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Mental Fitness and Holistic Resilience

RISE AND THRIVE WITH ELLA MAGERS

Mental Fitness and Holistic Resilience

Mental Fitness and Holistic Resilience

with SUN SACHS

The reality is you can’t decouple your mental health from your physical health, your nutrition from your brain health. There’s all these things that are interrelated. We’re very complex human beings, and you just can’t sum it up by looking at one data point or one aspect. So that’s really how I look at [holistic health], as the big picture and how everything impacts each other. – Sun Sachs

View Transcript

Ella Magers, MSW (00:00):

All right, son, thanks so much for being here with me today. 

Sun Sach (00:13):

My pleasure. Yeah, really looking forward to chatting. 

Ella Magers, MSW (00:16):

Yeah. I want to dive into your story. You’ve got a fascinating story and you’re doing some amazing things in the health, longevity, fitness space. First, could you share what your definition of holistic health is? If you had to define holistic health, what does that mean to you? 

Sun Sach (00:37):

Yeah, definitely. So in general, I would define it. I mean, holistic is the key, right? It’s easy to look at certain things in a vacuum as all interrelated or is not related. And the reality is you can’t decouple your mental health from your physical health, your nutrition from your brain health. There’s all these things that are interrelated. We’re very complex human beings, and you just can’t sum it up by looking at one data point or one aspect. So that’s really how I look at it, is the big picture and how everything impacts each other. 

Ella Magers, MSW (01:21):

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so bear with me for a moment while I get this thought out, because this is going to lead the way to quite the discussion, I think. All right. So you experienced quite a lot of trauma throughout your childhood, which you credit then for your incredible resilience. Now, I’m fascinated by the idea that trauma gives rise to resilience, which is a quality that countless, highly successful people have in common. That said, the quality of resilience doesn’t necessarily heal trauma and unhealed, or I actually prefer the term unintegrated. Trauma, can also, in countless ways, keep us from reaching our true potential, especially when it comes to feelings of joy and freedom. So I want to dive into this, but first, I think getting your backstory would be really, really helpful for our audience. Do you mind sharing about that? 

Sun Sach (02:28):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is. I couldn’t agree with you more. There’s a lot of aspects to trauma that can transform or transmute how you are in the world that can be positive, but there are certainly things that you live with that I live with every day that you continue to work on. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways that I could tell the story and a lot of different aspects to the story. But basically, I grew up, my name is Son because it was a sunny day when I was born to hippie parents who were kind of out there. We lived out in Canada. We on a farm pretty much minded, had a lot of different experiences, good and bad. Because of that, certainly aspects of neglect, certainly aspects of trauma and accidents and all kinds of things. That made me very fearful. 

Sun Sach (03:37):

Also, a lot of bullying, broken bones, things like that. For whatever reason, I just became a target. Maybe it was starting with my name, maybe it was just the way I looked at things and I stood out. I tend to think that bullies self-identify with the people that they’re brutalizing because they’re also sensitive and they pick up on it, and they’re not. They’re uncomfortable with their own sensitivity, so they lash out. There’s a lot of different ways to look at it. But for whatever reason, that went on for many years, and I kind of internalized this deep-rooted feeling of insecurity and of stress, and that drove me to a lot of different things. It drove me to try to excel in sport and to have, I ended up kind of having O C D personality, and that’s really helpful in some things, and really harmful in other things. 

Sun Sach (04:45):

And in sport. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, I worked my way to an elite level in cycling, but I also pushed myself incredibly hard. I was the most brutal coach to myself that I could ever be, and I was training 40, 50 hours a week, didn’t, there’s really no notion of self-care. I got very ill, very thin, and eventually had to retire from injury and burnout. And so all of those things then played into how I started to think about health, wellness, and longevity as I pursued a career in software development and took me down many paths of self-discovery. The most important ones ended up being incorporated into the app that we created, the platform that we created. But I’ll stop there in case you have questions. 

Ella Magers, MSW (05:46):

Yeah, wondering. Well, I wanted to hear the story about the broken hands on your bike, because that is just such an example of, and I want to also hear about your self-talk back then, because it’s obviously changed a lot since then. Yeah, 

Sun Sach (06:05):

Yeah. Was something I was probably bullied till I was about 14 and something snapped where finally I was like, I’m not going to tolerate this anymore. And it stopped. And in that there was some kind of feeling of empowerment, and that transmitted or morphed into this feeling of resilience, almost thriving on situations. What happened? So yeah, the story is basically, I was in a mountain bike race and going pretty fast. It was a single track that’s basically just a skinny trail. And I was going maybe 25 or a little faster miles per hour. And interestingly, I had this instinct, something was going to happen, and about five seconds later, the rim of my front wheel malfunctioned, and basically the wheel stopped dead in its track tracks, and I flipped over so violently that my hands were still attached to the handlebars, and my body weight broke. 

Sun Sach (07:16):

Both my hands, my face hit the ground. I had two black eyes, and you have to kind of have a lot of adrenaline when something like that happens. First thing I did was pull my bike off the trail to make sure that I wouldn’t get run over by anybody else. And then there was this moment where I was like, my race is over. And I thought, well, what if it’s not? Like, what if I could just do this anyway? And suddenly that became so inspiring. I ripped off the tire on the front rim and just rode on the metal with my two broken hands. And as I was riding over the train, I could hear the bones clicking in my hands. That sounds like crazy, but it was invigorating. And I just kept going, finished the race, went to the medics, and they were like, there’s no way you could ride with broken hands. They’re fine. You just sprained them, whatever. So then of course, I had to drive myself to the emergency room, which was an hour and a half away, get the x-rays. They were broken and deal with that. And I’ve had a lot of things like that happen over my racing career and other things where when the worst thing happens, for some reason, I seem to be at my best. And there’s something that is inspiring about it, and I can’t really explain how that happened, but it is sort of a part of my nature now. 

Ella Magers, MSW (08:42):

That’s pretty incredible. And were you, the self-talk that you had in those kinds of situations, it’s like I think about self-compassion and we celebrate, I feel like we celebrate self-discipline to such a large degree sometimes at the detriment of self-compassion. Do you felt, feel like you had self-compassion, or was it just like this extreme drive to reach this new goal of now doing this with this extra challenge of having two broken hands? 

Sun Sach (09:14):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a really good question. I certainly have had a lot of lack of self-care over the years, and that’s evolved that, and I understand it, and I do my best to take good care of myself. Now, I think what happened at the time is the self-talk was just, what if I could do this? What if I could do this? And being able to rise above was a challenge that excited me. I was literally happy with the challenge to do it. And I, I’m not really sure where that comes from, but it wasn’t necessarily trying to brutalize myself. It was more like, Hey, I could actually do, I could pull this off. Let me, the curiosity of, let me see if I can sort of changed my mindset. And that’s the important part. I could have easily had the mindset of my race is over. I’m not going to ride my bike for months. I’m totally hurt. This is terrible. But instead, it wasn’t, I’m so tough. It was more just like, well, what if I could overcome this and suddenly I could because I had that thought. 

Ella Magers, MSW (10:33):

Right? Right. Yeah, no, it’s super interesting. And I, it resonates with me in certain ways because when I was in my twenties and had a really horrible breakup, and I have a lot of trauma in my background as well, and I found my MOI Thai instructor, and he was like, saw my emotional pain. He’s like, let me train you. And I said, okay. And back then I didn’t know that people used foreign and gear. It was notion guards. I was black and blue. If I backed up, he would yell at me. And it was so empowering that I could keep going and that I could keep doing. And I’m like, I kind of explore where is that coming from that about, is that a pain derived thing or more on the positive side of what can I accomplish? So I think it’s fascinating, and I think you explore some of this in the app, which I want to get to. Do you think that we need to push our physical bodies to extreme levels in order to build mental toughness or grit? 

Sun Sach (11:42):

And I think that that’s one pathway, but in many times it’s a negative pathway. So I’m not a proponent of it. In the sporting world, millions of athletes literally have burnt out from that mentality. And it’s not necessary. It’s sort of this sledgehammer approach. Let me just beat myself up physically, and somehow there’ll be a side effect where I’ll be more mentally tough. Well, that’s a pretty indirect path to having resilience, and there’s probably a better way. That’s not traumatizing, do you know? But it does work, and it also does burn people out and have them be injured and have them be traumatized. So it’s double edged. Yeah, 

Ella Magers, MSW (12:31):

Yeah. Okay. So you were around 27 when you got out of the cycling, is that correct? Or the mountain biking? What was next for you? 

Sun Sach (12:44):

So just out of a coincidence, one of my cycling buddies asked me to do a kind of software development job and didn’t know how to do it, and just figured it out, ended up being that I had just a natural ability in it, and basically built a whole career around software development and product management, and made many different types of platforms for different companies. And while I was doing that, I was really trying to unpack what went wrong with my cycling career and started to explore a lot of different tools and techniques in science. One of the things that I explored pretty deeply was a quantified self. And I was doing this more than 10 years ago at this point, literally measuring everything every day, looking at my urine, looking at all my body weight and macros and nutrition and heart rate and subjective data. 

Sun Sach (13:55):

In the end, it turned out that the only data point that really seemed to be correlative to how I felt, at least in training, was the H R V, which turns out to be a really important measure that a lot of people use nowadays. So I put that in my toolkit and kept searching. As I continued to use that as sort of a hard metric, I went very deep into meditation, ended up joining Yoga’s group, and really took this aesthetic approach where I was meditating three to four hours a day and going very deep and reaching the certain level where they basically reveal more secrets that you’re sworn to never share with anyone, which of course I don’t. But in that process, 

Ella Magers, MSW (14:49):

So don’t ask. You’re saying 

Sun Sach (14:50):

Yes. 

Sun Sach (14:52):

Got it. Yeah, yeah. But in that process, I learned an incredible amount and appreciated not only that particular practice, but just the benefits of meditation. But I also recognized that particular approach, meditating three to four hours a day was causing its own stress and really didn’t fit into my lifestyle. So that ended up in my toolkit, but I basically took an approach that worked better for me with a lot less time still incorporating some of the things that I learned. And then the last piece was just being very well aware of the science that was around resilience training without having to beat yourself up that I was so excited about. I wanted to be the test subject. This was maybe like six, seven years ago, and I kept waiting for it to come to market and never did. And it’s just so happened that one day I was on the bike trainer working out, and I had this epiphany for how it could be done, and I realized that I had all the skills to build it. So that’s how that rewire started. 

Ella Magers, MSW (16:03):

All right. Well, I’d love us to get into and go through the different components and elements and talk about not only how it applies to athletes, but also in everyone’s daily life as well. Because all of these, am I right that they can be applied both to athletes and absolutely in our daily lives? 

Sun Sach (16:26):

100%. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. 

Ella Magers, MSW (16:28):

Okay. So yeah, maybe we’ll dive in deeper to each component, and then I’d love to know a little bit more about your routine now that you’re not meditating three to four hours a day, what you are doing instead. 

Sun Sach (16:40):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there’s really three major pillars or components of rewire. On one end, we’re really focused on building mental resilience, and that’s directly from the science using what we would call more of a scalpel approach to building that resilience where you’re not looking for a side effect from putting, pushing yourself physically, you’re more finding a direct path to that resilience. It’s a specific series of cognitive tasks that you do in the app. So it’s like weight training for your mind, if you will. And then on the other side, we focus on a mindset solution, which is two to four minutes. It’s really built around this idea that people have cognitive, emotional and physical fatigue that goes really unchecked or unmanaged, and we want to provide a solution for helping really be the best you can be every day. And then right in the middle, it’s our readiness system, which is designed to be a morning practice. So the idea is that you wake up in the morning, you open up the app, the app, if you’re connected with any wearables, it will sync all that information. And then it also assesses you cognitively, physically, and emotionally. So with that understanding, it reflects back your state, how you are emotionally, how you are cognitively, and how you are physically. And then based on what you’re trying to achieve, it recommends an intervention, which is this mindset program or the resilience program, depending on how you’re doing that day. 

Ella Magers, MSW (18:28):

Now, how in the world does it measure your emotional state? 

Sun Sach (18:36):

So we basically use a scientifically validated emotional scale. So it’s a subjective scale, and it’s asking you four simple questions. Questions like, how stressed do you feel today? How frustrated, what’s your sense for your readiness to perform, your level of fatigue? So it’s your own perspective on how you’re doing. And what’s important about that is let’s just say you are reporting that you’re a little more frustrated today. Well, that means that you have more emotionality, and that may be a consequence of getting a poor night’s sleep or having a lot of stress. And you may not recognize that the reason that you’re getting irritated by some little thing is because of all those factors. And once you realize that, then there’s something you can do about it as opposed to just being reactive. 

Ella Magers, MSW (19:37):

That makes a ton of sense. And it’s interesting how sometimes we can get, not know, even know if we’ve gotten a full night’s sleep, we know if we’ve woken up a lot, but sometimes I love how that it is connected with other apps. Do you have other apps that you recommend to help this one work better in terms of measuring? 

Sun Sach (20:03):

So we built the app and the platform to not require any devices. So if you just have the app, don’t worry, we’ll ask you the questions to understand your own sense of your sleep. But if you do have either a sleep tracker or a device, we definitely recommend. In terms of high quality devices, we connect directly with Aura, which is great. We connect directly with Garmin as well, and the health apps. So a lot of times you can just sync whatever you’re using with your health app and then that will connect to our system. But you’re right, you don’t always know the quality of your sleep. It’s one of those, I would say sleep is one of those things. You’re unconscious, you don’t know your amount of cognitive fatigue, you don’t know because you don’t have a tool to measure it. Right? Your, your emotionality, how often do you check in and compare your emotional state from today with prior days? Probably not often. So all those things we’re trying to illuminate for people. 

Ella Magers, MSW (21:05):

Got it. Got it. Okay. So let’s say it’s telling me I am more emotional, gi give me some things that it might have me do to help with this rewire process. 

Sun Sach (21:22):

So let’s say that you had a poor night’s sleep and the day before you had a lot of stress, whatever, that obviously the body just treats stress as stress. It would get a lot of different types of stress, but your body’s stressed out in your mi, and as a result, your mind is under a lot of fatigue. So we’re dealing with emotionality, we’re dealing with a lack of sleep, and we’re dealing with some cognitive fatigue. You’ll push a button that says, based on how you’re feeling, prepare for your day, and then it’ll ask you one more question, which is, do you want to be productive? Do you want to work on recovery? Do you want to work on performance? So let’s say you want to work on recovery, so it just means you want to get through all this stuff that’s been built up over the last few days, the lack of sleep, et cetera. 

Sun Sach (22:14):

So what we’ll do is in a two to four minute practice, we’ll create this, what we call a recipe where we basically take different protocols from science and from psychology, neuroscience as well. And what we’ll do is we’ll put them together in one holistic experience. So for example, in this case, because you’re under a lot of stress and you’ve had a poor night’s sleep, we’re going to bre bring you into a breathing modality first, which in this case will be box breathing, which I’m sure you’re familiar with for those listening, if they’re not, it’s very interesting breathing technique used by the Navy Seals or popularized by the Navy seals, which you breathe in for a certain amount and then hold your breath for the same amount of time, and then breathe out for the same amount of time, and then hold your breath at the end for the same amount of time. 

Sun Sach (23:10):

And what it does is it gets your body into a homeostasis and it puts you into a parasympathetic state, which is a rest and recovery state. So we’re telling your body, we’re queuing your body, get into a relaxed, calm state. Then you’re listening to relaxing music. What that actually is, is meditative music with neuroscience integrated in the form of bal beats. So this is basically a brain entrainment technique, which what the science shows is it is nearly as effective as meditating, but completely passive. So you’re just listening to the music. And what it’s doing is creating a entrainment system where your brain starts to mirror what the brain wave that it’s perceiving, and that can be a relaxed state or a focus state in broad strokes. So you’re breathing, we’re helping your physiology, you’re listening to the music, we’re helping your brain, and then we will take you through some self-talk. So a couple of just phrases that are designed to help you repeat them in your mind that can be used at any time. We might take you through a visualization, and in this case, if you are frustrated, a gratitude visualization can be very helpful. And we’ll also do something that I find particularly fascinating, which is subliminal priming. So you’re look looking at the screen and we’re priming you with positive imagery, which is actually very specifically people smiling back at you. 

Ella Magers, MSW (24:51):

Wow. 

Sun Sach (24:51):

So yeah, what’s really cool about that is because we’re social animals, if you think about of a herd of deer, if one deer has a fear response, all of the other animals, they’re all going to pick up on it, and they’re going to say, we’re in an unsafe environment for humans. We look at each other’s faces, and so if I’m smiling back at you, I’m telling your physiology specifically your vagus nerve, which goes through the muscles of your face. Hey, you’re in a calm, safe environment. And what that does is it affects your mindset. It affects your cognitive state and your cognitive recovery and basically tells your deep rooted biology things are good, and all you have to do is look at the screen. So that’s an example of what the experience feels like and what’s happening behind the scenes. 

Ella Magers, MSW (25:47):

Wow, that’s fascinating. I love that. I would love to hear, now, you’ve done all this research, you’ve done this development of this process, this protocols. What about now for you and your life? What is your morning routine? Do you have the same one every morning? I’d love to get a little window into your life and the holistic health and the patterns and the protocols that you’ve created for yourself. 

Sun Sach (26:19):

So these days, I definitely prioritize sleep. So if it means that my day will be a little bit more harder to manage, but I can get more sleep, I’ll do it. But I do sleep. I go to sleep very intentionally around the same and wake up around the same time because I want the circadian rhythm to really be in a natural cycle so that I get sleepy at the right time, and I wake up naturally at the right time without an alarm. So then when I wake up, I have a rule to not look at anything that would stress me out, whether it be social media or email or anything like that. The first thing I do is I sit down and once I get out of bed, I’ll sit down in the chair in my bedroom and I will do a readiness assessment using Rewire, and that will incorporate the data from Aura for Sleep and all my training data from the day before. 

Sun Sach (27:28):

And I do a live capture of my heart rate. And so I’m really just looking at my state and how I feel. And then I do this very abbreviated, it’s about a 10 mindfulness practice with some gratitude in there, which is taken from a lot what I learned from Pandas group, as well as just things that I’ve done over my life to help me thinking through what’s most important, almost like appreciating the gifts that I have, and also thinking through what’s important to me today. And when that practice is over, then I’ll go downstairs, get my coffee, get started with my day and that. Then the next thing is I go for a walk with the dogs seven days a week, always. So 

Ella Magers, MSW (28:28):

That I’ve got three of those. 

Sun Sach (28:30):

Yes, yes. 

Ella Magers, MSW (28:32):

What kind of dogs? You’re a fellow animal lover. I love that. 

Sun Sach (28:36):

Yes. Yeah, we have, they’re all rescues and they all have beagle in them, so they’re Barkers and they’re hunters, and I actually have to walk them two sets of dogs because they can’t walk all three of them since they outweigh me. So it’s a good 45 minute walk every day. 

Ella Magers, MSW (28:59):

Yep. Nice. And then you have four cats as well, rescues? 

Sun Sach (29:04):

I do. Yep. Exactly. Yes. 

Ella Magers, MSW (29:06):

And when do they start meowing for food? 

Sun Sach (29:10):

Yeah, they make sure that I don’t oversleep that 

Ella Magers, MSW (29:13):

Way. There we go. Yeah. Yeah, I figured out. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So you do your walk and then 

Sun Sach (29:21):

Depending on the schedule, so it’s either jump right into work or My preference usually is to do a workout seven days a week, but it’s pretty balanced. It’ll be usually strength and endurance alternating days. So I’d like to get my blood flowing to push my body to see that incremental progress. If I have extra time, I’ll get in the sauna and do a heat therapy for half an hour, only if I have extra time. But I also have learned to be flexible. I have the kind of mind where it’s easy for me to get rigid about things. So if let’s just say I only have a half hour and my workout is an hour, then I’ll be like, okay, I’ll do the first half, do the strength session in the morning, and then I’ll do the little cardio session at the very end of the day. It is way better than skipping it because it’s not a perfect situation. 

Ella Magers, MSW (30:24):

Absolutely. And I’m with you and I, I’ve worked with a lot of people that are the same, and it’s like, okay, I, I want to do an hour. I’ve got an hour plan. I only have 20, 30 minutes. Might as well just throw it all out the window. Right? That’s right. That’s the immediate thought. And I think this is where self-talk and what I like to refer to as self-coaching comes in, to be able to take that step, step back, observe those thoughts of those all or nothing, and then talk yourself into doing the healthiest thing, which would be to get in what you can. What is your self-talk like now? How has it changed and how I, is there parts of that worked into the rewire of helping people with their own? 

Sun Sach (31:11):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The thing about having a consistent routine is you notice when things are different. So when I’m doing the mindfulness practice in the morning, if I’m having extra trouble focusing, my mind’s wandering or I’m feeling impatient, that’s an observation. And that goes into the self-talk later in the day, Hey, recognize something’s a little off today. So as you’re approaching things, you might need to be a little more flexible. So that’s certainly an aspect of it. I try to have self-talk really around self-care and being okay with not having things perfect because that’s my thing. I have a perfectionist mindset, recovering perfectionist, if you will. 

Ella Magers, MSW (32:05):

Yes, me too. 

Sun Sach (32:07):

It’s therapeutic for me to let things go because that’s not my tendency. So just doing that, just being okay with it not being perfect is growth. 

Ella Magers, MSW (32:20):

Yeah. Thousand percent. Thousand percent. And you’re also vegan. How did that come to be? 

Sun Sach (32:30):

So for me, it checks all the boxes just in terms of great for the environment, great for ethics, and doing something that feels right for animal. We welfare and excellent for health. So I’ve actually had a couple of different rounds of veganism, to be 100% honest. The first time was younger as a vegan and didn’t know how to eat well and got just very sick and had a hard time managing it, and that was purely ethics based. And then later in life, as I approached middle age, I basically doubled down and recommitted. So it’s been about 12 years of being a vegan in this last round and very committed and very healthy and couldn’t be happier with the lifestyle. 

Ella Magers, MSW (33:35):

What did you do not so well the first time around that you’ve mastered this time around? 

Sun Sach (33:42):

I didn’t know a lot about nutrition, and not that I think you need to know a lot about nutrition, but you do want to eat a variety of foods. There’s so many things that you can do for your health and wellness. What I didn’t include in my morning routine, which I’m religious about, is my morning immunity smoothie, which I have done. I looked at the counter on the smoothie, and I think it’s like 4,000 smoothies that I’ve done. Oh, 

Ella Magers, MSW (34:16):

Wow. Of the same one? 

Sun Sach (34:18):

Yep. 

Ella Magers, MSW (34:19):

Okay. Will you give us the recipe? 

Sun Sach (34:22):

I certainly will. Yeah. It has evolved a bit, but the base is blueberries, two cups of blueberries, frozen wild blueberries every day. That’s the highest source of antioxidants, and a quarter teaspoon of matcha, which is the highest herbal source of antioxidants. Then you throw in some turmeric and some ginger and some dark leafy greens and some coconut water and a banana, and you’re good to go. 

Ella Magers, MSW (34:55):

And how long does that keep you satisfied and energized 

Sun Sach (35:00):

Till lunch, and then it’s usually a dark leafy green salad. I throw some protein in there like Satan or tofu, and then there’s a little snack in the middle of the day with another matcha. I’ll make LA latte 

Sun Sach (35:19):

Have a little snack. Yeah, I love that. That’s when I do my mindset session. Usually around three, the matcha and then a normal kind of dinner. Our whole family’s vegan, so we’ll have a stir fry or there’s so many options these days. But yeah, that’s kind of how it works. But yeah, it’s a very balanced diet and very easy to maintain, but it certainly does take time. You’re changing your whole lifestyle, so it’s one of those habits that you’re doing three times a day or more. So it’s a major change. It’s a major shame for people to get used to, for sure. 

Ella Magers, MSW (36:01):

Yeah. Okay. So this is probably my most important question yet. What kind of milk do you use in your mochi latte? 

Sun Sach (36:11):

Yes, it’s definitely oat milk. Yeah, nice. And because I do steam it, so I need to have the perfect milk, oatley milk. Yeah. Yes. And 

Ella Magers, MSW (36:24):

All right, just making 

Sun Sach (36:25):

Sure. Yep. I hand stir the matcha powder and all of that. 

Ella Magers, MSW (36:29):

You’ve got the traditional bamboo. Exactly. You’ve got to, yes. 

Sun Sach (36:34):

Okay. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, it’s a nice little ritual in the afternoon too. 

Ella Magers, MSW (36:39):

It’s awesome. I love it. Last question, what do you do now to get into your flow flow state? I know you know had the athletics, the cycling for a long time, what you’ve done yoga. What is your most effective methods for getting into flow? 

Sun Sach (37:00):

Yeah, there’s a couple of different methods. Some I wouldn’t necessarily recommend unless you have a lot of skill to back it up, but a great basis for it is having a calm, calm, ready mind. So what that means is you can use a breathing exercise, you could use our solution, which combines a bunch of different things, but you get into this state where you are open to anything, you don’t have a lot of expectations, and you bring down your anxiety level to a very low level. So you’re basically calm, alert, and aware, and that is a great primer for a flow state because you’re not going to get, if you’re holding onto things tight, there’s no way you’re going to get into a flow state. How I see flow, as you know, it’s basically a slowing down of your perception, not a speeding up of your perception. 

Sun Sach (38:13):

And you’re able to be aware of your surroundings and your body locomoting through space and think through almost as if you’re on those movies where martial artist jumps up and moves very slowly through the air. It’s almost like you have all the time. You need to figure out what you need to do, and that can be effective in work and in play, and in, of course, in sport. The other technique is using binary beats to help accelerate that state as well. And then on the extreme end, extreme sports can put you into that state very quickly because there’s a flight, fight, or flight response. But again, I don’t recommend that because that can also put you into a high level of danger. But I’ve experienced that a lot over the years. 

Ella Magers, MSW (39:10):

Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Son, anything else you’d like to, any final words you’d like to share with the audience and let us know how we can download your app? 

Sun Sach (39:22):

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would just say it’s incredibly powerful to give yourself just five minutes of mindfulness or reflection of calm, of self-care, just five minutes. Whether it’s just sit down in a chair outside and take in the sun, do a little breathing exercise. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but just stopping the madness for a few minutes and doing that daily can be incredibly powerful. So it doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t have to be a major investment of time. 

Ella Magers, MSW (40:03):

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and energy and sharing with us today, son. 

Sun Sach (40:10):

My pleasure. And as it relates to the app, if you do want to check it out, you can search for Rewire Fitness in the app stores, and we do have a free version, so it has a lot of everything that I described for free forever. So check it out. 

Ella Magers, MSW (40:26):

Fantastic. I have downloaded it myself, and we will put the link in the show notes as well. 

Sun Sach (40:32):

All right. Thanks so much. All 

Ella Magers, MSW (40:33):

Right. Thank you. All 

Sun Sach (40:34):

Right.

SHOW NOTES

The reality is you can’t decouple your mental health from your physical health, your nutrition from your brain health. There’s all these things that are interrelated. We’re very complex human beings, and you just can’t sum it up by looking at one data point or one aspect. So that’s really how I look at [holistic health], as the big picture and how everything impacts each other.   – Sun Sachs

Today’s guest is former elite athlete, Sun Sachs. Sun is the CEO & Co-founder of Rewire Fitness, the first mental fitness platform that helps athletes and individuals reach their full potential and avoid burnout by providing tools that improve mindset, readiness and resilience.   

And I have to tell you, that since recording the episode, I’ve had the chance to explore the app and I want to let you all know that I’m finding it quite helpful in my everyday life, particularly for refocusing my mind when I feel overwhelmed or “all over the place,” which of course happens more than I’d like. 

I also really appreciate that Sun is not only a tough athlete, but also an extremely compassionate individual. He is passionate about animal welfare, the environment, and human health and co-created the plant-based media brand, www.thebeet.com.  

Sun is also a plant-based culinary chef graduate and former instructor from Matthew Kenny Cuisine. 

Sun continues to advise for The Beet and promotes a healthy plant-based, athletic lifestyle with his wife, two kids, and 7 animal rescues (4 cats & 3 dogs).

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