There are now at least half a dozen quality papers published in quality peer-reviewed journals that show that forward ambulation—walking or biking or running—and generating optic flow in particular has this incredible property of lowering activity in the amygdala and thereby reducing levels of anxiety.

This is really important: Dopamine is a currency, and it's the way that you track pleasure; it's the way that you track success; it's the way that you track whether or not you are doing well or doing poorly ... If your dopamine is too low, you will not feel motivated. If your dopamine is really high, you will feel motivated. And if your dopamine is somewhere in the middle, how you feel depends on whether or not you had higher dopamine a few minutes ago or lower dopamine ... Your experience of life and your level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience.

Bright light exposure between the hours of about 10 PM and 4 AM, if it's chronic, if you do it more than every once in a while, triggers a suppression of dopamine that leads to deficits in learning, deficits in mood, and a whole host of other problems, including a connection to the pancreas that starts dis-regulating blood sugar.

This is the fastest way that I'm aware of that's anchored in real known biology to calm oneself down ... It's an inhale through the nose, and then it's another inhale at the top, and then a long exhale. That's the fastest way to slow your heart down and calm down.

For people that want to change their brain, the power of focus is really the entry point—and the ability to access deep rest and sleep. Most people don't realize this, but neuroplasticity is triggered by intense focus, but neuroplasticity occurs during deep sleep and rest.

When it comes to wanting to shift the way that you function—to get better, or to perform better, or to show up better, or to move away from things like addictive behaviors; it's absolutely foolish for any of us—me included—to think that we can do that by changing our thoughts first. Its behavior first; thoughts, feelings, and perceptions follow.

Hydration is a big one for cognitive function, and it's one that people often overlook. But the simple rule is... your body weight in pounds divided by 30 will give you the number of ounces of water that you should drink about every 20 minutes when exercising or doing mental work.

There's a near doubling, near doubling, in the probability of reaching one's goal if you focus routinely on foreshadowing failure.

Self-generated optic flow—by walking, running, or cycling—shifts the brain into a state of relaxation that's not seen when you're stationary ... When you move through a space and your active, there's a natural calming of the brain circuits involved in threat and threat detection.

I wake up, for me, that's usually somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, depending on how early I went to sleep. I wake up, and I do an assessment of whether or not I feel rested or not. Most days, the answer is no—just because of life, staying up too late, stress, etc. So, I do a 10-30 minute yoga nidra session first thing in the morning.

I'm a big proponent, based on 25 years of quality peer-reviewed work, of viewing bright light within the four to six hours after waking—but ideally within the first hour after waking.

For those that want to explore supplements and how they can impact sleep, this combination of about 300-400 mg of magnesium threonate or bisglycinate, 50 mg of apigenin, and 100-200 mg of theanine alone or in combination have been beneficial to many people, and there are excellent studies to support those statements.

Cold water exposure led to very rapid increases in norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is also just called adrenaline. It also led to increases in dopamine. And these increases in dopamine were very significant. They kicked in around 10 or 15 minutes after submersion into the cold water—and I should mention the head wasn't below water; it was just up to the neck. And the dopamine release continued to rise and rise and rise and eventually reach 250% above baseline.

You would not want to buffer cortisol early in the day. In fact, cortisol peaking early in the day provides an anti-inflammatory, immune-supporting, focus and mood-supporting effect all day long. So, I would recommend that people take their first dose of ashwagandha of anywhere from 250-300 mg sometime in the early afternoon...

A 20-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol after a bout of intense focus or intense attempt to learn anything... accelerates plasticity by about 50%. So, you are learning faster, much faster, and retention of that information lasts much longer.

Fasting increases levels of adrenaline, also called epinephrine, in the brain and body. And when our levels of epinephrine and adrenaline are increased, we learn better, we can focus better. There's terrific data supporting that.

And indeed, just looking at a narrow piece of the visual world, a small piece of the visual world, for some period of time and forcing yourself to hold that gaze on that location as best you can increase your level of cognitive attention and your ability to focus and stay focused.

Don't spike dopamine prior to engaging in effort, and don't spike dopamine after engaging in effort; learn to spike your dopamine from effort itself.

I recommend that you not take your ashwagandha prior to exercise because part of the adaptation response is triggered by increases in cortisol during exercise.

If you wake up before the sun rises, flip on as many lights as you can in your space if you want to be awake in your artificial light environment. And then, once the sun is out, go outside.

There was this lure in the yoga nidra community that 30 minutes of yoga nidra is equivalent to 4 hours of sleep. Frankly, I don't think there's any evidence for that specific statement. But when I started doing this practice and exploring it, I found that I would come out of a 30-minute yoga nidra session feeling like I slept 5, 6 hours or longer.

I think a lot of ADHD does go misdiagnosed because of this depletion in dopamine that occurs because of overindulgence in other activities and the drop in baseline.

The key thing is to get the levels of EPA that you ingest above 1000 milligrams per day.

There are some interesting data published showing that these yoga nidra meditations... can upregulate some of the neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, that make you prepared for action.

This yoga nidra practice resets levels of certain neurotransmitters and neuromodulators in the basal ganglia, which is an area of the brain involved in action, execution, and planning.

It's absolutely clear that one of the major ways that we can increase serotonin, which helps in the transition to sleep, is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates.

Because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard at something for sake of a reward that comes afterward can make the hard work much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future.