Secrets of The Bioenergetics of Longevity

Jason Prall

Hello, thanks for having me. It’s good to see you again.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, likewise. And before we got on the air, kind of laying out, what do we wanna cover here? And I know you can take us there. So we’re gonna talk to you, shared with me a quote of Nicholas Tesla just to set the tone of this interview.

Jason Prall

Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Nikola Tesla and the work that he did with electricity, as we all should be since it’s all around us in the form that we know, but he was a deep, deep thinker, and he actually went into a lot of human health actually, too. So he covered a lot of material with his research and his knowledge. And one of my favorites is he says, “There is no energy and matter other than that received from the environment.” And so what that means is, is that the energy that we feel like we have, that we are, is coming from nowhere else, but the environment. In other words, the thing that animates us is perhaps within us, but we get it from the environment. Now most readily, we think of food that is an energetic source, but there’s so many other energetic sources that we can look to. And this is when we talk about things like Chi gong and these ancient practices of this ability to actually cultivate energy. This is a fundamental practice of bringing and gathering, and cultivating energy from the environment. 

When we go out in the sun, we actually have photo receptors in our skin, in our eyes that actually absorb the energy from the sun directly, just like a plant does and convert it into various other biological signals, and what have you. So we are constantly picking up energy. Water is another fantastic source of energy, the breath itself. I mean, there’s things that we can look to from the biochemical, but even beyond that, from the energetic. In some of these areas that we don’t have great language for here in the west, it’s described as Prana, in sort of the Indian and Ayurvedic traditions is Chi, in some of the Chinese traditions. So there’s a fundamental, deeper aspect to energy. And I think the reason I like Tesla’s quote so much is because it starts to open up our minds to this idea that everything around me matters. My thoughts matter, the emotions matter and all the things that are influencing my thoughts and my emotions when they be sort of on this automatic subconscious program that is set from conditioning when I was young and as a child, or whether it’s something that I’m consciously doing, looking for the silver lining and to the bright side of things. So all the things start to matter when we start to accept this idea that the energy within me, who I am, the thing that animates me is coming from everything around me.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

You know, that gives me chills. And that component of really couched in the bioenergetics of longevity. You know, the ancients were tuned into this intimately, and we have a lot of these practices that have really stood the test of time and have been transmitted through eons to us. I wanna start with the sunlight component. Oftentimes, when I’m eating food, plant matter, even animal matter, I’m like, this is really sun energy. It came from the sun. And so let’s start at that level with the sunlight, from our receptors and ourselves to photosynthesis in the greens, respiration from the trees. I think that’s all intricately linked. Where do you go with that?

Jason Prall

Yeah, I mean, this is fundamental, right? The sun is the thing that makes life possible here on earth. It sets the circadian rhythm. I mean, I think this is a huge one for us in the modern world. A lot of the work that I did with Human Longevity Project, traveling to these remote regions of the world, they’re still operating like we did maybe in the west a hundred years ago. They are farming, they’re getting up with the sun, they’re going to bed with the sun and that’s how they lived most of their lives. My entire life, I’ve never had to worry about that. We’ve had artificial lighting that is fantastic. And thank God be have it ’cause it allows us to do so many things and it can also disrupt our natural circadian rhythm. This idea of circadian rhythm is primarily guided by the light. It’s also influenced by temperature and by food, and exercise, and some of these other things, but our body clock needs to be synchronized. 

It needs to be yolked to something. And the sun is the thing that really ingrains us. It schedules our body timing and it’s not just through in the brain. And this is now commonly, common knowledge in sort of the health sphere that the hypothalamus and the pituitary are guided by the circadian rhythms. But literally, every cell of our body has clock genes and period genes, and all- and this is in fact in 2017 Nobel Prize was given out to three scientists who are really studying the sort of the cellular aspect of circadian rhythm. And what this means that is that your cellular function in your thyroid, in your spleen, in your bones, in your eyes, everywhere is guided by these rhythms. And the genetic expression of each cell, each organ, each tissue is being influenced by these rhythms. And so when we are tied to this solar circadian rhythm, then our whole body function’s better. And this is why when we look at Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, there’s a clock. They have these circadian clocks that signify when the best time for digestion is. 

And when the most optimal liver time is. And there’s all kinds of these timings that they look at and perhaps it’s dependent on the season, but that’s really determined by the circadian cycle. Now, if we take somebody in the modern world and they’re working night shifts, and they’re sleeping during the day, then their body clocks are gonna be all out of whack because they’re not synchronized to the sun. So there’s a huge circadian mismatch in the biology. And that leads to basically, all cause mortality increasing dramatically. Autoimmune conditions, cancers, et cetera. In fact, cancer and some cancer therapies, and other drugs have now been studied pretty well actually, to determine when the best time to take certain medications are. And this is the experts in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda would laugh ’cause they’ve been doing this for thousands of years. 

They understand when the best time to take this herb is and when the best time to do that is, but we’re now starting to figure this out in the west too, with our pharmaceuticals. So we can actually optimize, even though I wouldn’t say pharmaceuticals are the best option for most people, at least we’re trying to figure out when the best time to take them is, right? So we’re starting to recognize this reality. And so this is a huge opportunity for those that are dealing with chronic symptoms to start to get their circadian rhythm dialed in so that they can heal faster. And that’s really what we wanna do.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Love it. And so on that, so we’ve got the circadian, all of those clocks. So that’s where environment matters, tying ourselves in on maybe the biosphere, getting out of our gray matter of our brains and realizing, Hey, we’re in the oneness of all. This is in relationship. As we started out with the Tesla quote of, “It is the energy that drives into matter.” That’s my shortening of that quote from him. The component of sunlight, it also plays a role around our mitochondria. Our mitochondria have light receptors for it as well. You wanna speak into that?

Jason Prall

Yeah, totally. I mean, this is what’s so fascinating is that mitochondria are huge receptors of light. Primarily, infrared light when it comes to the deep penetration of light. But on our skin surface and on our eyes, the surfaces that the sun reaches have photoreceptors of all kinds. And so different proteins and different substances in our skin will actually absorb different frequencies of light, which is so fascinating. In fact, we can absorb the UV light and many people are familiar with this, when it comes to the ability to tan. But what’s fascinating is that we can absorb that light into these various proteins and there’s a number of them. And then our body will actually give off full res, different color. So it’ll absorb the UV purple light and then it’ll give off green and blue, and different colors of light that then creates signaling pathways in the skin in the deeper dermal layers. It have a whole host of functions. Of course, it’s responsible for converting cholesterol into vitamin D to the hormone vitamin D. So there’s really important factors there. We can also produce adrenal corticotropin releasing hormone in the skin. 

And this makes a lot of sense if you think about camping. So if we were camping or we were living out in the wild, like we used to do, the sun, as it rises above the horizon, different frequencies of light are coming in. So early in the day, we see the blue and the purple, and the UV, they bounce back off into space, off the atmosphere. And some of these other warmer temperatures of light come in. as the sun rises and gets above a certain inclination, now the blue and the purple, and the greens all start coming in. They hit our skin, they start signaling these receptors to wake us up. These are adrenal hormones start to kick in. And then our eyelids being so thin that certain frequencies of light can penetrate through the eyelids, into the eye, go into the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is right up here and then communicate to our hypothalamus and pituitary. So this whole coordination of frequencies of light penetrating through the atmosphere, touching our skin in our eyes, waking us up, kicking on different hormones. I mean, it’s truly a miraculous thing to even consider. And if we’re doing this in the right way, then we can really optimize hormonal function. One of the biggest things, the biggest hacks, tips I can give anybody dealing with any chronic symptom or not is to wake up in the morning and one of the first things that I would suggest you do is go outside and go for a walk, 15, 20 minutes. 

I don’t care if it’s snowing, if it’s raining, if it’s gray, but as long as the sun has risen, going for a walk and getting your eyes and your skin exposed to that light, however, dim behind clouds doesn’t really matter, but that will start to signal your biology to kick on. It’ll actually help you produce melatonin later at night. So your melatonin spike will be higher, it’ll be more optimized in terms of the timing. And also in the beginning of the day, your cortisol will be more. You want a high cortisol. You want a nice spike in cortisol when you wake up, that gets you energized. That gets you going. That gets you prime for the day. When you start to do something like that. And of course, the walking helps get blood flowing, gets your lymphatic system flowing. Everything starts to move through the system a little bit better. 

And when you do that first thing in the morning, you’re setting your circadian rhythm. You’re setting the optimal timing for the rest of the day. And this usually takes three weeks, maybe, three weeks to a month typically to set your circadian rhythm. So if your rhythm’s off, it can take consistency. Once your body starts to get into this rhythm, it starts to know when the sun’s coming up, when you’re getting up, this is what allows you to have such a strong rhythm that you can start to wake up naturally. You don’t need to an alarm clock to wake up and you start waking up. I mean, it’s truly a better way to function. And I mean, when you’re hormones are optimized, everything changes. I mean, it’s a total game changer when you have chronic issues and your hormones start to come back online.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

So true and all linked to light. So that, go figure with the yin and yang symbol in Chinese medicine and Daoism and how that plays out on our day to day.

Jason Prall

That’s right.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

You know, so you mentioned, so that was sunlight. Let’s talk about breath because that’s another, the air. So we’re gonna talk, we’ll stay on in the sky here and in the elements. You know, Chi gong or energy work, the Prana, the Chi, you mentioned these terms, breath is, it’s the first thing that happens when we come into the world that starts everything going for us. So let’s talk about those practices and how the breath influences the bioenergetics of the body and this longevity discussion.

Jason Prall

You know, I think it’s really interesting if we just consider priority for life. Obviously, when we think about healthy living, we think about food and we think about water, and these are of course, very, very important. Exercise, very important. You can go quite a long time without exercise and live. You can go quite a long time without food and live. You can go more than a month without food. I wouldn’t advise it, without some serious help there, but you could. And you can actually go for without water for a couple days and be okay. You can’t go very long without breathing. This is so fundamental to life itself. And in fact, this is sort of the primary signal when one is born, is the breath coming in. It is what we look for. And if that’s not functioning well for the newborn, then we’ve got serious issues. 

So there’s something deep and mysterious, and magical about breath itself. In the west, we get very materialistic when it comes to health and biology, we think about breathing in and we think primarily oxygen. Well, there’s a lot more than oxygen in the air that we’re breathing clearly, but we think about oxygen and it goes into the mitochondria and we basically convert food and oxygen into water and ATP, and that’s how we have energy. It’s a very materialistic view. And it’s true too. There is some truth to that, but beyond that, there’s something about the breath that is deeper. And it’s in a sense, through deep meditation and some of these other Eastern practices, we can actually get to a state of awareness where it’s almost like the breath is breathing us. There’s something deeper about the breath that comes really interesting when we get into these sort of altered states of consciousness, of awareness, where we’re starting to experience breath in a different way. And so by pointing to that because I want to honor the big mystery that is breath, but there is life force in the breath itself. 

And so when you just start playing around with breath, at first, we think who cares? It’s not a big deal, I’ve been breathing my whole life. It’s not gonna do anything for me. I’ve got this, I’ve Crohn’s disease, or I’ve got some autoimmune condition, or I’ve had back pain. And we don’t give credence to what the breath can truly do because we never really given it a shot. And there’s different ways to breathe. We can be breathe through the diaphragm and that is creating pumps in the lymphatic system. I mean, it’s doing so many things on the physical level, just that alone, but when we start to breathe, we can actually breathe into different tissues. And this goes into some of the arts of breathing into some of the pranayamas, and these type of things where we can breathe into tissues. You can breathe into your big toe. That sounds very strange to the Western mind, but these are practices that can be used with awareness and breathing, and getting that breath into different tissues. And we breathe through the nose in particular, now we’re hitting these mechanical receptors in the nose. We’re kicking on nitric oxide production. 

Nitric oxide helps facilitate blood flow and perfusion to all the cells throughout our body. So it’s improving, optimizing our blood pressure. Nitric oxide is a signaling molecule that is fundamental, it’s fundamentally linked to longevity, to mitochondrial health, to cellular function in so many ways, brain health in particular, heart health, it’s critical. So we can influence our entire physiology with the breath. And if you don’t believe me, hold your breath for a little while and see what happens. You start to have things go on that you can feel. You can feel your blood pressure high, the heart starts going, you start getting red and vice versa. If you start breathing hyperventilating and really getting the breath going through something like the breath of fire, some of these techniques, you can start to feel your physiology shifting and changing. And so these techniques have been used very intelligently for so many years. In fact, they’ve been studied to no end, to the point where there’s sacred texts that just revolve around the breath. 

So I think this is really in the west, probably the most underutilized resource that we have. It’s free, it’s available to everybody. And it is the primary regulatory system in the body. Breath, it’s above temperature function in the body. It literally regulates everything in the body. So I think this is one of the rare opportunities that we can investigate every single person, whether you’re 8-years-old or 98-years-old, can use the breath to start influencing their health. Not only on the physical level, but on the mental, emotional, and spiritual level as well. So to me, the breath, again, it’s almost hard to speak about it other than to say, it’s a mystery, there’s something deeper going on with the breath. And it just takes someone experimenting with it and playing with it to get intimate with it, to really get to know it. 

That goes so far beyond anything that I can say, because the experience is the teacher when it comes to the breath. And again, I think what’s cool is that you can play around with it and you can really do so in such a safe way. I mean, Wim Hof has really brought a lot of awareness in the west around breath, and that’s a cool place to start for many people. And you can go through a little hyperventilation exercise for a few minutes and then hold your breath and you can hold your breath for three, four minutes. And that’s like sounds totally wild to somebody who is only used to holding their breath for 45 seconds, but that’s totally possible because your oxygen and you’re sending so much life force energy into your tissues that you can now hold for so long. So there’s a lot you can do with breath. And again, I think it’s so underutilized.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I so agree. I love that it is a great experiential teacher of trying it out. I think there’s a component that it’s not so big of so much on the laundry list of options because it’s free.

Jason Prall

That’s right, there’s not a lot of money to be made.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Aren’t promoting that. I always recommend for my patients to not stop breathing. So that’s number one.

Jason Prall

That’s a good idea.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

But I love the examples that you gave and there is so many variances of it. And I think bringing that awareness to the breath is the starting spot for a lot of folks because it is just this autonomic process of 12 to 16 times a minute, we’re breathing. And we don’t even have to think about it, but bringing your awareness to it and actually experimenting with the different styles that you mentioned, that’s great.

Jason Prall

And it’s one of the few systems that is both that you can control, that’s involuntarily and involuntarily. So it’s like if you’re not paying attention and you’re stressed out, you’re gonna start breathing shorter and shallower, and faster. And then interestingly enough, you can bring awareness to it and now you can shift that whole system. So again, it’s one of those few systems that we have control over that is involuntary as well. I mean look, I fundamentally think we can control digest, Wim Hof has shown this, that you can modulate your immune system. So there’s really cool techniques that we can get into with some deep, deep practices, I do believe, but this is one of those ones that you don’t need a lot of practice and you can control voluntarily.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Love it, let’s go to water next. So that seems like it follows the breath pretty well here. So let’s talk water.

Jason Prall

Water’s a fascinating one. I mean, it’s kind of boring for most of us because we don’t really think too much of it. We might drink some of it here and there, but fundamentally of course, it’s most of what we are in terms of our volume in terms of our weight, in terms of the molecular structure that’s in our body. I think what’s fascinating about water itself is that it can hold energy. And this is something that Gerald Pollack has really shown a light on, I guess, pardon in the pun, if you’re familiar with Gerald’s work. But water and light have a very interesting interaction and particularly infrared light. So there’s red and infrared frequencies along with some others, but water has the ability to hold energy like a battery. So we can actually hold energy through its structure. So when you have regular water and you shine light on it, what Gerald Pollack has shown and many others, is that water tends to organize in a different way. 

There’s these specific aspects of water that when they’re near hydrophilic substance, in other words, a water loving substance, such as all the proteins and things that are in our body, those are all water loving substances. When water is next to these surfaces and light of the specific frequencies in the infrared spectrum primarily are shown, then the water organizes into a structure that is different than your normal H2O. In fact, it looks more like H3O2. And so Gerald Pollack has called this the fourth phase of water or exclusion zone water. We might call it structured water. But the interesting aspect to this water is that it holds energy. Again, it’s like a battery and it’s doing so within its structure. And so when we have this sort of structured water, we find that energy, the voltage, the charge separation starts to allow for different processes to occur in the body. 

And when it comes to mitochondria, this is where it starts getting really interesting and that the science isn’t totally worked out. But when we put pieces together, we think we can kind of get a sense for what’s happening, but your mitochondria actually produce heat and light. So not only do mitochondria produce ATP, the energy, it also produces reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress, that’s part of what it does. And these are both signaling molecules. And then the third thing it does through something called uncoupling proteins is produce heat. And depending on what kind of mitochondrial genetics we have, you’re gonna produce different ratios, so to speak of ATP, energy, and heat energy. And so people like me with a heritage from kind of the Northern European area, we actually have mitochondria that produce a little bit more heat than somebody that’s, let’s say from Central Africa or India that has really dark skin. They don’t need to produce a lot of heat. In fact, it’s not a good idea for their mitochondria to produce tons of heat in the body. They wanna produce lots of energy. So it’s really interesting to think about when the mitochondria is producing this light this infrared light, is it influencing the water that’s surrounding in the interstitial tissue all throughout the body? And the answer’s probably, yes. 

And this is creating an energetic battery at the cellular level that is facilitating all kinds of function. We create exclusion zone, which is out of toxins. There’s just so many fascinating aspects to this exclusion zone water. And I think the key here, the take home with this sort of very theoretical and interesting information that I think will be proven out over time is that when we spend time in things like infrared saunas, when we go out in the sun and get infrared from the sun itself, then it charges up our body. It charges up our cellular structure through the water mechanism. The other thing I forgot to mention about this exclusion zone water is that it actually creates something like a motor. So this is what’s fascinating is that it’s this exclusion zone water can explain how water climbs up a tree without a pump. It can help explain how our lymphatic system blood is gonna flow through these tiny capillaries. 

In fact, one of the things that Dr. Pollack showed in his book was that the pressure required to squeeze these red blood cells to the tiny little capillaries at the end of our fingertips would require like 10,000 times the amount of force. Than the heart is supplying via its pump or suction, however you wanna think about it. And what’s fascinating is that with exclusion zone water applied, this creates the motor effect and also gives a little bit of a slippery substance, so to speak. And that allows these red blood cells to get to profuse all the tissues. And in fact, one of the experiments, I don’t know if he’s published it, but I was there in his lab a few years ago and he was doing this, but he had a chick embryo and this chick embryo was deceased, and he showed light on this infrared light on this chick embryo through the membrane, and blood started to circulate. So that actually shows this idea of fourth phase water that infrared light can start to move water, help it circulate, creates this motorized function in water. So there’s so much it has to do with the interaction of water and light. It’s truly fascinating, I think we’re gonna learn a lot more about this in the coming years.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

So true, and it is such an exciting time to be alive around that. He did dub the fourth phase of water and this whole component of structured water in every cell of our body and then structured on top of each other. It’s very, does get complex, really-

Jason Prall

If somebody’s really interested in the biophysics of water, they can look at Mae-Wan Ho’s work. The Rainbow and the Worm, I think is her book. This is really, really deep science. It’s not light reading at all. Mae-Wan has since passed in the past few years, but she was a brilliant biophysicist. And there’s a few others in that realm as well. So this idea, this biophysics of water, I think honestly, is still very much in its infancy. And I think there’s a lot there. You know, we look at Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work on water and this idea of speaking to water or putting energy into water, and then freezing water into these crystal shape. And what he kinda showed in his research is that when we put positive energy, when we put positive intention, I don’t even think we need to say words necessarily. 

I think the intention prayer, so to speak, a meditation. If you send this good energy into water, you can actually influence its structure and you start to get in more beautiful shapes when you freeze it. And that’s kinda what his work showed. And if you yell at it, if you scream at it, if you curse at it, you start to get this distorted aspect of water. So again, I think this may explain part of what’s happening when it comes to talking to plants, for example. And so there’s a lot of examples there and you get into the more natural societies, and this is kinda what’s going on. And so I think some of this stuff is very highly magical stuff. I say that sort of in a fun way. And I think some of it can be explained through modern science. And we’re starting to get to the point where we can explain some of this stuff.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, where those two come together, it’s a very exciting place. So that leads right into really naturally into talking about emotions and the energetics of emotions. Maybe just coupled off of the Emoto research there with structuring water, but putting into little energy packets of our emotions. They’re coming from somewhere. They’re not just like, oh, in here, oh, this is where I have happiness or joy, or bliss, or anger, sadness, grief, whatever the emotion we’ve kind of created this dichotomy in our language, in discussion, in societally, where they’re just emotions. So they’re just different charges, different experiences. So I guess one, the words that are coming up are, why do we have such a hang up around emotions? And then how do we couch it really in this bioenergetics discussion?

Jason Prall

Yeah, I mean, honestly, this is one of my favorite things to think about and to consider emotions and thought, kinda go in the same sort of compartment for me. And it’s really interesting you kinda hit on it. It’s like, where does a thought come from? What is a thought? Where does an emotion come from? What is an emotion? When you can take something like, there’s a lot of research being done now on MDMA and the therapeutic aspect of MDMA. One of the sort effects of MDMA is sort of this love component, this idea of just openhearted love. And so I think it’s really interesting when you consider, you can take this pharmaceutical drug or perhaps you can take the natural version, which is of the sassafras thing, and you can evoke emotion in somebody pretty reliable. Like that’s really fascinating that a pharmaceutical can do that. Or you can go into meditation, or you can be in a church when somebody’s getting married, or you can look at a newborn baby and all these things will evoke an emotion. 

So we can actually create emotion by sheer will. So we have the ability to do that. And I think perhaps, well, I wouldn’t say more importantly, ’cause it is important to recognize that we can take charge of our own emotion. We can actually consciously step into an emotion that’s really, really important because most of the time, I think for most of us, our emotions are running the show and we’re just kind of a bystander. We’re kind of a passenger along for the ride. And most of what’s happening there is, comes from conditioning, comes from a childhood experience, comes from a past experience that is essentially being brought into the future and being re-evoked based on some triggering event. So we create this map of the world, our internal working model, as a psychologist might refer to it. And through that, whether it’s somebody cutting us off in traffic or the payment process are not working at the grocery store and we’re late, and we gotta go pick up somebody. These can cause all kinds of triggering emotions that are totally dictating our physiology in every sense of the word. And my favorite example to give regarding this is if I were to ask you to give a speech at a commencement speech at Harvard University, let’s say, and a really respected university. And you’re speaking to all these graduates and you gotta deliver this amazing speech, pretty sure most people would be nervous to give this speech. 

And what happens when we give this speech on stage in front of everybody, our heart starts to raise, our mind starts to maybe go blank. We might start to sweat or get really cold, or really hot. So our entire physiology is shifting because our nervous system is being activated. The sympathetic side of our nervous system is kicking on as if we are in danger, there’s a serious threat to our life. And fundamentally there is. There a threat to our life perceived threat to our life. And that is the fact that we are not going to be accepted by the tribe. We are not going to be loved. We’re not going to be supported. We’re getting get ousted from the safety net, that is my human people. So this is a fundamental need that we all have when we’re young and that’s just one of the needs. We have other needs, like unconditional love, acceptance, safety. These are things that we are required as infants to get. And 100% of us don’t get them met perfectly all the time. 

So we all grow up with these hangups, these patterns that we start to develop because our needs weren’t met. And those start to dictate how we show up in the world, regard to our emotions and our thoughts. And a lot of these thoughts are so subconscious and the emotions are so subconscious that we can’t easily recognize them unless we do a lot of work. And some of this work can be in sort of the more ancient traditions, the Zhou Chens and the Daoisms, and the deep practices that come with some of these, the yogas and some of these arts, or they can come from our own meditation. They can come from psychological, modern psychology and inner work. 

There’s a lot of different practices there. Internal family systems is a great one. There’s all kinds of these things that we can start to get a sense for ourselves and start to uncover some of these deep wounds that we carry with us into adulthood. But they’re the things that are dictating our emotional states and our mental states, and those mental processes and emotional processes are guiding our physiology. So again, this is also one of the biggest opportunities I think we all have is to help understand our emotions, where they’re coming from and to begin to regulate those in a more healthy way because we’re running patterns that really served a brilliant function when we were young. And as we get older, they don’t serve, it’s not the most optimal way to sort of run things. And some of these patterns are actually praised in our society. Highly successful business person, multi-millionaire, who was obsessed and just does everything to the fullest. Steve Jobs might have been considered somebody like this who ended up having cancer. So there’s a lot of stories about the way he was with people and how he interacted with people. 

And so these type of things are something that we can all look at knowing that all of us are perfect and none of us are perfect at the same time. We all have these patterns that we’re running to look at them with curiosity, kindness, with compassion, so that we can shift them and we can get into a more optimal state for ourselves, and for everybody around us. But that is critical to really dictate again, our nervous system function. If we wanna just boil it down to the physical layer, it is the nervous. And they’re constantly in the sympathetic drive, if our baseline state is sort of highly sympathetic, we wouldn’t even recognize that we’re sympathetic. That just feels like rest. But then when you start to do a little bit of work and you start to heal some of these sort of old moons, you can actually get to a new level of safety, new level of regulation that you start to realize, oh, that’s what calm is. And what I thought was calm was highly aroused, it was highly in the sympathetic state. And again, I think this deep level of wellbeing can continue to deepen as we get more regulation and heal some of these old wounds. But again, it’s hard for us to even recognize where we’re at on the spectrum because all we know is, well, one of my favorite quotes I think comes from Ayurveda is that we don’t experience the world around us, all we experience is our nervous system. We literally don’t experience the world. All the things that we see, taste, touch, feel, hear, that’s all just inputs into our nervous system for us to reference. So it’s really interesting to think about that. We can all be going through life in a different way and not really understanding where each other’s sort of baseline, rest status.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Right, and they’re so different for each individual, with their ancestry and everything-

Jason Prall

And their constitution.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Their constitution, life experiences, et cetera. So the bioenergetics, let’s wrap this into this longevity discussion and the bioenergetics of longevity. So we’re talking about really multiple levels of energetics and how that’s interpreted into the matter form. So maybe from the wave into the particle. And what kind of guidance or getting somebody into action on this topic, what do you recommend?

Jason Prall

Yeah, I’ll start off with the overwhelming statement, which is that everything matters. And so that can be a little overwhelming at first, but it is helpful to recognize that everything does matter. And so that’s an empowering statement as much as it is an overwhelming one, perhaps. So anything that you can do can help influence your health. And of course, we can make better choices with food when it comes to what works for us and our condition, and our context. I think sleep is a huge one. So when I went around the world and spoke with people that were in their 90s and 100 and beyond, there was a handful of things that I noticed that, that were fundamental to their life story. One is they simplified everything. Everything was simple. And I looked at my own life and I thought there’s really a lot of complexity that’s not totally necessary. When I look at my calendar, when I look at my phone, do I need all these apps on my phone? 

And it sounds silly, like these apps, but if I can just declutter the number of apps, if I can declutter my calendar, if I can declutter my closet and my cleaning supplies, and what whatever’s in my shower to clean me, I can declutter a lot of things in my life and I can simplify so many things. Simplify the products that you’re using, the foods that you’re eating, instead of getting the organic apple chips, get the organic apple. And then of course, if we simplify even further, then we start growing food in our backyard and it becomes even more simple. So I think simplifying things starts to become a really beautiful signpost, a guiding light, a north star. Then how many ways can I simplify my life? And what you’ll find is that you get more time in your day. You start to find that you walk through the life with a little bit more ease. There’s not as much stuff to bog you down. It’s kind of the minimalist movement. The other thing that I noticed was they all had a fundamental belief in God or a higher power. And so most of them had a sort of Catholic-Christian, Judeo-Christian sort of heritage that they followed. But in Okinawa, they didn’t have that. They had a Shinto, which is kind of a quasi-religion. It’s more of a spiritual practice, so to speak, related to ancestors and what have you. 

But there was a fundamental belief that I can turn something over, that I don’t have to carry this all. And if we’d look at Daoism, we look at Buddhism, some of these traditions that don’t have a more formal religion, same thing. That we can let go, that we are not the ones in control, so to speak, we can turn it over. And I think that is a huge, huge weight off of our shoulders. When I can let something go and I can literally turn something over to God. In fact, some of the people that I asked is at 98 years old, how do you, how’d you live long? They would say, it’s up to God. In other words, that’s not mine to worry about. I’m just here every day, showing up, doing what I do, the smile on my face. And so even this idea of longevity starts to become kind of this silly thing to even chase. So it’s beautiful, it becomes kind of this thing that is worth pursuing, have a long life. And then at some point you realize, I’m just here to live healthy life today to the best of my ability. And so there was this letting go of all this stuff. And so they lived simply, they turned things over to a higher power that was not them. 

They lived in connection and community, and they relied on one another. So I mentioned a fundamental need when we were young, that’s one of them. Connection is fundamental. And it doesn’t just mean I have a lot of friends on Facebook or Instagram, or a lot of people following me, or people that really like my work. It actually means connection, real connection, deep connection with people in my world, in my community. So, and then they moved. That was probably the other big one. They moved, they moved a ton. They moved their body constantly. So when we talk about the bioenergetics, movement itself is seems to be fairly critical aspect to living a long and healthy life. And it almost doesn’t matter what kind of movement, as long as you’re continuously moving for as much of your day as possible and for as much in your life as possible, it seems to be consistency and regularity that tend to be the key with movement. And so if you’re doing CrossFit twice a day, let’s say, let’s go to a complete extreme here. 

You’re doing CrossFit twice a day, that might be fine for a little while, until it’s not. Until you get injured and you’re screwing yourself up and then that’s gonna prevent movement for a long, long time throughout your life. So things like walking and yoga, and Tai Chi, and swimming, and biking, and playing with your dog, and hiking, and what have you, like this variety of movement seems to be a really, really beneficial way to go about it, constantly moving. And these people were walking 30, 40 miles a day in their youth. And Julio who was 105 was riding his bike still. So I think they brought it down to a very simple aspect of what health is. But again, it boils down to the bioenergetics. They didn’t eat a lot. I will say that’s another big one that we didn’t really mention that I feel like I just wanna throw here at the end, is that not overeating. Let me just put it that way as simply as possible, don’t overeat. And getting familiar with what it even means to overeat. And so we might say eat until you’re 80% full or do some intermittent fasting, or what have you. 

There’s a lot of ways to sort construct your day and your life that sort of follows these concepts. But the bottom line is, is you’re eating in a way that allows for optimal digestion. It allows for you to maximize the effective digestion and your ability to pull nutrients outta that food and convert it into energy. When you overload your system, you’re creating a lot of damage. You’re creating a lot of, in Ayurveda, they call it Ama, but it’s this toxic waste that ends up showing up because you don’t have the digestive capacity to deal with it. And that really becomes a huge factor that the older you get. So what I noticed with some of these people that in their 80s, 90s and beyond is that they actually intuitively, instinctively, started to eat less and less because I think they couldn’t digest as much. They ate more fruit, simple things to digest. Many of ’em that ate meat when they were younger, stopped eating meat when they got older. And that may run counter to some of the research that’s being suggested. But I think if you can’t break down your meat, then eating it when you’re older, despite what some research might say is kind of pointless. So I think that’s a big one too, is allowing your body to digest food, not overeat that contributes to again, a long, healthy life.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Thank you so much, Jason, for the brilliance there. Everybody, Bioenergetics Summit. Thank you.