Biohacking | Amy Albright | Podcast 

Greg: So, our guest today is Dr. Amy Albright, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. Dr. Amy Albright runs a successful coaching and advising practice filled with top performing change-makers and business leaders from all over the world. She uses conventional and unconventional methods to strengthen her clients’ emotional resilience, physical performance, and to powerfully foster their professional and personal development. Dr. Amy works exclusively with leaders who have the genuine desire to evolve themselves and who are making a positive difference in the world. Dr. Amy’s first experiences of biohacking began with equipment to induce altered states, thereby creating profound healing and insights for her patients. Over the years, she has utilized a wide variety of other “technology meets healing” methods and devices. She more recently worked full-time as an executive for a company called Bulletproof, some of you may have heard of that, spearheading the creation of Bulletproof Labs, now called Upgrade Labs. Upgrade Labs, a first of its kind, two million dollar biohacking facility in Santa Monica, California. And I visited that lab, actually, that’s pretty cool. Now, Dr. Amy lives at the crossroads of modern technology and ancient wisdom and is creating a new paradigm for leadership and evolution. And I’m so excited to be interviewing Amy; we’ve worked together a little bit on our coaching program. And it’s so great to have you not in our studio but from your home studio, so welcome! 

Amy: Thank you! Thanks, Greg, it’s exciting to be here, to be a part of this. 

Greg: Yes, this is really exciting. Hey, before we dive into our topic today which is really, you know, your experience with biohacking, I wanted to know about your bio – you talked about using rare equipment to induce altered states. Can we start there? 

Amy: Yeah, sure. So, 17 years ago, I graduated as an acupuncturist and herbalist – that’s what I have my doctorate in – and at that time, I was introduced, almost simultaneously, when I first started in that month of practice, to a piece of equipment. You literally lie down on a bed and there was a light and sound kind of combination and the light would be “structured,” they called it, through crystal applications. So, there’s these giant crystals around, over the body, light shining through it. It sounds super esoteric and crazy-weird. When I first saw it, I took a step back and went, “Okay, what is this?” But that curiosity in me took over and I stuck with it. And what I saw, what I was able to experience with that was really incredible for myself – being able to just lie down and instead of struggling to drop into meditation between the sound and the light. It was the special mojo of that table, that piece of equipment, just dropping into a really deep state of meditation, sometimes, you know, often to the point where you’re not even aware that you’re there anymore – you’re so far in your altered state that you’re not thinking, “Oh, I’m laying here.” You know, a lot of times when we’re meditating, we’re thinking, “Oh, I’m sitting, I’m aware of this topic floating through.” It would literally be in an absence of thought. And then, sometimes, you’d come back around and have quick rapid successions of insights or like watching vignettes of movies. So, when I started thinking that, I knew it was really profound. And then I started to, you know, have other people get on it – you know, people that had done less meditation, people that were totally new to personal development, people that had never experienced any kind of healing before, you know? And when I had an accountant say to me after he came back from one of these sessions, you know, he’s lying down and it looks like nothing’s happening for 30 minutes – maybe he’s taking a nap. He wakes up and he says to me, “I was soaring on the back of an eagle and it was so powerful, I could feel it through every aspect of my being. And then the eagle turned back and looked back over its shoulder and said to me something really profound.” You know, that real, that was exactly what he needed to hear in order to transform and come into peace and more clarity about who he was and what he’s needing to be doing in his life. So this is a guy like, I mean, he’s an accountant, right? I mean, he lives inside of spreadsheets and numbers and everything lines up and everything makes sense and he’s never done anything like this before. And he’s basically explaining what maybe some people would liken to an ayahuasca experience. And there’s been zero substance, right? That’s something, to hear sound and experience light and go into a hypnagogic state, a deep meditative state – probably a theta state based on, you know, the theta brain waves. And, you know, so I was sold. It’s like, this is some really profound stuff because at that point, what I knew was the biggest thing that gets in people’s way isn’t necessarily their body or the restrictions of their genetics and it’s not even their past – it’s not their story, it’s what they believe about themselves and it’s about the perspective that they have. So being able to up-level his awareness like that, and in my awareness and everyone else that I saw exposed to that piece of equipment, it was really massive. It created a really huge change for me after having been in, you know, natural medicine for quite a while and helping people to develop themselves for a while. So, it was fun. 

Greg: Who created that equipment and where is it? Is it still around? Do you have one? 

Amy: There were seven units of it made. This is often how biohacking equipment – the story of it – almost all of the inventors of biohacking equipment are super brilliant scientists who make, you know, one to ten at the most, being an outlier. And then, they just sort of disappear. I don’t think that the genius that goes behind the invention doesn’t necessarily get met with the business sense to be able to know how to market, you know, and popularize. And then also reduce the cost because there’s a huge amount of cost, usually, associated with biohacking equipment – to purchase it at that scale. So, you know, there’s a $15,000 piece of equipment. At that time, not everybody would be able to have access to that. 

Greg: Yeah, I’m thinking I need to get one because I wanna soar on the back of an eagle or at least have an eagle speak to me.  

Amy: Right, yeah. And he’s just one of many I had. I mean, people would, you know, burst into tears of joy. You know, be relieved of decades of suffering – physically, emotionally – and have massive breakthroughs. So, you know, it unlocks. And there are other ways to get there. But, yeah, I agree, I think I should invent another one. It’s on my to-do list, someday, to create another equipment like that.  

Greg: And put me on your customer list, I think I need one of them. So, you know, when you’re talking about that, I’m thinking of float tanks and kinds of things. That sounds kind of similar to that sort of experience. 

Amy: Yeah. One of the things – you know, you mentioned the Bulletproof Labs, now called Upgrade Labs – one of the pieces of equipment that I was exposed to, in the development. There was something that Dave Asprey was so keen on – and he still really is – and he calls it the “waterless float tank” and it’s actually somewhat similar to the piece of equipment that I just described. So it’s not exactly the same equipment but there is something analogous to it available in Santa Monica and in Beverly Hills at the Upgrade Labs and – actually, I think they only have it at the Santa Monica location – but you lie down and it spins your whole body inside of a chamber and there’s a light and sound component and basically it induces you into a theta state within about 90 seconds. So the sensory deprivation tanks, they’re hoping, that you get there via more of a meditative dropping-in process actually push your body in that direction. And that’s one of the distinguishing factors with biohacking, is that, you know, we really use some science and technology to push the biology and push that state of consciousness into a certain way. So this piece of equipment actually works instead of sensory deprivation, like those float tanks would. This one works in sensory overload. It sounds horrible, it sounds miserable. It’s a little bit of, I don’t know, a multi-sensory Disney ride or something – like a Frog and Toad’s Wild Ride for a second there. And then, basically, you just let go and you get into a really expansive state very quickly. And people do have quite a lot of revelations, sometimes visions, and a lot of their emotional stuff drops off. You know, what I learned very fundamentally in my training as an acupuncturist – but also my own healing journey because I was actually challenged with a huge amount of health problems – basically, it’s all about the mind, it’s all about the emotional space. If we heal the mind and the emotions, the body’s going to follow. So, I really feel like technology that addresses and – you know, and any kind of application, whether it’s coaching or personal development – we’re really getting at the root of what’s going on with the body and creating that foundation for healing. Sometimes spontaneous body healing, even. 

Greg: You know, as you’re talking, what’s coming up for me is sort of this, you know, idea that we – traditionally, you have to kind of prepare yourself for these adventures. To prepare yourself for the external adventures, the internal adventures, for expanding our consciousness. I’m thinking about, you know, meditative practices and the traditional teacher or mentor or guide and mentee, or master-student relationship, that kind of, “I’m your teacher, you’re my teacher.” And you take me slowly up the mountain. You’ve got to sweep the floor for, you know, for six months and then I teach you to sit and then you meditate. And experiences with, you know, biohacking and with all this technology, it seems like we’re leapfrogging this. And I just wonder about that, no judgment. I’m just sort of, I’m reflecting on this new era in, kind of, almost instantaneous meditation or, you know, like what Drew’s doing – Dr. Drew Pierson with 40 Years of Zen, right? And I know that you have a lot of experience with that and how we’re leapfrogging now and just really advancing our development – can you speak to that, a little bit? 

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like you said, no judgement on what’s come before. I think our predecessors basically were trying to break down the mind and get access and they didn’t have necessarily the same technology we do now, of course, right? We’re in the boom of technology in the last 100 years, and then in the last 10 years. Even so, they were doing it through, you know, “Sit, and maybe I’ll teach you something someday.” Yeah, how our world is moving now and the way that I’m designed as a human, I don’t have the patience for that and I don’t think a lot of us do, you know? Like, “Sit and maybe I’ll teach you something 15 years from now,” right? It doesn’t really work for me and I think that there are a lot of people that are more impatient and wanting results. It’s not that they’re not willing to put in effort or spend, but they want a bigger yield – and why not have a bigger yield, you know? We now get a bigger yield – we have more power in our iPhone than we did in an Apple 2E. So why would we, you know, why would we be kind of strapped back to an older technology and older possibilities? So, you know, for me, the style I do – coaching and advising, I do teaching in groups – and that is basically with everything that I do. It’s my fundamental belief that we can get there faster and I really stay poised on the edge of creating a miracle at every moment I get – looking and creating miracles. And then I’m noticing miracles and I’m in that, kind of, a mindset that’s another way to get in, you know? Another way to describe peak performance versus, you know, we can coast through life. We can kind of do what our parents told us we should do or, you know, do what everybody else is doing and aim for mediocrity or maybe slightly better than we did. I mean, if we remove that uppermost barrier, then we can really pop into a different state with almost no technology, honestly. Because all of it, ultimately, is run from within but the technology can definitely help.  

Greg: I love what you said, paraphrasing, “Create miracles or be aware of miracles into every moment,” or something like that. What you just said.  

Amy: Well, the way that I used to say it, is that, “Hey, look, I’m just doing my thing and I’m creating a trail of miracles in my wake.” And every once in awhile, I like to look back and notice what I’ve been up to. Yeah, you know, and that’s the kind of attitude, I call it “badass-ery.” Like, I’m not here to just do a little bit. I’m not able to just, kind of, make a slight difference. I’m going to radically change someone’s life and I know that you know if I can do that with the right people at the right time, it makes massive changes in the world, you know? You started off working, so 17 years ago – just to tell a little to that story that you had mentioned wanted to hear about – 17 years ago, I graduated with that acupuncture license and I got into private practice and I realized that I had an opportunity. Yes, I could put in needles and yes, I can do herbal medicine and actually make a huge difference for someone with that medicine, and I totally love and believe in that medicine. But if I could just really, truly see someone and understand who they are and what it is they need to hear and relay that to them as quickly as possible and clearly as possible, I could set their life off on a whole different trajectory, which includes the physical and emotional healing that maybe they knew they were coming for, but maybe it just actually transcends that because most people don’t dare to dream. They don’t have a big enough frame or a context for what’s possible, in general, much less themselves, you know? “Creating miracles” attitude back then, and I’ve been missing it and honing it ever since. And what I’ve learned is, that if I can do that for people who are in positions of power and authority – let’s say they run a large corporation or they’re spearheading massive environmental changes – so these people that I work with from all over the world, I want to work with those that are strategically going to help create the biggest impact. 

Greg: Yeah, that’s beautiful. So, when you first started getting into – I kind of want to bring you back to biohacking – and when you first started getting into that, the biohacking domain, it was through your expanding consciousness, as I gather, right?  

Amy: Yeah, through that device – it blew my mind, right? And it really, yeah, it blew out the water of what we can do, yeah. 

Greg: Yeah, and then you went – did you, shortly thereafter, go to work with Bulletproof and Dave?  

Amy: No, it was, actually, that was about the meantime I used a lot of other sound and light healing technologies in my practice, in addition to acupuncture. You know, different ways of accessing the body, I feel. You know, there’s the tapping methods like Emotional Freedom Technique, using all kinds of different methods as needed. You know, people would come for color-puncture, which is the colored application of light to acupuncture points on the body. Tonics, so, using sound vibration on acupuncture points and around the body. Yeah, and then, so, within the first few years of my practice, I kind of shifted out of a lot of those body-based treatments, though, and got more into the coaching and advising and even ended up specializing in business. So, Dave, at that, did the story of how that all came to be – me working at Bulletproof – was, I was coaching Dave Asprey, as one of my clients, and his senior team. And we were doing really great work and making a big difference in the business. So he brought me in as a full-time employee as the Vice President of Culture for Bulletproof, a lot of people know, the buttered coffee for biohacking. Dave is, he’s an amazing, he’s a genius in the field. I really do feel like he’s grandfathered the entire field that what we would currently call biohacking, as far as using this most modern equipment. I think that we can go back, you know, much further but he’s really put together the field so i’m really grateful that I had that opportunity to work with him and for him. 

Greg: Yeah, so I want to read you this one quote I was telling you before we got on here. This is from the Huang Di Nei Jing, the Yellow Emperor’s Internal Classic of Medicine from the second century BC, for all of our acupuncturists and to re-calibrate your memory right back to acupuncture. It says, “The sages did not treat those who were already ill, but treated those who were not yet ill. They did not try to put in order what was already in disorder, but tried to prevent disorder from arising in the first place. Treating disease after it has arisen is like starting to dig a well when one is already thirsty, or only starting to cast weapons once the battle has begun. Would these also not be too late?” So, I mean, it’s kind of the roots of biohacking. I’m reflecting back to Chinese medicine and, you know, this idea of Yang Shen and nourishing life and all these different areas of nutrition and, obviously, qigong and meditation and mindful practices.  

Amy: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. 

Greg: Yeah, that’s why I wanted to.  

Amy: Connecting those dots, right? So, the origins of biohacking, you know, if we look at it, it’s science and technology making a difference on body. You know, mood and behavior, just really elevating that person. I mean, back in, you know, 2000/3000 years ago, the technology was qigong, right? They didn’t have lightning sound technology, yet. But, you know, if you do qigong and tai chi, you can significantly change how your body and your brain are behaving. And if we were to measure somebody with an EEG, we would see before- and after-effects of, probably, just one session, and certainly cumulative sessions, you know? But, as far as science, a lot of people are not that informed or only have a general sense of what goes into the science of acupuncture and herbal medicine. But I know that, you and I both know, it’s a massive amount of science. It’s not petri-dish cellular science but there is a structure and form. It sounds kind of poetic, sometimes. You know, we talk about the elements. But the truth of it is that it’s a very complex system and it is, really. You know, when I look at why I went through all of that training and then I ended up going such a different way with my practice, it ended up not dropping that but just getting so much broader. I feel like, that going through that training helped me to understand how those science and the technology and the systems work, and we know how to apply and then optimize those systems. And, yes, we can, in a pulse, we can detect a whisper of a pathology before the patient or the client could ever even know that they have it – and that is a beautiful place to make a difference, yeah. So, it absolutely is early biohacking, you know? We also have moxa – moxibustion, you know, the application of heat to specific areas of the body that do very powerful things. And, you know, I think that that’s another technology that we used at that time. We didn’t have nootropics and we didn’t have what we call “stacking” now, and we didn’t have all these capsules to swallow. But people were finding all of those supplements and augmenting how even their cognition was happening. You know, the acupuncture medicine doesn’t leave out, by any means, how the brain is functioning and how the emotional well-being is. And it doesn’t just work towards pathology. We talk about “brightening the mind” and, you know, “lifting up the qi to the brain” and all of that, the energy, so that we have that clarity of thought. And really, those are maybe early conversations about peak performance. So, I love those rooms and I’m grateful for them, yeah. 

Greg: Yeah, I’m always so curious about, you know, those origins. So, what sort of technology are you using right now? I know that you recently – we had lunch some months ago after you’ve just gotten back from 40 Years of Zen – you’re a big proponent of the work that Dr. Drew is doing. Have you been back since then or are you in a different program? 

Amy: Just as a context, 40 Years of Zen is another one of Dave Asprey’s 

companies. Dr. Drew Pierson and I actually worked together in San Diego and private practice. I did a lot of neural feedback with him and for myself and that was a really, that’s been a massive implementation of biohacking and a huge part of my evolution and my process, my growth. And then, we used it mutually on various clients. So, yeah, now they’re that intensive. I haven’t done it again since February. I do want to do it again this fall, but we’ll see. It’s just a matter of getting up there – it’s based in the Seattle area. But, you know, on a day-to-day basis, I still I have neurofeedback that I actually do at home. I’m blessed to know how to use the technology, at least in a basic way, I do that pretty regularly. And then there are different technologies and definitely there’s stuff that I do every day that I’m happy to share with everybody here to, you know, talk about just easy things to do at home that everybody can. 

Greg: Go for it. So, what can our listeners do? What would be a good departure point, because not everybody can afford time or the money to go? 

Amy: Exactly, yeah. 

Greg: Nor buy a $5000 piece of light-sound equipment with binaural beats and, you know, right? So I actually asked Drew this question too. What I asked him, what would he recommend, but what would you recommend? 

Amy: Yeah, it might be some of the same things because Drew and I’ve been sharing notes. We’ve been deep in this together for about seven years, or eight years now, yeah. So, I think that one of the most powerful things that we could do – it’s actually a light and sound device, binaural beats based – and it’s actually pretty recently new to the market, it’s called Mind Alive. And I don’t know the inventor myself, yet, I plan on making an introduction. But what we’ve seen is, you know, it’s basically, it looks like a pair of glasses that you put on your smartphone and, basically, you power everything up. You put in your headphones and you’re listening to binaural beats, which have a really powerful effect on the brain, and then the pattern of the blinking lights can drop you into different states, brainwave states – alpha, you can do alpha theta, you can do delta. You know, there’s certain ones that have program names so it’s very simple to use, you don’t have to understand, necessarily, a bunch about what you want it could be. They’ll call it, like, “Quick Meditation,” or “Afternoon Refresh,” there’s one that’s called “Invigorate.” So, somebody very new to all of this, you don’t have to be a cognitive sciences neurology geek to be able to buy this unit. And I think it runs roughly $250. 

Greg: That’s pretty reasonable.  

Amy: It’s super reasonable. I love how, again, with everything, technology gets cheaper.  

Greg: Yeah, that’s great. 

Amy: This thing doesn’t have wires, it works on Bluetooth for your phone. And you can slide it into a bag and have it with you anywhere. I take it with me when I travel and I use it on the airplane. 

Greg: Oh, that’s a great tip. I saw one recently, a friend of mine had one, it was Deepak Chopra’s one and you actually plugged in the glasses. I tried a lot of different, you know, programs. It was pretty cool but it was like, I think it was like, there’s a lot that’s out there for you. There’s a different unit that uses transcranial DCS, which is a light electrical current, and it can help to stimulate the brain. It’s used a lot of times for depression but also just to kind of up-level the thinking and get into a frame of mind and a stronger perspective. But that runs about $550 and it does have, you know, it’s got more wires and it’s kind of a system that you have to carry around. So this one’s really, like, simple and sweet. I think that there are a lot of really great products out there and it could sound really, you know, unbelievable what it is that it does. But for myself and for other people, if you’re struggling, if you feel a little bit bogged down, you’re not really sure how to have a breakthrough, maybe you’re not sleeping well, this little unit can make a huge difference. One thing to know, is that it’s not for everybody because blinking lights can cause seizures with certain people so I’m not necessarily, I’m not prescribing any of these things at all. But I do just want to tell you these are what I do when I’ve had other people be helped by. So people should make sure it’s appropriate for them, not for kids either. Kids can only do certain programs on those kind of light and sound devices and that would have to be prescriptive, again, I don’t even know the criteria for it. 

Greg: Yeah, I’m glad you said that. We, obviously, we give a disclaimer at the beginning of this show, anyway, that we’re not making any medical recommendations here. But I know that people with depressive or anxiety disorders and mood disorders have to be really careful with even just guided imagery, you know, it could just be a soundtrack that takes people on guided imagery – they have to be careful with. So, yeah, people should always consult their healthcare providers before embarking on these kinds of things. But I appreciate it, again, this is for our conversation here. 

Amy: Yeah, we’re just having fun sharing and comparing. So another one that I really, truly love is the Oura Ring – it’s spelled “o, u, r, a,” the Oura Ring. I sleep with mine every night. I used to go to sleep every night and just kind of wonder what happened and I’d wake up either tired or refreshed or whatever but not necessarily understand how much room did I have, how much deep sleep did I have, did I wake up, you know? And so, there’s been a treasure trove of information with the Oura Ring myself and the ability to modify – “Oh, I had a lot of wake-ups last night and I took a bath last night and probably raised my core body temperature up too high and that’s what caused more wake-ups at night.” So the Oura Ring is wireless, it looks like a men’s wedding band kind-of-thing. Yeah, I only wear mine at night because I don’t prefer the look of it for myself during the daytime. But you can use it for exercise tracking too and I love it because it has really low EMF, or Bluetooth. I really feel like the amount of electrical stimulation and interference that we have is a very important topic, and EMFs are really important topics. So with this ring, you can turn it off and then sync the Bluetooth back on so that you’re literally just wearing an inert device, but it’s recording all of that.  

Greg: Oh, interesting. 

Amy: Transmission happens when you link it to your smartphone in the morning. 

Greg: Okay, yeah, that was one of the things Drew told me when I was interviewing him on this podcast. I asked him, I said, “What’s one of the best things people can do for sleep?” because we’re talking about this, and he said turn off your wi-fi at night. 

Amy: Yes, completely flip the switch. Yes, it’s switched off. Yeah, and there’s ways to. There’s whole home EMF hormone harmonization. When I did that, I noticed a dramatic difference in my sleep. 

Greg: What is that? What is whole home EMG hormone harmonization? 

Amy: Yeah, EMF Solutions has a product – friend of mine runs a business – and you clamp a product onto your smart meter and the smart meter is the one place in the house that then connects to all the pipes, all the metal. And electricity is easily conducted and/or harmonized through metal, so you can actually just – it doesn’t reduce the amount of EMFs but it brings it into a more harmonious flow and, as we know, it’s not energy. Bad energy is a natural part of life and we get we get solar energy and all that kind of things into our body all the time. But it’s really about how harmonious is it, how natural? So, that’s the function of this. It’s just a device you install and then you forget about it, it’s just there, but it’s made a huge difference, I used a ton. The other piece was, I used to have a ton of spiders – black widow spiders – all in my backyard and I didn’t want to use chemical sprays. But I resorted to chemical spray, still couldn’t get rid of the black widows. He said that I had a really high level of EMF contamination in my home, based on his meters that he was measuring. When I got the EMF Solution device put on my smart meter, what happened was all the black widows went away, weird. I cancelled my pest spray company because I didn’t want that to begin with.  

Greg: So, they were attracted to the vibration or the EMFs?  

Amy: Yeah, somehow they were, that’s my understanding. I’m the only person that I know that’s maybe put that together so I don’t have a scientific data basis but it seems to me, really interesting. You know, like, ants and things like that sometimes are on geothermal lines, right? So I think some of these insects are kind of tuned in to or drawn to certain kind of electromagnetic fields or phenomenon and I just didn’t want black widows, out of all the spiders, not really what I want around. 

Greg: Although, they don’t really want to have anything to do with us. Most people are freaked out about that. 

Amy: Exactly, yeah. 

Greg: You know, I just think one day, ants are gonna lift my house up and just move it down the block just to mess with me. But, actually, I haven’t seen the ants, for some reason, this summer. I think my neighbor is spraying chemicals all over. Anyway, so what other kinds of tools do you have? So, let’s talk about genetic testing a little bit. And as a way of insight, what do you, first of all, what do you think about genetic testing? 

Amy: I think it’s amazing. You know, we we can test not genetics but also gut biome. Yeah, I think that’s an amazing tool. Sometimes, somebody is having an emotional or a mental performance issue and that’s gut-brain – it’s really, it’s the sameness, it’s not just connection, it’s almost the same system. So being able to know what’s going on with that, or maybe they’re having digestive or other problems – autoimmune problems, so health everywhere. You know, we’re reading it and to be able to test for specifically what is somebody low on because, sometimes, it’s just none of certain strains present in someone’s gut. And then populating that, specifically, can be just really massive. 

Greg: Yeah, I was reading – did you read this book, “Peak?” You see that? Okay, I’m gonna recommend that to you, you’ll like this a lot. It’s pretty dense – peak health, nutrition, recovery, mindset – by Dr. Mark Bubbs, “The New Science of Athletic Performance That is Revolutionizing Sports.” It’s not just about sports, I mean, he’s pretty keyed into athletes, obviously, by the title. He talks a lot about the gut biome and how we’re just so limited in our culture, in our western cultures, and a lot of it’s just we’re not in contact with soil, we’re not in contact with it and it can be replenished easily. But then it when you go back into your normal habitat, which is mostly indoors, or separating from nature, that it goes back to the limited levels of  microbiome that we’re talking about here. Yeah, but what sort of supplements are you using or do you recommend them to people or to your clients? 

Amy: Sometimes I do. I don’t get into too many of the details of that, I usually refer out and let somebody else manage that portion of care because it can be a real worm-hole for time and focus. Yeah, people that I’m working with right now, I’m on almost nothing sometimes. I found some really great gut flora I really like, Microbiome Labs, for their flora that they have, their probiotics. And then, also, they have a mucosa lining and a prebiotic, and I think that combo is really powerful. I’ve seen some great results with that, yeah. I mean, basically, I recommend that people get under the care of either an acupuncturist, an herbalist, a functional medicine practitioner, a naturopath – if you really want to make a difference, yeah. It takes being very comprehensive, very targeted at the same time, but taking a comprehensive picture and understanding, really, where to go and being on course. I feel like that there’s too much that gets left out of the medical model. I feel like that, you know, the medical model definitely has a huge amount to offer and I always recommend doing that in tandem, yeah. You know, taking a step back and recognizing that if we just treat with medication and band-aid things, that we’re going to end up, you know, never really handling those root causes and those root causes can snowball. Yeah, saw that in my own health – I was on antibiotics from two weeks old and I had a horrible time with, basically, it was autoimmune. Allergies are autoimmune, not many people understand that. So I had allergies and digestive problems and skin problems and, you know, just a lot of stress. As a kid, I had a really tough home environment and I think that, you know, getting people off of that circuit of just creating more medications and going the medical route is key and getting people to not necessarily just self-prescribe, you know, in the hands of somebody, that’s really good. Don’t just go to, you know, the health food store and hope that you can kind of pat yourself together. Yeah, uniform consumer, yes. And then, I think be in the hands of somebody that really knows what they’re up to. 

Greg: Yeah, what are you reading right now? What do you, what’s of interest to you? What are you listening to? Do you have time to read or do you listen to audiobooks or how are you charging up your intellect these days? 

Amy: Yeah, you know, I do it a lot through my work. The people that I work with are massive change-makers in the world and so I learn a lot just by interacting with them. And, you know, and by what I’m helping them with, as I’m rolling this stuff out, it’s dropping out of my mouth because I plugged into that flow state and it’s just coming through me and I’m going, “Yep, that’s good, yep.” Oh, you know, I’m including myself into the work as I’m doing it but I’m very clear that the information just kind of rolls through me, I’m one of those funny people. I haven’t watched TV in at least over a decade, maybe more, I’m very, very careful with what I put in because, just like junk food, there’s junk food. So I’ll occasionally listen to a podcast but nothing on the regular. You know, right now on my bedside table, I probably have 10 different books. I might pick it up and read a chapter here or there. I’m someone that I take a small amount of information from a lot of different sources and then I combine it in a new way. So I don’t want to dive in too deep, I don’t like to get too deep into details. I rarely read a book cover to cover. 

Greg: Oh, got you, okay. Yeah, you’re like me – I’ve got, like in my office, in my house, or you know, wherever my books are, yeah.  

Amy: Yeah, and it could be on anything. I mean, right now, one of my books is on parenting. I’ve got a middle school son and there’s just a lot of changes that are happening at this stage. So I’ve got a book called “How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk.” Yeah, it’s been a huge book for me, you know. Unrelated, again, to the field of biohacking, but just this and coming into peak performance. 

Greg: We should do it, we should do another podcast on parenting because I have four in various age groups and you’ve got your guy. Yeah, middle school, that’s one of the hardest jobs of my life and almost beautiful. 

Amy: Yeah, absolutely, so rewarding. And you know, I think that it deserves a huge amount of respect that we give ourselves for what we put in every day, but also just respect for the importance of the job and how much are we focusing on it because we’re really, we’re sculpting out how these humans are going to think and perform and be in their lives with our everyday behavior, conversation, breakfast, or how we pick them up from school, or how present we are. So, just like, with everything. You know, looking to be at that absolute top of what we can accomplish and at the same time, love ourselves for our imperfections because we’re not going to be able to do it to the standard that we want all of the time, right? Sweet spot – how do we get in there and how do we stay in that, how do we lean in and work that edge and be constantly growing? Just that by itself, I think, is a great role for our kids. 

Greg: You know, there was a great book that was written years ago called “The Dao of Parenting.” Did you read that book? Do you have that book?  

Amy: I read that in school, “The Dao of Parenting.” 

Greg: You read The Dao here at the school? 

Amy: I did, yeah, years ago, yeah.  

Greg: So let me ask you, when you talked a bit about your early years and coming in and being challenged health-wise and how you you managed through your education and through your practices to overcome that – what about, how do you face adversity now? And maybe you don’t have that much now, because what I get from you is you pretty much navigate a flow state and miracles pretty effectively. But, you know, we all have adversity, that things come up even for the best of us. So, tell us about, like, a challenge or something like that and how you navigate that? 

Amy: Yeah, well I definitely did, I had a lot of adversity, a lot of tough stuff that I had to get through as a kid, and even as a young adult. And sometimes the baggage of that still lays around. So, you know, it’s about working it down and really getting after it. For me, the thing that I think that kind of brings me the most strength and most resilience is my, just, really freaking deep passion and dedication to my own freedom and of others. You know, I got really clear. It was well over a decade ago that I’m here to radically change the planet. I know that might sound, you know, overly ambitious to some but it’s absolutely what I’m up to and what I’m about. And I think that we, actually, I think that all of us, actually, have a really big calling and we all have a contribution, we all have a reason for being here. So, for me, I just dive into my reason for being here, all the time. And I’m just really determined to get myself free. So if I’m challenged with adversity, one of the first things I do is just remember that I’m creating my own reality. It’s a belief that i have that, “Hey, if I’m experiencing it, there’s got to be a reason for it and there’s got to be something that I’m doing or a belief that I’m believing subconsciously that’s creating that.” So I reverse-engineer and troubleshoot it and I figure out what it is. Is it programming from when I was a kid? Is it just limited structures of beliefs that I still kind of, habitually – we’re so complex and we’re so beautiful and diverse and multi-dimensional, we can’t possibly understand everything that’s running our program at once, right? But if I can see, “Oh, wait, I’m having a challenge with getting through this next career hurdle,” or “I’m nervous about showing up for this,” or “I have a little bit of, maybe not a conflict, but a disconnect with the person in my life,” you know? How do I approach that from a place where I am not the victim because I’m fiercely determined and clear that I am not a victim and also that they’re not wrong. How do we pop the right and wrong paradigm? Those are the traps that we can get stuck in very, very easily. And I just don’t allow myself to go into that for more than a half a second. Sometimes I end up there, just like every woman. But how quickly can I pop out and how determined am I to make progress and to bring things, not just to a slight sense of resolution or a slight sense of relief, but all the way through the finish line? And I think that’s what sets, you know, peak performance apart and has allowed me to make the progress that I have – so that you stay in a flow state, so that I am really strong, almost all the time. I don’t get offline hardly at all anymore but just, you know, as a word of encouragement for other people, I used to spend a lot of time offline. In fact, I didn’t even know what it was like to be online. So, just on my game until I was in my mid-20s. So it’s been a journey and that’s really what I seek to show other people – how to get through and cut years off of that process, get to it very quickly, whether it’s with biohacking technology or just the techniques and the strategies that I’ve developed in my coaching and advising.  

 

Greg: So, when you’re working with your clients, do you, obviously you’re going to have them do some biohacking modes and methods? 

Amy: The lights and sound device. 

Greg: That Mind Alive. What about journaling? Do you journal? 

Amy: I do, yeah. I like to journal, I like to doodle in my journal. There’s all kinds of things that happen in my journal. It’s a rich playground in there, yeah. I also like to have my clients use HRV, so the Heart Math device that, again, clips into your smartphone, and I think you have to have an iPhone for it but maybe they have an Android now. But there’s a little clip that goes onto the ear and it measures the heart rate in a really complex way and you can tell when you’re tracking. And if you want to get yourself, what I call, “back online,” plug yourself into some HRV Heart Math training for about 10 or 15 minutes and you’ll be in a different state, for sure. And sometimes, that’s all you need. We don’t necessarily have to know how to get ourselves, you know, scraped up off the pavement if we’re having a hard day, or for a constant state of fatigue and stress into that peak performance. Sometimes, we just need to create a shift and then from that shift, we can start to problem-solve. Again, just kind of depends on how shut down we are, how locked into the illusion we are. So looking for that shift, it could just be good old-fashioned exercise – go outside. I love gardening, I don’t have a super fancy yard or garden but when I’m out there playing in the dirt, I definitely feel better. You know, whether that’s EMF neutralization, whether that’s the the microbiome like you said being populated by that exposure to dirt, it can be very basic. Go for a swim in the salt water, I think salt water cures just about everything.  

Greg: Yeah, that’s my temple. 

Amy: Yeah, I know you’re a surfer, right? Yeah, it’s massive. 

Greg: It’s definitely my temple. 

Amy: Yeah, there’s something about dunking the head under the water, that’s the key. Most people, if they go to the beach and you’re going to get in the water, dunk your head because that’s where it really takes over. 

Greg: Yeah. Although, the other day – and I know you live in north county of San Diego too – a couple weeks ago, I went down to the beach near Cardiff and it was a Sunday, it was packed, right? Yeah, packed beach, water was packed. I looked on a sign near the lifeguard station and said “shark sighting.” Oh, it really doesn’t freak me out but I was like, you know, I’m just going to be a little bit more cautious today. 

Amy: Right, yeah, there’s a little bit of living on the edge, I think. We have to be willing to be alive, you know, take risks. Yeah, there is some perspective in that, for sure.  

Greg: So, you talked a bit about exercise. We know exercise is a huge component of biohacking, right? So, what do you do personally for exercise and what do you recommend to your clients? Or do you tailor, I’m sure you tailor it individually for people, right? 

Amy: Yeah, I really do. What works for one does not work for the other. For myself, I like to hike. I love being outside in nature a ton. I don’t love to walk in a neighborhood so much as I want to be out on a trail. I feel like I just get about a hundred times more out of it, even though it takes a little bit more effort to do it. It’s not that good, it’s worth it. So that’s one of my outlets. I do love running but I don’t do it a ton. And then I also love aerial – I don’t know if you’re familiar with the aerial fitness or aerial silks, kind of thing – so I do climbing and I feel like that helps to keep me really strong physically but also really strong mentally because you’re literally suspended above air on, you know, pieces of fabric and you have to pay attention of utilizing my mind to be that strong and that clear. And you also have to be really dedicated because it is hard and, you know, physically it takes a lot of power but also it takes a lot of coordination, so it’s very humbling and I love that. But I also love it that, you know, the strength of my mind and the strength of my body all put together, yeah. And I don’t have any room to waver in that. I am really focused or it’s dangerous, you know, to do what I’m doing. And I love working that edge for me – if I don’t have enough edge like that, then it can be a little boring. 

Greg: You like to live a little bit on the edge. What’s that like, to live a little bit on the edge? 

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s part of the peak performance. So if you want to get into flow state, flow state does not work unless you’re working an edge, yeah. You don’t want to be out beyond it where you’re shutting your body down in panic, or you’re overloading yourself with too much new information, yeah. But, you know, that flow state where we feel in that natural high and then that rhythm of life comes from working in edge. So, yeah, absolutely. You know, I also just love mat yoga. You know, like some good vinyasa yoga is awesome and I’ve been practicing that for a really long time. And I found, you know, if I do yoga once a week, it makes a huge difference if I do it three times a week – I’m a different person. Yeah, combination of all these different things, yeah, really huge. 

Greg: I know you to be a very warm and loving person. Is that by nature or through design? Did you come in – so, some people come into the world, they’re very open-hearted and loving and warm, other people don’t necessarily have that but they work and achieve it. Other people never even recognize that they’re devoid of it and don’t even care, right? And, you know what I’m talking about, so how did or were you the one that were the type that came in warm and loving and open heart-centered, or can you talk about gratitude and space and that area of biohacking? 

Amy: Yeah, definitely. I think that one of the most important biohacking things that we can do is to be a positive person and to focus on gratitude. And there’s all kinds of brain science that’s backing that up now. But, I mean, the proof’s in the pudding. Do you feel better? Does it work, you know, testing it for ourselves and noticing that it works? So even though, yeah, I had what I felt like was a lot of adversity as a kid, a lot of challenges, I was always definitely a warm and super loving kid – extremely emotionally sensitive, very high emotional intelligence, to the point where starting at like one or so, people were noticing there was something really different about me and even the presence that I had as a baby. So, definitely, it started as an innate thing. I think that with the, you know, the trials and tribulations that I kind of walked through were parts of me that got a little bit shut down or definitely restricted – not necessarily that I wasn’t still really warm and loving, but I didn’t know how to fully express it. So one of the most beautiful things that I’ve experienced is my ability to connect and be really comfortable inside of myself and then to be able to connect and be comfortable connecting with other people and just loving on everyone. You know, my work, I definitely work with a lot of top performers. I work with people that have huge stakes, they’re used to pushing really hard and going really hard and they kind of do a combination of kick their butt and love on them all at the same time, love it. You know, that’s a sweet spot because when I am in that, I don’t have any judgment and there’s no malice and they’re so clear that I’m aligned really deeply for their freedom and for their success and it means a huge amount to me. So, I’ve put so much heart into my work and into my life and into all of my connections that, if anything, I’ve had to work the balance the other way and make putting myself in there into the equation. So that was the personal development piece – was to be able to be less selfless, if that makes sense.  

Greg: Sort of, shore up the boundaries a bit and, or at least, define them a little bit? To not be overly ebullient, I guess, right?  

Amy: Right. 

Greg: Yeah. Well, I think we’re about towards the end of our hour here and I just want to thank you so much for being here and sharing with us and with the listeners. And you have so much to offer everybody and I hope that, I know our listeners will enjoy this and I really want to thank you for sharing with us today. 

Amy: Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me on and I do want to just give a gift, too. If anybody would like to visit my website, it’s Dr. Amy Albright with one “L” for Albright, dramyalbright.com, and I’m offering what I call “Expand.” And it’s a very powerful audio track talking about working in some biohacking and some coaching tools that I’ve used. So I’ve been using this kind of technique for, I don’t know, close to a couple of decades now and I have seen some really huge miracles so analogous to flying on the back of an eagle and getting insight. I’ve had people come back from these guided imagery-type meditations that I conduct with massive transformation and insight, wonderful. Makes a huge difference. So I want to be able to offer that. So, yeah, people can visit dramyalbright.com and have a free download of that. 

Greg: That’s fantastic and we’ll link to that in the podcast too for our listeners, so you don’t have to remember it. But thank you so much, that’s very generous, yeah. And I hope I see you down around the college here at some point soon. 

Amy: Oh yeah, it’s been fun. That development of, you know, just to talk about what our recent project for a house before we sign off is the development of that Masters in Health and Human Performance degree has been a really fun project and I’m very excited for all the emergence of the field of health and human performance. You know, kind of, again, along the lines of biohacking and bringing health and health sciences to another level. So it’s been a blast doing that, developing that program together and I’m excited to see it soar. 

Greg: Yeah, it’s been really wonderful working with you and our other consultants on that project. And it’s been, for sure, a labor of love and we’re super excited to roll out the first cohort here in less than a few weeks, so amazing. Yeah, alright, well we’ll see you soon and thank you so much. Also, you’ll be speaking at the Symposium coming up in the fall, I forgot to mention that, on this topic of biohacking and its emergence in our healthcare domain, so that’s going to be really exciting for our listeners here in San Diego or those who are going to be joining us at the Symposium. We’ll get a chance to to see you live and hopefully meet you.

Amy: Yeah, it’ll be a very structured talk, a few hours long for the acupuncturist and herbalist that can get there. 

Greg: Yeah, alright, have a wonderful day! 

Amy: Thank you, you as well!