so hard. Right. Yeah. Right. This is such a good distinction. Yeah. Right. Right. And then in that, it's resistance. It's denial of what happened. It's rejection of what happened. It's like, why? I'm questioning and I'm regretting and shaming myself versus I did that. Fuck. Yeah. I love myself. Yeah. And I hope to be able to reflect on what I did and understand that I could potentially be a better citizen of the planet if I, for myself and for my family, for my community, for the whole society. Okay. But yes, keep walking us down the sensey path. Yeah. Well, this is the path. Okay. We'll go back to the sensey path. What you just hit on is like, so sage and that's it. Okay. That's the part that we really want to get to you, which is that how I treat myself is a reflection of how I'm going to treat my family and how I'm going to treat society and how I'm going to treat my environment and it starts right here with the connection to our heart and our feelings. So if I'm in rejection of my feelings and you show up and you're crying, I'm like, this guy, I don't have, I haven't given it to myself and I can't give to you what I haven't received. And so embracing my feelings and integrating them becomes this ability to now connect with you like this, right?  Okay. Interesting. Okay. So, and so, sorry. So going back to sensey, we can put this in a way where- Yeah, this can tackle a lot of the issues that we face.  This is, well, especially in San Francisco, we kind of have a serious amount of people that are on the streets and that when we can potentially reflect on what's going on, how can- this is very complicated, but there may be something that you're saying that could help us drive a little bit more empathy and love and compassion towards the stories of the situations, the stimuli that got people into the scenarios that they're in.  That's a big one. And if someone walks up to you and they're crying, or if someone's crying, or if someone, et cetera, and we haven't done a self-work practice where we are very comfortable with our own crying and our own where it will be harder for us to attend other people- Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And more people own- so to tie that into a sense, you go back to your point. More people own smartphones than health insurance, right? So like being able to administer the muscle test with a smartphone provides the capacity to help when a person back to start here. In the U.S. or in the world? Globally. Globally, more people own a smartphone? Oh, that question. Sorry. The initial data I had on that was in the U.S. In the U.S. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Okay. So then what are we using as sensors in the phone to be able to direct us back? Yeah. Okay. So going back to the test, so I did the muscle test. The way it works is we were talking about is the recoil in the deltoid. And the key part is the recoil. Okay. And so knowing that we asked the question, which is, okay, well, how do we replicate that recoil without a doctor being present? And so we created, I'm just going to grab my phone. Yeah, please, yes. So we created a unique whipping gesture, let me turn my screen off. A whipping gesture. So it's actually three whips, you go one, two, three, and we get three peaks of data from the gyroscope and accelerometer. And what we're measuring is the recoil of the hand. All throughout the wrist, the hand and the forearm are muscles. And what can you learn from just three whips? That's a, well, that's okay. So there's two parts of that. There's what we're detecting, which I think was what you're asking about, but then there's how can that be applied by a lot of different healing modalities. And the first one, what we're detecting is binary. It's either stress or no stress. Really? And that's what we can see. Down to a black and white level of... Binary. What? Okay, so what is it about this whip that you can determine a binary? Stress or no stress? Muscular tension. So, and are you asking about how we initially identified this signal? Okay, so is this like, when I'm holding it, I'm tense, I'm whipping it all tense, and then that's like, yo, this person's stressed. Yeah, and what's interesting about that is that you could be like, I'm tense, and you're trying to force it and you're not really tense. If you're not actually really tense, oh, sorry. That's fine. If you're not actually tense, we'll pick up and not actually being tense. So you literally have to be really tense. You can't fake it. You can't fake it. Yeah. Okay, so then, yeah, because even when I was trying to do that, I was loose, but I was faking things. Right, yeah, I saw that in your hand and I was like, yeah. And you can fake it to the point where you'll be able to evoke some tension, but there has to be, even if you fake it, there has to be the felt experience of tension. Versus if you're like light as a feather and you're just gentle. Right, you're just like trying to be like, I'm tense, but like you're super loose. It's the body, it's your body experience. So, since he's literally just asking me, hey, will you whip your phone three times right now? Yeah. And I'm like, okay, one, two, three. And I whip it.  That's no stress binary. But the one part that's important is it's specific to thought. So the way since it works, we can show a demo, but yeah, let's show a demo. Cool. Yeah, let's show a demo. So for context, we just, we haven't even announced this yet. This app just hit the App Store last week. So this is like. It hit the App Store last week. Great. Awesome. It's been, we've been doing research for three years. So we had a research platform. Three years of research. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it takes to get the good stuff. Yeah. So this is it. Should I show that again? Yeah, let's, let's, yeah, let's bring, let's bring it up. Yeah, let's bring it up to this one. That's the dashboard page. And the top two, the first button says, measure how you feel. Okay. So you just tap on that button and immediately you can check in on your current state. But it prompts you with a question it says, think and feel. I can, the stress in my life I can, I can helpfully manage. It has a specific statement that you have to think and feel. And then you whip. Manage stress, live better. Yeah. Practice mind and body skills are focused on improving specific areas of your life. How do you feel? So then you click on that to check in regularly and manage your health. Yeah. So you tap on this. Okay. How do you feel? And then there's the statement. I'm able to effectively respond to the stress in my life. And if you shake the phone a little bit, you'll see the sensor data moving. So you shake the phone a little bit, move it a little bit. Okay. Yeah. There you go. You can see the sensor moving. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's the gyroscope. That's the gyroscope. There's a gyroscope and accelerometer data, both. Yeah. Use both. Our primary signal came from the gyroscope. The primary comes from gyroscope. So yeah, there it is. So I will, I have to be with this. So I focus on the statement, think and feel the response. I'm able to effectively respond to the stress in my life. I swipe and then I whip. And I whip three times. And then it processes the sensor data. Whoa, okay. No one's using it yet, so it's going to take a second for the signal. Maybe it'll show up in about a second or two. It's got to turn the servers on. There it is. Feeling stressed. I'm a little nervous when I do public speaking, so. Whoa. So it's pretty accurate. And so it'll just show you just like that. And then you can agree, disagree. Yeah, so for this release. Or agree after reflecting. Yeah. And that's the non-conscious part. So the agree after reflecting is our sort of, that button is our measurement of starting to see how many people we're giving insights to into like something they weren't aware of. Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. And I'll agree. Now the cool thing is, right, so now we've identified that I'm in somewhat of a stressed state. It says explore sources of stress. So now we can identify where it's coming from. Slow down, find a safe space, take a deep breath. So here's kind of some of the things that you can do afterward. Yeah. Interesting. And then it shows up green if I do that in the don't detect stress. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so explore work is the first topic. And now I can explore if it's coming from work. What I'm going to do is just go back to our dashboard page. And these are all the topics. So you can explore all these topics to see where the stress is coming from. Oh, interesting. Okay. That was my check-in from yesterday. Okay. So the topic options. Okay. And then so then what you do is you can look at work, finance, well-being, self-esteem, joy, intimacy, family, flow, autonomy, random. So then when I, let's say I click on intimacy. Yeah. Does that mean I have to be in like an intimate moment or if I'm in work, I have to be at work and then I'm measuring it? No, that's a good question. So let's click on intimacy. So intimacy opens up and it tells you how to set contacts to be in a neutral state. You just have to think about that topic. Oh, so I think. My intimate relationships are healthy. Focus on the statement. Think and feel your response. And then you swipe and whip three times when ready. So each one of those cards has their own sentence that's like my work is healthy or my intimacy is healthy. And then depending on if that statement is true to you, focus on the statement. Think and feel your swipe and whip three times when ready. Okay. My intimate relationships are healthy. Okay. So I focus on it. Feel it. Okay. Okay. And then you whip. Swiped. Whip one, two, three. That's fitted to me, but let's see if this is accurate. Does that feel true? It's okay. It says stress not detected. I've been sacrificing a lot of what I've been working on with intimate relationships for what we're building with the show. But at the same time, I do have healthy intimate relationships. So also this is, you would want to do this on your own phone. That's true. This is on your phone. It's unique to me. It's unique to you. When you sign up, there's demographic information you give that help with the precision of our signal. Oh, interesting. So you might get a better insight. I would overall agree. Cool. Tap agree then. Oh, tap agree. You're getting feedback to it. Great job managing this part of your life. Interesting. Okay. Cool. Okay. So there's these topics. Okay. Interesting. What am I, this just gives me a more instantaneous response into feedback, a close feedback loop into how I'm managing my stress in each one of those topics of my life. And it should, a percentage of the time help you potentially identify an area you might not be aware of that's a source of stress. And I'm really glad you hit intimate relationships, because that was one in our early research that I hit on that was like an eye opener for me. So we had a baby. Love so much. Her name is Charlie. Congratulations, Charlie. Charlie. It's a girl.  I think I saw on the lock screen. Yeah, that's her. It's like a couple of years old or like one and a half. One and a half. But the point is that, so about six months after she was born, I was exploring the protocol on intimate relationships.  I did the gesture. It says stress not detected.  And if that's what I said, immediately my monkey brain was like, oh, that's not true. I want to shut it down. And then I stopped for a second. I was like, no, it totally is true. It's been like six months and I've totally neglected my wife since we've had the baby. And I was completely unaware of it. And like there was total stress building between her and I that like, I'm pretty sure if they kept going would turn into something gnarly. But in that moment I stopped and I went and talked to her. And I told her, I was like, look, I just saw stress detected on intimate relationships. Like how are you feeling? And she's like, yeah, I definitely feel stressed towards you.  And we had a conversation and it literally transformed our relationship in that moment. Because we also went and changed it, you know, and you know, got deep and intimate with each other. Yeah. Damn. And I wasn't aware. I really wasn't aware. And I'm confident it would have went on that path of like, you know. Oh, interesting. So there's a couple of things here. So first is that it doing doing our life trajectories can go so many different ways. And if we think sometimes that things may be going smoothly perfectly fine, but we don't necessarily know that the way that we actually are with one of our loved ones can be on a trajectory that might not be so healthy. So to be able to check in like this. Yeah. And push, put ourselves on to a healthier trajectory. Yeah. It's awesome.  Because the way you describe that is fits so well to how fast life is moving. And as a function of the speed of our life, we stuff things down. And then we lie to it. I wish there was a better word for it, but we lie to ourselves. Yeah. I don't want us to say it. We lie to ourselves as a mechanism to help ourselves with efficiency. So it's like, yeah, my relationship is fine. Let's keep going. I don't have time for that right now, so let's keep going. And we believe that. Damn. The pace of life is creating potentially no time for feeling. Yeah, right. Yeah. Even though it's my wife. Yeah. That's literally what my monkey brain wanted to do. It was like, yeah, it's like stressed. Oh, I have to get back to work. Yeah. She's fine. That was an intimate moment there in six months. Like what? Yeah. You know, it was crazy. And it wasn't six months, but it was long. That's a good, yeah, that's a good check in. Yeah. System. And it's your body. And that's the point. The real technology is your body. And that's really what we're looking to do with Sensei is we're amplifying something that's already there, which is your feelings. You know, and that's what we're really looking to carry the flag on is like, look, we got to come back into this. You know, we got to come back into this and find a way to love it and embrace it so that we can integrate it and live healthy for a lot of reasons. Damn. Our emotions regulate our immune system being one of them, right? Like it's a whole nother conversation. But the more we get into our feelings and learning our emotions, the more we're able to manage our health more appropriately, right? More effectively, I should say. Potentially. Yeah. So this is a physical way to measure with using technology the current state of our relationship with work or with intimacy. How do you feel? How do you feel? How do you feel? So the application you just saw wore those things and we're starting there. But then what we're doing is we're also working with different researchers and healers because there's a lot of really powerful healing techniques that use muscle testing that require a doctor to be present. And now we can take those techniques and meet a much larger audience at scale. So it's how you feel because they're using the felt experience to identify the root cause of the stressor. I can give examples on that. Yeah, do it. So there's a doctor. She's our scientific advisor now out of Oxford University. Her name is Dr. Ann Jensen. She did her whole PhD at Oxford on muscle testing. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, she's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. In a lot of ways she's amazing. She has like four masters, like two post grads, chiropractor. She's just an amazing woman. She's so smart. So she also has a program called HeartSpeak. And HeartSpeak uses muscle testing to identify if stress is present based on a certain topic. So for work, for example. And then identify what the emotional causes of that stressor. Is it anger? Is it fear? Is it sadness? There's like seven different emotions it goes through. And then once it's identified the emotion with the muscle test, she then uses a posture based exercise to evoke the stressful emotion. So let's say anger is identified with work. You come forward into a ball. You use the posture of anger. Your hands are in a fist. You're missing the face. And you start creating the emotion of anger. And what's interesting is you feel it burning off as you're evoking it.   Every stressful emotion has a different non-stressful emotion that it pivots to you. And when you're pivoting to joy, you're smiling. Your shoulders are rolling back. Your hands are open. You're rewriting the memory of work from anger to joy using the process of memory reconciliation. Which is how memory works. So that you can be at work and no longer feel stressed. Our technique is so powerful. It's changed my life. Would we also want to change work though too? Work that we are more passionate about doing? Right. That's a great question. And for sure. And I think another question that would follow is would you be more effective at making the decision with a clearer mind? Instead of making the decision out of reaction to anger. That's great. So then you can be clear.  My boss is abusing me. I need to get out of here. So you can measure the state of the feeling of the body. So her work is measuring the state of the feeling of the body. She's identifying muscle tension. Muscle tension. In which part of the body? Well, so she does this test. In her manual work, she's currently doing this. And she's asking the question, is it anger? It's fear. Actually it says it. It's anger. It's fear. It's sadness. Oh, it went weak. Whatever the stress, you follow that and you clear that emotion. So sadness is identified. You come forward and you evoke sadness. And then we retest. You evoke sadness. If it's been identified as stress. And then, yeah. Okay. Or anger or whatever. Whatever emotion's been identified. And then you can go through a memory reconciliation process. That uses posture to evoke. That uses posture. Yeah. To clear a stressful emotion and then pivot it to a beneficial emotion. So sad, sad, sad.  Your whole body is sort of going limp. And the posture actually can trigger the feeling of sadness. And then so you reflect on that for a moment and then you transition to... Yeah. It's less about reflecting. We don't want to think about the emotion. We want to feel it. We want to feel it. So she uses the right brain, left brain. And we want the left brain to sort of the logical side, right side is the intuitive emotional feeling side. We really want to get into the felt experience and not be thinking about it. You want to try? Sure. Okay. Do you want to do one? Yeah, let's do one. I'm certified in our technique. Okay. So let's do it. So just cross your legs. Okay. Yeah. So we'll do the muscle test. Okay. Bring to mind something that's stressful in your life at the moment. Whatever it is, you don't have to talk to me about it or tell me about it. Okay. Just think about it. All right. When it's present and you feel the feelings of stress, let me know. I went right into it. We have to test something first. Say out loud, where do you live? San Francisco. Say I live in San Francisco. I live in San Francisco. Resist up into my hand. Okay. Resist up. Okay. Say I live in San Francisco. I live in San Francisco. Say I live in Tokyo. I live in Tokyo. Okay, good. It even feels silly, right? It's like, right, that's a felt experience. The body's like, no, no, I don't. Look, what's happening, right? This is a full embodied experience. See, this is just ridiculous. Yeah, this is great. So what did you feel when I, what did you feel when I was in Tokyo? There was a wiggle. So there's a, in your shoulder. Yeah. There's a slight recoil when you sit down in San Francisco. There wasn't. You're good to go. Oh, interesting. There's a recoil. Yeah. For Tokyo. There's a bounce. Like a little. And I'm using, you felt it. Same pressure on both. It's light. Whoa, it's light. Yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to. I felt a recoil too. Yeah. Yeah. And so now what I just did was I calibrated. So it's basically the body will hold the score and be like, I don't know why don't. What are you talking about? You're cool. You're not even laughing, which is just really cool to see. So I asked those two questions to calibrate. Calibrate. Because sometimes you can be in a state that it's flipped, which is interesting. Oh, you can be in a flipped state. Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah. We don't know why, but it's just. What percentage of people are in that state? Somewhere between like 15 and 20, I would say. And you can also be sort of in a fried state. So if you're like dehydrated or super overtired, like, it's not going to work. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that's why I calibrated. Okay. See if you're. Yeah. So that was the calibration. Yeah. Okay. So now put the, you want me to push back. Yeah. Just that light. Little bit. That's good. Now bring to mind whatever it is that's stressful in your life, whatever the topic might be. Okay. Stress is present. Is it? Let me know if it is. Little bit. Take your time. The topic is bring it to mind. Okay. All right. Yeah. It's present. All right. Stress present. Yeah. Good. Okay. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most severe, what would you rate it? Five. Five. Okay. Cool. The cause of stress is anger. The cause of stress is fear. The cause of stress is, we're going to go with fear. So we're going to do a heart speak light. So we can go through this quickly. Okay. So we're going to use fear. Okay. So for fear, it's a little bit ear comfort into a ball. Okay.  I want to make sure we're in the shot. Oh, yeah. Okay. So comfort into like that right there. I see the camera. You're in the shot. Okay. So but really put your face in your hand. Okay. So you can use your facial expression. Okay. I want you to feel comfortable so you can really evoke it. So. Okay. Yeah. Feeling it. Yes. Yes. So I'm going to guide you through it. So there's no need to know why you're afraid now. That's not important. It's the feeling that's important. Letting go of any thoughts about fear. Just allowing yourself to have the felt experience of fear. We use the posture of fear. So sort of burying your face into your hands, trying to hide almost. Allowing the shoulders to round, letting the body go weak. Allowing any sort of facial expression that might be natural for you to evoke the feeling of fear. Whatever your face might look like when you're afraid. Allow that facial expression to occur. Be brave. There's no need to know why we're afraid. That's not important now. It's just the feeling. Search every cell, tissue and organ of your body for the feeling of fear. Keep searching for it. Keep looking for it. The feelings of fear may come in waves as they start to subside. Take a breath and look again. Using the whole posture, the whole body of the face, or expression to evoke the feeling of fear. This is your time to clear it. Be with it. Allow it to be felt through the whole body. Keep evoking it. When you reach the point where you feel like fear has been cleared, take a breath and look one more time scanning the whole body for the cell, tissue, organ of the body. Keep looking for it.  We'll roll the shoulders back. Now instead of fear, reach inside and find the central column of knowing. It's always there inside. Reach in and find it. Enjoy it. Allow this feeling of knowing to permeate every cell, tissue and organ of your body.  Allow the feeling of knowing to wash all through your body and when you're good there, you can blink your eyes open. Yeah. Mmm. How was it? Mmm. Yeah. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check that stuff. That was good. Good. So, scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate it now, whatever that topic was? Whatever that topic was, how do I rate it now in terms of what? How stressful it is. How stressful it is. Yeah, so go back to it and think about it. Oh, yeah. How stressful it is? Yeah, now. Yeah, just shoulder strong. What was it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, resist into my hand, press into my hand. Okay, resist okay. Yeah. And just think about the topic. Okay. Let me know when the felt experience is there, or when you have it present. Okay, it's present. Okay. Stress present? I mean, yeah. There was a little bit, but we could go again. But, yeah, it looked way firmer. Yeah. Yeah. The, I think probably one of the most interesting aspects to that is, yeah, come closer. Yeah. Sorry about that. I should turn my chair. Yeah, you're good there. Probably one of the most interesting aspects of that is the diving deep into the feeling in the body of whatever the thing was that we decided to explore in a moment, right? So, what is it Alan? What is that thing? And then the scanning of the body for where that thing is. And you're like, okay, feel it deeper. Okay, feel it deeper. Okay, feel it deeper. And then it's like, where is it? Yeah. Where? Right. Right. And then it's the process of like, it's nonexistent. Yeah. Yeah. So, kind of, you can go through maybe a process of identifying, okay, well, I had the thought, maybe I had the feeling, but then I'm scanning for it and where is it? Yeah. So, I think that that sort of central column of knowing was, in many ways, it's like, that's destiny in a sense, is that maybe that central column of knowing is that everything is perfect exactly the way it is. Yeah. And how wonderful is that? Yeah, how wonderful is that. So, what is this fear nonsense if everything is perfect the way that it is? And that you're meant to uncover that moment exactly when you're meant to uncover it with you and your wife. Yeah. Yeah, whatever it is. Right. And then so that technique that when doing manually, we can now do a sensei. And so to your point in our future release, that will be in there as a healing modality so that on your own, instead of having a doctor do a muscle test, you know, if you identify that intimacy is a place of stress, I can now identify the emotional cause, clear it. On the other side of that, maybe have the confidence or courage to go and speak to my wife about what's going on. Yeah. Right? Or whatever it is that's going on. But by clearing the emotional state, we then have this presence where we can do anything. Yeah. Right? Correct. Correct. You need this practice, well, not only of wanting to dive deeper into the current state that we're feeling, so it's our desire to actually open up sensei and go through that process, but also then of this clearing, the feeling of being cleared so that you can make these confident moves in the direction of doing something like healing. Yeah. Yeah. The whole process is a process of, it's a vulnerability, a process of, in many ways, confidence. You have to be vulnerable to go through this process. Then you have to be confident to take action on how you want to make that change. And then realizing that that feedback loop that you're going through is potentially unlocking new states of consciousness, new states of being for you, new fruits for you. Yeah. And it's great. Yeah. Good stuff. Thanks. Three years of research to lead into even the first developments of the application. Yeah. Well, we just did a lot of different, a lot of that research was understanding how muscle testing can be applied. So we did research with everything from employee surveys to food allergies to positive psychology and meditation techniques. And we did some work with Dr. Martin. Finder's course. Yeah, we love him. Yeah. He did. So what's the idea is that before my body was keeping the score and was like, no, you actually like feel quite a bit towards that thing. I was set five, right? Yeah. And then at afterward, the body was like maybe a tiny bit, but you're much more like, yeah. So you felt less of a. Yeah. I mean, the first one, there was a deep, it was a deep wiggle. And then the second one, there was a little wiggle. And so there's still something. So the muscle wiggles or recoils. Recoils. The muscle recoils when there's a lie. This is complex when we get into this level. So, but yeah. I love the weasel. When there's stress. When there's stress. When there's stress. This is well documented in physiology. You pick up a weight, the weight's too heavy. How did you know that weight was too heavy when you put it down? We don't ever stop and ask that question. We're just like, I knew it was too heavy, right? There's a tendon in your body that connects everywhere there's muscle fiber. There's Golgi tendons. That's the name of the tendon. Golgi tendons connect muscle fiber. The skeletal wall, it is a sensory organ. It's a tendon that's also a sensory organ. The Golgi tendon has something called the Golgi reflex. So when there's too much stress or tension on muscle fiber, the Golgi tendon recoils and that sends a neuromuscular signal to the brain saying too much stress and tension put down the physical weight. Now think about psychologically when you're stressed and tensed, right? The body is flexing and you're literally, or there's tension, right? When you're stressed and tensed, there's tension. And it's the body sending a signal to the brain saying, whatever you're doing, stop. We don't listen to it, right? We push through it, we get sick, we get ill, we get into fights, all kind of things, right? Well, if you slow down and listen to the body and when it whispers, we don't have to crumble when it's screaming, right? Which is sickness. Interesting. Right, so we learn to listen to the subtle feelings of our body. We can be guided by what might be optimal for us and our health is sort of the premise here. Whoa, okay, so the subtle signals of the body rather than the crumbling that happens when it's screaming. So listening to the whispers of when you have something psychologically or physically that is hard, that's stressful. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay, okay, so Sensey, where can people go to explore Sensey? Oh, thanks. The App Store. So we just go to the App Store, we're now on Android and we're on iOS. S-E-N-S-I-E. Sensey, just search Sensey. Just Sensey, it'll be the first thing it shows up. Okay, great, on iOS and Android. And what is, this is so much more to unpack, we'll have to do more conversation about this soon. Yeah, love that. And the domain also is Sensey. Oh, it's actually SenseyApp, SenseyApp.com. Okay, SenseyApp.com, S-E-N-S-I-E. App.com and search for Sensey in the App Stores. I want to ask you, do you think we're in a simulation? Oh, wow, that's a big question. It does feel that way, doesn't it? Wow, do we have another hour? I wonder that very often. I, it's a good question in one that I feel like there's smarter people in this conference that might be able to address that better than me, but I do really wonder that. What do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? What's inside of us? What's, I'm only going to start to cry. What's in our hearts? What's here? I'm going to start crying. There is something here when we embrace our bodies that is so beautiful. So beautiful, man. These are tears of joy. It's just so beautiful. And I rejected my body for so long. And the sooner I started to embrace it, the more of this. And by the way, this feels so good. I might be crying, but it's like tears of joy and bliss. It's like whatever is here feels so good. Feels so good. Making a mess now. But yeah, that, yeah, yeah. Wow. You knew the right question to ask me. Wow. That was a good question. It's like, I want some of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like tapping in like that. Yeah. Wow. I really like that question, by the way. Good. Start asking everyone that question. I love that one too. Stay on the shoulders of giants. Yeah. This has been such a pleasure. Likewise. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Huge pleasure. Wow. Joy, man. Thank you. Congrats on all the work. Thanks, man. Everyone, check out Sensei. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. We'll have the link to Sensei as well in the comments below. Conversing more with your parents, your family, your coworkers, the people online on social media, talking to them more about how we can feel and how we can identify these sources of stress better using technologies like Sensei. And support consciousness hacking, support simulation. Our links are below support organizations, the entrepreneurs, the artists around the world that you believe in. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. And we will see you soon. Awesome. Peace. Woo!


This paper proposes an approach to quickly estimate the impact area following a large earthquake by a social media by combining citizen sensor data with other auxiliary data using a spatial logistic growth model, SLGM. The reliability of the approach is demonstrated in two earthquake cases and its external validity is verified across other earthquake events. This article was authored by Yandong Wang, Shisi Ruan, Teng Wang, and others.


The long-awaited Samsung Galaxy S8 has arrived at Appalachian Wireless. Get yours for the introductory price of just $149.99 with a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless, an East Kentucky network company. This afternoon from Pikeville High School senior Sylvia Justice signed her letter of intent to attend Eastern Kentucky University and continue her dance career for the kernels. Since she was three years old, Sylvia has been a dancer. And what could be a better accomplishment than dancing at the collegiate level? We caught up with Sylvia Justice and talked about her choice to attend EKU. At Pikeville, I started out as a freshman. I was new to the school, I needed everything. And the girls just really took me in and helped me. And actually my first year we danced. I had a competing against my old school and we ended up winning and beating them in both two categories. Our poem division and we won a grand champ so it was just better sweet to move schools and be a part of such a great program and we accomplished so much. During her interview I could see that she is a leader and her former coach said that she would just go above and beyond and we are just expecting that she will bring her leadership to EKU and determination to help us be successful this year.