Episode 242 — Prioritize INTENTIONAL Attention
Guest: Dr. David Rabin • Date: February 6, 2025
Episode Overview
Dr. Dave Rabin shares powerful insights on reducing stress and building resilience, including practical tools like mindfulness and his innovative Apollo Neuro wearable. Discover how small, consistent practices and intentional attention can transform your well-being and help your child thrive. The secret this week is… Prioritize INTENTIONAL Attention
About Dr. David Rabin
Dr. David Rabin, MD, PhD, is a neuroscientist, board-certified psychiatrist, and health tech entrepreneur who has studied the impact of chronic stress for over 20 years. He is the Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer of Apollo Neuro, creators of the first scientifically validated wearable to improve energy, focus, and relaxation through touch therapy, signaling safety to the brain.
Dr. Rabin focuses on non-invasive therapies for treatment-resistant conditions like PTSD and substance use disorders. As Executive Director of the Board of Medicine, he leads efforts to establish evidence-based guidelines for alternative medicines, including plant-based therapies, while training healthcare providers and ensuring quality standards.
In his psychiatry practice and ongoing research, Dr. Rabin explores trauma recovery, the neurobiology of belief, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. He earned his MD and PhD from Albany Medical College and specialized in psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Rabin has been married to his co-founder, Kathryn Fantauzzi, since 2016.
Personal Website: David Rabin MD, PhD
Company Website: Apollo Neuro
Nonprofit Website: The Board of Medicine
Podcast Website: The Psychedelic News
You’ll Discover
Why You Want To Avoid Tunnel Vision (6:40)
The Wisdom of Ancient Mindfulness Techniques (11:47)
Why You Want Homeostasis (19:05)
The Power of The Present Moment (21:25)
A Powerful Exercise You Can Do Anytime (25:24)
How Apollo Neuro Helps You And Your Child Feel Safe (33:19)
The Benefits Of Improved Vagus Nerve Tone and Higher HRV (36:46)
A Different Way To Look At Your Child’s Behaviors (42:36)
Ways To Combat Burnout (48:58)
Referenced in This Episode
Apollo® Wearable - Use Code ALLIN for a Discount
Autism Parenting Secrets Episode 212 - “You Can’t Heal If You Dont Feel Safe” with Dr. Neil Nathan
Autism Parenting Secrets Episode 241 - “Trust Your GUT Feelings” with Dr. Will Cole
Full Transcript
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:00:00]:
Let's put the work on your body, not your brain, because your brain's exhausted. And let's try to calm your body. And if we calm your body, will it clear and calm your mind? And ultimately, that's what we discovered in the lab at the University of Pittsburgh. And then that became the Apollo technology that we launched in 2020 as a wearable that you can access on our website, ApolloNeuro.com and then you can access it and try it for free on your iPhone. But that is the core basis for how this works and how it helps people who never learned these techniques, kids included, and especially kids with autism and caregivers under stress. And we've done preliminary studies in both these populations, and they have tremendous outcomes just in terms of how they feel. Because when you remind somebody that they're safe in their bodies, all of a sudden most of the rest of the stress of the past and the future melts away. Because nothing's more important than feeling safe in your own body.
Cass Arcuri [00:00:52]:
Want to truly be the best parent you can be and help your child thrive after their autism diagnosis? This podcast is for all in parents like you who know more is possible for your child.
Len Arcuri [00:01:02]:
With each episode, we reveal a secret that empowers you to be the parent your child needs now, saving you time, energy, and money and helping you focus on what truly matters most. Your child.
Cass Arcuri [00:01:14]:
I'm Cass.
Len Arcuri [00:01:14]:
And I'm Len.
Cass Arcuri [00:01:15]:
Welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets.
Len Arcuri [00:01:30]:
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. It's Len, and today I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Dave Rabin to the show. I first heard Dr. Dave at last year's biohacking conference in Dallas, and his insights left a really strong impression. So I tracked him down because I know a parent like you will absolutely benefit from what he has to share. So some background on Dr. Dave.
Len Arcuri [00:01:52]:
He is a neuroscientist, board certified psychiatrist and trauma Expert with over 15 years of experience studying the effects of chronic stress on mental and physical health. His groundbreaking research revealed how touch signals safety to the brain, promoting better digestion, sleep, and mental function. This discovery led to the creation of Apollo Neuro, a game changing wearable device that helps reduce stress, improve heart rate variability, and boost recovery and cognitive performance. Together with his wife, Catherine Fantausi, Dr. Dave is making this powerful technology accessible to more people. The secret this week is prioritize intentional attention. Welcome, Dr. Dave.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:02:42]:
Thanks so much for having me, Lana. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Len Arcuri [00:02:44]:
Well, I'm excited for the conversation and it's interesting because some Recent episodes I've recorded with some really amazing people with incredible perspectives. Both of them mentioned you specifically and this device. So my listeners have had this teased for a while. So I'm excited for you to be able to share a little bit more about the Apollo Neuro and of course your backstory. But those episodes, the first one was Dr. Neil Nathan and his episode was all about how that you can't heal if you don't feel safe. And then last week, Dr. Will Cole was on and he was talking about trusting your gut feelings and.
Len Arcuri [00:03:23]:
And he was very big on the Apollo Neuro and how beneficial that could be. So I'll hand it off to you. How'd you get into this game?
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:03:32]:
I'm so glad to hear that first off, and glad to hear that you've been enjoying the technology as well. It's been a game changer for me wearing it on my ankle right now. And yeah, I mean, I got into this world because I. Long story short, I've always been interested in consciousness and how we make meaning from the world and how stress changes the way we make meaning from the world. And I think there's a much longer story there. But in short, I became fascinated by the way we think and feel and how we decide what's important to us as humans and where our attention is. For instance, over the years, particularly in college and ended up doing my PhD in neuroscience, focused on chronic stress because I was really interested in dreams and how dreams impact our lives. But studying dreams back in the early 2000s was still a very challenging thing to do.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:04:41]:
And so I started studying stress. And what was really interesting to me up until that point, up until I started college, was just noticing how sometimes the same stressors would result in. Or traumatic events of somebody's past could result in, on one hand, extreme growth in performance acceleration that we see in some of the world's greatest athletes, artists, musicians, et cetera, who really hit peak in their domain or surpass what anybody thought was possible in their domain. And then on the other hand, some people who experience those exact same stressors or very similar stressors or traumatic events end up getting sick. And why would the same kinds of stressors result in tremendous growth for one person and the opposite for another person? And so as I started to kind of tease that question, I went back to cells. And looking at the way that certain cells in the body, like brain cells and certain cells in our eye that live for our entire lives, the same cells, they don't divide, they don't grow, they just Stay the same. How are they dealing with stress? And over the course of our whole lives, because they have to deal with a lifetime of stress and not die or get sick. And I learned a tremendous amount from working with cells in the lab and my PhD for about, I was working on that for about seven years.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:06:09]:
And then from there I started to realize a couple things, one of which was that while cells were fascinating and I learned so much from working with them, I really liked working with stress on the whole person level, because even if you fix certain cells in somebody's body, they can still not be doing so well. And so how do we look at stress on the whole person level and taking it all the way back to the way that stress changes how we make meaning from the world. And that if you approach the world from a perspective of fear and being afraid, then you are more likely to see fear and see threat in things around you and then make decisions based on that with what we know to be called like tunnel vision and where you're missing a lot of the other things going on around you. And then if you approach the world from a standpoint of safety, knowing that you're not exposed to the same kinds of survival threats that our nervous system was designed to respond to and identify as threat, which are like predators chasing us in the jungle, running out of food, running out of water, running out of air, being excommunicated by your community, your society. Right. Those are like the core stressors that are supposed to evolutionarily in all mammals, trigger a survival threat response, or what we call the fight or flight response. But we don't have most of those stressors around anymore, thank goodness. And so in modern society, we have other stressors, we have the news, we have screens, we have emails, we have too many responsibilities, too much noise.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:07:44]:
Right. And so those are different, but they trigger the same fight or flight system. And this was particularly noticeable in the patient populations I was working with at the time. This is now Fast forward to 2012 through 2020, where I started to work with a lot more veterans with severe trauma from war conflict zones and also traumatized women and children. And realizing that many of these people were not only not responding to the best medication based treatments we had available, but they were having high likelihood of side effects. And they were also getting misdiagnosed all the time and, and where, you know, people with trauma were getting misdiagnosed with adhd, depression, autism, and, and everybody just seemed to be very confused about, you know, the role of traumatic, past traumatic events in our Behavior and our emotional regulation. And so it just seemed like an area that was ripe for improvement.
Len Arcuri [00:08:44]:
But.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:08:44]:
And so I started diving into that in my research around 2012, and then ultimately realizing that medications that we had available were not the best fit for many people because they weren't solving the problem. I started to look at how technology could be used to augment some of these treatment outcomes in people. And so that became the focus that eventually became Apollo.
Len Arcuri [00:09:11]:
Yeah. So much that you just shared, Dr. Dave, is so relevant, especially thinking of the listeners that we have where the autism diagnosis for their child, for many parents, that's what set them on this path of fight or flight, because it's a hard thing to take in. You're not given a lot of hope, wildly confusing as to what you might be able to do. So that fear response is very relevant for parents, particularly early on. Some can navigate and get to a better place. Others, unfortunately, do stay there. So whether it's a fear response fearing the future, or shame and guilt about what might have happened in the past, there's such a part of this journey for many parents.
Len Arcuri [00:09:56]:
And I think the good news is that a lot of what the parent might be experiencing, even though it feels like it's being done to them by the situation, but so much of it is within their ability to do something about and to control their response, which is why I love all the science you've done and what you've been dedicated to, including the Apollo Neuro. There's so many ways that a parent can take control and to carve a journey that just feels better.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:10:24]:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that. So that everybody who is in that kind of situation that you just described doesn't feel alone in their situation. What we're talking about is care is like caregiver fatigue. And it's something that happens whether it's extremely common. And it's something that happens whether you have. Whether you have a child that's struggling or whether you have a parent that's struggling or a family member that's struggling, where you're the primary caregiver. It's a tremendous amount of responsibility on the caregiver, and it causes a lot of stress.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:11:01]:
And ultimately it kind of takes us. It's humbling and takes us back to the core of what. What we can do about stress and what stress really is, because we can't. And whether you look at ancient Western medicine, Eastern or tribal traditions, they all say the same thing, which is that stress and pain, and they equate stress to pain. A Lot of the time. Because pain can be emotional, mental, or physical. And, you know, stress and pain are often unavoidable in life. And so if we try to avoid them or try to shame or guilt ourselves about them, or try to project into the future about them, then that is a slippery slope to what the Buddhists call suffering.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:11:48]:
And that is what is avoidable. Suffering is the avoidable piece. The pain is not. The stress is not avoidable. So how do we avoid transferring or transmuting pain and stress into suffering is we bring ourselves, rather than focusing on the past or the future, as you alluded to, we bring ourselves back to the present by teaching ourselves how to control our attention intentionally with our focus and our energy. And then when we focus on that, it restores the sense of control, as you were talking about. And. And control is everything.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:12:29]:
The sense of control is everything. And it just has to do with reminding ourselves what we have control over right now. Because we can't change the past and we can't often predict the future. It's uncertain. So if we spend a lot of time thinking about those things, then we're actually giving away our control. And that is a big part of what causes suffering. And so the Buddhists were right about a lot of things. And the ancient Eastern and tribal practitioners, medicine practitioners from thousands of years ago, think whatever you want to think about, whether or not that has been proven in Western science, experientially, psychologically speaking, it's true.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:13:10]:
They were 100% right. And we have a lot to learn from them. And attention control techniques like deep breathing, breathing by choice, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, movement, all of these kinds of techniques. Choosing thoughtfully what you put into your body, choosing where your attention is focused on any moment, which is a mindfulness technique. All of these are ancient techniques that are now being proven by Western science to be powerful healing techniques that we should be teaching everyone, starting with our children.
Len Arcuri [00:13:42]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think maybe 20, 50 years ago. Right. Particularly in America, it would be easy to kind of discount those ancient, you know, ancient ways, those ancient practices. But back then, it was at least more doable than it is now. Right. Where the distraction, the amount of just everywhere you look, it's so much harder now, I think, for anybody to get present to employ any of those practices you mentioned. I mean, they're easy to do, but it's a higher degree of difficulty because you won't stumble in it.
Len Arcuri [00:14:17]:
You have to actually make it intentional to become present.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:14:21]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I think that that is really the Crux of one of the biggest challenges of modern society is that as society becomes more modernized, the level of distractions increase exponentially. Not linearly, but like exponentially. And the more distractions we have, for example, with the invention of smartphones, which are an amazing tool but also very distracting, and screens in general, right, they are distracting us from ourselves. And so if we fall into the trap of distraction rather than actually tackling the problem at the core and self soothing and, and doing the self healing and recovery techniques and prioritizing those, then we wind up not teaching ourselves or just forgetting how to self soothe and how to cope with stress more effectively, which is a skill that all humans are born with the ability to do. We just have to practice it like all skills, right? It's just a, it's a practice, it's an exercise. And if you don't do, if you don't use it, you lose it, right? It doesn't mean you can't get it back, it just means you, you lose the, the skill goes down if you don't use it. And so there.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:15:34]:
What Eastern techniques teach, which I think is so fundamentally important for us to remember, is that as the level of distraction gets with, with modern society going moving forward gets exponentially higher, the demands on our, on our bodies and our brains get exponentially higher. And so it's required, mandatory that for a healthy life we must teach from a young age. And that you can learn this at any age, but ideally starting at a young age, we must teach mindfulness techniques and breathing techniques and self soothing techniques. Because if we don't learn and prioritize those techniques, which are techniques for filtering out distraction, then the distraction quickly takes over and overwhelms us and we lose sight of what we are supposed to be doing to stay healthy. And so the antidote in a lot of ways for this exponential distraction of modern society, which especially impacts caregivers, is to train your brain, which we again, we all have the ability to do just by nature of being human, to filter out distraction with self healing techniques, mindfulness and attention control techniques. And most of those are very old techniques, but they still are equally valid today, if not more useful and valid today than they were in the past, because as you said, the level of distraction is so much higher. So there's a, the good news is there is a way to balance and solve the problem, but we are still a little bit behind in Western society in terms of teaching this as a priority for people. And that certainly needs to change.
Len Arcuri [00:17:24]:
Absolutely. No, I thought that's a great backdrop. And I just want to emphasize the fact that everything you're talking about is incredibly relevant for a parent as well as the child, because both the parent and the child, to the extent that how their experience in life feels harder or challenging or exhausting or whatever the case may be, a lot of it does come down to a lack of safety, a perceived safety. And as you were talking about, underneath all that is whenever we don't feel like we're in control, that's going to create that lack of safety. So that whatever each person can do to get a better sense of presence, feeling like they can control how they're feeling through breath, work, or through just meditation, whatever the case may be. These all may sound like kind of New Agey things, but as you said, they've been around forever and they're super, super simple. But they won't happen by accident. It takes an intentional practice.
Len Arcuri [00:18:29]:
So I just think for people listening, everything we're talking about totally applies to you and for what you're trying to help your child with. All these techniques also are very relevant for a child who's doing the best they can, but might be more sensitive to a lot of the stimulus that's out there.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:18:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I would even go as far to say as these techniques of distraction, filtering, attention control, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, are applicable to all humans because we will all be subject to increased stress of distraction. Just by being an active participant in society, you will be faced with these challenges, so you won't be able to avoid it. Stress is unavoidable. Again, pain is unavoidable. The question is, how do you deal with it when it comes and still maintain balance? What physiologically we call homeostasis. And so that, I mean, as a brief segue, that's why we developed, in large part why we developed Apollo as a technology. Because Apollo helps get you into that mindful present state.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:19:40]:
Because the body knows present state. The body is always present. It's our minds that are actually elsewhere much of the time. Our minds can be in the past, which is where they are much of the time. They can be projecting into the future, which is where they are the rest of the time. And they're rarely present. Our bodies are always present. They're always in the here and now.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:19:59]:
And so they don't go anywhere. Right? So if you. That's why breathing works and why what we call somatic experience works. Somatic meaning the experiencing the body, the feeling of being in your body, and the reason why that works is because it helps take your mind, which can be anywhere, past, present or future, and grounds you back into the present by reminding you what it feels like in your body right now, in this moment. And Apollo works in that way by sending these very gentle vibrations to your body. And anyone who has an iPhone who wants to feel what we're talking about, you can just download the Apollo Neuro app in your app store and hit and just open it. And it will take you through this experience we're talking about. And these soothing vibrations that we discovered through my research at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:20:49]:
Working with traumatized individuals actually work for everyone because they just remind you simply that the mind is safe in the body right now. And even though the past might not feel safe because it's filled with guilt and shame, the future might not feel safe because it's uncertain and out of our control. The body can be safe right now and we can remind ourselves of that. And that simple reminder, whether it's through a used through Apollo or breath or mindfulness or meditation or yoga or whatever it is, any of these techniques are all working the same way to just center us back in the present moment. And the present moment is where we actually reclaim the power to change the outcome for the future. So that's where our decision making really matters. That's where our listening and our engagement with life really matters. Because it's in the present that we make our decisions.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:21:43]:
It's not in the future. Right. So I think all of that taken into consideration, that is the future of technology is not to make us more in the past or more in the future, or to solve past problems or solve future uncertainty. It's actually technology that makes us more present. And technology that makes us more present is the technology that heals the body.
Len Arcuri [00:22:07]:
That's great. And I'm a numbers guy, so I have to ask this question. I know when everything started with me in terms of particularly with my son and the challenges we had. I would argue that early on, especially in a given day, I spent zero hours present. Like literally, I was constantly in the past or in the future. And so now, fast forward to now, I've developed a meditation practice. I do work this in, but in terms of what most people like, what stats do you have on the average person? How many minutes are they actually present? And if you are employing practices and maybe using the Apollo Neuro, it's not like people need to be present 12 hours a day. We're talking about a small amount of time where you're just getting Your body, that alignment.
Len Arcuri [00:22:55]:
The alignment with the body and the brain.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:22:58]:
Yeah, I mean, I think so. So in general, I would say there's no limit to how present you can be, which is why the Buddhists and the yogis, ancient yogis, they spend their whole lives learning meditation and mindfulness practices because there's no limit to how present you can be. So I think in general, even just having a prioritizing presentness, prioritizing being here now is critical. And it's really just. That's a cognitive thing, right? That's not a. That doesn't require that much effort. It's really just, you know, recognizing for yourself and accepting this is a value for yourself, that being present is important. And I'm going to prioritize time doing it, doing practices that remind me to be present in my body in the.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:23:48]:
In the moment, not in the past and not in the future. I think, you know, it's hard to say how many on average, like what percentage of time people are spending in the present. But I would venture to say, just based on my work with patients over the years, that most people are not present in their bodies or in the moment unless they're actively doing an activity that they identify as being in the zone or being in a flow state. So you know what I'm talking about. Probably a lot of your listeners know what I'm talking about. Where you're exercising and feeling really good and your mind is clear and quiet. You're just doing what you're doing and you're not thinking about anything other than what you're doing in that moment and what you're experiencing in that moment. Or you're on a beautiful hike in nature and you're just surrounded by serene, incredible, magnificent natural environments, or you're having a wonderful connection to your child or to an intimate partner where your mind's just clear and quiet.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:24:53]:
And when you're in those. Every human knows those moments, right? Hearing your favorite song on a bad day. Right. Like getting a hug from a loved one. Everybody knows those moments because they're universal to human experience. It's just that they don't. We don't get enough of them. And it's.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:25:09]:
You know, we can't always rely on going into nature or going for a run or getting a hug, which requires other people or snuggles. Snuggling a pet, which requires your pet to be around to be present. We have to teach ourselves how to get there on our own, which is the hard part. And so I would suggest everybody who's listening to do an exercise that I use and I've used every day. Every day, every moment that I can remember to do it and that I use with all of my clients, which is a cognitive behavioral therapy exercise. And I would say that it's the core if you take nothing else away. For those who think they understand what cognitive behavioral therapy is, I would offer this as the most fundamental, basic principle of cbt. Cognitive behavioral therapy that is poorly taught, and it's called thought questioning.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:26:00]:
And if you have any doubts as to how or questions about how much time you spend in the present versus elsewhere, ask. Every time you have a thought, ask yourself the question, is this thought true and useful to me right now? And the right now is important, and the true and useful is really important. It has to pass that test to be worthy of your time right now. Has to be true and useful right now. Otherwise, it's not worthy of your time. Because our time is valuable. Our time and our attention is literally the gateway to our consciousness, and it's everything we have. The longer we spend paying attention to anything, the more we concentrate that thing inside of us.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:26:45]:
That's what concentration is. It's attention times time. Right? So if we let the environment decide what we pay attention to, then we're concentrating what the environment decides. Like the news inside of us. If we decide to focus on our breath, we're concentrating breath inside of us. And that breath training of being present. And so the thought questioning technique is really important because when people start to do it, which requires basically no time in your day, it just requires you to notice, hey, I'm having a thought. Is that thought true and useful to me right now? Well, that thought is that I regret something that I should have done better in the past.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:27:25]:
Okay, well, that could be true. I made a mistake. I regret it. That sucks. I should have done a better job, right? I wish I had made a different decision. Is that useful to me right now, even though it might be true? Not really. Right. Like regrets are generally, once we've learned the lesson of the decisions that we should have made better, thinking about regrets now is fairly useless to us right now.
Len Arcuri [00:27:53]:
There's no utility.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:27:54]:
Yeah, it's no utility. It doesn't help us feel better. It doesn't help us act better. If anything, it takes us out of the moment so we're more likely to. To make the same mistake again because we're not present. Right. And so then we can acknowledge that thought and say, hey, I see you thought. I see you drawing my attention to this Thing that I should have done better.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:28:14]:
But you're not passing the test. You're not true and useful to me right now. So I'm going to acknowledge you, I see you, and then I'm going to let you go and not give you any more of my attention. And then you reclaim through that practice your attention back to the moment. And you can attribute your attention back to anything. You can put it. The best thing is just put it back to your breath, put it back to self gratitude for reclaiming your attention. Right.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:28:35]:
Like there's all these things you can now free up your attention to do and focus on intentionally, by choice. And what I notice most people in the first couple months of doing this work, this exercise again, which requires like, it's totally free, requires basically no time each day. It's just an awareness practice. And I noticed that people come back within a couple months if they're actually doing the exercise and they're like, wow, I just freed up like 80 to 90% of my attention, like my brain capacity. I feel like I just got like 80 to 90% back because that's how much was spent thinking about untrue or useless things.
Len Arcuri [00:29:21]:
Right.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:29:21]:
And that's what I noticed for myself and when I started doing the practice years ago. And so I never stopped, but I think the. And eventually it just becomes second nature. But like, imagine how much better you would feel if you reclaimed 80 to 90% of your brain's capacity to focus on anything. Right. I mean, it's hard to imagine the gravity of that level of improvement. And to a lot of people, it sounds unbelievable, but it is believable. I mean, that is what these ancient techniques have been teaching for so long, that cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy, sort of repackaged into a modern therapy technique.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:29:56]:
But it's just questioning your thoughts. And that is how you can personally start as your. If you think about yourself like a lab experiment, the best lab experiment you'll ever have access to, and the fanciest, that is the first way to test how much of my attention is on things that are actually serving me or not. And then how do I reclaim it? And that's when you start to really see the difference.
Len Arcuri [00:30:22]:
That's amazing. That's a very powerful tool. Simple questions, right? And yeah, it's kind of like with a computer, you free up the ram. Right. Sometimes the memory, your computer gets sluggish. And this is a way of clearing all that.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:30:36]:
It's clearing your cache and your history in your browser. Yeah.
Len Arcuri [00:30:39]:
But you're actually doing something Extremely important. Which is, is this serving me? And the reality is so many of our thoughts don't serve us and we may be doing it habitually or for reasons we think might help, but ultimately this is where I think especially parents can get in their own way in terms of how they're operating and the thoughts they're having and where they choose to stay as opposed to, you know, pivoting and moving to something useful. And again, we all, we all do this to some degree and it's great to have a powerful tool to help get out of it.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:31:11]:
Yeah, I mean it's invaluable. Invaluable. And the best. And again, the best way to actually test this for yourself is just to do it. Right? You just gotta do it. And then when you do it, you'll start exercising that muscle that we call, I mean, in the brain. There's lots of ways to describe it, but it's like the attention control muscle. Right? And the attention control muscle works a lot better when it's tightly linked to the self, like the self value muscle, like how much you value yourself and your time.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:31:42]:
Because if you don't value your time or you don't value yourself deep down because of what you were taught about yourself as a child, perhaps then, or as a young person, then you're not going to feel like you deserve control over your time and attention. But you do. It's the most valuable thing you have to give you evidence for that. That is why every single advertising company in the world spends billions or trillions of dollars to command access to your attention, to sell you stuff. Right. This is not a mystery in marketing. This is the core basis of all marketing is if I can capture your attention, I can sell you something. Right.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:32:19]:
And so that is in and of itself evidence that this works. And they're just using it to sell you stuff. But you can use it to retake control over your life.
Len Arcuri [00:32:28]:
Yeah, no, there's no more powerful opportunity, I think for particularly again for parents who are listening. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about more how the Apollo Neuro works because the reason we're having this conversation is I'm a huge fan of simple things that require little effort, that have huge potential upside. So I'll hand it to you to talk about the device itself because I know there's lots of devices out there, wearables, and some are reading what's happening with your body and responding in some way. But the Apollo is just one way. And I'd love for you to be able to talk about that. And can you also, when you're explaining it, touch on what I talked about at the outset, which is heart rate variability. I think a lot of our listeners understand that concept, but perhaps some don't. So if you can talk about how not only how Apollo Neuro works, but the benefits, including hrv, I think that would be really helpful.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:33:23]:
Sure, yeah. That's a great place to go. So Apollo is a wearable technology. It, it's actually not just a wearable. You can also try it on your phone, on your iPhone, but it's a vibration based technology that delivers these very gentle, soothing wave like vibrations that we discovered through my research at the University of Pittsburgh Medical center that increase presence in the body by helping the body feel safe. We discovered the technology behind it through studying breath and mindfulness and yoga and these techniques that you, these ancient techniques that you and I were talking about just a few minutes ago because people have such a hard time doing them and we don't often, especially when you teach adults and they've never learned how to do these techniques before. It is very challenging to learn a new meditation or breath work technique and then to keep doing it on your own. That's really like the crux is not just doing it with a doctor or a meditation teacher or a breathwork teacher, but then how do you keep doing it afterwards on the go.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:34:30]:
Right. And that is really, really hard for people to do. And we don't talk enough about how hard, challenging those techniques are to integrate into your life and master. But it can take tens of thousands of hours of practice to be able to breathe properly in a moment of stress. Tens of thousands of hours. And we just talk about it like, oh, just do it right. But it's really hard. And so I witnessed this personally with my patients who were all had past traumatic histories of some sort or just past challenging events that they hadn't really fully sorted through and processed.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:35:05]:
And they were struggling even more than the average person. And I thought, well, you know, we're in the 21st century, we have all this modern technology, we have hundreds or thousands of peer reviewed science articles published on these topics of yoga, mindfulness meditation, breathwork, biofeedback, which is where the heart rate variability term comes from. And those studies show that this stuff works. Biofeedback, which most people don't know about, is the first science of breath and western science of breath. And this was developed and discovered in the 1960s, I believe, and is still a technique that we use to treat mental Illness. And it's incredibly simple. It's literally taking the standard breathing techniques that we use in meditation practice, which is about five to seven times per minute breathing, so about half the breathing rate that you'd normally be breathing at a half to a third of the breathing rate we normally breathe at, which is 12 to 24 breaths per minute, which is stress breathing. And you cut that rate in half, about five seconds, starts about five seconds in, five seconds out, give or take a few seconds.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:36:21]:
And then when you connect somebody to a heart rate monitor and a breath rate monitor, and they watch their rhythms, their breath rate, their heart rate on a screen, they can sync their breath rate and their heart rate within about 90 seconds. 95% of people sync the rates at about five to seven breaths per minute. And when they do that, within just 90 seconds, their vagus nerve activity goes up. Vagus nerve being the critical cranial nerve that governs all recovery, relaxation, soothing, healing in the body, including sleep, including digestion, including emotion, control and regulation, and empathy governs all of it. And it is activated by safety and soothing and breath that you, when you choose to breathe by choice, you take a nice long, deep breath, you are by choice, activating your vagus nerve. And so biofeedback proved that these ancient breathing techniques work, and why. But it requires still the effort of sitting in an apparatus where you're watching your heart rate and your breath rate, and it's not accessible to everybody. And it has historically required a coach who is trained.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:37:32]:
And that's a lot of effort and money and time that most people don't have. And so we thought, well, you know, if. And one of the key metrics that goes up, that improves when you do biofeedback is heart rate variability, which is a metric that measures vagus nerve activity. So if you think about vagus nerve as the core nerve of the rest and recovery system in the body, the opposite, which is the opposite of the fight or flight stress response nervous system. When we are feeling calm and soothed and safe, heart rate, vagus nerve tone goes up, it slows our heart rate, and then our heart rate variability goes up as a sign that our vagus nerve tone is improving. And when we are feeling stressed, our heart rate goes up, the time between each beat decreases, and our heart rate variability goes down.
Len Arcuri [00:38:19]:
It's almost a little counterintuitive, but, yeah, you want higher hrv, right?
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:38:24]:
And if you think about HRV heart rate variability as being a proxy metric, a biometric for vagus nerve activity, that's the best way to think about it, which is the more your heart rate, higher your heart rate variability is, that means the higher your vagus nerve activity is. And that's it. That's all you need to know. And the higher that is, day after day, week after week, month after month, the healthier life you're going to have mentally, physically and emotionally. The more consistently you're going to perform, the less you're going to get sick, the better you're going to feel, and the more you're going to absorb your food, et cetera, et cetera. And this has been now shown in many, many studies. And what's really interesting is that people who are stressed out, caregivers who are kids with, and adults with autism, kids and adults with ptsd, depression, anxiety, they all have, in studies of the studies that have been done, they all have very low heart rate variability. And so I thought, well, if this is the case, that this is a theme that we're seeing, that means that these folks are in a fear state all the time in their nervous system.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:39:34]:
And so how do you address fear? That you don't want to be there. You have to retrain. Safety learning. And so we thought, well, I can tell you until the cows come home how to do that with techniques that you're not going to practice on your own because they're hard. So what if we just sent the right safety signal to the body? Like when you hear your favorite song or get a hug on a bad day, you instantly feel better, right? That's again, another universal human experience. So if we can do that with your favorite song or with a hug from a loved one on a bad day, and it has an instant response, that's also activating the vagus nerve. So what if we could use technology to simulate parts of that effect and give you basically your favorite song for your body? And that ultimately was the kind of initiating theory, was let's put the work on your body, not your brain, because your brain's exhausted, and let's try to calm your body. And if we calm your body, will it clear and calm your mind? And ultimately that became, that's what we discovered in the lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:40:39]:
And then that became the Apollo technology that we launched in 2020 as a wearable that you can access on our website, ApolloNeuro.com, and then you can access it and try it for free on your iPhone. But that is the core basis for how this works and how it helps people who never learned these techniques, kids included, and especially kids with autism and caregivers under stress. And we've done preliminary studies in both these populations and they have tremendous outcomes just in terms of how they feel. Because when you remind somebody that they're safe in their bodies, all of a sudden most of the rest of the stress of the past and the future melts away. Because nothing's more important than feeling safe in your own body.
Len Arcuri [00:41:21]:
Oh, that, that's super powerful. And then so much of what you covered just resonates. And this device, you know, which is super simple, it's easy to look at and almost discount it. It's like that can't really be doing that much again. That's why the simplicity is deceiving. And even when Dr. Nathan was on and he was a huge, strongly recommended the Apollo Nero, he was saying, especially if someone's super sensitive that just a couple minutes and build up. Otherwise I look at it, I'm like, I'll put this on all day.
Len Arcuri [00:41:55]:
This is great. But depending on the child or the person, it might be something to start and you kind of just build up. But I appreciate you giving a little bit more behind the curtain of what went into it and what it's all about. And yeah, I encourage anyone. Go check out the website ApolloEuro.com, i'll include a link in the show notes. We also have a code you can use all in and get a discount. This is one of those things that's super simple and again can benefit both you and your child. And as you were talking, Dr.
Len Arcuri [00:42:29]:
Dave though, in terms of like people doing things that feel good to be present, a thought came into my mind where so many parents look at their child with autism and they look at the stims, the self stimulatory behaviors a child does, which as a parent you look at, you're like, okay, I want those gone. I don't want my child to do that. People are looking at them. But it dawned on me as you were talking that that is the child's way of being super present and doing something they really enjoy. So I know it took a long time for me to not judge those behavior behaviors and what the child was doing. But I'd invite parents listening again, what your child's doing, they're doing for a reason. And it may have a lot to do with Dr. Day is talking about in terms of safety.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:43:10]:
Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's also why kids, whether they have autism or not act out, right? Is because they feel out of control over their lives. And so Feeling out of control is literally. And focusing on it and the things you don't have control over is literally one of the primary sources of anxiety in our lives. So when you self stim or when you act out, it's a. Or when you restrict your eating, for instance, right? In kids with eating disorder, this is a major reason, it's a major way for kids who don't have any other coping mechanisms yet to exert a sense of control, reclaiming a sense of agency. Because if you can't control anything else in your life, what can you control? You can control how you self stem and you can control what you put into your body, right? Those are like the primary things. And if it gives you positive attention or negative attention, but it's attention nonetheless that you weren't getting before from caregivers, then that creates what's called a secondary reward loop.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:44:13]:
So I might be doing an activity, I might feel upset as a child because I'm ignored by my parents or I'm not getting the attention that I want. And so good or neglect is like the worst because it is neither good nor bad attention. And so if kids are neglected in any way or feel neglected in any way, they will even not just act good to get attention they want, they will act bad to get attention they want, because any attention is better than no attention from their caregiver. And adults will do this too. It's not just kids. It's so we, we are all like, even as adults, we often act like big babies because we still have the same responses going on in our bodies, the same core needs to feel in control. And so that's why it's so important to teach and model this for our kids. And you know, if you do these techniques, what's so interesting is you can measure the outcome.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:45:10]:
So not to say everybody should get a wearable tracker, but all of these techniques we're talking about, including using Apollo, improve vagus nerve tone, which means you can measure heart rate variability getting better over time. Apollo. Part of how we discovered it is we were looking for and designing technology to improve heart rate variability because we knew that people have higher heart rate variability, have better responses to treatment, and they have less symptoms of mental illness, better recovery rates. And so we thought, well, what if we just do, you know, focus on that? And we were able to figure out a specific rhythm that was tuned to the vagus nerve through the skin that boosts heart rate variability. And that was how we were able to then test and predict outcomes for huge numbers of people which now is true and proven true in the market. And it's so interesting because it doesn't matter what technique you use. I'm by no means saying everybody should get an Apollo. I'm saying, but you should try the free stuff.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:46:11]:
And if the free stuff doesn't work, then you can use Apollo as a tool to help augment that. But the single most important thing that parents can do as caregivers that we often forget is to model the behavior that we want our children to have for them. Because children are like sponges. And kids who have autism can be extra spongy in terms of how they learn from us, modeling after us. And they'll pick up on little behaviors that we have and then mimic them to an extreme. Right. And so because, and you've probably experienced this yourself. And so that is not necessarily the outcome we want.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:46:53]:
If we're being unintentional with our behavior around our children, then whether they have autism or not, or they're just healthy kids, they are still soaking up our behavior like a sponge. And so the best thing that we can do is, is when our kids are stressed out, uncomfortable, when we're stressed out uncomfortable, is to just take a few slow, deep breaths, hold your child near you. Your child will feel and watch you breathe yourself into a calm soothe state. They'll feel it through your lungs, rising and falling. They'll feel it through your skin. They will see it through your nose. They'll see and feel your energy level change. And then they will absorb it.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:47:36]:
That way. It's much easier to teach a child how to do these behaviors and practices naturally with, with, like, with. Without much question or resistance when they are watching their parent, their role model, their idols do it first under the similar circumstances. And then they learn how to self soothe with the right. The right. The behaviors that are desirable. Right. Like if your child is self stimming or restricting eating to feel in control, telling them not to do that without replacing it and offering another behavior that is healthy is not particularly helpful.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:48:16]:
And they will keep often keep doing the same behavior. So the trick is give them a new behavior that you model for them to replace the behavior you don't want them to have. And then they've learned a new skill that they can take with them through life.
Len Arcuri [00:48:29]:
Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic example of again, the parent kind of leading the way. Right. Showing through their own behavior what would be useful for the child. So I think that's a dynamite suggestion. And yeah, there's so many aspects I know we could go down mindful of time, though. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share this because so much of what you just shared, it all is so relevant and particularly when we think about parents and a big thing that they're worried about or maybe they're not worried about, but maybe the biggest danger for them is burnout if they don't take care of themselves. And I think I'm sure you'll agree with this, but in terms of combating burnout, the greatest way a parent can avoid burnout is by boosting their vagal tone, correct?
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:49:20]:
Yeah. I mean, the best way to so burnout is simply put, focusing in all of our efforts on performing and, and not enough effort on recovery. Right. It's like the idea of like burning the candle of both ends. And so you, if you burn the candle, both ends, you're going to run out of wax fuel really, really quickly. Right. And then when, once you run out, you're out and then you need to spend even more time replenishing your, and recharging and replenishing your fuel stores. And it's way harder to replenish when you're at zero than it is to replenish when you're at 10, 20, 30, 50%.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:50:01]:
Right. And so ultimately burnout, simply put, is really about an imbalance between how much output we're giving in any given day or moment and how much nourishing input we're getting and prioritizing. And it's really just a priority thing, you know, a lot in our society. We have like a very, we have a society that for many decades has been, you know, very familiar with the phrase like I'll sleep when I'm dead, but when you're dead, you can't sleep or do anything else. Right. And so that's not really a good solution or a saying that we should be identifying with. And even the military is turning on this old way of thinking of push until you are completely burnt out. They're actually now focusing on recovery techniques and teaching those early on.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:50:53]:
So if the military can do it, if doctors and medical professionals who are notoriously pushing themselves to the bitter end can do it, then the rest of us can do it too. And it just requires a priority shift to balance. And balance means to prevent burnout. Balance is balancing recovery and performance. And balancing recovery and performance means balancing vagus nerve activity, your stress response or your recovery nervous system activity with how much time you're spending in a stress, high performance state of being. Right. And that's. And so like in, in philosophy, there's a saying that is like as above, so below, right? So thinking about the cognitive switch is prioritizing balance of recovery and performance.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:51:42]:
The biological reflection of that is increasing vagus nerve tone. The amount of time we spend in recovery states. It means that our nervous system is actually spending more time in a high vagus nerve activity state. And when we spend more time in that state, guess what? We feel so much better because we're actually recovering so that we can continue to perform at a high level consistently. And when you burn out, your performance is the first thing that goes, right? Like a lot of people who burn out, like they just can't work for months or even longer. And that's not good. That doesn't achieve our goals. Right.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:52:20]:
Like if we are caregiving to the point of burnout, then how much care can we give if we're not caring for ourselves? Right? And so it's really the balance. It's just maintaining that balance. And that balance is reflected in our entire nervous system all the way down to the way our cells are processing stress themselves. And nothing could be more important to prevent burnout than understanding that.
Len Arcuri [00:52:43]:
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Got to fill the tank. And what you've shared in this discussion, lots of free ways where parents can do that. And the Apollo Neuro. Very affordable, simple. Again, if you're looking for something that requires no thought, it's a very simple wearable and again, profoundly impactful for both you and potentially your child. So check it out. Everything will be in the show notes.
Len Arcuri [00:53:07]:
And Dr. Dave, I really appreciate this expansive conversation. I know it's helped me. I'm sure our listeners are going to benefit tremendously. Thank you very much.
Dr. Dave Rabin [00:53:15]:
Yeah, it's my pleasure. So glad to be here with you.
Len Arcuri [00:53:19]:
Your child wants you to transform now. And the fastest way to do that is with personalized support. To learn more, go to allinparentcoaching.com intensive.
