Being brilliant every single day (part 2) |Dr. Alan Watkins |TEDxPortsmouth

Understanding why you feel what you feel is one of the most important aspects of human development. As you can breathe rhythmically, evenly, and through the heart every day, then you can be more successful and happy.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

This is kind of nice.

Because it is incredibly difficult
to contain what you want to say

in 18 minutes, but it's for me anyway.

So we kind of showed you earlier
on what goes wrong under pressure.

The human brain is constantly getting
a signal from all the bodily systems,

but particularly the heart,
the vagus nerve,

which, as we showed you
is sort of erratic and under pressure,

super chaos causes that DIY lobotomy.

You're all built that way,
and you've all had the experience

when somebody kind of
puts a challenge to you

and it doesn't really matter
as you saw how small that challenge is.

It can be any type of challenge.

A challenge to your point of view,
a challenge to your ego,

a challenge to your relationships,

any type of challenge
causes the physiology to go chaotic,

causes the frontal lobe to be inhibited,
and you become suboptimal straight away.

What's kind of interesting about that
is when the brain is inhibited;

it also inhibits your
perceptual awareness,

so you don't realize it's happened.

So you can come out of a meeting
and think, "Oh, that went well."

And everyone,s going, "What do you mean
it went well? You were rubbish."

Because your awareness is inhibited,
you don't realize how rubbish you were.

So it's a bit of a catch-22.

This is the phenomena that underpins
lots of different things

that you've seen and experienced
yourself or seen on telly:

Stage-fright, people get stage fright
and can't remember their words;

Kids go blank in an exam.

It's the same phenomena.

Or my personal favorite - Family Fortunes,
if you've ever watched that show -

the two people sit at the front.

We've asked 100 people on the street

to name something
you put in a jacket potato.

(Bzz) "Jam!"

(Laughter)

It's hysterical.

When your frontal lobe's inhibited
you say anything, and it's really funny.

Anne Robinson, The Weakest Link,

she throws you a simple question,
then stares at you.

You blurt out any all sort of rubbish.

So when you're up with your boss,
he might be the nicest boss in the world.

If you're feeling a little under pressure,

you suddenly discover
you're talking rubbish.

Sometimes you even have that awareness.

You almost see yourself coming out
with the most ridiculous nonsense.

You think, "Why is this happening?"
It's because you're built that way.

The human system is built that way
is that under pressure,

physiological chaos, the brain shuts down.

You're designed that way.

You think, "Why are we designed that way?"

And the only reason you have anything
in your physiology is survival.

There are survival advantages
to having brain shut down,

and it goes back 200,000 years.

So when you were wandering
across the prairie,

and a big grizzly bear comes out
from behind the rocks and says,

"Oh, human being! There's my lunch."

You don't need clever thinking.

In fact, if you stood going to be clever,

"Is that the brown bear,
or the lesser-spotted gray bear?"

(Laughter)

He will eat you, right?

So you need brain shut down.

Your thinking has to become
very unsophisticated,

in fact, it has to become binary.

So you either have fight-flight
or play dead. Two choices.

You either just drop
to the ground in a faint,

or you're prepared to slug it out or run.

It's binary.

Anything more sophisticated
you don't need, it will kill you.

So here we are, 200,000 years later,

we still have the same
biological mechanism.

We've basically got
a 200,000-year-old software,

and we've never had the upgrade, right?

We don't meet a bear today;
we meet each other.

But in meeting each other,
the same phenomenon goes on.

We showed you how that chaos

can cause somebody
who's even good at math, like Neil is,

"Uh ... 200 ... Uh ... Shut up,
you're putting me off! 200 ... Uh ..."

It becomes impossible,
a simple task like that.

I can tell you, I did this
in the office of the chief exec,

one of the leading retailers in the UK,

and his first answer was 298.

(Laughter)

And, he went, "Oh. No, that's wrong!"

He was so embarrassed
that he got the first one wrong,

he couldn't think of the second one.

It literally sounds like, "Ah ..."
a rabbit in the headlights.

He just couldn't come up with anything.

So as I said, you're all
at the mercy of that.

The point being, until you've got
control of this physiology,

anybody can make you look like an idiot.

And what's worse?

You're doing it to yourself
an awful lot of the time.

Your own anxiety
about your own performance

is actually causing the chaos,
so you're lobotomizing yourself.

A lot of people around you
can trigger you into a lobotomy,

but most of the time,
you're just lobotomizing yourself.

So until you've got control
of that absolutely, fundamental basic -

you might be brilliant one day,
you might be poor,

and who knows what's going
to show up that day.

So right about fundamental,
the cleverness of your thinking,

or your ability to read
the line on a golf putt,

or your ability to come up
with a great idea,

or how to innovate that sales process,
or any of that stuff.

The quality of your thought, in fact,
the very things that you think,

and how well you think them
is hugely influenced by your biology.

I'll give a couple of live examples,
then get Neil back up,

and we'll show you
how to control your physiology.

So if you haven't yet clocked

that your biology is controlling
your brain function.

If we held you and locked the doors
and filled you up with coffee,

what happens is your bladder
gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

It starts to send
alarm messages to your brain,

and you're getting one of these pee.

"I've got to pee ... I've got to pee."

If you've ever had that experience

when you can't get out, but
your bladder is sending alarm signals,

and all of that -
you haven't got Pampers on -

(Laughter)

what you'll discover is you go deaf.

You ever notice that?
You can't hear people.

You're so internally focused,
"My bladder is going to burst..."

You go deaf.

You can see people's mouths moving,
but you can't hear what they're saying.

Then beads of sweat start to break out,

you're trying to pee urine out
through your forehead.

(Laughter)

Literally, your consciousness
is completely eradicated.

So that's the biology disrupting
your consciousness.

Well, I was in a meeting recently
with an eight-month-pregnant woman.

We were chatting away,

and you saw the baby visibly
ripple across, went like that,

and you could see the ripple
go across her abdomen,

and she was chatting, then ..."Ooh ..."

For about 20 seconds she was gone,
completely kind of left the room, "Oh ..."

and then she went, "Oh, hello!"

(Laughter)

Back in the room again.

It was like her consciousness
disappeared for 20 seconds.

So these are live examples.

You think you just think, right?

But what do you think,
and why do you think it?

I was talking to a senior exec,
he was from a government think tank.

I said, "Oh, government
think tank, that's interesting!

You probably sit around
with loads of clever people

debating the issues of the day

and trying to come up
with some clever answers."

He said, "Yes, pretty much what we do."

I said, "Have you ever thought

about why those answers
are not these other answers?

Have you ever thought
about your own thinking?"

He said, "I never thought about that."

"Spotted it! You're a think-tank;
you've never thought about thinking.

What's that about?"

So we just think,

but we don't realize that what we think
and how well we think it,

is actually influenced by something else.

Thought is really an emergent
property within your system.

The very things that you think,

you will think different things
if you're happy than if you're depressed.

And how well you think them
will depend a lot on the biology.

So if you want to step-change thinking,

if you want to really double or treble
the quality of your thinking,

you can't do it by thinking about it.

Wouldn't that be nice if I said,

"Look, I've spotted the problem
for you in your life,

you're not thinking smart enough.

So I want you to go away
over the weekend,

come back 25 percent smarter
on Monday morning, alright?"

That will be nice, wouldn't it?

"Oh, I haven't thought to do that,

I'll go away, and I'll think
about my thinking over the weekend,

25 percent better
on Monday, here I am!"

It doesn't work that way.

That's what Einstein said,
"We can not solve our problems

with the same level of thinking
that created them."

You don't get a new level of thinking
just by thinking about it.

You've got to change the context
in which thoughts emerge.

It's the context,
in human terms, is the biology.

What is the biological context
from which thought emerges?

What is the emotional state
from which thought emerges?

You change that context,
the biological and emotional context,

and you can change
the quality of the thought,

and the actual thought itself.

That is the source.

I suggest we get Chris back up

and I'll show you how Chris can learn
with no training before,

how to control his physiology.

You do not need to be - sorry, Neil -
a yogic master.

(Laughter)

Neil: What happens to short term memory?

(Laughter)

Here we go.

Which ear are we on? Neil: This one.

If you just hold that,
change chair around a bit if you like.

Turn your chair around,
so you can see the screen more easily.

So exactly as before,
is he still alive? Yeah.

So we'll start recording.

So again, just picking up each heartbeat,

the software is measuring the distance
between each heart beat

and calculating his heart rate.

Because he walked up the stage
out of the audience,

he's going about 90 miles an hour.

Just the excitement
about being the front here.

So if you want to control your physiology,

this isn't years and years
and months and months of practice.

You don't have to be a yogic master
to control your physiology.

You just have to know exactly
what to do, right?

So we're now going to show
Chris, sorry, Neil exactly what to do.

(Laughter)

Mental block.

Over here is a breath pacer,

so when that goes up, I want you
to breathe in ... (Inhales)

when that goes down, I want you
to breathe out. (Exhales)

At the bottom, there's a hold.
So wait for it. Don't go too soon, ready?

(Inhales)

And a long, slow ... (Exhales) Okay?

Wait for it.

(Inhales) A long, slow ... (Exhales)

You can follow this
in the room, if you want,

just breathe in this rhythmic fashion.

It's a nice rhythmic breathing.

So a long breath in,
and a long, slow breath out.

I'll leave Neil to do that,
and I'll carry on talking to you guys.

So of all the things that you can do
to get your physiology under control,

there are many things.

But the start point is to do something
that you can get conscious control over,

and you can get conscious control
over your breathing.

Now, there are 12 different aspects
of your breath that you can regulate.

12 different aspects.

So when you go to classes,

whether it's singing, sports,
fighter pilots, all sorts of things,

they'll talk to you about breathing
and breath practice.

Yoga, you know.

But what are they teaching you?

For example,
there's a yogic practice

where they teach you
alternate nostril breathing.

That's kind of interesting,

but in my view, that's number nine
on the list of priorities, of the 12.

The single most important thing is rhythm,
which is what this is training.

So we've seen that this measures
the level of coherence in Neil's system.

When he's in complete chaos,
he's down here in the red.

And just with a bit of guidance,
in less than or about a minute,

he's up and into the coherent green.

He is the yogic master.

(Laughter)

Neil brackets Yoda, right?

So you can see the physiology
has changed from this erratic

to this coherent waveform
in less than a minute,

when you know what to do.

So of all the things
in your breathing that you can do -

if you start to control
the rhythm of the breath,

that will start to change
the physiology, just as you've seen.

And you'll start to become more coherent.

So his frontal lobes will work better now
than at the beginning of this trace,

when his physiology was erratic,
you all see the difference?

Even though the average
heart rate is about the same,

during that period and during this period.

The heart rate is the same,
but the pattern is different.

So when you change that pattern,

you're basically sending
better quality fuel

from the heart to the brain,
the brain is going to work better.

And when the brain works better,

you're more perceptive,
you're more insightful,

you're more clear thinking,
you can understand how to problem-solve.

So I saw the other speakers say,

you have to figure out when things
go wrong, what I'm going to do about this?

If brains inhibited,

you probably won't come up
with the idea or the right answer.

But if you've got your brain switched on,
you've got a much better chance.

Does that all make sense?

So when you hear people say to you,

"Oh yeah, before that big presentation,
take a few deep breaths."

I'd say, "Don't bother."

Because a few deep breaths

isn't actually going to alter
your brain function that much.

By the way, when they say deep,
what they actually mean is large.

Large volume breath is what they mean.

Because depth is the area
where the air in the lungs is going.

What they mean is a few big breaths.

But even volume

is only about number five or six
on the batting order.

The number one priority is rhythm.

Take a few rhythmic breaths,
that will start to change your physiology.

So you can put this to the test.

Next time, before you might
have to make a difficult phone call,

rather than taking a few deep breaths
or even a few large breaths,

take a few rhythmic breasts,

and rhythm really means
a fixed ratio of in-to-out.

It doesn't matter what that ratio is,
so long as it's fixed.

So this is four seconds in,
six seconds out.

Four, six, four, six, four, six.

You could do five-five.
Five, five, five, five.

So long as it's fixed.

What you don't want

is four, six, five, five, eight,
three, three, seven, two, five.

That's erratic breathing, okay?

You want a fixed ratio.

And then, once you've got
a rhythmic breath going,

the second most important
thing is smoothness.

Because you can breathe
rhythmically but staccato,

so you could go (Puffing in and out)

That's entirely rhythmic,
but it's staccato,

so what you want is smooth,
so (Slow inhale and exhale)

which is a fixed volume per second
round the entire cycle.

Just as we're probably both rowers;
my sport was rowing.

That's what they teach you.

How are the rowers going
to win all the gold medals

in the Olympics in 147 days?

Neil: The first ones in 151 days.

They'll teach you
whenever you learn to row,

blades in the water,
blades out the water.

In, out, in, out. Rhythm, right?

And then once you've learned
that rhythm as a novice oarsman,

the next thing is once
the blades are in the water,

even smooth pressure through the water.

All the way through the stroke.

You don't want to put a blade in a water,

pull really hard, let it drift a bit,
and pull really hard at the end,

because boat goes "Uh..." like that.

In, even pressure.

And the same with Chris Hoy
on the bicycle.

If you look at the metrics
that is done around Chris Hoy -

I don't know if you realize this -

novice cyclist thinks
it's just about the kick down,

but, then it's the drag and it's the lift,
and actually, it's a circle.

So if you look at the metrics on that,
they've got to go circular,

and get as much pressure evenly
applied around the whole cycle.

So you'll see the Olympic cyclist

will have a smooth, and even force
all the way around the loop,

and those are the guys
that win the gold medal.

So it's smoothness through it.

So exactly as we've got here

is if we can (Exhales erratically)
then (Inhales erratically)

So you might have rhythm,
but have you got smoothness?

As you get smoothness better,
it becomes more and more coherent.

So rhythm and smoothness exactly

as you would cycle,
exactly as you would row,

gives you the most powerful effect.

Does that all make sense?

So one other thing,
if we got time, we probably have.

I'm just yapping because
we don't have lunch till one.

I might as well tell you something.

The third most important thing

is the location of your attention
while you're breathing.

What we say is ...

People teach you abdominal breathing -
breathe through the belly and all of that.

Breathe through the center of your chest,
through the heart area if you will.

Three reasons why we say
breathe through here not through there.

Or don't imagine you're sucking
the air up through the soles of your feet.

It's coming in through
the crown chakra, or whatever.

You do any of that stuff.

Where is your attention
when you're breathing?

Put your attention
to the center of your chest.

Three reasons why you put your attention
on the center of your chest is number one:

The heart generates more electrical power
than any other part of your system.

So even though there are billions
of nerve cells up here,

and only a couple hundred
thousand down here,

the power output of your heart
is three and a half watts,

which is the way greater
than the power output of your brain

Because what happens in your brain,

the electrical charges are going
all different directions, it all cancels.

But here you've got something
called "auto coherence."

The heart has to synchronize
in order for it to pump.

So electrically speaking,

the heart generates 50 times
more electrical output than the brain.

If you want to record
somebody's brain waves,

you have to put a clip
on their ear, like Neil's here,

pick up the heartbeat,
mathematically remove the heart beat,

because the heart beat is this big,

and the brain beat
or brain wave is only that big.

The heart's wave
more powerful electromagnetically;

the heart generates 5,000 times
more energy than the brain.

So it starts to, forgive the pun,
turn on its head.

Hang on, what's controlling what here?

We've got to start to look more broadly
in terms of the human system as a system.

We're so brain dominant, brain-centric.

So if you put your attention in the heart,

you're putting your attention
where the primary source of power is here.

So that's the first reason.

The second reason:

If you drop your attention
and breathe through here,

it gets you out of the noise in your head,
which is where we usually confuse,

just to drop into the body, and breathe
through the center of your chest.

And the third reason
which we're going to get onto

is actually, we're ultimately going to go

from controlling that physiology
up to the emotional state,

and show you actually
how do you turn on the passion;

how do you turn
on a positive emotional state.

We know an awful lot
about positive emotions

are experienced
in the center of our chest.

“Hence, I love my son with all my heart.”

Why do you even say that?
Because that's actually where I feel it.

The awareness might be in our mind,

but where do we feel the sensation
of love? In the center of the chest.

So where do you clutch the baby?
You clutch them to your heart.

You don't clutch the baby to your knee.

"I love my son with all my knee."

We don't say that because we feel it
in our knee, we feel it in our chest.

So the very fact
that you put your attention

on the center of your chest,
or in the heart area

starts to drift you into
a slightly more positive state.

Does that make sense?

So the last thing I want to -
just while Neil's impressing you,

give you this other bit,

so in my view, the biggest myth
of performance, I think,

is that it's something
to do with adrenaline.

You'll see this in business or in sport,

If you're not a bit pumped,
you won't perform.

For that meeting
you've got to be psyched,

that exam you've got
to be a bit psyched up.

You said, "No, no, no, You've got
to be relaxed under pressure."

Now you've got to be psyched;
you've got to relax.

You get both types of advice,
neither is true.

It's not about sympathetic activation,
or even parasynthetic activation.

it's not about how hot the system is
or how cold the system is.

There's another part of your system
which really determines your output,

which is whether you're in
a negative emotional state.

So, if this is adrenaline,

and this is a chemical
called Acetylcholine, ACH,

negative emotion underpinned
by the hormone cortisol;

or positive emotion underpinned
by the anabolic hormones

like DHEA, Dehydroepiandrosterone,
banned substance in the Olympics.

You get caught taking
those tablets, you're out,

because they're performance enhancers.

In the States, this is known
as the elixir of youth,

the vitality hormone.

You can get them on the internet.

(Laughter)

DHEA tablets.

The point is you don't need them.

So when you heat somebody's system up,
you can heat it up negatively.

Anxiety, anger, frustration.

Or you can heat it up positively.

Passion, determination, focus.

The heart rate over here
is 120, but erratic.

The heart rate is 120
over here, but coherent.

Both of them have the same heart rate,

both of them have
the same amount of adrenaline.

That will impair your performance;
that will enhance your performance.

Passion is the number one
predictor of performance

across every aspect of life,
including health.

If you're passionate
about something, you do it better.

It predicts all types of performance.

Simply, when you cool the system down,
relaxation is not necessarily valuable.

In fact, I've given lectures
to some of my medical colleagues,

entitled, "Relaxation can kill you."

Sometimes lecture titles
can pull the crowd in.

And it can, because
you can be relaxed and negative.

So apathy, boredom,
detachment, indifference,

all those kinds of things.

The heart rate is erratic, averaging 50.

Now you can be relaxed,
and it can be positive.

So things like contentment, curiosity,
equanimity, those kinds of things -

heart rate coherent, and 50.

So it doesn't really matter
whether the heart rate is 50 or 120.

What matters is, am I on the left,
or am I on the right?

And so, the secret really ...

If you map most organizations,
you'll see a rightward skew,

people are rightward skewed over here.

If you don't believe me,
go stand next to the coffee machine,

and you will hear the negative hum.

(Humming)

"Do you know what so and so
said to me yesterday?"

" That's outrageous!"

And then you bump
into somebody else over here,

full of the joys of spring,

What’s up with you?
How dare you be that cheerful?

You don't realize it's shit - the economy.

(Laughter)

They're trying to drag you
back over to here, back to "reality."

So as a leader, you really ...

And a large part of the work
we do with folks

is get them over here,
and you live your life over here,

so somebody references Csikszentmihalyi
in the zone or the state of flow

is about being over here.

And how controllable
is our emotional performance,

we've got Neil's point,
can we live our life over here?

Now, as you've seen most people
haven't got control of their behavior.

Let alone their thinking;
let alone their feeling;

let alone their emotional physiology.

So how do you live your life over here?

That's where the training comes in,
and we've shown in Neil

that when we've taught him
how to regulate his physiology,

that's the start point.

The regulation of the physiology
would get you to the midpoint.

You at least get to the midpoint
with regulating your physiology.

So you'll get to this point
just through breathing.

If you learn to breathe properly,
you'll at least get to the midpoint.

How you get over here

is you've got to learn to regulate
what emotional state you're in.

Now, most people have got
no control over that.

Their emotional state is dependent
on everything outside of them,

not on what's going on the inside.

So you've got to learn

how to train yourself to stay
on this side of the thing,

but if you take nothing away,
at least you get yourself to the midpoint

by learning how to breathe properly.

So to help you remember that,
think of "BREATH" as an acronym:

"B" stands for breath,
"R" stands for rhythmically,

"E" stands for evenly,
And Through the Heart Every day.

So if you breathe rhythmically,
evenly, and through the heart every day,

you'll at least get to the midpoint.

OK. Thank you.

(Applause)