472. Heart Coherence: Finding a Higher Power Within & Living Your Truth w/ Bruce Cryer

Bruce Cryer

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is presented for educational and exploratory purposes only. Published content is not intended to be used for diagnosing or treating any illness. Those responsible for this show disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information presented by Luke or his guests. Please consult with your healthcare provider before using any products referenced. This podcast may contain paid endorsements for products or services.

In this episode we'll be covering how to live life fully from the heart with Bruce Cryer, renaissance man and former HeartMath CEO. We discuss the science behind heart coherence, the physical and spiritual energetics of the heart, and how to harness it to positively influence the world.

Bruce has been called a renaissance man. Beginning his career starring in the world's longest-running musical in New York City, working in television and film, then moved into entrepreneurship and left show business to explore the leading edge sciences of health, wellness, and heart intelligence as a founding director and later CEO of HeartMath, the world’s leading research institute on the science of the heart.

It was during this period that his commitment to living life fully from the heart was born and cultivated. He has brought his heart-based wisdom to clients such as Stanford University, Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Unilever, Shell, the NHS, Cathay Pacific Airways, NASA, and Yosemite National Park. 

After fully recovering from a two-year health trial, Bruce began to sing again, and in 2017 recorded his first album of original songs, entitled Renaissance Human. His creative yearning led to a body of work to help individuals and organizations unleash the power of creativity in their lives.

Bruce is now 13 years cancer-free, and almost 12 years living youthfully with titanium hips.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is presented for educational and exploratory purposes only. Published content is not intended to be used for diagnosing or treating any illness. Those responsible for this show disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information presented by Luke or his guests. Please consult with your healthcare provider before using any products referenced. This podcast may contain paid endorsements for products or services.

Today we're covering what might just be the most important topic we've ever explored on The Life Stylist podcast – the transformative power of the heart, the center of our experience of love. 

My guest, Bruce Cryer, has been called a renaissance man. Beginning his career starring in the world's longest-running musical in New York City and working in television and film, he then moved into entrepreneurship to explore the leading edge sciences of health, wellness, and heart intelligence as a founding director and CEO of HeartMath, the world’s leading research institute on the science of the heart. 

We explore how to create a heart-centered business, why our current timeline is brighter (and darker) than ever, how to avoid the pitfalls of both spiritual bypassing and getting stuck in our feelings, tools for alleviating stress, my secret sauce in conducting meaningful interviews, and finally, why feeling the brokenness of it all is the key to feeling the rapture. 

Let’s share a deep breath and dive in. For even more love, visit lukestorey.com/brucegifts for Bruce’s free musical guided meditations and an ebook on awakening creative brilliance.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is presented for educational and exploratory purposes only. Published content is not intended to be used for diagnosing or treating any illness. Those responsible for this show disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information presented by Luke or his guests. Please consult with your healthcare provider before using any products referenced. This podcast may contain paid endorsements for products or services.

00:03:51 — Heart is Where the Home Is
  • Reflecting on the impact of Dr. Joe Dispenza
  • Dr. Joe Dispenza meditations
  • Bruce’s experience living through a cancer diagnosis 
  • Our experiences with sleep and the Oura ring
  • Bruce’s work with HeartMath and heart coherence
00:39:50 — Understanding Heart Coherence in Anxiety & Relationships
01:16:36 — Why A Broken Heart Is an Open Heart
  • Exploring broken heart syndrome
  • What heartbreak teaches us
  • How to heal the heart
  • What happens if we run from heartbreak
  • How trauma is stored in the body
  • What happens when we spiritually bypass
  • The way the direct act of service plays a role in getting out of self obsession 
01:44:11 — How to Create a Heart-Centered Business Through Energy Awareness
  • Applying a more pragmatic approach to the heart-centered model 
  • How love drives customer retention and contributes to a successful business 
  • The impact of spirituality and mindfulness becoming mainstream
  • Bruce’s view on where things are heading in American society 
  • The importance of being aware of your own energy and attitude towards others
  • Lesson learned from Nelson Mandela

More about this episode.

Watch on YouTube.

Bruce Cryer: [00:00:06] Sowhen you're just being in a situation, as you were describing earlier, andtrying to radiate whatever you're thinking, love or kindness or calm, thepattern of your heart is the amplifier of that feeling. The rhythmic pattern ofthe heart is the wave that carries it out into space. So it's no surprise atall, even from a standpoint of physics, that you'd be changing the dynamic. I'mBruce Cryer, and I'm on The Life Stylist podcast.

Luke Storey: [00:00:38] Welcomeback, friends. Today we'll be covering what might just be the most importanttopic we've ever explored on The Life Stylist: The Transformative Power of theHeart: The Center of Our Experience of Love. Our guest is Bruce Cryer, andhere's a taste of what we get into in this episode. 

Bruce's meeting andsubsequent work with Dr. Joe Dispenza; Bruce's cancer diagnosis, treatingcancer holistically, and why we get sick in the first place; how to gamify yourhealth and well-being. The definition of heart coherence, and how we can infectothers with the contagion of the heart; why the heart is 60 times more powerfulthan the brain; what makes the heart so much more than just a physical organ, aportal for higher dimensional intelligence and connection to God; what goes onat the HeartMath Institute and their Inner Balance training program; the 400plus studies they've conducted.

What HRV or heart ratevariability is and why it matters, and the experiment I once did testing my HRVduring a plant medicine ceremony; why the culture has so many heart-based termslike heartbroken; living from the heart and tapping into our heart basedintuition, and how connecting to the heart impacts our creativity and makes usbetter artists; how to create a heart-centered business; tools for alleviatingstress, stimulating creativity, and getting unstuck.

Hacks to achieve theflow state; and I also share my secret sauce in conducting meaningfulinterviews like the one you're about to hear; why our current timeline isbrighter and darker than ever, simultaneously; avoiding the pitfalls of bothspiritual bypassing and getting stuck in our feelings; and finally, why feelingthe brokenness of it all is the key to feeling the rapture. This, my friends,is Episode 472. You'll find complete show notes at lukestorey.com/bruce.
And while you're at it, you can visit lukestorey.com/brucegifts for some freemusical guided meditations and ebooks on awakening creative brilliance. And ifyou're uplifted by this conversation with Bruce and feel inspired, I'd like tomake a humble request. I'd invite you to take three minutes to leave a ratingand review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. You probably hear otherpodcast hosts make this request all the time, and to be honest, I probablyshould too. But I just forget, and I don't want to overwhelm you with requests.

But when you leave arating and review, it really does help this show reach more people. In thealgorithm of podcast land, a show's reach and visibility largely depends on thenumber of ratings and reviews. So taking just a couple minutes to tell theworld you listen and why goes a long way to support our shared mission. You'llfind a leave, a rating and review tab on most podcast apps. So if you feel likehelping, go for it. And if you don't, just keep listening and enjoy theshow. 

Let's go ahead and takea deep breath together and open our minds and hearts to the loving wisdom ofBruce Cryer on The Life Stylist podcast. All right, Bruce. Here we go. Let's doit.

Bruce Cryer: [00:03:50] Awesome.

Luke Storey: [00:03:51] Sothe first time we met, which you reminded me of, was at a Joe Dispenza retreatin Indian Wells, California, otherwise known as adjacent to Palm Springs.

Bruce Cryer: [00:04:02] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:04:03] Andwere you there just as a fellow participant like I was or were you involvedwith HeartMath or doing something behind the scenes that I wasn't aware of?

Bruce Cryer: [00:04:13] Iwas there as a participant. I had met Joe, probably 12 or 13 years earlier at aconference I was moderating a panel, and he was one of the speakers, along withone of the HeartMath guys, Howard Martin, and another author, Marci Shimoff.And Joe dominated the panel as he does because he makes so damn much sense. SoI met him then, but didn't really stay connected, didn't get into his work yet.But over the previous few years before I met you in 2020, I was aware that hewas really expanding and people were really getting into his work. 

Plus, he had begun towork closer and closer with HeartMath, so I knew that HeartMath was doingresearch to support the work he was doing around brain coherence and heartcoherence. And then I recommended to a conference in the Bahamas where I wasspeaking on stem cell research and regenerative medicine that they bring insome people like Joe Dispenza for a conference like that, not just have theorthopedic guys who are doing stem cells into the knees, have some people thatare really in the leading edge of how to really regenerate, not just usingexternal stuff. 

And I recommended theyget Joe, and Joe agreed. And so he was a speaker there, and so was I. And itwas a conference right after the hurricane, the devastated part of the Bahamas.So the attendance was terrible. And Joe was still there. And I thought, why didyou come? Anyhow, it was a funny story that he was on the way between stops andsaw somebody booked him. He wasn't even asked because it was a nice stopbetween New York and Houston or something. But anyhow, we started talking and Iwas fascinated to see how he had evolved, in my mind, from when I'd met him,whatever, 10 years earlier.

Luke Storey: [00:05:55] Yeah.It took me a while, but after I got into his work, I realized that he was inWhat The Bleep.

Bruce Cryer: [00:06:03] Yes.That's--

Luke Storey: [00:06:03] Thatdocumentary. And he was young and just, I mean, still Dr. Joe, but young, andscrappy, and excited. And he was much less refined. But yeah, I had totallyforgotten that that's when he popped onto the scene.

Bruce Cryer: [00:06:17] That'sthe first time I ever saw him too. But in this conference in the Bahamas, wehad a couple of private long talks over dinner and tequila martinis in onecase. And I was just fascinated with hearing the story of how his thinking hadevolved and the work that he was doing. And I was like, how do I get started?And three months later, four months later was the Indian Wells week-long event.I was there as a full on participant. Coincidentally, HeartMath had a wholeteam of people there, the research director and two or three more researchersthat were doing collecting all kinds of data. But I was there just, I'm here tolearn and have an incredible experience.

Luke Storey: [00:06:55] Andwhat was your experience of it as just assigning yourself as a student to thatexperience?

Bruce Cryer: [00:07:02] Well,no doubt to me that when you have a 1,000 people that are all committed to theidea of being in a coherent state and doing that with the heart and the brainlinking up, and dancing at the same time, and a very loving bunch of people, Iwas blown away by the community that existed there. The number of people whowere there, who had been, this was not their first rodeo at all.

Luke Storey: [00:07:26] He'sgot deadheads.

Bruce Cryer: [00:07:29] Hedoes.

Luke Storey: [00:07:30] Peoplego on Dr. Joe tours, which I did for a minute too. I'd like to get back on thetour because I always just found so much transformation taking place.

Bruce Cryer: [00:07:40] Yeah.I felt that in visceral ways. I think partly when you are meditating with theintention we all had, a 1,000 people every day, for hours every day, hours, butit didn't ever feel, hardly ever, maybe it did at the time, it didn't ever feelboring or long or tedious. Not like when you hear about 10-day silentmeditation--

Luke Storey: [00:08:03] Vipassanaretreats.

Bruce Cryer: [00:08:04] That'sa little different. This is--

Luke Storey: [00:08:06] That'sfunny. I meet so many people that have done, if not one, multiple vipassanaretreats, and I did one silent retreat that was 21 days in India back in '04 orsomething. But it was a different lineage, wasn't really a Buddhist thing, butI'm so surprised that I have never done that because it's one that most peoplejust check off their list. You'd at least done one official vipassana retreat,and I've yet to do that. 

The Dr. Joe events, tome, are so interesting because, especially, I think it was the second one Iwent to in Florida that my wife Alyson came to, and my dad was also therebecause he lived two doors down. His winter condo is literally next to thehotel where he was doing his events there. But I was really surprised by, Idon't know if psychedelic is the right word, but just the activations thatpeople are having. And my dad was really shocked by that. It's one of themeditations all of a sudden the lady three rows behind you, she's like, ah,starts screaming, or laughing, or crying. And I see my dad looking around like,what the hell? 

But I never really hadthat depth of experience, and I've been meditating for a couple of decades. AndI've had some profound transcendent experiences where everything gets diffuseand quiet and it's in that quantum space, observing the mind, observing thesensations in the body, but never really seen visuals or having spontaneouseruptions of emotion or anything like that. 

And I find that sointeresting, just the model that he's created and the group of people, as yousaid, that have the intention to go deeper. And when you get that many peopletogether doing that, it's really, really interesting. I remember thinking like,did everyone take plant medicine or something? What is happening here? It'sspooky. I mean, in the best sense, spooky. It's really interesting to just seewhat's possible through intention and a little practice.

Bruce Cryer: [00:10:16] Yeah.Well, having been a dancer and having, as we were talking a little bit earlier,having had double hip replacement, one of the things I didn't mention was thatpart of my rehab became not a plan at all, but I was introduced to the idea offive rhythms, which is a form of dance that's meditative, and it's improv, butit's a form that allows you to express yourself through different modes ofmusic, and therefore different modes, styles of dance. 

And at first when I wastrying it, I was quite tentative because I had brand new titanium hips, one oneach side, and I didn't know what my body could handle. And I was like, ah, I'mnot sure I should be doing this. And not only should I be doing it, but itturned out to be a tremendous way for me to therapeutically heal from not justthe surgeries of the hips, but right before that, my mother had passed away.Right before that, I was dealing with MRSA staph infection in my blood. Rightbefore that, I had surgery for cancer, and my marriage was ending. 

Other than that,nothing much was going on. So here I am now, realizing I could actually danceagain, which brought me to tears when I realized I could dance again. This iscrazy. I'm able to dance on titanium freaking hips. But what I found when I'mrelating this to Joe's work is that the ecstasy that I experienced, but wasalso the release that I experienced through dancing again and discoveringthings that were trapped in me that I wasn't even looking for, grief about theloss of my mother that would come out on the dance floor. 

And I would, thank Godit's happening now, and I'm able to work through it and move through it. And Ithink there's a brilliance in Joe's work that he does as much movement as hedoes, between the walking meditations, which are very powerful. I still do themoften. I just head off in the hills.

Luke Storey: [00:12:08] Dude,I have them on my phone, the files. Actually, I just did a Dr. Joe 20-minutemorning meditation yesterday because I just fell out of the habit, thedifferent cycles of different things that I do practice-wise. And I saw in myfeed that walking meditation, I was like, oh man. There was a point at which Iwas doing them more frequently when I lived back in LA because I lived in a,well, I guess I live in the hills now, but they were steeper hills so it wasthe right timing.

If I went to the top ofthe hill and back down, I had a nice little setup there. But yeah, it really isinteresting integrating movement into that depth of mindfulness. There'sdefinitely something there. Thank you for the reminder. I really need to put iton my calendar so it happens.

Bruce Cryer: [00:12:58] Happyto be a reminder.

Luke Storey: [00:12:59] Yeah.I want to get into all kinds of other stuff, but I just haven't thought aboutDr. Joe, and he's one of my favorite guests on the show. We'll put that in theshow notes, by the way, if people want to check out that link. You'll find thisat lukestorey.com/bruce. So everything we talk about today will be linkedthere. I'm sure we'll talk about much more. But in Florida, during one of thelong meditations, before you go out and do the walking meditation, I mean, Ihad a really supernatural experience where I guess it's a Kundalini awakeningor something of that sort, but my body started shaking uncontrollably. 

And we're going to talka lot about the heart today. And I'm so excited to talk to someone who spent somuch of their life's work exploring that topic. But it was this energy goingthrough my heart, and my chest is heaving, and at some point I tried to stop itand I could stop it, but if I didn't exert any effort to stop it, it just went.It was just a very spontaneous thing. And it went on for some time. And then wewent out to do the walking meditation. I'm like, well, surely it's not going tohappen when I'm standing up. And I stand out on the beach and it's just like,it's going.

And I just rolled withit. And I'm crying, and it's not crying about anything. I'm not thinking aboutmy mother's death or, well, my mom hasn't died, but in your case. There's nothought forms attached to any of the experience. It's purely energetic. It'sjust an energetic clearing or activation or something. It's so fascinating. AndI love a phenomena like that. So it was interesting to not become attached toit either like, I hope it keeps going or I want to do this every day. It's justa gift. 

It's like consciousnessgoes, poof, and just moves through you for a moment. And then with the exceptionof a couple of other times, I've never really had anything, at least not tothat degree of intensity and duration. And also going outside. And you'd thinkthat the conscious mind would take over when you get out there and you're like,oh, okay, I'm settled down now. But it was activated and there was no stoppingit. It was really, really neat. Tell us about your experience of living througha cancer diagnosis.

Bruce Cryer: [00:15:17] Hmm.Yeah. I never thought I'd be one of those people.

Luke Storey: [00:15:23] Yeah.None of us do. Yeah.

Bruce Cryer: [00:15:25] Andthere wasn't that much in the family either. I mean, it's not a cancer family.Although there was some, but not particularly. Yeah, it was pretty shocking. Ihad symptoms that I wrote off as something far more benign. And initially theywere very random and didn't have any real intensity to them. But then at acertain point, they started getting very obvious and couldn't ignore it. 

And I knew somethingwas serious because I was having blood discharges and whatnot, and went to thedoctor. And based on where it was in my body, there was no question they knewthere was a large tumor. They'd identified it. They'd seen it. But there was noquestion that it was cancer, even before doing surgery or doing any biopsy. Itwas in the bladder. And you can't have a benign tumor grow in your bladder, itturns out. And so I already knew before the surgery that it was cancer, whichwas strangely comforting. We didn't have to deal with that question. It wasn'tthe answer I wanted.

Luke Storey: [00:16:22] It'scut to the chase.

Bruce Cryer: [00:16:24] It'scut to the chase. Yes. The biggest question in the mind of the doctor was,well, how far along is it? We're hoping it's just been there for a while andit's been slowly doing its thing, and we're hoping it hasn't attached to thewall and therefore started to spread, and then it's a whole other story. Andluckily it hadn't. So that was good. It was just Stage 1. So I dodged a bigbullet. 

But then in thedoctor's office, as he was describing what was going to go on, he was expectingit was not advanced. He was expecting it was relatively slow. He was confidentthat after the surgery he would have me on what was called immunotherapy,neither chemo or radiation, which was much more benign. It had some sideeffects, but nothing chemo or radiation. So he was pretty confident that wasgoing to be what was going on. 

And he had Googled me,which I found really unusual and refreshing that he already knew that I hadthis involvement with this organization called HeartMath. He already knew I wasa speaker and traveled around the world, and I thought, you Google all yourpatients? And actually, it's a funny story. No, he didn't. And he had seen inmy chart, my medical chart from my primary care doctor that was sent over tohim, I was referred to as Dr. Cryer at some point in the write up about me.

He said, "You'reDr. Cryer. You went to medical school?" No, I'm not Dr. Cryer, and I neverplayed one on TV either, so I don't know what's going on here. But anyway, hewas giving me even more respect because he thought I was a doctor. So we werehaving this fairly intelligent conversation around the prognosis, and theprotocol, and everything. And at one point I said to him, "I'm prettyclear, doctor, that I have a choice right now." 

I'm at a fork in theroad, and the dark side is quite obvious where I could go, the fear, theanxiety, all the levels, all the things, but I'm out there in the world all thetime, and if what I go through can help anybody, I'm going to talk about it andI'm going to share. And he smiled and said, "That's a very positiveattitude to have." And I said, "Well, I'm at a fork in the road. I'mnot saying I'm never going to go down the-- I'm sure there'll betemptations," and there were plenty, "but I have got to go this routeand I've got to be open about this somehow." And that's what I felt. 

Plenty of other guyswould not have necessarily gone there, especially given the fact it's bladder cancer.Who wants to talk about bladder cancer? And it's not like I wanted to talkabout the bladder cancer per se. It was more like, what am I going through thatcould maybe in some way help others? And it did turn out that way that so manytimes over the years I've been able to share, through a keynote talk orwhatever, or a video or whatever, just a little bit of what it's like to havethat. 

In fact, when peoplesay, well, what's holistic health mean or what's integrative health mean? Isay, let me let me explain real simple to you. So when I heard the word cancer,do you suppose it was just my body that responded to that? Do you think my mindwas racing? Do you think my emotions were going crazy? Do you think my spiritwas even wondering, why me, why now, what's going on? So we're all of thosedimensions. We're all those parts of ourselves. 

And so for me, I wasaware of that, that this is a multi-dimensional issue and a multi-dimensionalthing. Yeah, I need the surgery. That wasn't the question to me. I feltconfident with the doctor. It wasn't like, oh, I think I'll just-- I won'tworry about the-- I'm not going to do the surgery. I don't want to get surgery,especially not this kind of cancer. It's not comfortable. Every singletreatment and every single-- is invasive, is exactly where you wouldn't want itto be invasive. I'll leave it at that.

Luke Storey: [00:20:01] Ican imagine.

Bruce Cryer: [00:20:03] Forthe men out there, I took one for the team, that's for sure. There's so manylevels to it. It ultimately became an incredibly powerful, liberatingexperience, oddly enough, the whole set of things that happened, which includethen getting staph infections as a result of some of the treatments, then thatbeing hospitalized because the staph was in my blood, which is alife-threatening condition. 

There's a lot ofchapters to the story, but in the end, I realized that I had had it pretty easymy whole life, physically. I had never had anything. I had had pneumonia as akid and had to go to the hospital for a couple of days or something, and I hada broken ankle playing football in ninth grade, and that was about it foryears.

Luke Storey: [00:20:47] Justknowing very little about you, but you mentioned holistic healing and thingslike that, I don't see you as a guy that was spending your time, prior to thatdiagnosis, eating McDonald's and smoking cigarettes and doing all those things.I mean, had you been living a pretty clean life, doing your best to eatorganic, and being active, and sleeping well and things like that?

Bruce Cryer: [00:21:12] Notall of those. The sleeping--

Luke Storey: [00:21:15] Youweren't perfect?

Bruce Cryer: [00:21:16] No.

Luke Storey: [00:21:16] Butyou know what, sometimes I think even though I have minor health problems hereand there, I don't foresee that experience in my future because I put so mucheffort into being vital and healthy. And I find it interesting when someone isa relatively healthy person and they have an experience like cancer. I'm justlike, yeah, but how does that even happen if you're not eating a bunch ofglyphosate all the time? 

If you're puttingpoison in your body on a consistent basis for a number of years, it's almostguaranteed that you're going to get some chronic, if not life-threateningdisease. I mean, were you surprised by it? Because you're like, well, I've beendoing everything right or--

Bruce Cryer: [00:21:57] Idefinitely was. And I guess over the years, I have learned that why we get sickhas so many possible sources, including something we've brought in from aprevious life, including other factors that are more about our soul'sblueprint, our soul's journey in this life. And it isn't necessarily-- I mean,I do all the things and always learning more. And that was part of why I wasfascinated to meet you because I know you love to learn about every conceivablething that could potentially benefit health. 

And I mean, this is onelittle example, my Oura Ring that when I got that several months ago, it waslike, this is very instructive. I'm thinking I'm good on sleep. I really payattention to this. I'm not one of those people that ignores it. And there wasso much that I learned.

Luke Storey: [00:22:47] Totally.Dude, with the Oura Ring, I don't know if you've had this experience, but I'malways curious to see if my my Oura Ring sleep score matches my subjectiveexperience in the morning. And I always find it really interesting that thereare nights when I feel like I slept really well, and I wake up refreshed, and Idon't get that great of a score. And then there are other nights where I wakeup and I'm like, oh man, today is going to be rough. I feel like I was up allnight. This happened two nights ago, and then I checked my score and I got areally high sleep score. 

So I do my best toresist looking at my score in the morning because I think there's a nocebopossibility there where if I got a score, oh, you only got six hours, you got a73, and you only got five minutes of deep sleep, I think it's going to affectthe way that I feel that day because of just the belief that I'm holding aboutit. And I'm not always successful at this. I admit the temptation this morninggot me. I was like, I'm really curious. I got to see. And it was better than Ithought it had been, today. 

But I felt really tiredthis morning. I had this interview with you, and I was like, doing all thesethings to ramp up my energy and get rid of the brain fog that I wasexperiencing. But for me, the most effective way to do it is to check it once aweek and just log, oh, Tuesday night, that makes sense because I ate a pint ofice cream at 11:00 PM and then tried to sleep well. But do you ever find thatyou jinx yourself if you look at it and you'll become tired because you look atthe score or something like that?

Bruce Cryer: [00:24:19] Well,I anticipated that could happen before I started using it, and I was a bitskeptical. I had never been that drawn to it because of that fact, actually.And so I've been very much trying to understand, because I don't always agreewith the score, definitely. But I like all these little stuff that's beentracked like, well, that's really true. I was awake for an hour. It wasn't bad.And so that's where the tracking is not 100% accurate in a sense, becausesometimes it'll ding you. It doesn't like the fact that I can fall asleep inthree minutes. I get dinged for that every single day. 

Well, I taught myselfhow to power nap when I was in college and having ridiculous three hours ofsleep at night because I was performing a lot, and then had to teach Tai Chi at6:00 AM. So I had to learn how to get out quick, to restore in five minutes or15 minutes. I learned that 40-something years ago. So if I hit the bed, I canbe out in no time. The Oura ring does not like that because it thinks that I'movertired.

Luke Storey: [00:25:17] Oh,interesting.

Bruce Cryer: [00:25:18] You'reso tired, you're falling asleep like that.

Luke Storey: [00:25:21] Thesleep latency.

Bruce Cryer: [00:25:22] Thelatency. Yeah. I'm always being dinged on the latency thing. No, you don't getit. If I have five minutes before a call, I can sleep for three of thoseminutes. No problem.

Luke Storey: [00:25:31] Right. 

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How accurate do you-- we're going to talk about HRV and stuff, of course,today. How accurate do you think the HRV analytics are on the Oura Ring?

Bruce Cryer: [00:27:44] Well,I come from such a different orientation because with HeartMath, as I'm sureyou know, we were very much about helping people see the actual pattern of theHRV. And so in these devices, I find the HRV, for me, useless. It's giving me anumber. It was 25 milliseconds last night, and what does that mean? Becausewhat we learned with HeartMath was that the pattern of heart rate variabilitylooks chaotic, in very simple black and white terms, looks chaotic like anearthquake if you're in any stressful emotion. It looks smooth like a sine wavewhen you're in any so-called positive emotion. 

So love, joy,compassion, appreciation, gratitude, peacefulness, feeling relaxed, the heartrhythm naturally goes into this smooth five seconds up, five seconds down. Fiveseconds up, five-- that's what happens. And you can train yourself to do it.And that was one of the big ahas of HeartMath was how easy it was to trainyourself to manipulate the rhythmic pattern of your actual heart. 

And so when I see it ina lot of these devices where it's just giving you a number and not giving youany information about the pattern of what was going on emotionally for you,that's one of the biggest challenges I think, with a lot of these things is Icould be sleeping great from all the parameters of the Oura Ring, but have beentossing and turning at another level too. It's not telling me that.

Luke Storey: [00:29:10] Aninteresting thing too about the Oura Ring score from what I understand is thatit's very individual. So I think my average over the course of a few years isaround 47. But then I'll talk to someone and they're like, oh. I go, what'syour HRV look like in your Oura Ring? And they're like, oh, 125 every day. I'mlike, what? I'm doing something wrong. But I think as I understand it, justfrom reading the very brief descriptions that come with their software, well,that person's baseline of 120 or whatever doesn't necessarily mean that theirsis better or higher than mine. You're competing with yourself.

So yeah, I wish thatthe ring, if anyone from Oura Ring's listening, I interviewed their CEO at onepoint a few years ago. But wouldn't it be cool, though, if you got more data onthe HRV piece? Because I think that would be really useful and instructive justin your day-to-day life. I really only use the ring when I'm sleeping. I don'ttrack my fitness or anything really. I just can't keep track of it.

Bruce Cryer: [00:30:12] Youget extra points if you start taking walks.

Luke Storey: [00:30:15] Yeah.But I have played with the HRV where, in the Oura app, I'll create a sessionand then I'll do any number of things and see what happens to my HRV. In fact,I did that once in Costa Rica in an ayahuasca ceremony. So I was just curious.I'm like, what's my HRV going to do? So as it started to come on, I reachedover and barely could operate the phone, and I set the thing, and four hourswent by or something. And then the next day I looked at it, and my HRVtanked. 

I mean, it was horribleduring that period that I was really in the depth of the experience. Oh, that'sinteresting. But I love the quantification. I think that's something thatappeals to me about Dr. Joe's work is, okay, so we do all these things. There'san infinite number of practices, whether it's just you with your breath, yourmovement, a meditation, prayer, or I have all these crazy devices all over thehouse, Tesla coils, and energy devices, and light machines, and hypnagogic thisand that. It's always fun for me to see what it's doing. 

So I'm looking forwardto the availability of more home user analytics where I get just a headbandthat's a really accurate qEEG, for example, and I can see, ooh, during the Dr.Joe meditation, I did laying on my mat today, I went into high gamma. It'sexciting to be able to gamify these practices. My sleep over the years thatI've been using the Oura Ring has improved dramatically solely by the fact thatI've gamified it and I'm trying to beat my own scores. If I don't know, then Itend to lose motivation in a different modality because I just have thissubjective, well, I think it worked thing.

Bruce Cryer: [00:32:07] Weassume convenient things about ourselves because it's more comfortable to. I'msure I got my act together on sleep. Of course I would. I've been doingfreaking heart meditations for 30 plus years, of course my sleep would be fine.

Luke Storey: [00:32:19] Right.Yeah. I tried an experiment this week with this thing called the Mendi. It'sone of my new tools.

Bruce Cryer: [00:32:24] Oh,I've heard of it. I've seen it.

Luke Storey: [00:32:25] Yeah.It's really neat. It's to train neural activity, to up-regulate neuralactivity. And so rather than using qEEG, it uses infrared sensor. It's a littleband that goes on your forehead and it's got an app. It's neurofeedback. And soyou just follow this little bouncing ball and you try to, with your mind like aJedi, get the ball to go higher and higher, and over time your score improves.And it's bringing blood to your prefrontal cortex and has effects on focus, andanxiety, and all this stuff. 

So I've been doing thatfor pretty much every day for about a month, and I thought, ooh, I'm going togo in front of the BioCharger. It's just crazy. I don't know if you've everseen a BioCharger. It's just this huge energy medicine device, essentially. AndI sat in front of that thing and I watched my neural activity just go throughthe roof, way higher than it would ever be just sitting there. 

And it was veryaffirming for me because I'm like, cool. I like the BioCharger. I've usedit for years. I find benefit, but could I really prove that it's doing this orthat? So if I run brain activation program, I don't know, I think it's working.Is it doing that? But to see my neurons go, it's impressive and it makes mewant to do it more and actually utilize the tool.

So anyway, um, well,congratulations on thriving through the cancer experience and transmuting thatinto a gift that you can share. I always am just in awe at people that gothrough something like that and come out the other side. Let's go back to, areyou still involved with HeartMath or have you gone rogue now and you're justdoing your own thing?

Bruce Cryer: [00:33:59] Um,I'm still very connected because my daughter works there, my ex-wife worksthere. All the senior team were colleagues. I've known most of them for 40years, so I'm still connected. I still teach HeartMath courses at Stanford.I've got a course coming up. I'll be doing in a few months a weekend retreat,mostly about Heartmath. It's not my own stuff, so I'm still very involved in--

Luke Storey: [00:34:22] SoI can talk to you a lot about it without you?

Bruce Cryer: [00:34:24] Youdefinitely can.

Luke Storey: [00:34:25] Withoutyou being bored, you're like, oh, that was 10 years ago. I'm on to my nextthing now.

Bruce Cryer: [00:34:29] Yeah,it's in me, and on me, and through me. And I was so involved since day one,since before day one in helping to develop the techniques. I've taughtthousands of times. I have taught workshops, done coaching sessions, donekeynotes, literally thousands. I think it's probably up to 5,000 or somethingat this point. 

And last Friday inSalem, West Virginia, I was doing a workshop for 25 athletic coaches, andtrainers, and nurses, and it felt new in spite of the fact that I've done themfor over 30 years. Because there's something powerful about the information ofHeartMath and the practicality of the techniques.

So, for example, to goback to that heart rate variability visual I was trying to give, I did thisdemo where HeartMath has developed several pretty cool technologies, and one'sa computer-based thing and you see the graph live on the screen of somebody'sheart going like that when you stress them out a little bit. But then ifyou can coach them for a bit, it'll turn into this very smooth rhythm. 

So the assistantbaseball coach volunteers to be a volunteer subject, and he comes up to thefront. And I said, "Cassidy, good to meet you, man. Are you a high stressguy?" And he said, "Yeah, I can be." I said, "Excellent.How are your math skills?" Oh, not very good at all. I said, alsoexcellent. And so I said, "So we're just going to do a simple littlemath thing, but it's going to be fast. I just need you to count backwards from13, but pretty quickly because we're running a little bit late. So I need toget this-- and I'm just going to be encouraging you by clapping rapidly."So he's instantly-- and he's already hooked up. So I've already got his--

Luke Storey: [00:36:13] What'she hooked up to?

Bruce Cryer: [00:36:14] He'ssitting there. He's hooked up to the HeartMath software. There's a sensor onhis ear already picking up his heart rate, and the heart rate pattern is beingdisplayed on the screen. So people could see that each time I would unfold thestory a little bit more and say there's going to be math and it's going to bestressful, his heart was spiking again and again. So there was already anawareness in the room that we're just playing around here, and this guy's heartis already jumping.

Luke Storey: [00:36:42] Areyou using the Inner Balance?

Bruce Cryer: [00:36:43] InnerBalance is the app with the sensor, which is an easier one to use for individuals,but it's hard to demonstrate for a group, so I used the older software becauseI can project it on a screen.

Luke Storey: [00:36:54] Isee. Okay. Yeah. I used to have the Inner Balance device at some point. I don'tknow what happened to that, but yeah. Anyway, carry on.

Bruce Cryer: [00:37:01] Yeah.So I do the math thing with him and his heart rate's going up to 120, 130 beatsa minute sitting there just-- and he got all the answers correctly but at asignificant cost to his physiology. He was just really cranking it out there.And I said, okay, now I'm going to have us all learn this technique. And it's away to get coherent, which is a term HeartMath uses a lot. And Joe Dispenza, ofcourse, talks all about heart coherence leading to brain coherence. 

So this was their firstexperience to learn about what heart coherence means. And I basically said, sowhat we're all going to do now is we're going to just focus your attentionaround your heart. You can focus it anywhere in your body, but right now you'regoing to focus it around your heart, and you're going to breathe in for aboutfive seconds, and then you're going to breathe out for about five seconds,imagining the air coming into your heart. And then imagining the air going outthrough your heart. 

And so I said,"Cassidy, let's just do that." And the whole room was doing that. Andas soon as he started doing that, his pattern went from this chaoticearthquake-looking pattern to this perfect sine wave. I mean, there was nodistortions at all. Perfect. And I just kept with him. And then in a coherencepractice, as Joe also talks about, to really be in your heart, it's not justabout breathing, it's about finding a feeling of gratitude or appreciation.

Like I was reallyexcited today to see you again, having seen you periodically in betweenmeditations and dancing in Indian Wells three years ago. And so that was apositive feeling for me today. So I just asked him to focus on some positivefeeling as he was doing this breathing. And so he kept doing that, and thepattern continued to be in this beautiful-- Very distinctive. 

We finally stopped andthe audience could see this entire five or six minutes he was up there, thischaos all over the place pattern when he was struggling to try to do the math.And when he was just sitting there at the beginning, not knowing what was goingon, just the uncertainty had him a bit anxious, and there was the heart goingall over the place. And then just that period breathing in and out through theheart, five seconds each way, and then bringing in a feeling of appreciationproduced this beautiful sine wave that he just stayed locked into. 

I said, "So all ofyour athletes, you got to learn how to self-regulate, don't you?" Becauseif you're throwing the ball for the potentially game-winning, match-winningserve in tennis, you got to be in the zone to do that. If you're on the foulline with the game-winning shot, potentially, you want to be in the zone to dothat. So it was a fun experience. So I'm rogue in the sense that I don't workfor the company, but I get asked all the time.

Luke Storey: [00:39:45] Yeah.That's good because I wanted to talk to you so much about the heart today.There's so much to explore, I think. But a couple of years ago, I had a realizationwhich looking back, is like, why did it take me this long to figure this out?Because it's a superpower that I've really use, and you essentially justdescribed it. 

And this phrase came tome in a meditation that went, heart is where the home is, like that saying homeis where the heart is. And I was going through this whole process. And I don'tknow, it's hard to articulate, but essentially, I got this code, this key thatthe practice of life that is going to yield the most profound results are tojust actually center my energy in my physical heart, in this part of mybody. 

And any time I leavethat awareness, I become more prone to anxiety or sadness or anything that wemight reference as a negative emotion. I don't really think of things ina binary way. But just in common parlance we say, well, happy is apositive emotion and sad is a negative. But if I want to be in an optimalstate, especially in a situation in which there is a potential for anxiety oruncertainty, etc, and it was just this extremely simplistic yet profoundunderstanding that just was delivered to me and just hit me.

Heart is where the homeis. And it's just like, any time I feel any sense of separation and I getcaught in duality to any degree that's taking me out of my body or out of astate of deep presence like quick, quick key to get back into who and what Ireally am is just go back in here. And it changed my life. It's so profound.And so that's one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you. 

And maybe a way that wecould frame this to open this dialog is the fact that many people have aperspective of the heart, that it's a physical organ, that it's a pump, thatit's like your liver or your pancreas or any number of other organs. And it's amechanistic, just physical-based approach. So on one end of the spectrum, youhave that left brain interpretation of it. 

And then on the otherside, you go full woo woo or Eastern mysticism that it's this energy center,that it's this living entity unto itself, and that it has powers to reachbeyond your physical space, and you can connect with someone across the planetto their heart and your heart. This supernatural or esoteric energy approach,the chakras and all this. 

So maybe you couldmeander down the path of, at this point in your career, having spent so muchtime, I'm sure personally, but also professionally, just understanding andteaching what this thing is that's behind our ribs, beyond the physical.Everyone, I think, has a fundamental understanding of, well, the physicality ofthe heart and what its purpose or role is in the body, but into the moreenergetics of it, at this point, sitting here, how would you define it? What isthis thing?

Bruce Cryer: [00:43:21] Ilove your definition, heart is where the home is. God, there's so many thingsthat have influenced my sensations and my sense of what the heart is in humanexistence. To me, it's the portal for higher dimensional intelligence. I thinkI have this personal view partly influenced by a set of books I've read overthe years called Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East, which itturns out, was a key set of books that Joe Dispenza also read when he was ayoung guy. It was a key thing. 

I'm going deeper intowhat's the nature of God and mankind, humanity. And in there it's talked abouthow in the design of humans, God placed a chip behind the heart. And that'swhere the presence of God can be felt. And I read that and I thought, that ismy experience, but I want to go deeper into that. So for the last severalyears, as part of my prayer and meditation work, I've had that very feltpresence of God is in me. 
It's not God's not out there. He's not something else. It's like, theinterconnectedness means I'm in it. I'm not separate from it, can experience itabove me. No, it's actually in me. So I think, energetically, the heart isthis-- I mean, we've talked about it for years. To bridge the mainstreamscience that we were committed to doing because we thought another system ofself-help from California was not exactly needed on the planet, but whenscientifically based in mainstream science.

Luke Storey: [00:45:04] Especiallyin this-- where are you guys, in Marin or something out there?

Bruce Cryer: [00:45:07] SantaCruz.

Luke Storey: [00:45:08] SantaCruz. Okay.

Bruce Cryer: [00:45:09] Samedifference.

Luke Storey: [00:45:09] Yeah.Anywhere within a few zip codes of there, you would have an abundance of that.

Bruce Cryer: [00:45:14] Yeah.I mean, that's where so much of it's literally started. I mean, Eslan came outof Marin County, holotropic breathing. Werner Erhard lived on a houseboat inSausalito. So much did actually start there. But anyway, part of my attractionto HeartMath when it was starting, I already knew the founder, was he wanted todevelop a system that could be used by anybody, regardless of whether they werespiritually oriented, or born-again Christians, or atheists, that it would be afriendly facilitator for anybody. 

And and to do that, hewanted to use science because he said, science has become God. And so if we canprove through mainstream science, not using equipment that no one else hasvalidated except us, what good is that? Then you have the true believers thatbelieve in you but the powers that be who run companies or military orgovernment or schools or whatever, they're not going to buy into it. So hesaid, we're going to go as straight as we can to be able to prove it to theskeptics. 

And then we're going tostill do all the wild stuff like, what if hearts are able to connect across theplanet? And there's been research that HeartMath has done on that. And there'sa whole project that HeartMath has called the Global Coherence Initiative, whichis all about the connecting of hearts all over the planet. But we wanted tomake sure we did all the mainstream stuff. There's been now 400 peer-reviewedstudies on HeartMath.

Luke Storey: [00:46:38] Really?

Bruce Cryer: [00:46:39] Fourhundred published, peer-reviewed studies. It's probably maybe even 500. I don'tknow the exact number.

Luke Storey: [00:46:43] That'scrazy to think that. I mean, even just getting one published paper isdifficult, from what I understand. I've never tried to do it, but interviewingpeople, and they're like, oh, I've been working on this for five years, andthey finally accepted it and are going to publish it kind of thing. That's alot of work.

Bruce Cryer: [00:47:00] Well,part of that is you got to use research methods that mainstream publicationswill accept. If you don't, quite simple, your study was not based on theprotocols we deem. So we had to play that game, but we thought, this is wellworth it because I've joked about Stanford. I've taught there for 25 years now,taught HeartMath. I said, I could have fooled him pretty well for the firstcouple of years, just been a really good presenter, he's really great, but atthe end of the day they would have knocked me for the science if the sciencewas at all in doubt. There's no way Stanford is going to let somebody that'sspouting weird science at Stanford, especially. So I appreciated that a lotabout HeartMath. 

In contrast to theenergetic stuff which we couldn't talk about nearly as much in order to gainthe foothold in the big organizations and the Kaisers of the world, I mean, wedid this one study that I was connected to. We actually got funding from USCongress to study test anxiety in high school kids because we believed thatanxiety which shows up in the heart rhythm pattern, it's very easy to see whatanxiety looks like in anybody, a child or an adult. 

We believed that a lotof the problems with kids not doing well on tests had to do with anxiety. Iftheir anxiety is high, we already knew from other research, we and others haddone, is if you're in an anxious state, there's noise in your system. I mean,think about when you're anxious. You say weird shit. You make stupid decisions,short sighted decisions. Sometimes you're physically awkward as well.

Luke Storey: [00:48:41] Thisis the root of probably 98% of breakups.

Bruce Cryer: [00:48:44] Yeah.Totally. You say something and you can't--

Luke Storey: [00:48:47] Yeah.I've observed within myself over the years that if I'm emotionally charged, Ilose the capacity to think or communicate rationally. I mean, it's so obviouslyso. So I've learned to, okay, I need to go self-regulate and then I cancommunicate with another human being about what we're working with. But if youdon't know that, I mean, God--

Bruce Cryer: [00:49:10] You'rejust in it.

Luke Storey: [00:49:11] Yeah.

Bruce Cryer: [00:49:11] Andthinking you're still really smart.

Luke Storey: [00:49:14] Yeah.I got them, and then later on, you're like, oh, why did I say that? Oh. andthen you have to go make amends.

Bruce Cryer: [00:49:20] Yeah.And sometimes the amends are not enough because what you've said cannot beunheard, and they hold that against you, and the relationship doesn't everregain itself sometimes. So all that matters.

Luke Storey: [00:49:32] Andso these high school kids taking tests, and I'm assuming you found that theyhad a worse performance as a result of being stressed just because they knowthey're taking a test.

Bruce Cryer: [00:49:42] Yeah.So we found-- it was a large study with hundreds of kids. There was a largecontrol group of four or 500 and a main group of six or 700, and found thatthere was an absolute correlation between the amount of anxiety kids had abouttaking tests and their score. And we were able to demonstrate that kidslearning these heart rate variability self-regulation skills, as I was sayingearlier, that was the main skill. 

Learn how to breatheslowly in and out. Imagine your heart's doing the breathing. Do that fiveseconds in, five seconds out, and then try to find something you appreciate.Your puppy, your grandpa, vanilla gelato, whatever, and feel a positivefeeling. And they would learn how to do this. And there was an absolutecorrelation between the reduction in test anxiety and the increase in scoresabove what the control group was able to do. 

So control group, whowasn't getting any training but taking the same test, they weren't improvingtheir scores, but the kids who were anxious, who were now less anxious becausethey were learning how to self-regulate, now their scores were going upsignificantly. So the point of the story was just that we made a strong effortto prove, and almost, not totally unassailable because anything in science canstill be questioned by somebody who hasn't heard of it before. But we weregoing very mainstream. 
But again, in answering the question about of the energetics of all of it, Idid this thing the other day in the workshop and I said, so there's this thingI'll do. I'll say, so everybody close your eyes, roomful of 50 people, let'ssay, and just go ahead and point north. You got hands going here. Nobody hasany idea where North is. I said, okay, great. Put your hands down. Noweverybody just go ahead and point to yourself. All hands go here. I've done thisall over the world with thousands of different people and about 0.1% pointssomewhere other than the heart. Everybody points the heart.

Luke Storey: [00:51:45] Forthose listening, and not watching, he's pointing at his heart.

Bruce Cryer: [00:51:48] Yeah.So if the question is point to yourself, virtually everybody just somehowdecides to point here.

Luke Storey: [00:51:55] They'renot pointing at their mind.

Bruce Cryer: [00:51:57] That'swhere the others are, because there's a very small percentage that pointssomewhere in the head area. But the same happened on Friday. The room full ofpeople, athletic coaches and trainers. I said, "Okay, open your eyes. Havea look." Who taught you, when asked the question, who is your self to pointthere? Nobody did. We just intuitively feel that. 

And so that was anelement of what HeartMath assumed before we got started really, was that therewas this whole wisdom for millennia associated with the heart, reverence forthe heart, way past its fantastical pump nature. I use the term fantasticalbecause there was a period, 150 years ago or so where everything was gettingdumbed down to, it's just a machine. The human body is an incredible machine.The pump is fantastical. Wow. Awesome. But they completely wiped out anyenergetic possibility that, why was it called Richard the Lion-hearted? Why wasit brave heart? Why there's a thousand references to the heart in the Bible.

Luke Storey: [00:52:59] Aheartfelt message.

Bruce Cryer: [00:53:01] Aheartfelt message. When you tell a kid who's nervous about going out on thefield to play soccer, just go out and play with your heart, why do you saythat? Why would you say that? You intuitively know that if they'll just puttheir heart into it, you don't even know what that means, but it just feelslike, yeah, you got to do that. You got to put your heart in. And so wesaid we're going to be a system of that, meaning people intuitively know that,but then the mind says, no, don't do that, and don't bring your heart intobusiness because you'll get messed up if you do that.

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So things tend to fallapart if you don't get enough of it. So the obvious answer there is to justtake magnesium every day, right? Well, sort of. To experience these healthbenefits, you have to get the right kinds of magnesium. And it turns out thereare seven unique forms of magnesium, and you've got to get all of them toreceive its many benefits. 

And this, my friends,is why I take magnesium breakthrough by BiOptimizers. It's the only organicfull spectrum magnesium supplement that contains all seven different forms. Andit's your lucky day because BiOptimizers, the makers of magnesium breakthroughare offering some incredible bonus gifts for a limited time. 

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Bruce Cryer: [00:55:24] SoHeartMath is all about the energetic side and being able to become more andmore sensitive. And part of what I learned over the many, many years of thispractice of focusing around my heart and breathing gently and rhythmically andtrying to put out positive energy to the world, to the event I'm going to dotoday, to this lady I'm talking to a lot, to whoever it is, and the more Iwould do that, the more I realize I'm becoming-- and it wasn't overnightchange, but it was so noticeable over time was that I am becoming so much moresensitive to subtle things in my system, subtle thoughts, subtle thingshappening in my body, subtle waves of, where did that-- what was that wave Ijust felt? Where does that come from? 

But then that wastranslating as increased sensitivity to others, far more intuitive senses ofpeople. And not like I'm now psychic or something, but just feeling like I'mjust way more sensitive to other people's moods than I ever used to be. In mycase, and I think the sphere behind HeartMath is, it's about being kinder. It'sabout being more compassionate. The home is where the heart is or the heart iswhere the home is. That goes along so much with that thing that I do of pointto yourself, and they all point here. This is home.

Luke Storey: [00:56:48] Ithink this is why it eluded me because of its simplicity, this idea, and justusing it as an ongoing practice. In other words, you could instruct someonethat wants to have more peace in their experience to just stay present. Just bepresent, be in the now. But with what am I being in the now? What? In thechair? Because in meditative practice it's like, oh, feel the seat, the cushionunder your butt, and feel your hand sitting on your jeans and so on.

And there's this moresuperficial ways to just be in physical presence. But I think when it landedfor me that like, oh, there's a whole other level of presence when my focus ison putting my presence into my physical, and I guess energetic heart, to justbe a heart-centered person, it moved the goalpost. 
It's like, oh, that gives me something a little more tangible, and somethingthat subjectively, it's just more powerful, the practice in and of itself,rather than just a nebulous general, oh, I'm just going to be more present andbe in the moment. It's like, I'm going to be in the moment with the core of whoand what I am, at least in a physical body. That's what the practice is growinginto for me. But it's so simple that it seems like, what's that going to do?The pragmatic part of me is like, oh, it sounds fluffy. It's like, oh, be inyour heart. But it works. That's the thing.

Bruce Cryer: [00:58:29] It'sthe irony of the heart is that so many things of the heart sound so cheesy.They just do. To the mind, that wants to write it off as cheesy, which I've hadthat part of me. I'm a New Yorker. I'm a skeptical as they come. I'll write offa holistic treatment. I think, what's your evidence? You're telling me it'll do25 different things, but what's your-- I'm happy you've had at least one personthat's gone through that, but is there any actual evidence in that that'sreally true? 

I can be hard-nosed andcutting relative to things that don't seem to stack up. But what you're talkingabout is that felt, that deeply embodied sense of this is what's going on now.And I feel like a part of it I relate to as a singer of downshifting into justwhere the vibration of my soul is really coming from here, not up here whereI'm talking or where I'm thinking, but it's like the soul of me is here. And Ithink that's just been an ever-deepening practice for me. 

There was this oneperiod of my life where I had an interesting way I had to practice. I wasdating a woman who was in her own spiritual awakening, and the way it presentedin her was almost seizures, and just shaking, and wild shit. And I had neverreally had that in all my journeys. I mean, I've had wild trips and differentstuff I'd done over time, but this was like a regular occurrence with her.

Luke Storey: [01:00:04] Likethe thing at the Joe Dispenza thing I was describing.

Luke Storey: [01:00:07] Yeah.Be careful if we do go to a meditation together because she could be writhingon the floor. But I had a great love for her, and there were times when we'd gooff to different retreats and whatnot, and I realized that a lot of why I wasgoing to that retreat was to be the anchor for her because she was goingthrough all this shedding of lifetimes or stuff from this life, whatever itwas. And I knew how to stay in the heart. 

And so I could beholding her at night in bed and just my job is to anchor here, and just stay inmy heart, and just radiate that essence of calm from the center of me. Andshe'd just hold on to me sometimes. I'm so glad you're here. And I wasn'tsaying anything. It wasn't the words that was helping her. It was just I wasstable. I wasn't flowing all over the place with her because that wouldn't havegiven her any comfort. 

So I realized there wasa period where I had to learn it at another level through an importantrelationship that was going to take me out if I didn't learn how to-- I lovethat expression, heart is where the home is. That's what I felt like I wasdoing with that. Those words exactly. Stay here. Dude, just stay here. Youdon't know what's going on. You don't know why she's having to go through it.None of this is personal. Just stay in your heart. Just radiate love asstrongly as you possibly can. And if you can't radiate love, just stay in yourheart anyway.

Luke Storey: [01:01:34] Well,that's interesting because you're talking about these events at which you trainpeople how to self-regulate, and do the breathing, and such, and teaching thesestudents and their test scores improve, and all of that. It's interesting thatthe practice as a whole can be so beneficial to one's self as the practitioner,but when it gets really interesting is when you see the magic that ensues whenit starts to entrain the people with whom you're sharing space, when you'retalking about that experience in that relationship. 

I've learned to do thisin my relationship and also even with peripheral relationships just out in theworld, dealing with other humans, having their own things going on. Anytimethere's a potential for some stress in an interaction, I've become morehabituated to just going back there. And it's so interesting to see how theenergetic of an interaction can be so quickly transmuted by me just doingthat. 
So it's not only like I'm self-regulating myself, but there's a field that I'm,I don't know if I'm creating the field, but a field that I'm acknowledgingmaybe and putting some attention on, and all of a sudden something that couldhave been tumultuous and full of conflict can just be disarmed. And it's justlike, oh, we're fine. 

Like when you're in themoment, say, in a relationship, someone expresses a feeling and you might get alittle bit triggered by it. And if you were to respond with the same level ofintensity or energy, it could escalate in both of you. Now, we're not makingany progress to toward a resolution. But if one of you can self-regulate andstay in that presence, I guess, as we're speaking in this context in the heart,it's like the other person catches it.

It's contagious in away, and all of a sudden there's just a softness that starts to ensue, eventhough you're not trying to control or manipulate the other person or get themto do this or that. You're literally just doing it for yourself but it has thetendency to spill out onto the field that you're sharing, and next thing youknow, everyone's cool. It's like a superpower. It's really, really interesting.

Bruce Cryer: [01:03:59] That'sbeautifully said, Luke. And the field you're talking about is tangible andmeasurable, and it is non woo woo. I'm not saying there aren't dimensions to itthat are more quantum and other levels, but this is another one of the giftsthat HeartMath gave to the world, in a sense, is this idea that the heartelectrically produces a signal, electrical signal, the electrocardiogram, EKG,which is around 60 times stronger in amplitude than what the brain creates.

So the analogy I alwaysuse, the heart is the main electrical and magnetic power plant of the body. Thebrain is a substation. Not saying the brain is subservient to the heart, butfrom that perspective, electromagnetism, a heart's by far not even close. Infact, even measure brain waves. The little secret about how you even measurebrainwaves, you've got to filter out the EKG because the EKG signal overwhelmsthe measuring of the EEG unless it's filtered out. Because it's the electricalsignal. 

The fact that you canfeel your pulse on your big toe or anywhere in your body, it's goingeverywhere. It's electromagnetic. And so as we know from physics, anythingthat's producing electromagnetism, like the wires all through this house,create a field around where the electricity is conducted. A field is generated,an electromagnetic field. Again, it's not woo woo.

Luke Storey: [01:05:25] We'vetalked about that a lot on the show. Yeah. In this house, by the way, there arevery few fields because everything's all shielded because I'm a hugetinfoil-hat EMF advocate. Yeah, but we know the concept. Yeah.

Bruce Cryer: [01:05:38] Yes.So in the case of the human body, there's a field created by theelectromagnetic signal of the heart, which with equipment called magnetometers,it's also called a SQUID, which is actually found in every hospital, it's avery mainstream medical device, the field generated by a human heart can bemeasured at least three feet away from the body, which means the signal of myheartbeat can be picked up by a medical equipment several feet away.

What HeartMath alsoshowed, back to the heart rate variability, is that signal, which is seeminglybeating evenly, but actually isn't, it's beating all over the place in adisordered pattern most of the time, it's not just a steady beat, beat, beat.No, it's bum, bum, bum bum bum bum. Get's faster. Bum, bum bum bum, bum. Getsslower. It's always changing. 

That rhythm is what'sactually going out into space. So the field being created is a byproduct of therhythmic pattern of the heart. So the field you're creating is a field filledwith frustration, if that's what you're feeling. It's filled with anxiety, ifthat's what you're feeling. It's filled with gratitude, if that's what you'refeeling.

Luke Storey: [01:06:48] Sothis emanation of an electromagnetic field from the heart is not just a benignfield. There are frequencies which we could call a frequency of a differentemotion that's actually carried by that field. And I'm thinking of a PEMFdevice. The AmpCoil is a great example where you have some software on atablet, and then you can set any number of different frequencies for whateverbenefit you're trying to achieve. And then those frequencies are amplified throughan amp and carried to this modified Tesla coil, essentially, like what's on theback of a subwoofer, a big magnetic field.

Bruce Cryer: [01:07:30] I'veactually tried this one.

Luke Storey: [01:07:31] Oh,you have?

Bruce Cryer: [01:07:32] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:07:32] Oh,cool. Yeah. I love this. We have it downstairs. It's a fascinating technology.But essentially, what you're describing is the human heart could be thatmagnet, that Tesla coil, for lack of a better analogy and we know thatscientifically it's provable that this is going out three feet.

Bruce Cryer: [01:07:54] Measurable.

Luke Storey: [01:07:54] Measurable.

Bruce Cryer: [01:07:55] Whoknows how far it's really going out.

Luke Storey: [01:07:57] Right.Okay. But the technology allows us to measure three feet. Well, that'sinteresting in and of itself. But this idea that a carrier wave is transmittingand maybe receiving different frequencies, and this we experience just ineveryday life, is like, ooh, there's a vibe. I get a bad vibe from that personor a good vibe. Or you walk in a room where someone just had an argument,there's a density to the energy.

Bruce Cryer: [01:08:23] I'veused that example thousands of times in workshops. Exactly what you just said.

Luke Storey: [01:08:27] Oh,really?

Bruce Cryer: [01:08:27] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:08:28] Okay.

Bruce Cryer: [01:08:29] It'sthe point we're trying to make about this.

Luke Storey: [01:08:30] Sowe're essentially then from our hearts, these energy generators. But it'sagain, not just benign generic energy. It has a flavor. It has a--

Bruce Cryer: [01:08:41] Exactly.

Luke Storey: [01:08:42] Wow.

Bruce Cryer: [01:08:43] Sowhen you're just being in a situation, as you were describing earlier, andtrying to radiate whatever you're thinking, love, or kindness, or calm, thepattern of your heart is the amplifier of that feeling. The rhythmic pattern ofthe heart is the wave that carries it out into space. So it's no surprise atall, even from a standpoint of physics, that you'd be changing the dynamic.That's what the HeartMath has been saying for 30 years. So you've been a secretambassador for HeartMath without knowing it. They may ask for royalties, Idon't think.

Luke Storey: [01:09:15] Well,it's hard-earned understanding of just, I mean, many of us are just born out ofsuffering and just not wanting to suffer anymore and trying to figure this shitout, how to be a human and live with a greater sense of ease and joy.

Bruce Cryer: [01:09:33] Yeah.What this part of the conversation is at the core of what HeartMath is reallysaying is that we have the power to not only regulate on a 3D level thedysfunctions going on in our bodies, the autonomic dysfunction of not enoughparasympathetic, not enough vagus nerve, too much sympathetic, high energy,accelerator pedal energy all the time going on, we have the power toself-regulate that. 
 But in the process of doing that, we galvanize these electromagneticresources that are otherwise somewhat in chaos. If we're stressed out, theyjust are right. And so our brain can't function at its highest. It's not likewe're--

Luke Storey: [01:10:13] Orat all.

Bruce Cryer: [01:10:14] Orat all in some cases, yeah, like where was my brain when I was thinking thatthrough. So on the most basic, as I say, 3D level by learning how to regulate,that the body is going to work better. It just has to. But then on these other dimensionsthat are not as easy to measure like the impact you can have on a conversationwith others, you can't measure it in terms of electromagnetism necessarily, butyou can sure feel that, wow, something just changed.

I could feel lyingthere holding on. She could feel something that I was doing. And it didn'tmatter what she called it, but it was helping. There was a grounding happeningas I was holding her, but I was holding her in a certain frequency of love andcare. And the heart's an incredible system for that on all kinds of levels, notjust physical.

Luke Storey: [01:11:06] Wow.I'm going to reveal one of the secret sources of conducting this podcast asI've been doing for seven years, and sometimes I think it's unconscious, but asI've seen how it works, I've become more deliberate. But a lot of what you'redescribing as a practice, I do when I'm sitting here with people. When you'retalking, because there's always a-- I'm managing my notes and how are peoplegoing to perceive this and what do I look okay on camera? I mean, there's atendency to go into the mind.

But I really want tohave a felt experience with the guest because I just enjoy the people with whomI have these conversations. But I also want to imbue the essence of therecording, the actual audio file and the video file. I want to imbue it withtransformative, uplifting energy. I want to imbue it with love because I lovethe people who are listening.

And it's like, I don'thave the biggest podcast in the world. I mean, everyone's always using JoeRogan as the benchmark, and if you're not there, you're a failure. Thinkingabout, I'm at 11 million downloads at seven years. That's pretty good. And thenyou see someone like that, and they're like, 30 million per episode every dayor something. But I think for the few people that do tune in, they've got to bepicking up on the energetics of it.

Bruce Cryer: [01:12:34] That'swhy they're tuning in.

Luke Storey: [01:12:35] That'smy hope, is that the heart that's shared between myself and the guests like youthat they're picking up on that, and that they're hopefully having anexperience beyond just intellectually learning some new information or beingentertained by a story or someone's persona or something, but that there'ssomething underneath what we're doing here that is really the point. 

And so I think of itas-- I've never really articulated this, but it just came to me to share. Butwhat I'm doing is I'm paying attention to that field, and I'm focusing on that,and using the intellect as little as possible, just as a guide so that weaccomplish what we set out to accomplish. But it's more of an upper layer ofwhat we're really doing here, which is loving one another.

And then the peoplelistening, they feel that energy, just like you feel the energy of a certainsong and it moves you to tears. Why is it? It's a combination of the notes.Mathematically, it makes no sense. It's in a key, and there are notes withinthat key, and you pick a variety of notes. It's like, what's that going to dofor you? 

But you can listen to aChopin piece and be brought to tears because there was an inherent love,whether consciously or not, in the heart of the composer and the performers,that when it enters your field and you invite it in and you're present to it,it's transformative. It affects you. Something happens that you can't explain.It's a magic of sorts.

Bruce Cryer: [01:14:07] Yeah.Beautiful. Well, then I'll share my little secret. It's so refreshing to hearyou say this. I'm a guest on podcasts and I nearly always enjoy them becauseusually a good dynamic unfolds. But to hear how intentional you are and howyou're creating that, I feel it as you as you are now articulating. I feel thatfrom you. I feel this-- thoroughly been enjoying this conversation. 

And we talked for fiveminutes downstairs. I mean, it's not like we had a lot of time talking witheach other. And as I was driving over here this morning, I was actuallythinking, they didn't ask me for anything before. Usually people will say,well, send me some things or even a bio or whatever. And I don't think theyasked me for anything. And sometimes they'll send-- one guy, recently, he sentme 12 questions in advance and wanted to make sure I had thorough answers forall of them. Really. 

And it was on a book Ihad written some years ago and I thought, I haven't even read that book foryears now. I've got to study my own book just to come prepared. And I thought,I am not prepared in that way at all today. And as I was coming over shouldI've brought this, that, and I thought, no, of course not. 

Because I trust when Icome to any situation that if I'm just in my heart and loving who I'm with,loving the interaction, that it's going to turn out exactly as it's supposedto, exactly in the highest outcome it could because I'm putting that kind ofpositive energy in. And then if you got two people who are secretly doing thatat the same time, watch out.

Luke Storey: [01:15:44] Yeah,you might just come out with something good. Well, there's something to be saidfor the spontaneity that I think is-- there's an element of surprise in therethat's fun. Whenever I'm interviewed, they'll be like, oh, you want me to sendyou the question? I'm like, no, I don't want to know because it's going to betoo tempting for the intellect to get in and start to try to control andmanage. And I don't want to be in the mind. 

The mind is, I mean, Ilove my mind. And I have a decent one. It's served me well when it's usedappropriately, but it fits at the forefront. You're going to get a much moreshallow experience. And when you're talking about creating any art or content,the mind is useful, but the heart is where the real magic happens. What do youthink about the term, thinking about the just common phrases that are part ofour vernacular, brokenhearted? Oh, I got my heart broken. What do you thinkthat means?

Bruce Cryer: [01:16:42] Well,it's funny. I immediately go to the medical because there is now a namedsyndrome, broken heart syndrome, that shows actual physical things that happento the heart when we've had a tremendous heartbreak. It's not uncommon withelderly couples where the loss of one partner causes the other one to diefairly quickly because the connection has been there for so long that now tolose one, the other doesn't want to go on.

Luke Storey: [01:17:12] They'relike conjoined twins of the heart, kind of, almost sharing a unified system.Yeah. That's interesting.

Bruce Cryer: [01:17:22] Yeah.I think that's true for many. I think it's a deep question. All your questionsare deep. We could talk several hours on each one of these questions. I'veexperienced a broken heart. I've felt in my life at different times thatsomething that I thought was going to continue to unfold, a relationship,usually, sometimes a business relationship, but mostly a personal relationshipthat I thought was going to unfold in a certain way and got love that wouldnever die, and then suddenly it's changed dramatically or it's over, and thefeeling can be there, the feeling of loss, the feeling of feeling hurt orabandoned can be in the actual heart itself. 

At least I have sensedit that way. Not like I'm having a heart attack or not some physical pain somuch, but the sense of grief or sadness can be felt there. And I think this iswhere the multi-dimensional aspect of the heart is so important because like inthe chakra system, as you mentioned earlier, the heart is central. Three above.Three below. 

And so in that system,it was viewed that the heart is the distribution point for a lot of theimportant cosmic energies or divine energies. It comes through the heart tothen be distributed out. And the heart itself, when we emotionally, and back tomy [Inaudible] game of point to yourself and everybody point here-- I keepwanting to remember your phrase. Heart is where the home is. We feel homehere. 

And so when suddenlythat's threatened or feels like it's violated in some way because the love thatgave us that feeling of home is suddenly been withdrawn or even doneaggressively, maybe, that's extremely painful. And so many people don't recoverfrom that or they're so guarded after that. 

I've gone through a lotof loss. I've lost three family members to Alzheimer's. I've lost anotherfamily member. So one was a brother and both parents. I've lost another brotherto Lou Gehrig's disease. So four immediate family members with neurologicaldisease, all lost. So that's a sobering reality as I age. 

But I guess why Ibrought that up was just that I think this dimension of being able to connectto our hearts and heal our hearts, I know even though I've gone through anumber of tragedies in my family and losses in terms of relationships, anotherdeeper part of me said, don't shut down, don't cut off as a result of this,which most people would do. I mean, you go through a lot of loss and you justfeel so guarded because you're afraid something else is going to happen. So no,I won't engage with life is almost to protect yourself.

Luke Storey: [01:20:13] Yeah.I mean, that's another phrase I hear someone after a heartbreak say, oh, I'mafraid to open my heart again.

Bruce Cryer: [01:20:17] I'mafraid to open my heart again. And I intuitively knew, thanks to opening andbreathing through the heart for hundreds of thousands of times for so manyyears, the heart, I still needed to keep activating it. Yes, I was feelingpain. Yes, I was feeling sadness. Yes, I needed to grieve. Yes, all of that wastrue. And in fact, to heal the heart is not to try to go to love instantly.Good luck with that. 

When my mother finallypassed after about a 10-year decline with Alzheimer's, we'd had to say goodbyeyears earlier. She was gone years earlier, but still stayed alive. But now shewas really gone. As a child of an Alzheimer's parent, you never give up thepossibility, as unconscious as it may be, that at some point they will wake upand say, Luke, how are you doing? One day that she would say, oh, hi, boo boo.That was her nickname for me when I was little. 

But that neverhappened. So then when they finally do pass, it's like, oh, it's reallyfinality. And so there was a lot of grief, even though we had already lost heryears earlier, in a way. So I found through that experience and many othersthat I had to really acknowledge how I was feeling and allow myself to feel that. 

And only through thatprocess could the strength that I had in my heart, which I developed throughtrying to be a loving man and try to be kind, try to do, when you're in asituation, try to be-- I've got to be the adult right now. I've got to be the one--Goddamn it, I'm the one that's been learning and teaching this stuff for 30years. I ought to be able to pull something off in the middle of an argument.So now it's my turn.

But honoring the factthat I get to do that. And so I guess there's just this this dimension of theheart is incredibly strong. The heart's always evolving. Our ability to senseand experience through the heart. Having gone through all that health stuff,let alone the other, the loss that I had during that time, and since, I canfeel the down side of life deeper than ever. 

But I am brought totears by something magnificent in a leaf or a sunset, or a song that justsuddenly is on my playlist. I'm thinking, yes, thank you. For whatever reason,this song just came in. I'll give you a quick example. So I was going to drivedown to Austin right before New Year's from New Jersey, stopping in Washington,DC to see my brother. 

And the last morningbefore I left to get in the car for a 1,500-mile drive, I walked downstairs inthis beautiful condo where they live and all of a sudden this very fun, upbeatmusic starts playing pretty loud. I'm thinking, Oh, Donna, my sister-in-lawmust be downstairs doing Peloton. So she's got some high energy meeting. Oh,this is fun. 

And I'm going aroundthe kitchen and making some matcha tea, and then the music changes and it's awhole other totally different track, I think. Is that Donna? What's going on?And then another song comes on, and then finally I'm heading back upstairs andthis Anita Baker song comes on. 

Now, Anita Baker, someof the audience don't know who that is, she was an 80s jazz singer who crossedover and had this pop album that was incredibly beautiful, to me, in the yearthat my daughter was-- before she was born. So in 1986, when my daughter wasborn, in December, that year, I had fallen in love with this album of AnitaBaker. And every day on my drive to the spirulina company where I was vicepresident of marketing back in 1986--

Luke Storey: [01:24:02] Oh,you're OG in spirulina.

Bruce Cryer: [01:24:03] Ohyeah.

Luke Storey: [01:24:04] That'sfunny.

Bruce Cryer: [01:24:05] Smoothieshave been around my lips for years.

Luke Storey: [01:24:07] Yeah,that was a long time ago.

Bruce Cryer: [01:24:09] Itsure was. So every day I'd be driving down to Santa Cruz, where the companywas, and singing along with this Anita Baker album. And one day while singingher song Rapture, which is this incredibly sweet, gorgeous song about therapture she felt for someone, I felt the soul of my daughter who was not yetborn. She was four or five months before being born, and I felt the incrediblelove for the soul of my daughter. And I thought, this is a thing? I can feelher soul? She's not even close to being born yet. We knew it was going to be agirl. 

And every day, I havethese tearful sobbing while singing this album. So I'm about to leave DC todrive down here to Austin and suddenly an Anita Baker song is playing in mybrother's house. I go up to my room and I'm looking down on my phone, and myphone had been controlling this. I'd been in the house before. I had hookedinto their sound system before, so as soon as I walked downstairs, unbeknownstto me, my phone turns on the sound system. And the fourth song was an AnitaBaker song. 

And as soon as Iexperienced that, I thought, Anita Baker, that album was incredibly powerfulbefore the birth of my daughter. The next three days, I sang with the AnitaBaker album for 1,500 miles till my voice is practically raw. And there were somany times I was brought to tears while singing. I could not sing a portionbecause it was just so gorgeous, and so meaningful, and so powerful. 

And I'm saying all thislong story because I feel the upside so much more deeply than ever. I mean,I've always been a pretty loving, pretty caring guy, I thought. But now it's ata whole other level of a tiny thing, just a moment of seeing vulnerability onthe face of someone like, oh, make me feel it. Oh my God, it's such a beautifulsoul this is. 

But I know had I notallowed myself to feel the moments of darkness and grief and what am I doing,what is going on, and depression even, not clinically depressed, I'm notexaggerating it, but still feeling like what could I have also then felt likeat these moments of the bliss. Bliss is not the right word. It sounds likesome--

Luke Storey: [01:26:32] Rapture.

Bruce Cryer: [01:26:32] Raptureis a great word.

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Well, what you just described brings to mind, I don't even remember what theheartbreak was because like for many of us, there have been so many, you can'teven keep track. But at one point, a teacher of mine said to me, it must havebeen after a breakup or something, he said, Luke, a broken heart is an openheart. Just those things that get delivered to us throughout our lives. And I'msure there are many that I forgot that were profound and simple but yet potent,but that one stuck with me. 

And I think what youjust described is really the essence of that, is that when we surrender intothat broken heart, that it opens up our capacity for feeling as a whole. Andthere's a real juice in life of knowing that we're someone who can feel deeplyand experience life in its fullest. A broken heart is an open heart. 

There's something thatdoes-- it's like the humbling effect of just feeling your humanity and all ofthe melodramas that we experience. There's a softening and a humbling in thatexperience, which is really sweet. And thank God that that's the case becauseif we adopt that principle, then in those moments of heartbreak, we know thatthere's-- it becomes grist for the mill. 

There's a purpose toour suffering because we know if we can feel it deeply, and we can allow it in,and we can process it and not run and hide and numb, that we're going to builda strength and a fortitude in our spirit that's going to allow us to keep goingthrough those experiences, and keep expanding our capacity to feel, and to beable to feel the rapture, and drive down south hearing Anita Baker. 

I mean, I have theseexperiences all the time. I'm a really feeling-based person. Happens a lot withmy wife. I'll just be sitting there and nothing's happening, and I just look ather and through practice, just appreciate her. And it's such a beautiful-- I'msure it feels nice for her probably too. But literally all I'm doing is justacknowledging what's present. Just opening my eyes a little wider, or openingmy heart and just going, oh my God, what a magnificent person and what a giftin my life. 

Think about all thethings that are present in our day to day lives that we just become habituatedto and don't really notice, but have the capacity for that depth of gratitudethat can bring us to tears. But I don't know that I would have that capacityhad my heart not just been broken over and over and over again, starting, Idon't know, five, six years old, in my case. The hurt that we experience. 

And for me, I ran, andnumbed, and hid from that hurt for so long. And the interesting thing aboutthat tendency, at least in my case, is that most of the things, speaking ofjust a life of addiction and this stuff that I did to try to evade feeling thatheartbreak actually compounded the heartbreak with more self-harm and more harmto others that resulted in guilt and shame as a result of my behavior. So thereis no way to wiggle out of the heartbreak, because even if we run from it, ithas the compounding effect of actually causing more harm. Do you agree orwhat's your take on that?

Bruce Cryer: [01:32:10] Yeah.It's--

Luke Storey: [01:32:12] Inother words, what I'm trying to say is, if you don't feel it now and you justsuppress or repress it, then eventually it's going to bubble to the surface insome seemingly unrelated way and probably hurt even more. It's like, take yourlumps and just sit with it and be with it.

Bruce Cryer: [01:32:29] Thebest chance of loosening its grip is to sit with it and be with it. I thinkthis is where the work of HeartMath and Dr. Joe is very profound because youlook at all of the experiences that you've had that were traumatic when youwere young, all the years of numbing, and then still heartbreak, the traumathat you experience is stored in the body. It just is. I mean, that'sbiochemically true. It's not like a psychological concept. Well, we storetrauma. Okay, good. 
But physiologically we know the mechanisms of how that happens. It's in theautonomic nervous system. It's getting stored in the subconscious mind. Firsttime I've ever heard this expression was from Joe, that this autonomic nervoussystem is our subconscious mind, that the system that manages all the processesin our body, including the storage of memory, is controlled by a subconsciouspart of our mind. We're not thinking about what the autonomic system does. It'sautomatic. It just does stuff, including the storage of memories. And thereason that we store memories is to prevent future harm.

Luke Storey: [01:33:35] Yeah,it's nature's built-in defense system.

Bruce Cryer: [01:33:38] Thedefense system. So in case something similar happens in the future, you'll knowwhat to do. You'll kill it, or you'll fight it, or you'll run from it. You'lldo something. But that storage is taking up energetic resources in our body asproven by the fact that something can set off an old trauma that's completelyunrelated to the trauma. So there was a lot of energy in there that suddenlybursts out.

So I think that's thething with heartbreak. You can try to numb it. You can try to forget about it.You can try to tell yourself, I've moved on. Good for you, son. But have youreally? Have you really moved on from the trauma that was stored? Becausethat's what happens in the body. It just is. 

So I think that's wherethere's Dr. Joe's meditation techniques or the HeartMath work of coherence thatwe have to allow ourselves to feel what we have felt. But if we only do that,the danger is we're going to wallow. We're going to get stuck. Because ifyou're just feeling it, that's what happens. That can easily happen. You canget so hopeless, feeling victimized, how unfair life is, feeling so abandoned,whatever the version may be.

And where does theantidote come from? Where does the strength come from? And that's where Ithink, in my own case, I've found that, thank God, I've learned to be kind morethan not. Thank God I've learned to be compassionate sooner than to just alwaysjudge somebody because they're acting in a way that seems unfriendly tome. Well, do you have any idea what their life is like? No. What's yourpoint? Well, then you maybe ought to be compassionate because you have no ideawhat you inadvertently may have just triggered in them that has nothing to dowith you. And now you're reacting. 

So I think it's thehumbling nature of of life to be able to deeply experience what the pain hasbeen but to also recognize, and this takes some faith, not necessarily faith inGod, but faith in yourself, at least to keep on going, to keep on trying to bepositive when it feels so hard. And I know you've been there because you haveto have been there. And I know I have been there.

Luke Storey: [01:35:51] Yeah.Well, there's something to be said in there for this phenomenon of spiritualbypassing. I think that many humans experience suffering and then look for adeeper answer, and so they start exploring spirituality. It's a tricky one inthere because it's the love and light thing. It's like, oh, it's all good. I'mjust-- it's like this-- what's the word I'm looking for? It's like, I don'tknow. It's like a false sense of joy.

It's like trying totrick oneself into thinking we're all good. Everything's cool. I'm becomingspiritual. But there's still that whole bucket full of pain that hasn't reallybeen brought to the surface and processed. And then you're a sitting duck foranother similar situation, as you described how the nervous system, thesubconscious hangs on to this stuff, and then you find yourself in anothertailspin. And meanwhile you're going, what? I've been being spiritual. What thehell? 

But sometimes it does,I think, take the boots on the ground, the scrappy work of just getting inthere and getting dirty and just feeling it all. But you raise anotherinteresting point there, and that is the risk of getting caught in the morassof self-pity and wallowing in the pain. It's like I don't know exactly wherethe balance is there. There's probably not a, well, there's a three-stepprocess, do this, and it works every time. 

It's so individual andso dynamic. But it's worth stating that those are different possibilities,different maybe pitfalls that one can fall into. And in the latter, do youthink in the terms of wallowing in self-pity and just getting caught in the sufferingrather than feeling it for a period and thinking, well, I think I'm empty, Ithink we've processed and we're ready to open our heart to life and move on,where do you think the act of service, as you mentioned, being kind andcompassionate to people, where do you think the direct act of service plays arole in getting one out of that self-obsession? 

Because when you'redepressed, you're thinking about yourself, and your problems, and yourthoughts, and your feelings. We tend to just silo ourselves into our owninternal experience and get trapped there. Do you think service is a gateway togetting out of self and starting to express and move through that in a healthyway?

Bruce Cryer: [01:38:29] Yes.I mean, I think so many times-- I mean, I've had certain financial setbacks,for example, at times. And so then, of course, the energy is I got to recoup.And so a lot of mostly mind-based energy starts to come into what can I do to rightthe ship quick, or whatever. And the counterintuitive thing to do is to, atthat moment, say, no, instead, I'm going to just see if I can serve this personright now. 

So a recent example wasI had this lady who I'm connected to on LinkedIn, I don't know how long we'vebeen connected, but a year or maybe more, who reached out to me. She's aprofessor of psychology in Iran looking for a research position in the UnitedStates. As I sat there talking to her, we did a Zoom call. I thought, what isit like to be a researcher in a university in Iran as a woman right now? 

I thought, oh myfreaking God, what would it be like right now? I mean, with the war on women,this going on, I mean, killing of women for going outside the bounds of whatthey're expected to do. So I just humbly would listen to her, and she hadreached out to me. She saw there was university references on my profileteaching at Stanford, etc. And she hoped that I could help her. And Ithought, this is an interesting challenge because I have connections and maybeI can. But, boy, this is definitely a freebie. I mean, there's all that headstuff going on that was slowing me down initially.

Luke Storey: [01:40:06] Andyou're like, I got to focus on recouping my own stuff here.

Bruce Cryer: [01:40:10] Yeah.And I'm trying to help this Iranian professor get a research position in a USuniversity. Let me see what I can do. And sure enough, it looks like she'sgoing to get over here through one of my connections. So I had enough presenceof mind to realize in that moment that whether I can help her or not, thisvulnerable heart has reached out to me hoping that I might be able to help. SoI need to at least make some effort. I do know people that maybe couldhelp. 

So there was a greatfulfillment. And even making the effort and putting out the connections andseeing the response that came back, I knew she would be heartened by thatbecause these were all people that were friends of mine that I knew would takeseriously anything that I was asking them for help with, even if they couldn'tphysically guarantee her a position at the university. 

So I did it and it wasvery satisfying. And then it looks like she is actually going to get a positionto come over to Washington DC. But it was a great example of, in the moment,thinking that whether I'm successful or not I need to respond to the heart ofthis person right now. I can't respond to every single person that wants myhelp. I get weird stuff. People ask me on Instagram, can you pay for my poor brother?And they send me a picture and I think, who knows what this is? 

But I talked to her,and I saw her CV, and I could tell she's a highly intelligent person. HerEnglish is quite good. And this is not a fake. This was all completely real.And so if there's any way I can serve this heart that was reaching out, and notdesperate because she's more refined than that, but still you realize she`could contribute so much more if she was not stuck in her currentsituation. 

So I have found manytimes in my life that even when things are desperate and the mind would say,dude, you got to take care of your own house first before you start cleaning upother people's houses, well, in general, that's true, but also there are thosetimes where life is asking you to serve. Do it.

Luke Storey: [01:42:17] Isthis next part of the story where you won the lottery just randomly afterhelping?

Bruce Cryer: [01:42:21] No.That would have been cool. An inheritance suddenly.

Luke Storey: [01:42:27] Yeah.But I think there definitely is something to be said for just getting out ofyourself. I mean, I think a lot of the things that keep us stuck are just goingaround and around, and ruminating, and getting so fixated on our problems andsolving them that self-centeredness can often keep us trapped. And sometimes itis just like, okay, I need to just get out of my own head here for a minute andjust focus on someone else. You think of the phenomenon of therapist andpsychoanalyst whose personal lives are a total shit show--

Bruce Cryer: [01:42:59] Butthey can--

Luke Storey: [01:43:00] Yeah,because they derive pleasure and a sense of purpose from helping these otherpeople unravel all of their problems. And meanwhile, they're not doing it forthemselves. So there's a dysfunctional side of it maybe if you use it as anescape to help other people. But there is a huge key, I think, in that when youfind yourself just thinking about yourself too much. 

I learned this inaddiction recovery. Pretty early on, I realized if I was really in a stuckspot, that the fastest way out of that was to think about someone else'swelfare and to just do something really inconvenient to help someone else, picka kid up, an hour away, and take them to a meeting or something like that wasjust, wow, I felt like shit all day today. What happened? I go, literally all Idid is just inconvenience myself slightly to help someone else. It's like, oh,I'm out of it. It's like magic. It's really a beautiful principle. 

So you work withcorporations as well, training people how to use this heart modality to improvetheir bottom line and to become more successful as a company. How does this,for someone listening who's more pragmatic and not so touchy feely, say someonethat does own a business or has a career about which they're very serious, andwants to make money, and be successful, and grow, and scale, and all thosethings, how does this model apply to that?

Bruce Cryer: [01:44:36] Well,there are many facets, I think, in organizations where there's a corporationthat's thinking always about profits. There's enough sophistication these daysthat generates that most reliably are happy customers. And why are customershappy? It's usually not just because of the product, but it's how they've beentreated by the company that sold them the product. 

I mean, Apple remains amodel for all this stuff, in general. They're exceptional at the customerexperience. I mean, you look at the freaking packaging, you can't wait to seethe box, let alone open it, let alone whatever is inside it. It's like, the boxis so good. But there's a sense of care. There's a sense of refinement. 

And so I think I thinkthat's a great example of does Apple talk about love all the time? Well, SteveJobs is pretty much a love guy as much as he was about design and caring aboutthe customer. But I think whether it's a for-profit business needing to befocused on, as I was saying earlier, to get the highest profit business, youhave to have the most happy customers because they are going to continue totalk about you. 

As your marketing costsgo down, your customer retention is high, and so they keep buying from you. Andso they're highly profitable compared to the new customers you have to acquire,and how expensive that is, and all the things you may have to do in yourbusiness to generate the customers. So love it every step of the way. 

Actually, it makes alot of sense because the more everyone that that customer touches in yourorganization, the more that customer is satisfied and fulfilled and thinking,that was great. I presented a bad energy today. I was frustrated with yourproduct, and you handled it great. Thank you for that. I feel way better aboutyou, and the company, and as a result of that. So to me, that's a very practicalthought, is that what can sound very soft, very fluffy, these two guys, thesewarm-hearted guys talking all about love today, we do business with people thatwe love. And we go to places over and over again because there's somethingabout the vibe of the place that we love. And there's certain products that wekeep buying because we love them. 

These are not words weare afraid of using in regards to all this. And I've given many a talk whenI've said to the audience, how is it okay for a 350-pound, 6'7 defensivelineman to just come off having won the Super Bowl or won a game and just ravedabout, my guys play with so much heart that I love my guys? I'd do anything formy guys. I love them. I love every one of you. Totally testosterone driven humans,completely comfortable talking about love. 

And yet in a businesscontext, don't go there. That's soft. That's mushy. That's for girls. You don'tdo that. And to me, it's crazy at this day and age, especially in the last fewyears where everything's gotten so polarized and we're so suspicious ofeverybody for whatever reasons. There's a need to connect more than ever. Andbusinesses got to be on to that.

In the case ofHeartmath, we recognize that here we are talking about a concept called coherence.We're saying if you can learn how to regulate your emotions, put out more love,be more appreciative, recognize what you're feeling internally, a result ofthat is that your body is going to be more coherent. Your heart and brain aregoing to be more coherent. You're going to think more clearly. A lot of goodstuff can happen to you. 

We also realized that'sour message going to the world. If we are not practicing that in ways that aretangible to whoever is interacting with us, people will sense this is snakeoil. So we were constantly practicing, how can we get better at being coherentourselves? How can we get better at treating the customer always with respect,always with care? How can we do that with each other in meetings? And when Iwas CEO for 11 years, the last three years I was CEO, we were named in the top50 Bay Area workplaces. And that was our employees voting on anonymously,voting on how the company treated them.

Luke Storey: [01:48:58] Outof how many companies, approximately, do you know?

Bruce Cryer: [01:49:01] Hundreds.I don't know how many there were. Hundreds.

Luke Storey: [01:49:04] Imean, that's inclusive of Silicon Valley and all that.

Bruce Cryer: [01:49:08] Itwas quite an honor. But again, we said this is practical, to act in coherentways, to be loving to the shipping people, to treat them with respect. So itdoesn't have to be just, oh, I love you, shipper. No. It's like be respectfulto them. Be humble that you have no idea what their life is like, so treat themwith the utmost respect. They could be a saint in this place. They could bemore of a saint than anybody else in here, and you're judging them as ashipper. 

So we just said thatthat's how we're going to be with each other as best we can. We weren'tperfect. We had our gaps, but high level, high percentage of the time. Andhaving been CEO during that period, I felt like that was something thatmattered to me, that I felt like we were an easy target because we're talkingall about love and we're trying to prove it with science. Oh, you cleversci-California-ed people. Okay, we're on to you. But we got to act it this way.It's got to actually be how we behave. 

And so many people overthe years would say, it's so fun interacting with you guys. You guys are such agood company. Everybody is so friendly and warm-hearted. I said, yeah, it'sgenuine. It doesn't mean we're not stressed, doesn't mean we don't have ourmonths where we have, how are we going to pay salaries this month? We've hadall of that, but we never lost sight of it's still about being as respectfuland as kind, as compassionate as we possibly can be. And I would argue thatthat energy is needed more than ever in the world.

Luke Storey: [01:50:39] Oh,my God.

Bruce Cryer: [01:50:40] Morethan ever.

Luke Storey: [01:50:42] Yeah.It's interesting to observe culturally right now. There's this huge divide inour culture, I think especially in the past three years. And on one hand-- Iguess it's just duality playing out, but on one hand, you have things that arepretty dark and scary coming to light in terms of just the organizing bodiesthat run all of these different aspects of our society. The emperor's clothesare falling off, and it's just the media and just everything. It's justlike, what? 

I mean, I never trustedthe government anyway because I'm a rebel at heart from way back, so it wasn'treally news to me. But you're seeing the darkness and the erosion of so manycultural norms, and yet at the same time, you have these massive corporationsthat have a meditation room and invite guys like you in to teach about love andheart coherence. 

And I see on socialmedia all these really young people who are doing meditation and getting intoall these esoteric practices and things. Even I remember when The Power of Nowcame out, that book, it was revelatory to me, and there was no one around myage, maybe I was in my early 30s or something that I could talk to about that,except my little inner circle of spiritual seekers and stuff. And now this isjust like, everyone knows this stuff. It's so prevalent.

Bruce Cryer: [01:52:13] Atleast some level.

Luke Storey: [01:52:15] Yeah.I mean, not everyone, but I mean, it's like the spirituality as a whole,mindfulness, meditation, yoga, all of this stuff is much more pervasive, atleast in Western culture, than it's ever been. So it's like it's that classic.It was the best of times. It's the worst of times. It's like everything is justramped up on both sides of the scale. It's a really interesting time to bealive in that way, because one day I wake up and I go, oh man, things arebetter than ever. Everyone's waking up. I live in Austin. There's this huge newagey spiritual community here, people doing great work. And then I turn on myphone and go on Twitter, I'm like, oh my God, we're going into World War III.It's so full on right now. It's a really interesting time to be a human.

Bruce Cryer: [01:53:05] Yeah,I think it is interesting. And I have a little longer perspective just becauseI'm older. But yeah, I mean, to see how mainstream, things like meditationrooms and mindfulness, I mean, the average person-- the CEO of the universitywhere I do some work currently used the term mindful the other day, just aspart of a strategy meeting like, we need to be mindful, and I thought, that didnot use to happen. And he's not even a meditator. 

But even just thethought of being mindful has become extremely mainstream. And it's reassuringon the one hand that so many people are recognizing there's another side tolife that I need to learn about, and it's about myself and how to truly growfrom within. 
I think that's one of the silver linings of the pandemic was people beingthrown back on themselves and at the same time wanting to blame whoever was thetarget of the day and at the same time realizing, wait a minute, what could Ibe doing differently too? Whether it's my immune system, whether it's how Itreat other people, whether it's, man, I'm judging everybody that's not goingalong with my particular train of thought here.

So I think it's overalla good thing. But I think, energetically speaking, in the world, there is moreupheaval going on than ever. I mean, that's probably verifiable somehow,statistically. Maybe there aren't more actual wars going on than ever becausethere are people that study that like, well, actually there's fewer wars on theplanet than-- okay, great. That doesn't make it feel any safer because it's notonly war that's going to get us. Oh, yeah, climate change.

Luke Storey: [01:54:38] There'salso different types of wars too. Now we're in an information war. It's a bitmore ambiguous. There's just confusion and division and this polarity betweenleft and right. And there's definitely, seeming to me, but I'm conspiratorial,there seems to be an orchestration of chaos going on. So it's not necessarilythe military industrial complex war machine. I mean, they're still doing theirthing too. But I'm not expecting a literal World War III. It's like economicwarfare and cultural warfare, just the erosion of traditional values, at leastin the West and things like that. Yeah, it's so interesting. 

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That said, do you havean optimistic point of view on where things are headed as an American man?

Bruce Cryer: [01:57:11] That'sa great question. I think there's going to be a lot more turmoil and chaosbefore it gets, obviously, better. I mean, I'm influenced by other people thathave said similar things that looking into the future, it looks like it's basedon how certain things, systems are breaking down or at breaking points, thatthere's going to be certain things that just will get worse, like climatethings. This is already happening.

But I think there isabsolutely some orchestration going on. There's no doubt in my mind thatthere's all kinds of factions that are trying to cause disruption to gain morepower. So all that's happening to. And to me, it's all part of the upheaval ofhumanity that's going on. And so I keep coming back to where we've talkedabout, since the beginning of the chat, of the heart is where the homeis. 

And I keep coming back,for myself, to whatever happens. And I don't want to spend too much timeplaying out all the scenarios because it's completely freaking overwhelming tothink about the climate issue. And that's forgetting about all the othercultural issues. That one thing is getting ever more prevalent. It's toooverwhelming. So what can I do in this moment? Radiate as much compassion andlove to the world as I possibly can.

As woo woo as thatsound, as new agey as that sounds, what can I do in this moment, energetically,at least for the three feet around me that can be measured? I can affect that,and maybe I can affect 10 feet, and maybe I can affect someone who's listeningto this to say, that I can do. I can breathe through my heart and I can besolid in caring about people who need care. And God knows there's a lot rightnow in this moment that need more care from someone, and more compassion fromsomeone, and more hope from someone. So if I can give anything to somebody, Iwant to do that. So that's where I'm--

Luke Storey: [01:59:20] Beautiful.

Bruce Cryer: [01:59:20] Asbest I can.

Luke Storey: [01:59:21] Imean, that's it. I can't see any other solution because the macro is so beyondour control as individuals. But let's say we conclude this conversation todayand you pull out of the driveway and you could go, but you let the other guypass, and it gives that person a little warmth in their heart. And then they goto the gas station, and someone's a little impatient at the cash register, andthey cut him some slack, and so on and so on.

And then the cashregister picks their kid up from school, and their kid got bad grades, and theyhave some leniency there, and so on and so on. There's a, I don't know ifvirality is the right word. There's a contagion element to that energy, justlike there's a contagion element to riots, and people getting together, and acity just burning down because everyone catches it.

Bruce Cryer: [02:00:12] Catchesit. Exactly.

Luke Storey: [02:00:14] Soit's a similar thing. And it reminds me of those experiments they've done wherethey have a group of people meditate at a certain time in a city or about acity, and then the crime rate goes down for the period in which they'remeditating. And I can't think of the specific one, but I know there's been afew that have been validated like that. I'm sure you guys have done thatresearch or at least aware of it. So it's not woo woo, it's actually provable,at least just by observation, if nothing else. 

And I know in my ownlife, if I'm going out into the world with a shitty attitude, I find thatalmost everyone I interact with irritates the hell out of me. It's like you cango out into the same world with a certain perspective or bringing a certainenergy and you just find, God, everyone's impatient, and irritating, and justnothing's going my way. And it's like that Murphy's law thing will play out,but it all originated from what I'm projecting.

It's that like, oh,create your own reality thing, which sounds trite, but it's actually just true.It's just the way things work. So I like your perspective. I'm going tosummarize what you said is like, don't bother trying to change the world, justchange your own experience of it. And it's probably the most each individualcan contribute, really.

Bruce Cryer: [02:01:37] Yeah.And have humility. I mean, again, back to the compassion thing. Even the peoplewho seem to be the manipulators or are, I still don't know what they're like,how they were abused and what happened in their life that brought them to this,they are still human. They are still, from a certain perspective, a child ofGod just like I am. As distorted as they may be, as off track as they may be,as acting irrationally, or inhumanly, or awfully as they may be, they are stillalive. And that doesn't mean they no longer have any value whatsoever. 

How many people havemade complete changes? You've talked about your own incredible change. I mean,you weren't a despot, I don't think, but it's not that people are incapable ofthat amount of change. They are. As we see, some of the greatest heroes arethose who have been-- I mean, I often think about Nelson Mandela. I share abirthday with him. I'm not the same age, but same birth date. And he wasaggressive. He was a boxer.

Luke Storey: [02:02:41] Oh,I didn't know that.

Bruce Cryer: [02:02:42] Asa kid. And that was part of what got him into jail. I mean, yes, he wasprotesting the apartheid government, but he was also very aggressive and was anactual boxer. And it was 25 years in prison, and a lot of soul searching, and alot of internal awakening that showed him there had to be a whole otherapproach to life.

And it was thanks tohim that the whole reconciliation movement even happened in South Africa, whereinstead of all the blacks suddenly being in control and lynching all the whitesfor all they had done for hundreds of years, there were these sessions all overthe country for years to try to reconcile, to try to bring the people together.Who had been the oppressors were being invited into these sessions, not like incommunist China being beaten by the new rulers. It was, how are we going toreconcile as a country because we--

Luke Storey: [02:03:33] Wow,I didn't know that.

Bruce Cryer: [02:03:34] Wewon't go on as a country if we don't do that because all of us, we're-- themajority is now in power. And you can't have oppressed us this long withoutsome serious retribution. And yet our leader is saying we have to havereconciliation now.

Luke Storey: [02:03:49] Wow.That's powerful.

Bruce Cryer: [02:03:50] AndNelson Mandela is, to me, one of the most magnificent humans ever because ofbeing able to do that. I mean, when he walked out of the-- famous stories abouthim walking out of prison, he forgave all the jailers, all the guard. And I actuallyvisited the prison where he was for 25 years. It's now a museum. And the tourguide we had had been in the prison with him at the same time. And they talkedabout how Mandela had such a powerful presence that there was always a guardassigned to him.

And after a while, theywould all start to be on his side. And so at a certain point, they'd have to,okay, that guy's getting too friendly with Mandela. Get him out of there. Wegot to get a hard-nose Afrikaaner in charge again because he would just be kindto them, and he would be forgiving, and he could have easily not been that way.He was in prison. All his people were in prison, and his nation was in tatters,controlled by a tiny elite that wanted to do everything. And yet he could findforgiveness, and he could find it in his heart. 

And so that spreadthrough a nation. It didn't solve all his problems. It still had to grow upbecause it didn't know how to act in that way without him. So they were all-- Iwas there right before he passed. And there was a lot of fear because when he'sreally not with us anymore, how are we going to manage this? It's like, as longas he was there, even when he was out of power, he was still this father figureof the nation of we can be peaceful together. We are brothers, whatever hashappened in the past. And to be able to say that to your oppressor who had doneunspeakable things to your people for hundreds of years was an incredible actof courage to do that. So if he was doing that and we have the same birthday, Igot to.

Luke Storey: [02:05:45] Yougot to step up. You have a benchmark.

Bruce Cryer: [02:05:48] Exactly.

Luke Storey: [02:05:48] That'sbeautiful. Well, that is an excellent segue into my final question. And youmight have just given me the one of three, but who are three teachers orteachings that have influenced your life that you'd like to share with us?

Bruce Cryer: [02:06:03] Yeah.I mean, I don't think of Nelson Mandela as a teacher per se, but I've read alot about him. I've studied his things. And there's something about just hisbeingness as a man, as a leader, and even before he was physically a leader,how he was in the world that is incredible inspiration. 

To me, and in a similarvein, Martin Luther King, a man that stood up for his principles without beingshy, ever. Very authentic and very real. And always his message was thesame. We have to do this without violence against one another, emotionalviolence or physical violence. We have to do this with love to each other. Andyet he was saying that as an oppressed, as part of a race that had beenoppressed. So to be able to go higher and be able to speak from that standpointas somebody was incredibly powerful. 

And I'll say JoeDispenza because he's a good friend, I know him well. But his commitment toseeing humanity advance and all the ways I have seen him evolve andgrow. There are a lot of teachers that have a new program, and they bringout a new version, but are they really evolving? Not usually. It's like, oh,they're packaging the same thing, but they've got a new thing, then now they'vegot to give it another name. And you get on to that. And I mean, Joe brings outnew music or whatever, but I experience him as evolving. He is on the path moreand more about love, more and more about coherence than ever.

And I give him a lot ofcredit for that because he has found ways to reach many people, very diverseaudience in powerful, motivating, inspiring, hopeful ways. And I think we needmore messengers out there giving positive messages that's based in the sciencebecause our minds got to buy in, and the powers that be need to buy in. Soscience matters still. But we need more of that where you cannot just feelinspired by somebody, but you have something you can do.

Luke Storey: [02:08:20] Yeah,I agree. Yeah. One thing I remember about the conversation I had with Dr. Joe,that's when I found his work. I had been practicing Kundalini yoga for manyyears and so when I found his stuff, I'm looking around like, this is doingKundalini yoga and calling it neuroscience or whatever. But I don't want to sayI called him on that, but I was like, Joe, like, this is not new stuff. Andhe's like, well, yeah, no shit. I know that. But how many people are going toput on a white turban and go sit there and do the things? He said, "I'mtaking these esoteric practices and making them accessible to a larger group ofpeople." 

And I was like, wow,that's actually really cool. And to your point, man, it's like all of thewisdom and all of the practices, all of the teachings that we need areprevalent. They're already here. It's not that we even need a new thing, it'sjust that we need to, to your point, more people that have different ways oftranslating that in a way that's compatible with different people's beliefsystems or worldview. But it's like the raw materials for us to evolve andchange and create the kind of world that we crave are present and here. 

It's just not everyoneis even-- Joe Dispenza's too woo woo for many people, I mean, let alone akundalini yoga class or something. Yeah. I like that perspective. And that'swhat we're doing here today. There's hopefully someone that's heard what youhad to say. Well, I don't hope, I know there are going to be many people,probably thousands, that are like, wow, never looked at it like that, and it'sgoing to have a positive impact. So for that, I thank you, and--

Bruce Cryer: [02:10:01] Well,and I want to thank you. You're cool.

Luke Storey: [02:10:05] Ido what I can.

Bruce Cryer: [02:10:06] Youdo what you can. But you have so much depth. This has been a really deep, richexperience for me. As I said, I get interviewed often, and I'm very gratefulthat people want to hear what I have to say, but I was so compelled by so manythings you said today, so many insights you've had from your life, from all thedeep work you have done. So it was very energizing and rich for me today. And Ijust want to-- 11 million and counting.

Luke Storey: [02:10:36] Thanks,brother.

Bruce Cryer: [02:10:36] Alot of people need to hear how you come across, how you share is reallybeautiful, really powerful.

Luke Storey: [02:10:43] Received.Thank you very much. Great to meet you, again.

Bruce Cryer: [02:10:46] Absolutely.

Luke Storey: [02:10:50] Well,that's a wrap for Bruce Cryer. If you're a long-time listener of the show,thank you so much for continuing to join me. You are a ride or fly listener,and for that, I love you. And if you're a new listener of The Life Stylist andyou just stumbled upon this conversation with Bruce Cryer, I encourage you, ifyou feel called to share this episode with a couple of friends. I think thisone really held some value in our ability to connect to our innermost andhighest selves and of course, one another.

Next week we've got anincredible show coming for you, man. These are two in a row that carry asimilar theme. And I love exploring the inner journey and how we can elevateour consciousness and thus our comprehensive well-being. Next week's show isEpisode 473. It's called The God Pod: Spiritual Evolution and a Vision of Valuefor Humanity with Dr. Mark Gaffney. And man, if you enjoyed this show, nextweek's show is going to blow your heart wide open, folks. Definitely one worthchecking into. 

And if you want to makesure you don't miss next week's episode, I can make that very easy for you.Here's what you do. Simply go to lukestorey.com/newsletter, quickly enter yourname and email, and next week on Tuesday morning, I will send you all of theshow notes, written transcripts, audio, and video for that episode. And guesswhat? Next Tuesday after that, you're going to get the same thing. Again,that's lukestorey.com/newsletter.

If you want to get thefree gifts that Bruce kindly offered during this conversation, you can findthem at lukestorey.com/brucegifts. He's got some musical guided meditations andan eBook on Awakening Creative Brilliance all free for you atlukestorey.com/brucegifts. And with that, my fellow humanoids, I bid youfarewell. Have a great week, and I'll see you soon.

 

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