The School of Greatness - Andrew Huberman: The #1 Reason Why Faith-Based Practices Matter When It Comes To Your Mental Health

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

The world's most respected neuroscientist just admitted something LIVE at Summit of Greatness that shocked everyone: prayer saved his mental health. After decades of relying purely on science, Andrew Huberman discovered that faith-based practices don't just feel good—they literally restructure your brain for better health, clearer thinking, and deeper peace. But here's what makes this conversation revolutionary: he doesn't stop at spirituality. Huberman reveals the exact protocols he uses to hack his nervous system, from morning cortisol optimization to evening wind-down routines that guarantee better sleep. He exposes cynicism as the ultimate brain killer and shows you how curiosity becomes your superpower for lifelong learning. You'll walk away with a complete system for transforming your mind, backed by both cutting-edge science and ancient wisdom.Pre-order Dr. Huberman’s book Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human BodyHuberman Lab podcastHuberman Lab websiteIn this episode you will:Discover why prayer and faith-based practices create measurable health benefits that pure meditation cannot matchTransform cynicism into curiosity using the exact neuroscience principles that unlock lifelong brain plasticityMaster the cortisol rhythm protocol that optimizes your energy, focus, and sleep quality every single dayLearn the revolutionary "activation" technique that replaces traditional meditation with targeted brain state changesBreak through learning plateaus using the self-testing method that prevents forgetting and locks in new skillsFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1830For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Kevin Tracey – greatness.lnk.to/1812SCSadhguru  – greatness.lnk.to/1800SCDr. Caroline Leaf – greatness.lnk.to/1785SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We're going to have a fun time. This audience has been learning tools to help them thrive for the last couple of days. People have flown from all over the world. There are a lot of locals here as well. How many from L.A. here? We've got a lot of locals and others who have flown from other countries and all over the world. And I wanted to make sure that we created an experience for two full days to give people tools and inspiration to help them improve the quality of their life.

You talk a lot about the science and the neuroscience behind health. and living a healthier life, how to maximize our brain, our bodies, and ultimately our spirit and our souls to feel more peace and harmony. You talk a lot about sunlight, getting up early, and making sure you look towards the sun early on. You talk about getting quality sleep. You talk about eating well, which is a lot of what our parents or grandparents try to tell us to do as well, but sometimes we've forgotten how to do these things.

But I have a bunch of questions for you here. But there's one thing we talked about backstage beforehand. which we were taking some photos backstage and before, you said you were meditating and you were praying before you came up here. And I wanted to ask you, this is not in my questions, but I wanted to ask you, is there any science or research behind prayer or faith

that helps people heal their body, their mind, or their souls? They answered for you. Well, first of all, great to be here. truly. It's really wonderful. And so believe it or not, there's quite a lot of science now about prayer and meditation, but we differentiate between those two. And work by a guy by the name of Dr. David Desteno at Northeastern University and others has really identified, first of all, a number of clear health benefits to acts of faith, including prayer.

So the- Acts of faith. Acts of faith. What does that include? So the mere statement that one believes in higher power or God or something larger of some kind is not sufficient to glean these health benefits. It's not a problem, but, you know, it doesn't get you any health benefits. However, people that engage in faith-based practices pretty much of any kind that get your mind outside itself to some extent and acknowledge something or other things outside of you have

been shown to have pretty spectacular health benefits in the short and long term. Everything from reduced cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, recovery from grief, recovery from addiction and on and on and on in ways that we can separate from the social connection that often goes with face-based practices, which of course are also wonderful. convening with people, in some cases, praying with people. And, of course, prayer and faith is a very individual thing. It's something that, for a long time, made scientists kind of uncomfortable, unless you look into the history of scientists,

and then you realize that many scientists actually had faith-based practices. And the reason I say faith-based practices is it's different to engage in actions related to one's beliefs, as opposed to just thinking, yeah, I believe in something greater than just... So not just saying I believe in God, or I believe in the universe, a hard power or whatever you're saying is bigger than you. It's not enough to just say that, but it's actually having a practice of prayer

or communing with people in a faith-based practice. That's right. And, you know, it was, I'm a longtime meditator since I was in my teens. I turned 50 in a couple of weeks. I still am. And feeling good. Thank you.

And, you know, meditation for me started off as a kind of a standard 20 minute a day or 10 minute a day. It soon went to zero minutes per day. type practice as it does for many of us it's very difficult for people to maintain a meditation practice very few people do that it's a wonderful practice as you know for uh reducing stress giving um often insight allowing more creativity there are many many hundreds of of studies on this now um but the the practice that i really embrace starting back in 2017 that i'm a huge proponent of um is traditionally called

yoga nidra um this has been something that's been uh known about for thousands of years and done for thousands of years. It involves lying down, doing some long exhale breathing. We can talk about why that's beneficial, which lowers the heart rate, among other things, a sort of body skin, getting the mind out of thinking and doing, as they say, in these yoga nidra scripts, and to one of just being and feeling, one impure sensation. Okay, so that's sort of my meditative practice. I coined that somewhat reluctantly as non-sleep depressed, because I thought that would bring more people to the practice. But I acknowledge that's a thousands of year old practice that was not developed by me was developed by others. That's a form of meditation in the sense that you're not

in a dialogue with anything outside yourself. Prayer, I think we all know what that is, is something quite different. And that's something that I've always done. In the past, it was somewhat covert prayer for me. I didn't really acknowledge that I pondered an existence of a higher power. And I had a, I wouldn't say a religiously divided family, but their beliefs and value systems were, let's just say, very diverse within my family. So it was a point of confusion for a long time. And then starting about a year and a half ago, I got into a regular practice of prayer daily, or it's actually nightly for me. And the way I do it doesn't really matter because, again, it's highly individual. But this is, it's a communication with, you know, a non-human

you know, an entity for me in, you know, praying to God. So, and people do this very differently. And again, it, I think it can make some scientists uncomfortable because you say, well, you're, you're supposed to be a person of science. You're supposed to be objective. And, and scientists and theologians have gone back and forth that, you know, can you prove, can you disprove? And as Dosteno, Dr. David Dosteno points out, it becomes sort of irrelevant at the point where you acknowledge that the human brain, I think we can all acknowledge that the human brain is spectacular. It can change itself. It can make plans. It can enact those plans. There's a reason why we are the curators of the Earth. I mean, we have brains that are

far more sophisticated in terms of our ability to build technologies than any other species. And here I, of course, acknowledge the incredible sophistication of other species. But humans are the ones basically in charge of taking care of this planet. And yet human brains alone, and even in combination, are spectacularly terrible at salt, certain problems. I mean, every time we see a challenge in the world, as we, you know, many challenges these days, but recently there have been, you know, some of these have been highlighted again and again, and it's hard to not just acknowledge that and see that and think, are we, are we progressing? So then people cite statistics, right? They say, well, you know,

100 years ago, things were far more violent or difficult, and infectious disease was worse, etc. But somehow you'd think, well, shouldn't we have it right by now? I mean, I mean, Should we be able to control our behavior, resolve our differences? And that, to me, personally, I'm just revealing my personal beliefs, is where acknowledging that humans are not equipped to have all the answers. And that's where I look to my training as a neuroscientist. I say, we understand a fair amount about how the brain works, certainly not everything. And I don't think that the human brain, for all its beauty and abilities,

is capable of managing everything that life is. here on earth presents to us. And so for me, this notion of higher power and faith-based practices has been enormously powerful for me in terms of helping me navigate decision space, come to clearer understanding about what emotions that exist in me and in others mean. And again, it's a very personal thing for each and every one of us, and I acknowledge that, but it's something that the science is really demonstrating has immense benefit. as well. What have you, what have you personally gained in the last year and a half since diving deeper into the practice of faith and prayer for you? What is just, whether

you've researched it or not, what has personally been supportive for you? It's a work in progress. Have you seen health benefits or mental benefits? Yeah, for once I can answer in one word um uh which is uh peace oh wow you know it it's um that's good oh wow did you not have a lot of peace before you started this practice no really i mean you know i could find joy i could find happiness i like to think i could find meaning in my work and relationships and um but i didn't have that notion that or that like sense this a really core belief that i now hold that i'm not supposed to have all the answers of how to bring about peace. And so I pray for, among other things, peace for myself, for others. You know, one of the things that I found to be most beneficial,

and we've heard all of this in the psychology studies, is actually praying for those that you, you dislike the most. I mean, so actually, I didn't think we were going to go this direction. I didn't either. But you brought it to me last time. Well, I'm going to try and not take the entire hour by doing this. But when I sit up on my seat, that's, that's a warm. Let's go. So, okay, may I? Okay, so yesterday, two days ago on my podcast, I got on my podcast by the name of Christoph Koch.

He's a, um, he's a luminary of neuroscientists who's been studying consciousness for the longest time. And, um, that episode will come out. I believe Monday, but the point is not to plug the episode. The point is that, um, I asked him, what is consciousness? And we have a conversation about that. Ask him about how one changes the brain. And, you know, I know a thing or two about that and he does.

And so I was learning from him as well. And then we got to this point of, you know, there seems to be too big, right now, broadly speaking, two bins of mindsets about the world that we see around us, which, of course, is filled with wonderful things, but also is filled with very troubling things, including questions about whether or not we're evolving or devolving, frankly, whether or not social media is good or bad. And I think we all acknowledge that these answers are somewhere in the gray zone. And we got to the point during this podcast discussion, which was sort of an agreement, that there seemed to be two stances that one could take about

about life. One is live and let live. Look, as long as somebody's not harming anybody else, you know, live and let live, right? Okay, the other is one of moral judgment where we feel infringed upon by people's choices, right? And I think we all have the capability to go into either of those. And if we acknowledge that that's been the case throughout human history and very likely is going to be the case going forward, then I don't think we can expect things to get that much better, right, as long as those two bins exist. And so the question is how to get outside of this, what Christoph calls it different perception boxes. He've made up that term I didn't. These are boxes of perception based on what neuroscience we call priors, which is nerd speak

for your own personal history and memories. You believe certain things based on how you're raised and your experiences. Other people believe different things. Different perception boxes. How do you, how do we get outside? And by the end of that very long conversation, and I, I, I, I, basically came to the conclusion that I started with at the beginning of the conversation, which is that humans don't have all the answers. We can't do it ourselves because the brain is just not equipped to do that. It's equipped to do many wonderful things, but the brain is so context dependent. It's so self-perception box dependent. We're all looking out at the world through these boxes that are built on our personal histories and beliefs. And unless we were to embark on a

worldwide experiment where we all try and enter the minds of other people and develop immense empathy and make that a project. It's very, very hard. I think we can assume that some of the same, many of the same problems are going to continue to show up, but in different form. And so if we really want, I believe, if we really want to evolve our species, right, and evolution is often discussed as of a cornerstone of non-religion, right? But if we want to do that, we're going to have to embrace the idea that we can't do it alone. We need some outside guidance. We have to because otherwise it's going to be human brains which are fallible, making fallible choices, despite best of intentions because of these perception boxes. So I don't have a stance of

pessimism. And we also talked about it maybe this is a segue perhaps to kind of more, you know, daily life things. But on one end of the continuum, we have optimism. and curiosity and neuroplasticity, right, the ability to change our minds in ways we want. And on the other end of the continuum, we have cynicism. And I think the most dangerous thing to brain change to plasticity is cynicism. I'm absolutely convinced that cynicism is the enemy of all good things. What is that? Cynicism is the belief like, yeah, well, people are, you know, fill in the blank.

any statement that dismisses the possibility of change. A negative thing. Could be a group, could be about yourself. The worst kind of thinking, and there's science to support this. I have a colleague at Stanford who studies this. You know, the worst thing for brain plasticity is cynicism, because by definition, cynicism is anchored in the idea that things are one way and they're not going to change. Curiosity is an interest in what might be there or could be there, sometimes layered with

emotional hope that it might be a certain answer, but real true curiosity is about wondering and wanting to find out and doing the work to find out, understanding that the answer might be one thing or another. Curiosity and neuroplasticity are absolutely linked. In fact, if you look at the great minds throughout history that seem to be great learners throughout their lifespan, the great Richard Feynman among them, the great Oliver Sachs, neurologist, writer among them. They were curious about many, many different things besides science, art, animals, nature. And curiosity is something that we can breed inside ourselves.

It takes more work for some than others. But curiosity is basically the gateway to brain change. I'm certain of it and the data support that. Cynicism is the way you make your brain filled with cement. You take what you've got now and you kind of cap it off and you go, I guess I'm just going to kind of live out the rest of my years, believing this, believing that. and not just about other people, right, but about ourselves. So I truly believe that with each phase of life, I can say these things now because I'm turning 50, with each phase of life, I think the real work for us to do

is the same work we did as we were children, when we were children, which is to embrace the learning and the curiosity about what's being presented to us in this next frontier of life, the next month, week, year, and trying to evolve into it, evolve with it, as opposed to clinging to these notions of self. And the Buddhist talked about this as, you know, ego detaching from the ego or disillusion of the ego.

But I think ultimately, since simple things tend to stick with us, cynicism is the enemy, curiosity, and neuroplasticity is hope, basically. Wow. I'm so excited about this because a lot of the things we've been talking about, you know, my man down here said he came back. this year. Tell me your name again? Corpus. Corpus came back this year from last year. And I said, why did you come back? He said, to help me overcome the negative thinking in my life, because it just keeps coming, creeping back in. And what I'm hearing you say is that the cynicism sounds a lot like

negative thinking, doubting myself, doubting what's possible, doubting, could I actually do this thing? Is that similar to negative thinking and cynicism? Yes. Cynicism is sort of a it's anchored in this core belief that things can't change and if they do not much and if they do change much then they're going to change back and it's work to be curious it's you know this is what we forget it's sort of like anytime we see a great performance of someone in the arts you know we think that it just kind of came to them right uh virtuosity does not arrive by chance it's built on tons of work and we know that so the work to make our minds perhaps not optimistic maybe optimistic is too too lofty to really reach for we just to just to just to just just try and remain curious. You know, why the cynicism, ask questions. I mean, the best way to trigger brain plasticity is to ask questions of oneself. And, you know, going back to this thing about prayer,

you know, that's also something you can pray for. You know, you can acknowledge that the brain, our brains, all of us, are stuck within our own modes of thinking. I mean, think of this is so wild, right? You talked about the kids, right? The kids, yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah.

Because otherwise it's like, yeah, okay. We had a gender reveal the whole thing yesterday. Because if not, I just kind of, he's having twins. You talked about their kids. No, we didn't. So, you know, I teach, for many years, I taught human fetal brain development. So we could talk about that. Perfect.

But the point here is that the most incredible thing, the most incredible thing, is that all our brains built themselves. Don't get me wrong, your wife's doing a lot of the work and you're doing like this much. But your brain built itself. It took the genetic instructions and built itself. Sure, nutrients come in. We need to support it. There's a communication between mother's body and fetus, of course.

But it built itself. And then the brain, the human brain, can self-direct its own change. Now, fetal development is a miracle. It's a spectacular miracle that you join two cells, sperm and egg, and you get a baby. That's crazy.

In your case, you get two babies because you're ambitious. And so, you know, but it's, and I think that the most important, I'm going to say it's the most important thing, like 50 times, I realize. A key thing to understand is that we don't have infancy, childhood, adolescence, teen years, adult, and that's it. Development is an arc. Our whole life is a developmental progression. and some of the great psychologists like Erickson understood that at every stage of life we're dealing with some core conflict that we need to resolve.

He was smart enough to understand that it's not like you become an adult at 25 and your brain's wired up. By the way, I just found out that for men, the myelination, the unsheathing of the neurons with the tissue that allows for fast transmission between neurons doesn't occur until 50. Yeah, I know. You'll notice mostly female laughter in that one. So sort of a frequency shift. Two more weeks. Two more weeks. So, oh, man, you got it in for you. You're so stoked. I'm so happy for him. I really am.

You know, to see your friends who, obviously, Lewis, is going to be a spectacular father. It's so awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It would be so much fun. So brain change is not easy. And it's more and more difficult as time goes on, but it's a skill.

It's a skill that can be mastered like any other. And we could talk about ways to access that. I've talked about that on various podcasts. You know, we say, you've got to be alert. You got to be focused. Okay, you need to be alert to be focused. And you engage in some learning process and it's going to feel hard, it's difficult.

And it turns out that the challenge, the friction of learning, the errors themselves are the signals back on the learning system that it should change, right? Which makes sense when you hear it, but then we all are looking for flow states and the notion of flow states is wonderful,

but flow states are something that are kind of a higher order thing. And when you start reaching for them, it disappears. And it's like grabbing for fog. And so you have to go back to this alertness, focus, effort, errors. That means you're doing everything right. So every time you have a cynical thought, but you're like, there it is again.

Actually, I'm going to sound like a name dropper. But he's a close friend of mine. I just spent a couple of weeks with him each summer as I do. Rick Rubin, who's a master of creating things. And we talked a lot about meditation. Now, Rick's awesome. uh just such a nice person too um and he is a long time meditator and his process of meditating is very simple but he's a there's a very powerful tool within the meditations that he had never

told me about and um i'm kind of pissed that he didn't tell me about it earlier which was he said you know when he when he's meditating um which by the way he does every day i observed it um and a thought comes up he just labels it like with a little sticky thought like that's a thought that's a thought when we can start watching our own mental processes we can start seeing things like oh i'm in friction there's an error here um i need to try harder and you you start to observe yourself learning and you get better at that process so frustration becomes the prerequisite and and all that's good and fine and then you need to sleep at some point i've talked a lot about sleep and had access sleep on the podcast and sometimes you actually access sleep on the podcast because they're very long. I was

I was joke. If nothing else, I'm going to cure insomnia. But really, you know, like serious hat-tip acknowledgement to the great Matt Walker, author of Why We Sleep, because I would like to point out that 10 years ago, the mindset, you know, in the high-performance community, it was like, we'll sleep when I'm dead, you know, and a lot of those people are now dead. And, But Matt was the first one to really start beating the drum. Like, hey, you know, this sleep thing is important. Now, you don't want to get sleep-related anxiety, you know, about getting sleep. But during sleep, in particular, the second half of your sleep night, the brain rewires, you get neuroplasticity.

Okay, all that's fine and good. But if we really think about neuroplasticity, like how do, how can we accelerate this process of learning? The real process of accelerating neuroplasticity and learning absolutely comes from, clearing away the clutter and accessing the things that for us feel most true even as we're making errors like there's something really pleasurable about digging through a learning process and it's very hard when we have to learn something we don't want to learn and here's what's very interesting about the neuroscience literature over the last couple of years which is that the release of dopamine actually occurs often in response to errors that we make while trying to learn

and here again we thought dopamine was pleasure we know it's motivation we know it's a number of other things, but here it's also released in response to errors that we make, which wake up the brain that has the opportunity to change. And Rick and I were, and he gave me no permission to talk about this, but I'm just going to do it anyway, because we decided, you know, it's kind of interesting. There are all these meditations, there's love and kindness meditation, there's yoga nidra, non-sleep deep rest, there's even forms of hypnosis out there. But, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if we could place our brain in? into particular states to do the things that we want to do.

This is my real wish and my real work over the next year or so. And so I don't even think these are meditations, but the practice that I encourage you all to try is very brief, is, you know, these days we know we're being bombarded with tons of content. We essentially walk around with little TVs, like little TVs all the time. And then we're like, I don't know why I can't focus. We're watching TV all the time, you know. And, you know, but our brain's every content.

dependent. The way to think about the way your brain works is that in certain states of mind, your mind and your focus is like a ball bearing on a flat surface, and it can go anywhere if you tilt that surface. As you get more focus, imagine little dimples in that surface, and it can drop into any one of those dimples. And the thing that we're all seeking is for the ball bearing to drop into a deep trench and be locked there for as long as we want, and then out. But typically, it's the other way around. It's, we get locked into these states that are either because our emotions have been grabbed by something external or because, you know, we're upset about something and so on and so forth. And it's very hard for us to get that ball bearing down into

the trench of the thing that we know we need to do. And so the practice that I've been developing for myself is one in which I acknowledge this. I acknowledge that the world is noisy. My brain is noisy. And I have a practice now of about one to three minutes. And believe it or not, I just scripted it out onto a voice memo. I do believe that when we do it in our own voice and I encourage you all to do it in your own voice it's more powerful than listening to someone else's voice because after all it's your voice and I highly recommend recording three voice memos or four voice memos the first one is one that you you tell yourself there's a lot of noise in my head there's a lot of

noise in the world and I'm going to get distance from that noise and for me the visual is one thing I can share it with you but for you it might be another where I just imagine the noise moving further and further away. I'm still acknowledging I'm in the world and it's happening, but it's sort of like ripples moving further and further away. After about three minutes, I shift to a different voice memo, which is, this sounds so crazy, but knowing what I know about the brain,

I figure it's, you know, not quite as crazy, which is then I listen to a one to three minute script about focusing, which is really to try and acknowledge that focus is something that constantly drifts until we're in a flow state, that focus is a process of redirecting our attention, Redirecting, redirecting, redirecting. I had Alex Honnold on the podcast, right?

The guy that we were all terrified to watch Free Solo up El Cap, probably more than he was. Amazing. That's the craziest movie. We know he lives, like, from the first frame of the movie. It's still terrifying. Yes. But, you know, in that state, he's got so much to anchor his mind that I doubt he's pushing away lack of focus.

But for most of us, because it's not life or death circumstances, you have to acknowledge that you're constantly pushing away. things and you have to refocus, refocus, refocus. It turns out people that are very good at accessing flow states have powerful activation of what's called the no-go pathway. There are two pathways of action in the brain and a brain circuitry called the basal ganglia, a number of different brain areas. One is go, like to generate movements or thoughts.

The other is no-go to try and suppress movements or thoughts. Flow states are mainly accessed mainly by the no-go process. So the more you can shift out of your mind, and try and redirect, for instance, to curiosity, the more you're in a no-go that way, yes, that way. So this second short script is what I use to visualize focus. And sometimes I actually will think about Alex's climb as a kind of a, the pinnacle of an example of focus.

And then I'll go into something I really need to do. And this might sound silly or overly structured, but I'll tell you what's really silly. What's really silly is that voice in my head saying, and you should do this thing. Now I got to do this thing. Oh, wait, there's a text message. And then three hours later, you're a little fatigued and you need lunch.

And then you're a little fatigued because you ate lunch. And then the next thing you know, the thing didn't get done. So I'm talking about a one to three minute investment to clear, get distance. That's it. Get distance from noise. A one to three minute script to acknowledge the focus process and get into it. And then to do the thing.

You know, that's the thing about, that we procrastinate, the thing that we can just avoid until it becomes a, deadline or it's terrifying or it's past now here's the real key to plasticity those steps are required but the real key is when you finish out what you're doing your your focused work on whatever is most important to you at some point later that day you need to reflect on what happened in that work about and this is so important if you remember nothing else that i said please take this away we know now based on the neuroplasticity of learning literature and how best to study and that whole mountain of literature that the best way to

remember information is to not forget it, which sounds like I'm joking. No, it sounds like I'm joking. I know. I was like, I have to like get in before. How do you not forget it? So here's the thing. You self-test. Every bit of learning turns out to be anti-forgetting. And I know it that sounds like it's just a twist on words, but here's the experiment that's been done many times now. I give you a passage to read four times or one time or two times. And in some cases, I have you self-test just in your mind for a few minutes later that day. Then I wait three to six months and I come back and I test you on the material. Turns out reading something once and self-testing later and realizing you don't remember it all, but you remember certain things,

allows you to remember significantly more information six months later than had you read it four times. So it's the reflection on the thing that we did earlier that locks it in. And I'll give you an example of a ton of sensory exposure with a ton of focus and a ton of attention that you devote every single day and you remember nothing of. If you were to think, okay, last night, you're probably yesterday, you probably scrolled social media at some point. You didn't think about it afterward. I mean, do you know how many dog posts I look at? And I can, if I think about it now, I'm a little afraid to do this because I don't want to remember the wiener dog sleeping in first class thing that I saw yesterday and now it's stuck in me right but when we were the whole the social media is wonderful

you can learn there you can connect there but when we reflect on the thing that we did or that we learned in particular the errors that we made you lock in the critical information you prevent forgetting it turns out that most information that comes in through our eyes and ears etc is designed to be discarded, which is why reading something four times doesn't allow you to remember it that well compared to reading it once. Yes, your mind will drift. And then later that day going, okay, what do I remember? I don't remember that. I remember that piece. Okay, I'm going to go back and look up that piece. So testing is not just something that we should experience of others testing us. Self-testing on knowledge or skill or this could be physical skill, musical skill,

could be relational interaction. I mean, how many people after like couples, therapy, take a walk by themselves, and know, yeah, like, what did I really learn? And maybe that's why I should be more of it. Who knows? But the point is that we don't do this. We tend to think that the experience is the experience. The learning was the learning. And it turns out you can learn so much faster.

You can learn so much more durably. And there's a terrible instance in life where we know this works, which is in the case of trauma and things we don't want to think about later. The replay later is critical. replay later is critical and so if it's not happening automatically as is often the case you need to do that for yourself and then the sort of force so I have a one to three minute script which reminds me of this it says you know like Andrew the data all tell you that I know and I already know it but it's useful to have a practice this is why I dare I say we we sort of coined

the word protocols even though it existed before because in in laboratories you would say what's the protocol to stain these cells for dopamine or something So protocols to me make sense because, as a word, because it's supposed to be a list of things that you do that work the first time and every time to get you someplace. And so it's critical that we acknowledge that our brains are just not good at doing all the steps without a little bit of self-guidance. Then the question becomes what self-guidance? Then the question becomes, well, how can that self-guidance be weaved into my day in a way that's seamless and easy and quick and doesn't cost anything? And I'm giving you some examples of these. So this is simply what I've been doing, and I've found to be very useful.

And, you know, neuroplasticity does exist across the lifespan, but, you know, in a kind of, you know, acknowledgement of a reality, it's harder to learn now than it was in my 20s. But I think with these practices, I find that it's not that much harder. And all the data tell us that our brains are plastic throughout our entire lifespan. So I encourage you to think about these not as meditations. The word that comes to mind is sort of activations. You're trying to place your brain into particular states that have you less noisy in your head, more focused for the second one, then you do the thing, whatever that is,

and then in a state of reflection to really lock in the plasticity that you'll experience that night or the next nights when you sleep. that's basically what it is so sorry there was probably another question and I just kept rich I'm amazing I haven't even gotten to the first question so I haven't even

so I'll stop I have all the questions for a whole episode on the protocols of greatness but you just kicked it off so beautifully that I was like all right we'll have to do another one later I was just in flow state watching you man

I'm like it's amazing you got so much information I'm curious and for you you know when you were talking about the the self-guided meditation essentially these voice notes this is something i did 22 years ago when i was in college playing sports i would record voice notes not on a phone back then but on a voice recorder and i would sync music to it to create an emotional feeling for myself kind of like a motivational song with my words over it and i played a night and try to anchor in this feeling of belief in myself for the next day for practice for games

for things like that. And you are just reminding me now that I need to do that again, like these voice notes. So is these, do you have music over them? Or is it just a voice note for like two minutes that you just say to yourself and listen to? Yeah.

For me, it's, there's no music. It's just dialogue. And, you know, it's funny. Like 10, 15 years ago when you were doing this, you said 20 years ago? Huh? Okay. You look so young.

It was 20 years ago. You were like an in college. No? Okay. the uh the you know a lot of the stuff that we now know is is supported by science was you know like people were like oh that's kind of like weird breath work and you know and like are you going to levitate too and it's like well if i could i would but it's been just a little bit of an editorial here it's been really interesting to me um you know my lab worked on respiration physiology

we used to breath work we didn't call it that because that sounded like mysticism and you know it's really interesting that science is a evolving to, you know, meditation, there's tons of peer-reviewed, federally funded studies on meditation. Thank goodness. Also on yoga nidra, lowers corzol, helps you sleep, helps you learn better. I mean, respiration, you know, we now, basically, the breathing thing is all pretty straightforward, right? The conclusion I've come to after all these years of looking everything from Wimhoff breathing to Kundalini breathing to physiological sign to box breathing, to all of it is that if you emphasize the exhales, make them longer or more intense than the

inhales, your heart rate slows down, you get calmer. If you emphasize the inhales relative to the exhales, your heart rate goes up, you tend to be more alert. You do a combination of the two. You can be very alert and very calm at the same time, right? And it works through respiratory science, ethythia, and the motor and the sensory branch of the vagus and the diaphragm and carbon dioxide and oxygen, but basically longer deliberate exhales, calm you down. longer, more intense inhales, wake you up. And, you know, I'm not trying to trivialize, you know,

hundreds of studies, some of which I, you know, I got very involved in for a long time, but that's basically the crux of it. But for many years, science and my community of scientists were, they were disparaging of everything. Like, oh, yeah, I don't know. You know, like, that seems a little weird. And then I'm like, well, you look kind of stressed

and maybe you should do it. And, you know, but likewise with the sunlight thing, right? people have been talking about getting morning sunlight for thousands of years, all of the circadian biology, all of it tells us that it's extremely valuable for elevating your morning alertness, which we could talk about the mechanism for that, improving your sleep and things that I've, you know, blabbed about for a long time. So when we talk about adding music, music is an incredibly powerful anchor for emotions. And there's something really special about the music that accompanied particular life events with other people we care about, right? I'm sure you can

Remember the song they play to your first dance after being married, this kind of thing, right? I mean, you'll probably play music as your babies are being born, right? That would be awesome. Every time we play music, they like start dancing inside. It's cool. Yeah, they start moving. Amazing. He's so stoked.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. I love it. You make me cry, man. Don't do that. Yeah, yeah. Don't do that. Okay. Yeah, don't do that.

Huberman never shows any emotion. He's very scientific. Yeah, I'm a real robot. yeah yeah actually last year i cried on two podcasts no stephen bartlett's podcast i kind of welled up and i was like and then and then uh when martha beck was on my podcast she made me cry oh wow yeah she made me cry talking about my bulldog costello and it was it was it was actually and i told my producer rob i looked at him he's been in every podcast we've ever done and like when it was just me him and costello my little closet into paying good and i looked him after we wrapped with

martha and i go we're not releasing that and he goes we're Definitely. Oh, man. I was like, oh, man, I still can't watch it. Oh, man. No, emotions are good. Emotions are good. Emotions are good.

Emotions are good. Emotions are good. What happens? I'm half Latin, man. My dad's Argentine. So it's like, you know, the... I'm curious, speaking of emotions, what happens to the brain of the body when we express our emotions, whether it be through tears, through crying, through physiological release of some type?

what happens when we do it and when we block the flow of emotions that we want to release, but then we stiffen up? Yeah. Well, unless it's, okay, so feeling emotions, obviously, is healthy. Right? The ability to feel your feelings. What's probably not healthy is catharsis directed at somebody else. Like angry you mean?

screaming at them, you know, screaming at yourself. You know, I guess there's, I mean, I've let out some pretty loud yells at myself that were pretty effective, I think. You know, I think, so there's a time and a place for it. We know that pushing down of emotion is not healthy. We know that. But of course, you know, we have to behave ourselves, right? Right, right, right.

All the data tell us that, you know, this Vegas nerve thing, I did an episode about this last year that really opened up my eyes. You know, we all know the mind and body are connected. The Vegas is the connection between the mind and body. More serotonins made in the gut than the brain. But I had no idea. Even though I teach neuroanademy,

I had no idea how far the research has come in the last like four years. Basically, the Vegas can be summarized this way. It collects sensory information from your whole body, heart rate, lungs, how full they are, your gut, the status of your conscious and unconscious. stuff and it's sent up to your brain like 85% of the vagus nerve pathway is sensory it's stuff going up to your brain it's feeding your information that feeding your brain information excuse me about the status

of your body and what it's experiencing and then there's about 20% that's descending information that is motor it's controlling your heart rate it's controlling how full your lungs get or how not full your lungs get and so it's a bidirectional pathway and we've You've heard so much about it being parasympathetic. It's a calming system, but it turns out that it's a system that's positioned to understand when you're packing something down. You know, that packing down that we're all familiar with because it's like not the appropriate time for something or you don't, you know, you just don't want to feel what you're feeling.

Stuffing. Yeah, sadly, I mean, I can say, and I think I'm, I'm certainly not alone in this. I can remember one particular event in my, you know, childhood history where I, I remember feeling something really and I was like, ooh, and I was like, wow, that's good, I can do that. that. I can like pack that. That turned out to be not so great. That's not good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the ability to, to pick time and place for an way of expressing emotions is obviously key. But emotions are the gateway to plasticity. Your music experience and practice certainly acknowledges that. Any, you know, we talk about peak and awe experiences. We never forget those. And on the darker side of things, you know, traumatic experiences, we can unload the emotional component of those through things like cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, These days there's a lot of interest in it's not really a psychedelic, but in pathogenic therapies like MDMA, which by the way is still schedule one. It's still illegal. I have to point that out. And maybe we'll get FDA approval this year. If you ask me, I'm hoping for FDA approval, but they need the proper safety checks in place. The question is who are going to be the therapist? How is this therapy going to be done when people are in a state of vulnerability? So some really serious issues. And despite what you could say about government and the FDA under any political leadership, you know, they really do, there are good people who want to protect people from harm. So, but I think with empathogenic help, you can, you know,

learn to emote more easily and have empathy for self is a big part of being able to tolerate emotion. So emotions are a wonderful aspect of life. It's about being able to control time, place, and way of expression. But yeah, I think crying into your pillow every once in a while is pretty healthy. Yeah, I do.

I think it's a good, I think it's a good thing to do and no one has to see it unless you do it on a podcast. So, you know. Okay, I'm going to try to get to my first question. I still haven't gotten to the first question.

I mean, I'll keep going on now. I don't care, right? This is great. I'm not, I mean, I love this. I mean, so it's up to you. You probably, people probably want to go see the Canello fight or they want to go out to dinner.

It's right. Canelo's fight tonight, right? Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's all right. It's okay. We're all hanging out tonight. I know what's going on.

I'm perfectly happy to miss the fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll see the replay, you know. This is all about the protocols to greatness. Again, I wanted to give you guys the best of the best here at Summit of Greatness. This man is the most popular scientist in the world, the biggest following in the world. He's changing lives. I'm curious for you, if you had to say these are my top three,

top three science-backed protocols to support you. personally and the evidence is just abundantly clear that if you follow these science back protocols you will have more peace more clarity more focus more freedom more of what you really want in your life what would those three things be all right well i'm going to take a freebie and make and tell you four perfect because i'll just reiterate earlier i that's interesting you started with prayer you're like let's go in the deep end here um first i mean i do think that when we feel least able to control our mind and where it goes that's especially that's an especially good time for something like prayer where you give it over it's not like it's not your task to

handle everything and it certainly isn't the task of other people in your life i mean that's another benefit that i've noticed is that is like meditation prayer they they unburdened a lot of people in your life that you that i was otherwise burdening uh-huh right to solve things or to reflect back things I mean we're a crazy species and we love love and we don't like to feel angry and then we it can get all mixed up and and it's tough and so when you when you just acknowledge like and you just ask for feelings to be taken away so that you can have more clarity and more depth of connection with the things in your life and the people in your life I mean anyone who's done this knows it works I can't tell you why and I kind of love that I can't tell you why like for once it's a

short sentence. I don't know why, but it works. Okay. The other three, the other three, you know, I talk so much about this morning sunlight thing that it's almost like a joke by now, right? It's kind of like a meme. I keep seeing it, the morning sunlight thing, or long exhale breathing to slow your heart rate or NSTR. And I do think nowadays, thankfully, something that, by the way, back in the day when I was a teenager and in my 20s and 30s resistance training oh it's all going to turn to fat that's only for bodybuilders and

military and it's like no everyone needs to do this and now everyone knows they need to do it so basically whatever they're saying right now is ridiculous that's the future I mean have you caught on to the pattern whatever people go that's ridiculous like this whole creatine craze is pretty interesting to me I don't think everyone

needs to take it but yeah there's some benefits for many people it's not necessary But cretein's been around a long time. It just only broke through now. Vitamin D3 made it first for some reason. And then magnesium will probably be next. Just remember, not everything is safe, but whatever is being kind of chuckled at now is very likely to be the thing in 10 years, five years.

So I think rather than give you three protocols, I'll give you a framework that will encompass all the protocols. And I'll try and keep this brief. so when I was a little kid my mom no seriously my mom bless her soul

she would say to me we'd be in the kitchen and she'd say sweetie we're just going to take like two minutes and we're going to stop talking and I was like but why are we going to stop talking

you know and when I was really little the reason this worked is okay half Argentina so we called the pacifier the chuppete so I used to have one in my mouth and I carry one in each

hand. So I learned how to talk out the side of my mouth. And what they should have done is just said, just shut up and send the corners. So, but so, but in all seriousness, here's the deal. You want your cortisol, this so-called stress hormone. It's not a stress hormone. You want your cortisol high in the hours after you wake up. I don't care if you wake up at 5am, 4 a.m., 8 a.m., noon. It doesn't matter to me. Do what works for you and your schedule and your life. And you want your cortisol low at night. Use that as the bookends and the framework of your days and you'll be amazed how many things go incredibly well. Here's the deal. Viewing bright light, ideally from sunlight, in all the ways I've described elsewhere, I won't rattle off all the details, take off your

sunglasses, put on eyeglasses and contacts are fine, et cetera, blink as needed to protect your eyes, all that stuff. In the first hour after you wake up, doesn't matter what time you wake up, doesn't matter where the sun is, although I'll place a caveat on that, you have a unique opportunity in that first hour to amplify your cortisol levels. You wake up because your cortisol levels rise. It's called the cortisol awakening response. You actually wake up in the morning because of that. Most people are keeping themselves in environments that are too dim in that first hour.

Your phone won't do it. A 10,000 luxe artificial light will if you don't have access to sunlight, but get outside and get just a little bit of sunlight you'll amplify that cortisol guess what after about two hours going outside will feel nice going outside will feel warm that sunlight won't amplify your cortisol drinking caffeine provided your regular caffeine drinker won't amplify your cortisol it'll extend the duration of your morning cortisol exercise will get surprisingly deliberate cold exposure won't amplifies epinephrine nor epinephrine for an end dopamine, the so-called catacolamines,

but it doesn't amplify your cortisol. Now you say, wait, cortisol is a stress hormone. I don't want to be puffy. I don't want visceral fat anymore than I already have. Like, what are you talking about? Here's the deal. Your cortisol is going to go up and it's going to go down every 24 hours.

The higher it is in the morning, the lower it's going to be at night, and the easier it's going to be to fall asleep. If you look at conditions like cancer, you look at conditions like PTSD, you look at anxiety, you look at milder major depression. What you see is what's called a flattening, flattening of the cortisol response. So instead of a big peak in the morning and then it tapering

off into the afternoon at night, you see this kind of gradual tapering off. And the higher it is later in the afternoon, the easier it is for little bouts of stress to ride on top of that higher baseline. And then you find it typically people can fall asleep if they're exhausted. And then at three, two, three in the morning, you wake up. So get your cortisol high in the morning. There a bunch of other things you can do believe it or not eating great fruit will double the duration of that peak in the morning so that's cool i like great fruit you don't have to do that licorice root with something called glycerizen greatly amplifies your cortisol but here i have to say be careful first of all don't take liquorish root late in the day that glycerizan will greatly extend

the active excuse me the activity of any prescription drugs you're taking because it works on some enzymes in the cortisol, but other pathways too. So you have to be careful. You know, you could take a little bit of licorice root with glycerizing. Actually, many licorice root products and teas that you have the glycerizing out because it increases cortisol. So exercise, bright light, taffine, great fruit, licorice root. These are very basic things. People with Cushing syndrome, be careful. There's a whole other thing. Talk to an endocrinologist. Okay. Now, ashwaganda, the herb rather that everybody knows can reduce cortisol. And it does have a fairly potent cortisol reducing effect.

You wouldn't want to take it in the morning, would you? If you are going to experiment with it, it would be in the evening. I don't think you should take high dosages of it, at least not for long periods of time. It is very potent at lowering cortisol. By the way, pregnant women, the cortisol rhythm of high, low in morning versus night, it's maintained. Perimenopause, menopause, it's maintained, but it tends to flatten a bit around the transition between perimenopause and menopause. And so doing a few extra things to try and make the peak higher. We'll make the trough lower later in the day.

And then at night, just think about all the things you would do in the morning to increase your cortisol and do the opposite. Keep the lights dim because it doesn't take much light in the evening to raise your cortisol. Long exhale breathing. Certainly avoid things like licorice root and caffeine. We know these things. And so pretty soon you go, wait, the protocols just fall into these bins. And of course, you can't do all of them every day.

and you need to be careful about which ones you select. But if you think about cortisol, not as a stress hormone, but what its real function is, the real function of cortisol is to mobilize glucose and other energy stores to your brain and body. That's why it wakes you up in the morning. And guess what? If you sleep with too much bright light in your room,

even with your eyes closed, if you don't use an eye mask, morning blood glucose is elevated. This was published last year or two years ago in a really fine journal. Makes sense, right? Cortisol is released, and it causes, is elevations in blood glucose. So now we can regulate our blood glucose with cortisol? Yes.

Yeah. This is the way it works. And so for me, I'll continue to pursue and evolve protocols and share protocols. I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about these short one to three minutes. I call them activations because they're not really meditations. I'm trying to create a certain neural state

to be able to do things. I just call them that. That was Rick Rubin's idea. He's so damn smart. He was like, well, they're not really meditations. And he goes, Activations. I'm like, damn, well, that's why you're Rick Rubin, right?

By the way, he was in the Beastie Boys. You know that? He wasn't just a producer. Yeah, go back and watch the first video. Yeah, he's the big guy with the beard. That back then was not a big white beard. It was a big brown beard. So if you imagine these bins for your morning and evening,

it all falls into place. And then you say, well, wait, does that mean I can't go out dancing at night? But guess what? Going out dancing at night, you're not elevating your cortisol. It's a stressful experience. And look, it's okay to get some bright light exposure at after dark every once in a while. You're going to be getting a lot of that.

Actually, I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to give you something. So we all heard of red light therapy. It's great. Increases mitochondrial function for reasons we can talk about. By the way, you can get it from sunlight, long wavelength light from sunlight. It goes through your body.

This was shown by my colleague Glenn Jeffries, and it improves your mitochondria. The long, 850 nanometer light, which is long wavelength light, comes from the sun, goes through your body and charges your mitochondria. Wow. Like a battery.

Wow. Wild. But for you, because the little ones are going to be here soon. Yes. At night, when you're up, you're going to be up, by the way. What do I need? You need red lights, like of like a Christmas tree red lights or any lights where they're not very blue, not LEDs, you know, incandescent bulbs or red lights.

You'll sleep better and your babies will sleep better. The other thing that I just learned, and this makes so much sense, is like how stupid are we? Turns out, you know, women will, you know, they produce breast milk, and they'll pump, and then they'll set aside milk to give their babies. Turns out the milk collected in the early part of the day, guess what it's very high in? And in the evening, the opposite, and people tend to not divide them by morning collected or evening collected. And they're now looking at the, turns out babies could sleep well all the time, like, sorry parents. No, no, it's like, so it has a big effect. There's a big effect on important.

proving the sleep patterns of babies. These poor babies were being blitzed with cortisol. I was probably one such baby, you know? Anyway, I'll stop there. This is amazing. I've got three things. Three things for you. We're going to have to do another episode in the future

because I have a lot of questions. I'm sorry. You wonder why I'm an introverts because I have no friends because I'd meet up with people. Two, can we put up Andrew's slide for his, new book. It's not even out yet. It's delayed. I have to it's delayed, but they can pre-order it, right? You can pre-order it. You can pre-order it.

You can pre-order it. There's a QR code here. So I encourage all of you, get your phones out, pre-order this. This is going to be, I told this to Mel Robbins last year, mid-last year. I said your book's going to be the number one book of the year. And it's been number one on Amazon, I think, for the last nine months. This is going to be the number one book of next year if it comes out next year, maybe it's in two years. I don't know. Whenever it comes out, It will be the number one book of the year. I guarantee it. So make sure to support this man right now.

I should say I didn't ask him to do that. That's very kind. And the reason it's delayed is because I decide to include illustrations and lists to make it clearer as to what was in the text. So forgive me, but, you know. And the last thing, the last thing, we got the book up there. We got some of the protocols here.

What's the last thing I'm thinking? You know, I'm trying to, I need to recall the beginning. The first thing that we talked about was about faith. And I wanted to acknowledge you, Andrew, for starting to talk about that and you doing this in your own practice over the last year. Because, you know, there's a lot of people that say inner peace is the new rich. And you are creating more peace in your life. And I think it makes you a better person in all areas of your life.

You seem healthier and happier and thriving. And it's good, I'm sure it's many different factors, but I'm glad to know that you're bringing prayer into your life more frequently. And I think you're only going to be a better scientist and researcher in that process by doing that. So I want to acknowledge you for that. And give it up one more time where Andrew Huberman, give it up, give it up. I love for going long. You're good. You're good.

Appreciate it, but one more time, guys, Andrew Huberman. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about. this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out

how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.