♪ [music] ♪- [Vishen] My biggest highlight
actually came before A-Fest. See, we don't just randomly put on an event,
call up a bunch of incredible speakers, promise them the time of their life in Greece, and
then put them on stage. We actually test all their stuff out. So, pretty much every speaker here, I went
through their programs. I ate their recommended diets. I drank their freaking coffee. And I've been testing this out for one year
and what I want to share with you is what I found, what worked, what did not work. What were the myths and the challenges on
hacking your body, increasing longevity? I had the healthiest year of my life and I
want to share with you how I got there. Now, the thing is, I turned 40 in January. So, I'm now 40 years old. And I made a promise to myself when I was
35 that before I turned 40 I would be fit enough to run a marathon. In the last one year, I decided that that
was a dumb idea because I realized that it's actually not an actual measure of fitness
or even how good your body is. That came from a conversation with JJ Virgin. So, I learned that all of these ideas I had
about what it meant to be fit, what it meant to be healthy, a lot of them were nothing
more than rules, bullsh** rules from the culturescape. What I want to share with you is what I learned,
that I now believe, in the last one year and what you can take back. So, what I'm going to talk about are my bio-hacking
experiments between June 2015 and May, and I'm going to share with you what I learned
about the mind, what I learned about food, what I learned about the body. And I'm going to give you really rapid fire
a whole range of different tools that you can look into to bring this back into your
life, depending on what results you want. I promise you this, if you take action on
some of the things that I'm about to share with you, you will add as much as 5 to 25
years to your lifespan. And I kid you not, a lot of this is studied
by science, a lot of this stuff is validated. This is what I believe. And I believe that the cause of these things
which I'm going to share, I will slow down my aging by almost a factor of half and I
will extend my lifespan by 10 to 25 years. So, here's what I learned. Now, the first experiment has to do with bio-hacking
the mind. So, a lot of people do not think about the
mind as something that you want to actually hack, but what I learned from Dave Asprey
in experiments with 40 Years of Zen, is that consciousness is hackable and that the way
modern science is evolving, it's so interesting, you can actually study up to 50 different
frequencies in the brain. So, a lot of you may have heard of alpha,
beta, theta, Delta. Have you guys heard of that? - [Together] Yes. - It turns out that's really, really, really
basic. We've gone so much beyond that. I spoke to the author of the book, "God in
Your Brain" Dr. Mark Waldman. There are at least 50 different frequencies
which are being studied right now and you can reverse engineer these frequencies to
change the way your brain functions. So, I do this, JJ does this, Dave does this,
and 40 Years of Zen is one of those things. Now, you do not have to do 40 Years of Zen,
you could easily use this with the Muse band, which is a very affordable device. There are numerous devices out there. But what I did, that I found had the biggest
result was this, I want to show you something really interesting. So, if you can see that image there, that's
JJ, Dave and me actually looking at my brain waves. That's what my brain waves look like. So, by limiting what brain waves correspond
to what states you want, what corresponds to creativity, what corresponds to intuition,
what corresponds to, now this is weird, but the ability to alter and bend reality, you
can induce those states at will and then, you can do more with. So, I actually learned how to function intuitively
in a waking state. I learned how to make my meditation go really
deep and all of this through hooking my brain up and then studying these brainwave patterns. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I can guarantee
you that one of the things that you can do immediately without any expensive machinery
is radical forgiveness. Radical forgiveness is the big thing. Radical forgiveness was the key to the healthiest
brain states. So, you learned that technique yesterday. It's also clearly explained in my book, "The
Code of the Extraordinary Mind." Radical forgiveness is one of the biggest
things that you can bring into your life. Forgive yourself or someone else that hurt
you every single day, and in a moment, I'll show you how. I'm going to give you guys a simple audio
you can take home for free that will guide you through this. Now, the next thing that I worked on this
past one year is refining my own meditation practice and being able to go into really
deep powerful states of meditation. So, how many of you here have tried my 6-Phase
Meditation? Quite a number, right. How many of you here do this on a daily basis
right now? So, a little bit less so. But, you guys are probably the smartest, wisest
people in the room, those who raised your hands. Nothing comes close to the 6-Phase. It isn't me who invented it, rather I looked
at all the latest research on meditation and I put it together into one 20-minute hack. Do you know that most people who study meditation
stop? They do not continue because they buy into
so many bullsh**rules about meditation, from you having to clear your mind to you having
to breathe in and breathe out or chant mantras. A lot of that is outdated. I believe in science. I believe in what scientists are saying works. I believe in empirical evidence, studying
it yourself, 6-Phase does this. There are six different levels of your self,
your consciousness that you can level up on, that science shows has the greatest contribution
to well-being. And the 6-Phase takes you through this, through
the most effective way in 15 minutes. So, the first one is compassion and kindness. So, in the first two to three minutes of the
meditation, you learn a simple exercise that helps you create compassion with all of humanity. Now, when you do this, you find that over
time and over time I mean within a month, within two, within three months, your idea
of yourself changes. You start to give a damn about the rest of
the world. Your affinity to your religion or your tribe
or your race or your country starts fading away and you develop an affinity with the
entire human race. You become more humanistic. And that's the first thing that happens in
Phase 1. Then you go on to Phase 2. Phase 2 is about gratitude. Science has shown that gratitude has the single
largest correlation with human well-being than any other character trait. So, you then go into gratitude. Stage 3 you go into forgiveness. We've already spoken about that. Now, all three of those states, have to do
with discipline, with the idea of disciplining yourself to be in a state of bliss throughout
your day. But then you go to Phase 4, 5, 6 which is
based on future dreaming. So, Phase 4, 5, 6 is about developing a vision
for your future and the impact you want to have in the world. Phase 4, is basically thinking of having a
vision for your life three years ahead. Phase 5, is having a vision for how you want
today to unfold and Phase 6 is feeling supported. Phase 6 comes from religious and spiritual
traditions where you have this feeling of being supported by a higher power. Now, we string it all together and in the
book "Code of the Extraordinary Mind" I included a bonus chapter where I explain this entire
process. So, we won't go through it now. I explain it in the book, but I go further. The Code is one of the biggest technologically
hooked up books in history. So, you can actually go to mindvalley.com/extraordinary,
it's completely free, sign up and you get the online version of the book. In the online version, there is a free course
that we've set up for you called the 6-Phase Meditation. You can get this course and immediately over
seven days I will train you through this approach. So, you start with day one on compassion,
day two on gratitude, but by day seven, you're able to string them altogether and you have
your meditation practice. And entrepreneurs who do this, their lives
change. Many entrepreneurs say, "I'm so A.D.D. I can't do this type of meditation." This is designed for people whose mind doesn't
want to sit still. It's designed for people who want to go out
there and kick butt in the world. So, with the book, you can unlock the course. And now, as of today, I'm proud to announce
we now have an app. So, you can go to the app store right now
in your Android or your iPhone, type in Mind Valley Academy, download the Mind Valley Academy
app, and if you have the book and you log in, you will instantly see this program will
be available to you, the entire 6-Phase Meditation course. So, you can go back and put yourself through
this training completely free. Cool. - [Woman] Cool. - So, next up, body. So, as I turned 40, I managed to get a better
fitness level than I was 25 to 40. So, in the last, actually more than 10, but
15 years of my life. So, I want to share with you what I discovered. So, the first big thing, is how do you measure
fitness. If you're not measuring it, you don't know
that you're truly becoming fit. There are two simple ways. Two really simple ways. One is resting heart rate. When I wake up in the morning, I check my
resting heart rate and I try to keep it below a certain threshold. Now, I'm not going to share that number with
you because it's different for different people based on your biology, based even on your
ethnicity, based on where you live and the foods you eat. But, you should know your resting heart rate
and you should try to make sure that that isn't going higher. Higher actually means less fit. But, the second thing I do is a simple concept
called set points. So, a set point is a simple measure that lets
you lock onto a particular health level. You see, as we get older, different things
happen to biology. We might put on weight around our waist or
our thighs. We might lose our endurance or our fitness
level, but most of us accept this as being so. We accept the fact that, you know, when I'm
80, I probably won't be able to do as many push-ups as I can right now when I'm 35. Or, you know, when I'm 70, I'll probably get
some weight around your belly. Why? That's another rule that you want to disrupt. So, what I do is I establish set points. See my belt, don't worry, I'm keeping my pants
on people. - So, I have a particular loop in my belt. I've had that same hole in my belt for 10
years. Every time I find that I can no longer tighten
my belt to that hole, I know that I have failed a set point. So, my belt loop is a set point. And that means I immediately have to install
what is called a set point correction procedure. So, a set point correction procedure is simply
for me, it's one-week low-carb diet, working out in the gym twice a week. That's it. And in one week, I go back to that same belt
level. So, I've been at the same belt level for 10
years until A-Fest Bio-hacking and the experiments I did in the last six weeks, where I actually
lost a further two inches. So, now I'm the slimmest waist level I've
had since 25. I'm actually in better shape now that I was
in 25. Check this out. This vest, I bought this vest eight weeks
ago. This is how loose it is for me right now. Eight weeks ago, this was a V-shaped vest. It was actually slim fit. Now I can stick another human child into the
back of my vest. - It's amazing. So, we'll talk about that later. We'll talk about of how I went to radical
slimming really fast. So, set points are really important and I
have two set points. Belt loop is one. Now, the second set point, is really simple. It's push-ups. At anytime in my life, I must be able to drop
down and do 50 push-ups. If I cannot, I have failed my set point. So, with setpoints, there's a terminology
I use and it's called your non-negotiable point, your non-negotiable set point. My non-negotiable set point is 50 push-ups. If I cannot do 50 push-ups, it means that
something is off. Maybe I've put on too much weight or maybe
my muscle strength has gone down. Again, what happens next? Can anyone answer? - Set point correction. - Set point correction procedure. So, I go back to the gym and I change the
way I'm eating. So, I've been able to consistently do the
same amount of push-ups at 40 as I could at 25. But here's the thing, it's actually getting
higher. So, I just set a new push-up record, which
is 55, which is still pretty good. But, here's what happens. Every time you fail a set point, let's say,
I wake up one day and I cannot do 50, I can only do 47. What happens is, not only must I correct myself
to 50, I must level up by one. So, that's a called correction procedure. I must level up by one. My new acceptable set point becomes 51. So, over the last couple of years I've gone
from 50 push-ups to 51. You see, our brains are really interesting
when we fail. So, if I set a goal for 50 and I only do 47,
you feel like a failure. But that's the wrong conditioning in your
brain. You want to flip that around and turn a problem
into a project or a problem into a challenge. So, my brain flips, and I'm like, "Okay.I
did 47. Awesome." Now, this means I got to raise my set point
to 51. So now, for the next two weeks, I'll do push-ups. I'll go to the gym. I'll eat healthy and I get to 51, and then
52. I want to be able to do 100 push-ups at 80. F*** aging. But the fact is, it's doable. You guys might remember 1993, the Academy
Awards, Jack Palance, who won an award for best supporting actor in "City Slickers" he
was 80 years old. He got down and did one arm push-ups. I want to be like Jack Palance and all of
you guys should as well. - So, all of this is doable. I talk about set points in my book, "Code
of the Extraordinary Mind." Now, second thing is minimum effective dose. How do you exercise. So, what I learned is that one-hour exercise
routines are completely unnecessary. You do not need to do one-hour exercise routines. The reason why I changed my goal to not run
a marathon is because I realized that many of my friends who were running marathons,
were not actually getting fitter. They were putting themselves through extreme
stress for the marathon, they were injuring their knees, but it didn't really change their
body shape. And, I was having a conversation with JJ and
she says, "Don't run a marathon." And JJ also said this, she said "This whole
idea of one hour at the gym is a culturescape rule that we can dismantle. Who says you need to go to the gym to get
an hour worth of exercise?" Well, the fitness industry because personal
trainers charge by the hour. Gyms charge by the hour. You can get, modern science is now showing,
that through minimum effective dose exercise, you can get the same results in four to seven
minutes. Mark Hyman was telling me about one study
he just read about that said one minute can give you the same results. So, what is minimum effective dose? Well, the number of different models that
I use. One is a program called "Total Transformation"
which Mind Valley publishes, it's by Christine Bullock, seven-minute exercises. So, I combined three different formats of
exercise. Some days I'll do Total Transformation. So, I pick a particular routine. You can just Google Total Transformation Mind
Valley and you'll find it. Now, on other days, I do something call kettlebells. Kettlebells are really interesting. I learned about this from Tim Ferriss's book
"The 4-Hour Work Week" which is an incredible book. So, I want to show you how rapidly kettlebells
can shape your body. Tim Ferriss said, "If there's one exercise
you do, it's kettlebells." And that's basically what it looks like, right? So, this is called the kettlebell swing. You have a kettlebell between your legs, you
squat, you grab it, and you do this. So, that's a kettlebell swing. So, it exercises every aspect of your body. If you are a woman or a guy, it gives you
an incredible ass, but it also increases your shoulders, your arms, your chest. It's an incredible exercise. Now, I want to show you how rapidly kettlebells
improve your strength. This was my kettlebell routine, over one month
before A-Fest. I started out 14 kg. I could do 50 swings. Now, Tim Ferriss in his books says, "You only
do this twice a week." So, this actually represents week one. In week one, Tuesday, I did 50. By Thursday, I could to 60. As soon as I got to week two, I could do 14
kg, 75 and I stayed at that level, this is week two, this is week three. Now, by week four, I could already go from
14 kg to 20 kg and 50 swings. And by week five, I could do 20 kg, 75 swings. That's how rapidly kettlebells improve your
strength and your endurance. They call it the ultimate exercise. Now, week eight, I injured my back and that's
why it says, "Ouch.Ouch." So, you got to be careful with kettlebells. So, what was happening was, I was lifting
a very heavy weight and I bent forward a little bit too much and that's how I injured my back. Okay. So, you want to be careful, but if there's
one exercise you can do, this is it. This is what I found to be the most effective. And, each of these, by the way, takes two
minutes. So, my daily morning exercise routine is either
seven-minute Total Transformation or two-minute kettlebells. Two minutes. It's not even the length of a song, which
kind of sucks, because I love doing this to Eminem. Right? He's my new favorite white rapper. - And, by the way, interesting statistic,
I Googled this. Can you guess what is the number one music
to listen to that it's proven scientifically to improve your workout? Eminem's "Lose Yourself." Awesome. Right? So, the next thing I do is Tabata. So, Total Transformation, kettlebells, then
I switch it up with Tabata. Tabata is really interesting. It's an exercise routine design by a Japanese
exercise and fitness coach. And what Mr. Tabata found is that when you
do this for four minutes, you get the same results as almost an hour in the gym. It's insane. Now Tabata looks like this. Let's say you're doing Tabata push-ups, right? You get down and you do push-up as much as
you can for 20 seconds, then you break for 10. Then, you go down again, 20 seconds, then
you break for 10. You go down again, 20 seconds, you break for
10. You repeat these eight times. Four minutes have passed. So, the Tabata exercises I do are push-ups. I do Tabata squats and I do Tabata burpees
which is basically this. Okay. So, that's a burpee. So, Tabata, highly, highly effective. Now, the tricky thing about Tabata, is that
20-minute 10 second timer. So, what I use is the Microsoft Band. Now, let me say, I used to work for Microsoft,
this is one of the shittiest fitness products I ever experienced. I don't know who designed this because it
is just downright stupid and it doesn't connect with your iPhone very well. The Bluetooth is horrible. It breaks very easily but it does one thing
really right and that is the timer. So, I paid $200 for this band, for just one
thing, the timer. It's supposed to log your heart rate and it's
supposed to measure stuff and keep your timings on your phone. It doesn't do any of that because the damn
Bluetooth doesn't work, but the timer works. And so, just for that timer, I own this band
and I love this band because think about it, right, this little band helps me get one hour
of gym time in four minutes. It's so freaking easy. And that's really all it takes. So, my exercise routine again, let me repeat,
seven minutes, two minutes, or four minutes. That's it. I do not exercise for more than this. Yet, I'm able to get the same results, body
wise, muscle wise as I had and better than I had when I was 25. And I know this because once a week on a Sunday,
I go to the gym. And I go to the gym and I test and I work
out for no more than 30 minutes. So, my total gym time a week is 30 minutes. And, I always start with one exercise, which
is the push-up. Sorry, which is the bench press. For men, bench press is awesome because men
are considered more attractive when you have a powerful chest and shoulders. Bench presses do that. For women, you probably want to do leg squats,
because honestly, we love your asses and leg squats really, really, really help. So, I choose the particular exercise technique
in the gym that crafts my body to the shape that I want for attractiveness. So, you decide whether you want a better chest
or a better ass or better legs and pick that, but I only do do focus on that. So, as a guy, I focus on my arms, on my chest,
but I track this. I use MyFitnessPal as a fitness tracker. So, over a period of six months to one year,
I can see that I'm able to bench press heavier, and heavier, and heavier loads. So again, it's a really good sign if at 40,
50 you can bench press more than you could at 25 and 30, and you can, with the right
stuff. Now, one thing I do, which JJ will completely
disagree with, is after a gym, I have a whey protein milkshake. So, I go to GNC whey protein milkshake. Studies show that when you have a high dose
of protein after a gym workout, you can get up to 40% higher muscle gains, but you must
have this protein shake within 40 minutes of your gym workout. So, I found that this has really helped me. Now, one more tip. Your skin, whether you are a man or a woman,
one of the things that's going to age you like crazy, and most people are not aware
of this, is the sun. This was released in the New England Journal
of Medicine. This is a truck driver. One side of his face is exposed to sunlight
because of how he drives his truck, the other is not. This is how his aging occurred over 10 to
20 years. You can see, if you block off this side of
the face, he looks maybe 15, 20 years younger. That's what the sun does to your skin. You need to wear sunscreen every single day
folks. Every single day. So, one of the biggest things I started doing,
washing my face and putting on sunscreen. You want to slow down aging, that's your face. Your face is what is going to show the most
when it comes to aging and it's a really simple hack, sunscreen. It's that simple. Next, let's talk about fuel, food and the
food you put in your body. So again, by the way, all of this I learned
in the months preceding A-Fest, just from studying. But I found the results to be so beneficial,
I'm now making this a part of my life. Now, fuel, here's the important thing, 95%
of your body shape is what you eat, 5% is exercise. So, those ads you see, late-night P90X all
of that stuff, if you want a better body, ignore that. Honestly, I tried that and I can say, it's
nice. It makes you fit. And you want to exercise. You want to get fit, but if that one hour
of time is precious to you, skip it. Don't. Do Tabata, but focus on eating well. Ninety-five percent of your body shape is
what you eat. So, I did an experiment. I did Beach Body Les Mills Pump for 30 days
straight. So, this is where you use weights. So, it's P90X but with weights. It's by the same producers and I loved it. It got me really, really, really fit. But, in terms of body shape and how I wanted
to look, it was nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near effective as simply following a particular
diet program from Eric Edmeades, which is "Get WildFit." And Eric Edmeades' "Get WildFit"didn't cost
me any additional time. I had to give up some foods I love, but that's
what got me to really lose excess belly fat and changed the way I looked. Now, here's what "Get WildFit" is about, right,
it's about switching your engine. So, most of us have a sugar burning engine. We burn sugar. And we live in a society that really, in a
bad way, promotes sugar consumption. Sugar is addictive. You go back to 7000 years ago when we were
hunter/gatherers, if you were roaming through the forest and you saw a bunch of bananas,
you would leap, get those bananas, and eat as much as you could because you would not
know when the next bunch of bananas would be spotted. And, you'd want to eat it so you and your
tribe and your family get that fuel, not the next bunch of hunter/gatherers who come by. So, our bodies evolved to get this thing,
where sugar causes a craving. If you eat something with sugar, such as fruit,
you need to keep eating, but that's good, that's what causes us to survive. Because, here's what the body does next, it
takes all that sugar and it stores it as fat, so when winter comes, you have fuel supply. And so, you're burning, that sugar. Now, in our modern world, where sugar is everywhere,
food companies have figured out that if you add sugar to something including ketchup,
we need to consume more of it. So, to get you to spend more in a grocery
store, sugar is added to as much as 70% of food products. It's ridiculous. The American diet is dangerous and it's evil
and it's spreading to the rest of the world. And companies like Coca-Cola, I believe are
criminal and if you work for Coke please quit folks. Please. You're fucking up the world for our kids. - Thank you. So, when you switch your engine, what happens
is, you stop burning sugar. You start burning fat. You start burning that storage fat and that's
what WildFit does, it trains you to switch your engine. Now, here's how it works. Now, it's a complex program. It's about 90 days, but it gets you to eat
more quality meat, lots of veggies. I love nuts, so I swapped to pistachios and
almonds and sparkling water. Sparkling water is brilliant. We'll come to that in a moment. Now, some of the rules I learned from Eric
is keep the cheat day. So, again, even if you read "4-Hour Body"
it talks about a cheat day. Low-carb diet, then on Sunday you just binge
on everything you want. It turns out that's dumb. That will prevent your engine from flipping
from sugar to fat burning. So, skip the cheat day. Do not do the cheat day. When I learned from Eric to remove the cheat
day, I got much, much, much better results. Second, even a tiny amount of carbs or sugars
can prevent the engine switch. So, you've got to be pretty disciplined about
it. And third, hunger is often thirst. So, sometimes when you feel hungry, just drink
more water because your body is trained to, 7000 years ago we got our water from fruits. So, hunger would emerge because our bodies
needed water, but it's not that you need to eat fruit. You can now get fresh water easily. So, drink water and the hunger goes away. When I learned that, it got rid of my mid-afternoon
snacking, which really, really, really helped. And finally, I learned that it's really easy
to retrain the mind. We think it's so much harder, right, but it's
really easy. So, these are all the things I used to crave
and all my cravings disappeared in the last two months. Cheese, wine, whiskey, chocolate, coffee. I would drink four cups of coffee a day. I would eat one bar of chocolate a day because
I love eating chocolate, because I'm married to a European. Chocolates are everywhere. Whiskey, you should come to my house, I've
got the best freaking bar. I've got bottles from every country. I love my bar. I love my whiskey. I love my wine and I love my cheese and I
gave all of this up. But what's interesting is, I didn't give it
up completely. I gave up my attachment to them. The cravings stopped. Now, when I go to a party, I need one glass
of wine, before I'd have three. Now, what did I replace all of this with,
one thing, sparkling water. And this, I found really amazing because I
never liked sparkling water. Growing up in the US, sparkling water isn't
popular. But, in Europe it is. And, what I found is that sparkling water
is a really powerful substitute for coffee, for wine. I found that often I was drinking coffee,
not for the caffeine, but because I liked the feeling of comfort, having a warm liquid
in my hand during a day at the office. When I swapped this to sparkling water, so
much changed. Now, with sparkling water, keep this in mind,
please do not buy the commercial stuff like Evian or these other bottled waters. They are bad for the environment, really,
really, really bad. Horribly bad. The whole plastic water bottling industry
is started by companies like Coca-Cola, because when Coke found that teenagers stop drinking
their poison, Coke started going into water. So, Coke started manufacturing water such
as Dasani, shipping it in these plastic bottles. Today, Americans discard a billion plastic
bottles and only 5% actually get recycled. So, what you want to do, you want to support
companies like this, sodastreamusa.com. You buy this machine and you buy that little
capsule, you put it in the back of the machine, it comes with a plastic bottle, you stick
it in, it makes your water sparkly. And then you can return, you can go to any
store that sells it and get the carbon dioxide in this refilled. There is no plastic waste at all. This is what I started doing. And this was amazing. Now, the final thing I started doing was in
the mornings, as part of WildFit, I needed to make sure that I had a really good breakfast,
right? So, I would either, if I had time, I would
make myself an omelet. But, if I did not have time, I would use JJ
Virgin's shakes. So, JJ Virgin shakes is what I typically eat
80% of the time when I'm rushing off for work and I love it. It's delicious. Again, I'm not doing this to support JJ or
whatever. She's incredibly successful in her own right,
but she has a shake guide online that you guys can check out. That is the website, jjvirginshakeguide.com. So, check it out. So, anyway, I hope these three tips, conscious
hacking, exercise, and nutrition and food, this is what I learned. This is what has made me so much fitter at
40 than I ever was in the last 15 years and I hope you guys can take this back with you,
decide what you want to implement, and see the results shortly. And by the way, all of these changes, two
months. All of it, two months. All my weight loss, two months. Me going from 50 push-ups to 55 push-ups,
which is hard, two months. My bench press weight increase, all in two
months. All of this is possible with the right attitude. And, you can completely rewire your brain,
rewire your cravings in two months with the right program. Thank you.
