November 12, 2025 • 38 mins
Ever wish you could quiet the story in your head without having to relive it? We sit down with Marine veteran and defense-tech CEO Tony Crescenzo to explore a practical, science-backed way to downshift the nervous system using neuroacoustic entrainment. Tony opens up about the years he spent running hot—rage, hypervigilance, and fractured sleep—and how a targeted audio protocol shifted his sleep from barely restorative to deeply replenishing. The conversation gets real about why so many first responders and veterans avoid talk therapy, and how culturally aware approaches can make all the difference.
We break down the sleep architecture behind feeling human again. Slow wave sleep restores the body; REM sleep stabilizes emotion and consolidates memory. Tony shares research showing meaningful gains in both, along with a 9% boost in threat recognition—vital for police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and military communities where seconds matter. You’ll hear how suppressing the prefrontal “rumination engine” while opening the anterior cingulate, parietal, and occipital regions enables somatic processing: the body digests stress so the mind can stand down.
Then we zoom out to cognitive resilience—the brain’s ability to adapt quickly under pressure. Using EEG-guided and AI-personalized protocols, entrainment builds coherence front-to-back and left-to-right, easing brain fog and improving metabolic efficiency. The result is a steadier baseline, faster recovery after spikes, and sleep that actually repairs. If you’ve been stuck between white-knuckle coping and sterile clinical answers, this is a credible path you can start at home, including free app tracks for power naps, rumination relief, and sleep support.
How to reach Jonathan:
1) https://www.IntelligentWaves.com
2) https://www.PeakNeuro.com
3) https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonycrescenzo/
Freed AI converts conversations into SOAP note.Use code Steve50 for $50 off the 1st month!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Welcome to Resilience Development and
Action with Steve Beast Home.
This is the podcast dedicated tofirst responder mental health,
helping police, higher, EMS,dispatchers, and paramedics
create better growthenvironments for themselves and
their teams.
Let's get started.ai.
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that will save you time andmoney.
And I highly encourage you to doso.
Well, hi everyone, and welcometo episode 230.
If you haven't listened toepisode 229, it was with
Stephanie Simpson.
We talked about coaching, wetalked about grief and changes
and how law enforcement have toalways kind of adapt to that and
(02:08):
the techniques that she offers.
But today is someone um I knowthat Veterans Day isn't a few
days.
And I really honor my veterans.
And one of the things I learnedfrom my first year of doing this
podcast is I had a veteran onfor Veterans Day, and he says,
Don't say thank you to me onVeterans Day, say it on any
other day, but so I'm not gonnasay thank you for your service
(02:29):
to this individual for thatpurpose.
But Tony Crescenzo, uh, he's theowner of Peak Neuro, and we're
gonna hear about that.
And I can't wait you guys tohear about this because it's
very important.
But uh, Tony's someone that uhwas presented to me through you
know, people know me, so theypresent me like, oh, this is the
perfect guy for my my audience.
And then they they told me hewas a Marine.
(02:50):
I'm like, oh, I'm not sureanymore.
But anyway, I decided to goagainst my best judgment and
have a Marine on.
And for those of you who areMarines and know me, you're
gonna laugh.
And those who don't know me,chill.
It's a joke.
But Tony Crescenzo, welcome toResilience Development in
Action.
SPEAKER_01 (03:06):
Thanks.
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02 (03:09):
I and again, I literally will not say that
today to you because I know thatVeterans Day is coming up.
I will say thank you on anyother day, but that's the reason
why I don't say thank you onVeterans Day for most of my
guys.
But I kind of told a little bitabout you, but I think my
audience would like to hear moreabout you know who you are,
where you come from, and whereyou're doing right now.
So can you tell me a little moreabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (03:30):
Oh, sure.
I'll give you a quick history.
So I grew up in uh in SouthPhiladelphia during the 70s.
So if you've seen the movieRocky, the neighborhood where
Rocky runs is the neighborhood Igrew up when Rocky was made.
Wow.
So think uh think Rocky and uhRocky meets the Sopranos was my
childhood.
When my parents divorced when Iwas relatively young, uh my
(03:52):
mother remarried a navalofficer, and I spent uh most of
my my youth traveling.
Uh, went to five high schools,lived all over the world.
When I um when I graduated fromhigh school, I went to college
in New Jersey, made a wrong turnon the way to a Charles Carrot
lecture, and found myself in theUnited States Marine Corps,
(04:13):
where I spent uh eight years intotal, some of which were really
fun, some of which weren't somuch fun.
Once I got out of the MarineCorps, I was uh recruited
actually to work for atechnology company on Wall
Street, spent three years therein the late 80s and uh with a
company that turned out to bethe largest mergers and
acquisitions transaction of uh1989, worked for three really
(04:36):
crazy, brilliant, outstandingpeople.
Uh, and that really launched acareer in technology for me.
I uh left that company, camedown to Washington, D.C.
Uh for a short time.
I worked for a small managementconsulting firm around
technology, uh, competing forcustomers with the world's
fourth largest software companyat the time.
And I uh irritated them so muchthat they wound up hiring me.
(05:00):
I wound up there as the uh uhtechnical director of their
federal division.
So I've been in and out ofgovernment service for most of
my adult life.
From there, uh the Germancompany asked me to spend some
time in some other places.
So I've been to, I've worked inuh Hong Kong, Italy, France,
Germany, and the UK, as well asthe United States
internationally, federally, andnow in the last 20-something
(05:22):
years, I've been in the nationaldefense industrial-based market.
After I sold my second company,I became what most people think
of as a CEO in residence, whereprivate equity firms or venture
capital firms sort of have youthere evaluating companies, uh,
eventually dropping into them.
So I've I've been uh a venturecapital CEO, I've been a private
equity CEO, and I've uh now I'mwhat I I think most people would
(05:45):
call just a really expensivejanitor.
I'm the guy that you hire whenthings aren't going so well and
you need the mess cleaned up.
Now, having said that, thecompany I work for now is not a
mess at all.
Intelligent Waves is a veryinteresting national defense
industrial-based company, isstarted by a gentleman by the
name of Jared Shepherd, anamazing individual.
Uh I think I think he has a GED.
(06:06):
I don't think he ever went tocollege.
Got out of the army, uh,invented some amazing technology
that defeated IEDs.
So the entire company wasfounded on uh on the joint IED
defense program in Iraq duringthe war.
And we've grown since then.
We are about 65% of our companyare veterans.
Half of those, I'm sorry, 80% ofthose are combat veterans, half
(06:27):
of those are special operators,Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Marine
Raiders, uh, MarineReconnaissance.
We are essentially people whowore green suits for most of our
careers and then put on bluesuits.
So we're very focused onmission, uh, mission-only work.
Most of our work is done in aclassified environment.
About 90% of our employees holdextremely high clearances.
(06:49):
They work in copper rooms thatare sealed, 26 states and seven
foreign countries.
If you go to Monster.com and youlook up uh best companies for
veterans, I think Boeing orLockheed is number one, we're
number two.
Uh it is a verymilitary-friendly,
veteran-focused, veteran-owned,veteran-run organization that
(07:11):
specializes in mission work.
We do things around the F-35program, we support operations
overseas on in both hemispheres.
Um, we have a quantum resistanttechnologies for secure
communication.
We're the defenders of the U.S.
judiciary system.
We have the cyber contract todefend all of the U.S.
courts and the U.S.
(07:32):
Marshall Service.
So very, very high-tech, uh uhmission focused and critical
infrastructure kind of anorganization.
SPEAKER_02 (07:40):
Yeah, and you were talking about all the specialty
and the Green Berets and uheveryone else.
That gives you a lot ofclearance, but it also gives you
a lot of high-functioning, highachieving type of people, which
might be an interestingenvironmental organ, I'm pretty
sure.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
It gets a little intense.
It's uh the only company whereyou know water cooler
conversation is not like anyplace else you've ever been.
Uh people have conversationsabout uh, let me put it this way
when you're establishing yourbona fetis in our company, if
and by the way, if you're aveteran, you may have you might
understand this, uh, and someonemight ask you which hand you
(08:17):
carried your hatchet in.
And that's uh not a conversationyou're gonna have at a at a
Google or a or a uh or a uhMicrosoft, right?
So it's a very interesting uhcrew of people, but I would have
to say uh with the exception ofthe Marines, almost all of our
employees have a four-digit IQ.
SPEAKER_02 (08:35):
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like they'realso specialized, very, very
specialized, and that IQ is evenhigher because of their
specialty.
SPEAKER_01 (08:43):
They are, yeah.
They're uh our chief strategyofficer is a former Delta Force
operator who uh ran the JointSpecial Operations Center
Innovation Lab for years beforehe got out of the army.
Now he does that for us.
So we our our our job really,our our role in the National
Defense Industrial Base is whatwe call flash to bang.
If you look up here atIntelligent Waves, right?
(09:04):
Anytime, anywhere, any domain,that's that's our tagline.
But what we tell people is we dohard shit in bad places, which
is essentially what we do.
We fix problems that otherscan't solve.
SPEAKER_02 (09:15):
Yeah.
Well, I I'm just impressed by awhole lot of different things.
And then makes me think aboutthis little podcast.
And you're like, hey, I want tobe on this podcast.
What made you decide to come inon this podcast?
I mean, uh I I just feel like uhvery impressed by what you're
accomplishing and what you guysare doing.
So I'm wondering why you wantedto come on to this podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (09:35):
Well, you know, I've um uh I I served in some
interesting places in the in theMarine Corps, um uh not the
least of which was Beirut andLebanon, and then in uh in an
undercover capacity working forwhat you know as NCIS.
Uh back then was known as NIS.
I spent three years undercoverin a fraud and drug
(09:57):
investigation that um was muchmore dangerous than anything I
had done in Beirut.
I was a I was uh temporarilyassigned to Beirut.
I wasn't part of the permanentpersonnel, so I was back and
forth every couple of weeks fora week or two.
Uh not the same as workingundercover when you walk in a
room for three years and don'tknow if you're gonna walk out of
it alive.
(10:18):
And I had some some interestingfallout from my experience
there.
The Marine Corps is very small,everybody knows everybody.
And at one point I was uh uhsequestered in a hotel room with
uh a sergeant who is a friend ofmine, and I think we we went
when we went to the men's room,we stood back to back just to
make sure that nothing happened.
So, you know, you don't realize,and by the way, this was all
(10:41):
before the age of 25.
So that kind of you know, thatkind of responsibility you don't
really see very much, except infirst responders and in military
folks.
And you don't realize what itdoes to you.
I I went 30 years without reallyunderstanding just how much it
had impacted me.
Um, my first wife, my secondwife, my daughter, most of my
(11:02):
friends could tell you how itimpacted me.
I'm sure everyone listening tothis podcast knows a first
responder or a veteran who youdon't want to get in a car with.
Right.
Um, thinks bar fights are funand sport.
Uh maybe their wife told themonce that they'd been in more
fights than all the men she'dever dated in her life combined.
That was me.
Uh, you know, and in my in mywork in technology and in
(11:24):
leadership in companies, uh, youcan keep that in check, right?
You're the boss and you don'tshow people as much as you might
show uh in other places, but itwas something that I didn't even
realize how bad it was until Igot into my 40s and 50s.
Um I went to the VA, I had someuh I actually met a VA counselor
I thought was going to be greatfor me as a Vietnam veteran,
(11:45):
three tours in Vietnam, saw awhole much more, you know, a lot
more uh bad things than I hadever seen.
And three uh three sessions inhe told me he couldn't treat me,
I was triggering him.
So I just sort of went quiet anddealt with it by talking to
friends and keeping it allinside.
And then I found uh I found PeakNeuro.
(12:05):
I found the technology, notnecessarily the company Peak
Norro, but I got to experiencethe technology that was
developed by one of myco-founders, uh Bob Holbrook,
who spent 31 years developingneuroacoustic entrainment
technology with a little bitdifferent focus, more on things
like altered states andmeditation.
But in six days, it changed mylife, and it changed my life so
(12:26):
completely we formed Peak Norroas an organization to take this
out uh commercially.
Uh, Intelligent Waves, thecompany that I run, is a
national defenseindustrial-based company, and we
do this work with uh the UnitedStates Air Force.
We do it with some classifiedcustomers.
We're very focused on thingslike post-combat down
(12:47):
regulation, PTSD treatment, uh,anxiety and stress, and
cognitive resilience, along withsleep.
Sleep is an amazing challengeacross the board.
If you're a, you know, if you'rea cop, you're undoubtedly
working shift work.
If you're a fireman, you know,you got a lot of days off, you
got a lot of days on, but yourcircadian rhythm gets killed and
your sleep suffers.
And when sleep suffers, uh, thatcreates all kinds of physical
(13:11):
problems.
Uh slow wave sleep, the deepestsleep that we get, is what's
most physically restorative forus.
And that's typically what getsimpacted the most when you have
sleep issues.
Uh REM sleep, where you dream,that's you know, that's your
emotional regulation and howyour memories get implanted.
So if you got brain fog andyou're angry all the time,
you're probably not getting agood amount of REM sleep.
(13:33):
And so I went from using thetechnology uh getting around 18
to 22 percent of my sleep isrestorative to into the 53-54%
range.
That it really changed the waythat I interacted with the
world, it changed the way I sawthe world and really made me
feel like I wasn't brokenanymore.
And so the goal here was to makethis available as widely as
(13:54):
possible to as many people aspossible, as quickly as
possible.
And part of the, you know, partof my experience as a Marine and
as a Marine veteran is I have umuh I have some uh philanthropic
things that I do.
I'm on the board of uh anorganization called Warriors
Ethos.
Uh, it's a nonprofit focused onmoving veterans through
(14:16):
transition.
We'll pick you up 18 monthsbefore your end of service, all
the way through 18 months afteryou get out of the service to
help you make that transition.
It's a very difficult period formost veterans.
Um I'm also on the advisoryboard of the Sumperfying
Americas Fund, which is startedby five ICU nurses and Camp
Pendleton during the Iraq War.
They put$500 together, and ifI'm not mistaken, we're up to
(14:38):
about$200 million that they'vegiven directly to veterans.
So looking at those kinds oforganizations and working with
those kinds of organizations,I've been able to establish
relationships with, for example,uh Carlton Kent, the uh retired
sergeant major of the MarineCorps.
And not unusual for him to callme or me to call him several
times a year to say, hey, I havean employee, uh, they're an Air
(15:00):
Force veteran standing on arunway at uh Elmendorf Air Force
Base, they got triggered and nowthey're in crisis and they need
a program.
And the problem with that isthere are not a lot of programs.
Um it's very hard to findsomething, so it's sort of a
network to put uh you know, tofind a place to put veterans
into something.
And it's typically a dedicatedfacility away from home for
(15:20):
several weeks at a time.
And there was a study done by uhan Air Force colonel several
years ago that looked at the uhsuccess rate for PTSD treatment.
And the farther away you arefrom home, the lower your
chances of success.
So we were looking for a way tobring this type of relief closer
to the veteran's home, in fact,in their home.
(15:41):
So there's less of a stigma,you're not traveling somewhere,
you can do it when it'sconvenient for you.
Um and so that you know for me,why did I want to be on the
podcast to make people aware ofit?
I think it's an important uhalternative treatment to
psychotherapy.
And if you just give me a minuteto talk about what's different
between that and psychotherapy,and I know I'm talking to a
(16:02):
therapist, so this ought to befun.
For for most people.
Oh, I it's I don't think you'lltake it personally.
I'm just curious what your uhwhat your uh perspective would
be.
Uh my my daughter is uh is atherapist, and we we work with
uh we work with some cognitivebehavioral psychologists at
(16:23):
major universities likeColumbia.
When you experience trauma,forget about PTSD for a minute,
let's just call it trauma.
I mean put PTSD is a disorderbased on your trauma.
Trauma, stress, anxiety, all ofthose things have an impact on
your neurological system, onyour on the the brain and how
the brain functions.
Um when you go to talk tosomeone, when you want to get
(16:46):
treated or work through yourtrauma, you typically will go to
a psychotherapist, and apsychotherapist, 99% of the
time, works in uh narrativebuilding.
It's it's talk therapy.
And how that works for mostpeople is you've got this
autobiography, I was born, I hadall these things happen to me,
and today here I am.
And within that autobiography,I've got to figure out how this
(17:08):
thing that happened, whatever itwas, uh a fist fight, a gun
fight, I got blown up somewhere,my you know, my wife left me for
Jody down the street.
Uh, all of those things have tobe they have to be assigned a
meaning, right?
So talk therapy is about meaningmaking.
The problem for many veterans, Iwould say most veterans, is that
(17:31):
nobody wants to relive that,especially with someone who
hasn't chewed the same kind ofdirt that you've chewed.
If you haven't worn thatuniform, you haven't been in
that situation, it's very hardfor someone to want to open up.
Um so that makes it even harder.
And then you have people whohave uh they might be on the
spectrum, they'reneurodivergent, they're not
necessarily capable of talkingabout something, either
(17:54):
physically or emotionallyincapable of it.
So how how peak neuro works, anduh just very quickly for your
clarification, are you talkingabout people who are uh on the
spectrum?
SPEAKER_02 (18:05):
Are you talking about the therapist or the
client?
SPEAKER_01 (18:08):
Well, sometimes it's both.
SPEAKER_02 (18:09):
Right, correct.
That's all I wanted to say.
Go on, I apologize.
SPEAKER_01 (18:12):
Uh so you know, at the end of the day, it's really
about narrative building.
Psychotherapy is about narrativebuilding, creating a narrative
where you can inculcate theexperience into your your
autobiography.
And like I said, that's verydifficult, can take weeks,
years, months, and it's also attimes hard to find someone that
you can do that with.
So uh Pete Nora is not areplacement for that.
(18:33):
I think it's an adjunct.
So we just talked about hownarrative making and meaning
making are part of thepsychotherapeutic process.
But what we doneuroacoustically, that is, you
put on a set of headphones allby yourself, sit in a quiet room
30 minutes.
What we do is we entrain yourbrainwaves to suppress the uh
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,the executive network in the
(18:55):
front of your brain, wherenarrative and meaning making
happen.
And by the way, so does anxietyhappen there in high beta, high
gamma wave uh neurophysiologicalexpression.
SPEAKER_02 (19:06):
And so what we do on a loop, but anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (19:09):
Exactly, the rumination loop.
And you know how I love todescribe that?
Anybody who's ever walked out ofa room and said, Why did I say
that?
And they can't get it out oftheir mind.
Or why did that person say tome?
What did he mean?
What was that all about?
Was it a good thing?
Was it a bad thing?
That's a rumination loop.
And that is your brain stuck inthe prefrontal cortex, running
this script over and over againthat you cannot get out of.
(19:32):
Um, so neuroacoustically, whatwe do is we suppress your
brain's ability to even createnarrative, to create meaning, to
create anything that looks likean A, B, C, D, E, F, G kind of a
narrative-building structure.
We suppress that in the front ofyour brain and we open up the
what's called the antigular, I'msorry, uh anterior cingulate
(19:53):
cortex and your parietal andoccipital cortexes.
And your occipital cortex, bythe way, which is kind of
interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (19:59):
By the way, for those who are not on YouTube, uh
it's behind your head.
SPEAKER_01 (20:02):
That's the way your eyes are in the front of your
head, your occipital cortex isin the back, and you've got to
run that connection.
SPEAKER_02 (20:08):
Correct.
SPEAKER_01 (20:08):
Um, so when we shut down your ability to create
narrative, we open up yourability to create what's called
symbolic admission.
And if you've ever, as you'refalling asleep, uh had a flash
of a person, a memory, a movie,uh, something that sort of comes
into your consciousness that'salready fully formed and not a
(20:29):
narrative.
That's what that feels like.
So when you when you processtrauma through talk therapy,
you're doing it semantically.
You're talking about it.
When you process trauma thisway, you're doing it somatically
with your body.
You're virtually digesting it.
So what happens there is overthe course of literally a couple
of months, you can see majortrait level changes in your
(20:52):
neurophysiology that suppressthis anxiety response and open
up what we call the equanimityresponse.
Uh, I'll give you a greatexample.
If you're if you're uh AmazonPrime subscriber, in the, I
think in the spring of nextyear, there will be a show
coming out called Leapfrog.
Leapfrog is based on a bookwritten by Mark Green.
Mark Green is a 24-year U.S.
(21:13):
Navy SEAL, uh, eight years inthe Teams.
I'm sorry, 13 years in theTeams, eight as enlisted, five
as an officer, 21 TBIs and aPTSD diagnosis.
Uh, in two months of using thetechnology at home, um, with
every two weeks getting an EEGto see how his progress is
coming, he has about 80%resolved his TBIs and uh went
(21:38):
from sleeping three hoursfragmented every night to six
hours in a row.
And the only reason he doesn'tsleep more than six hours is
he's got this old dog uh thatkeeps waking up and has to pee.
It's a great dog, by the way.
I've met her.
She's awesome.
Uh but the difference has beenstark, and the reason why I'm
telling you his name is becausehe's given us permission to do
that.
Mark is Mark has had such agreat experience with this, and
(21:59):
he's one of several uh veteransthat we're working with
currently that we have workedwith, where we see these uh
31-day, 42-day trait levelchanges to people's
neurophysiology where they justfeel better.
And that's really what it's it'snot so much even about what
happens to your brain, it's whathappens to your subjective
(22:20):
experience.
Do you do you feel better?
Are you calmer?
And I remember, you know, I wentthrough a six-day program um
that was sort of a prototype forwhat we're doing now, and this
was just after the pandemic, andpeople who hadn't seen me for a
couple of years, just 100% ofthem would comment and say, You
seem so different.
You know, you're not as uhyou're not as activated, you
seem so calm.
(22:41):
Um the very, very, uh, verystark uh difference between when
you start and when you end.
And it's self-paced, you can doit at home.
By the way, you can you can trythis for free, experience it
yourself.
Go to www.peakneuro,onework.com.
You'll see a download link forthe app store and for uh Google
(23:01):
Play.
There's uh uh an app therethat's gonna have four files on
it.
One's a power nap, one issomething called Let Go, which
was built for the military,which is also, by the way, used
by professional athletes anddivision one athletes today.
Uh Let Go is a prettyinteresting one.
It um if you're it's made, itwas made for two things.
One, post-combat downregulation.
(23:24):
You have to just let things go.
And for athletes from unnamedcollege football teams who get
their butts kicked on a Saturdayand can't stop thinking about
it.
And so LEGO is a rumination loopbreaker.
Those are the two I wouldrecommend people to try.
If you're having troublesleeping, try the sleep one.
It's we we have one uh that's onthe on the app that you can
purchase that's a 10-hour uh uhsleep uh sleep induction
(23:48):
technology.
And I'll I'll tell you aboutthat.
We ran a six-month randomcontrolled trial at a research
institute here in Virginia witha professor from Virginia Tech
who was writing the uh theprotocol for it.
Uh 161 participants in sixmonths.
People's slow wave sleepincreased by 16 percent, their
emo their REM sleep increased by22 percent.
(24:09):
For veterans and firstresponders, their threat
recognition time increased by9%.
And when you're in the military,1% is the difference between
living and dying.
It's not a question of uh of uhum performance uh for those
folks, it's a question ofsurvivability.
Yes.
Um the one of the unintendedconsequences that we noticed,
which we're now working withsome uh some universities and
(24:31):
research on, is that over thecourse of six months we saw
people's neuroplasticityincrease.
And if you're not familiar withthat term, neuroplasticity is
simply your brain's ability toadapt, to create new neural
connections, to learn.
So uh if you think about whatthat really means, the ability
to adapt is what your brain isall about.
(24:52):
Each of us, it's kind of funny.
I I can group uh I you know Ican group Steve and I into the
into a cohort, we're probablyaround the same age, uh similar
background, similar education,that's one cohort.
But our neurophysiologicalsystems are as different as our
looks.
Your brain is the sum total ofthe adaptation of your
(25:13):
neurological system to the lifethat you've lived, which means
the entire thing is plastic.
So if you don't like where youare, you can change it.
And Mark Green and May, perfectexamples.
And there are more, but uh, Ithink Mark is a great one.
He's uh written a book calledUnsealed, it's available on
Amazon.
Uh talks about his transitionand the difficulties that he
(25:35):
underwent.
Uh and that show on Amazon.
Uh, show on Amazon will beinteresting.
Both Warriors Ethos and theSumper Five Fund get checks
every time that show runs.
I'm really proud of that.
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Uh yeah, I'm gonna put that in the show notes.
You you know, like I gotta stopyou here because I let you talk,
and then I already wrote, andfor those on YouTube, you'll see
that I wrote all these notesalready that I want to follow up
on.
SPEAKER_01 (25:56):
Sure.
Well, I'll then I'll shut up andlet you ask questions.
SPEAKER_02 (25:59):
Oh, don't ever shut up.
First of all, I didn't know youwork with uh the UMass Minutemen
because you said teams that gettheir asses kicked uh regularly.
Um yeah, shut up in UMass.
Uh but I there's a few things.
Let me uh share something from atherapist standpoint first and
foremost.
Yeah.
When you talked about, you know,this is different than
(26:21):
psychotherapy, you you'll hearthis, and again, we're about the
same age, and I feel like I'velearned that in reality in life,
you gotta adapt all the time inorder to survive.
You can't, you know.
Charles Darwin never saidsurvival of fittest, he said
survival of those who adapt thefastest.
SPEAKER_01 (26:39):
Most adaptable, yep, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (26:41):
So I tell people that I did online therapy before
it was cool.
I started in 2015.
Now suddenly the pandemic hits,everyone told me I was a fraud
and cheating clients and blah,blah, blah.
And then in two 2020, I wasgetting 10 to 20 phone calls a
day.
Hey, Steve, can you help me setthis up?
So for me, I always think aboutadaptation.
If you're gonna crap on any typeof treatment, I think that
(27:06):
you're disturbing people aroundyou.
So when you said to me, youknow, I want to hear it from a
psychotherapist's standpoint,I'm gonna tell you as a
50-year-old therapist doing thisfor over 26 years at this point,
if it works, I'm all for it.
It's not psychotherapy, it's notfor everyone.
And that's okay.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And for some people, like youmentioned something, and this is
(27:27):
what I really want to address.
And this goes to my all my firstresponder and all my military
personnel.
When you don't have someonewho's culturally competent in
order to treat you, it alwaysbackfires.
Not, I shouldn't say always,most of the time, it's going to
backfire.
I'm very culturally competentbecause of the knowledge I have
with working with firstresponders, but I've never been
a first responder.
(27:48):
I work with the militarypersonnel since 2003.
I am not a military person, Ihave never served, but I
certainly respect their work andI do that.
And I think that that's how Ipicked up my knowledge.
But I'm also not for everyone.
I'm not for, you know, and Ijoked around before the
interview, and I'm going to beserious for a second.
I've worked with a lot ofMarines.
(28:08):
That doesn't mean I work withonly Marines, and that doesn't
mean all Marines like me.
There's nothing wrong with that,by the way.
I think that one of the thingsthat I want to hear about you're
more about, and we're going tokeep on talking about this, that
peak neuros seems to take thatvery seriously, is that we adapt
to the person, and this is a wayfor them to not to have a
creative narrative, or like youtalked about, I call it a
(28:29):
subjective narrative that wecreated.
And sometimes it's up to theclient to say the right thing,
and sometimes it's right, it'sup to the therapist to ask the
right question.
And for me, this is just youknow, at best, a lucky guess.
Um, and that's not because of mycompetency.
It's sometimes when do you askthe right question at what time?
(28:49):
So that takes that away by doinga little bit of that work.
And for me, I almost see it ascomplimentary because maybe
perhaps doing you know, peakneuro and doing that the the
sound waves and everything else,you are able maybe to
communicate more effectively intherapy and you're maybe able to
ask more what you need.
But to me, there's no such thingas psychotherapy or death.
(29:10):
It's whatever works for people.
I'm not a fan.
The only thing I will say thatI'm not a fan of is just
medication that I am not a fanof.
SPEAKER_01 (29:18):
Uh ask anybody who's ask anybody who's been to the
VA.
SPEAKER_02 (29:21):
Right.
And that's what I mean.
My my VA guys, I mean, Iremember a guy coming in who was
uh we'll we'll I don't I I'llsave that he was a marine, I
won't tell anyone, but he was onlike seven different meds, and
he was literally a zombie.
And he's like, Steve, what doyou think the problem is?
I said, at best you should be onthree meds because at one point
(29:43):
you don't even know what's doingwhat, and is it a side effect
versus actually helping?
So that's the only one I willsay that I do not want
singularly medication, and Ireally like to talk about the
frontal cortex and talking aboutthe occipital uh cortex because
that's very Important whenpeople talk about PTSD and
trauma.
And so I can go to so manyplaces here.
(30:06):
But what I like to do is justfinish off maybe on talking
about one thing, because I Ithought that was interesting
when you mentioned aboutcognitive resilience.
This for me is the first timeI've heard that term.
So I again I don't pretend Iknow stuff I don't know.
But can you tell me more aboutcognitive resilience?
Because I have a sneakingsuspicion as to what that means.
But I rather ask someone whoknows than sounding stupid.
SPEAKER_01 (30:28):
Sure.
So I'll give you uh I'll giveyou two um a two-part definition
and a couple of examples.
So cognitive resilience is yourbrain's ability to adapt to
change and fast change, right?
So I didn't expect to see uh thehouse fall down.
I didn't expect to see lightninghit the person next to me.
That's a that's a significantchange that interrupts what's
(30:50):
happening neurophysiologicallyin your brain, and along with uh
chemically as well.
Um the the second is whether ornot you're as we talk about
cognitive resilience, can youlearn at a speed that is
necessary to adapt to yourenvironment?
And that so that's adaptation atscale.
(31:11):
So in in a situation where, forexample, you're uh you're uh uh
a soldier, marine, a sailor,you're deployed somewhere and an
event happens, an IED goes off,uh one of your friends gets
injured or killed.
If you if you've been working onthis and you have cognitive
resilience, you don't get PTSD.
You don't get trauma.
It doesn't traumatize youbecause your brain is capable of
(31:34):
absorbing that impact.
Uh so cognitive resilience isreally around being able to
pre-plan and absorb stress asstress occurs because your
neuroplasticity is very high.
We do this, I'll give you agreat example of sort of how
this works.
So I just I just gave yourlisteners a link to an app
that's got four exercises.
(31:55):
They're real exercises, they'reproduction grade, they're just
something that you can see ifyou like it, then you can buy
the full app.
But that's at the very low endof what we do.
So typically, when we work with,for example, fighter pilots, we
will take a baselinephysiological and neurological
uh uh profile of that fighterpilot.
Neurologically, it's an EEG, andthey'll go out and they'll fly
(32:17):
five training missions and we'llcorrelate the best training
mission to the best baseline,and then we'll reverse engineer
their their brain signals,literally their EEG, into an
entrainment program so thatevery time they climb into that
aircraft, they're at theircognitive best.
And this is built on an AI backend that allows us to look at
(32:39):
your personal neurophysiologyand adapt all of the entrainment
and signals to you as anindividual.
So think of it as tuning anengine or tuning an instrument
over time because your brainchanges all the time too.
Your brain is not static.
So as you get to one point wherelet's say you're resolving, uh,
I I I think when we got cut off,I was talking about how TBI and
(33:01):
PTSD look alike on a on an EEG.
There's a lot of uh asynchronousalpha, beta, way too high on one
side, way too low on the other,and that creates on one on one
end anxiety, and on the otherend, depression, you know,
basically manic depressive.
Uh things like hemisphericsynchrony come into play.
Are both sides of my brainworking together?
(33:22):
Are they working independently?
SPEAKER_02 (33:24):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
Uh, and frontal temporal coherence.
So, what do I mean by that?
If you if you if you've been ina traumatic event, if you had a
concussion, if you had atraumatic brain injury,
oftentimes we hear people talkabout how they have brain fog.
I can't remember names.
I remember a face, I can'tremember name.
You remember the face becauseoccipital cortex, right?
That's where memory getsimplanted.
(33:45):
When your coherence breaks,which is up here in the anterior
anterior cingulate gyrus, whichmodulates uh emotion.
SPEAKER_02 (33:52):
Middle of the when you have give or take, just for
those who are not video.
SPEAKER_01 (33:57):
When you have um uh when you have brain fog, what's
happening is your front to backcoherence in your brain is
essentially disconnected.
And so you can't you can't runuh you can't save memory to the
place where you should.
And so building coherence, uh,that is front to back, left to
(34:17):
right, hemispheric synchrony,creates whole brain synchrony.
And whole brain synchrony allowsyou to be metabolically a lot
more efficient.
What do I mean by that?
Well, and on average, it takesabout 12 watts of energy to form
a thought.
If you're solving a mathproblem, I can I can measure
that with uh with variousdevices, not necessarily on any
EG.
And that energy takes glucoseand oxygen, and that's delivered
(34:38):
by blood and it's delivered uhthrough your venous uh uh
structures in in your brain.
When that happens and you havethat thought, if you can you
think about um uh something uhthat produces anxiety or trauma,
that we just talk about anxiety,something that aggravates you
and you can't get it out of yourmind.
(34:59):
Imagine what that's like.
That rumination loop has highmetabolic cost.
You're spending glucose andoxygen, resources, and energy
that you would otherwise nothave to use, and that creates
headaches, migraines, uh, itmakes you tired, sleepy.
But when you can train yourbrain to return to uh what I
would call a state of equanimitywhere it's 12 watts up and goes
(35:23):
right back down, you become muchmore metabolically efficient,
you sleep better, you thinkbetter, you react less because
you're not already in aheightened state of awareness,
not a lot of hyperviligence, uh,hypervigilance.
As we as we suppress, and notalways, but for certain people,
we suppress that prefrontalcortex.
We really prevent you fromgetting to the point where you
(35:45):
get into these anxiety andrumination loops.
And once you get to the pointwhere you can do that, this
becomes over time, over about amonth's time, it becomes part of
your neurophysiological traits.
So you don't you don't have touse the technology anymore.
It's funny, I mentioned earlier,I think uh I get I started
getting 18 to 22 percent of mysleep was restorative.
And in my age category, that'sabout average.
(36:07):
And last night I had a badnight, it was 47%, which means I
sleep half as long with twice asmuch restorative sleep.
And if you know, if you want toknow uh for listeners who are
curious about what that reallymeans is things like Alzheimer's
and dementia, they're you know,that's a lot about the plaques
that accumulate in the in thefolds in your brain.
(36:30):
And when you engage in slow wavesleep, that dreamless deep, deep
sleep, what happens is that theglial cells in your brain, they
actually shrink.
And what happens when theyshrink?
They pull cerebral spinal fluidup over the top of your brain.
It soaks in there, and thelonger you you sleep in slow
wave sleep, the more theyshrink, the more that that
cerebral spinal fluid soaks in.
(36:51):
That when you wake up, the cellsexpand and they push amylase
plaques, broken proteins, downyour spinal column, into your
liver and kidneys, and yourlymph system will clean what was
going on.
If you don't do that, if youdon't get good sleep, we find
that that becomes in the longterm things like dementia and
Alzheimer's.
So the ability to get good sleepreally is the base of the
(37:14):
mountain that everybody wants toclimb from a cognitive and and
neurophysiological standpoint.
SPEAKER_02 (37:19):
Well, Tony, I'm just gonna end this first part of the
episode because this isfascinating because I want to
continue talking about per a lotof different things.
I like the neuroplasticityconversation, and I know that
lithium also starts playing arole with memory and everything
else, and I have a lot of peopleworking on that that I know of,
but I'm gonna tell everyonecoming back uh Friday for the
(37:40):
second part, and for those ofyou who are not listening on our
order, just the next episode.
SPEAKER_00 (37:47):
Please like, subscribe, and follow this
podcast on your favoriteplatform.
A glowing review is alwayshelpful.
And as a reminder, this podcastis for informational,
educational, and entertainmentpurposes only.
If you're struggling with amental health or substance abuse
issue, please reach out to aprofessional counselor for
consultation.
If you are in a mental healthcrisis, call 988 for assistance.
(38:10):
This number is available in theUnited States and Canada.
Welcome to Resilience Development and
Action with Steve Beast Home.
This is the podcast dedicated tofirst responder mental health,
helping police, higher, EMS,dispatchers, and paramedics
create better growthenvironments for themselves and
their teams.
Let's get started.ai.
SPEAKER_02 (00:37):
You heard me talk about it.
I'm gonna keep on talking aboutit because I love it.
I've had about a year and ahalf, 18 months practice with
it, and I still enjoy it.
And it saves me time and itsaves me energy.
Free.ai takes your note, makes atrans what you're talking about
a client, just press record, andit does either transcript, it
does a subjective, and anobjective with a letter if
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So for$99 a month, it saves meso much time that it's
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And if you do it for a wholeyear, guess what?
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If you do listen to this and youwant to use free.ai, uh put in
(01:24):
the code Steve in the promo codearea.
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Go to getfree.ai and you willget one of the best services
(01:47):
that will save you time andmoney.
And I highly encourage you to doso.
Well, hi everyone, and welcometo episode 230.
If you haven't listened toepisode 229, it was with
Stephanie Simpson.
We talked about coaching, wetalked about grief and changes
and how law enforcement have toalways kind of adapt to that and
(02:08):
the techniques that she offers.
But today is someone um I knowthat Veterans Day isn't a few
days.
And I really honor my veterans.
And one of the things I learnedfrom my first year of doing this
podcast is I had a veteran onfor Veterans Day, and he says,
Don't say thank you to me onVeterans Day, say it on any
other day, but so I'm not gonnasay thank you for your service
(02:29):
to this individual for thatpurpose.
But Tony Crescenzo, uh, he's theowner of Peak Neuro, and we're
gonna hear about that.
And I can't wait you guys tohear about this because it's
very important.
But uh, Tony's someone that uhwas presented to me through you
know, people know me, so theypresent me like, oh, this is the
perfect guy for my my audience.
And then they they told me hewas a Marine.
(02:50):
I'm like, oh, I'm not sureanymore.
But anyway, I decided to goagainst my best judgment and
have a Marine on.
And for those of you who areMarines and know me, you're
gonna laugh.
And those who don't know me,chill.
It's a joke.
But Tony Crescenzo, welcome toResilience Development in
Action.
SPEAKER_01 (03:06):
Thanks.
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02 (03:09):
I and again, I literally will not say that
today to you because I know thatVeterans Day is coming up.
I will say thank you on anyother day, but that's the reason
why I don't say thank you onVeterans Day for most of my
guys.
But I kind of told a little bitabout you, but I think my
audience would like to hear moreabout you know who you are,
where you come from, and whereyou're doing right now.
So can you tell me a little moreabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (03:30):
Oh, sure.
I'll give you a quick history.
So I grew up in uh in SouthPhiladelphia during the 70s.
So if you've seen the movieRocky, the neighborhood where
Rocky runs is the neighborhood Igrew up when Rocky was made.
Wow.
So think uh think Rocky and uhRocky meets the Sopranos was my
childhood.
When my parents divorced when Iwas relatively young, uh my
(03:52):
mother remarried a navalofficer, and I spent uh most of
my my youth traveling.
Uh, went to five high schools,lived all over the world.
When I um when I graduated fromhigh school, I went to college
in New Jersey, made a wrong turnon the way to a Charles Carrot
lecture, and found myself in theUnited States Marine Corps,
(04:13):
where I spent uh eight years intotal, some of which were really
fun, some of which weren't somuch fun.
Once I got out of the MarineCorps, I was uh recruited
actually to work for atechnology company on Wall
Street, spent three years therein the late 80s and uh with a
company that turned out to bethe largest mergers and
acquisitions transaction of uh1989, worked for three really
(04:36):
crazy, brilliant, outstandingpeople.
Uh, and that really launched acareer in technology for me.
I uh left that company, camedown to Washington, D.C.
Uh for a short time.
I worked for a small managementconsulting firm around
technology, uh, competing forcustomers with the world's
fourth largest software companyat the time.
And I uh irritated them so muchthat they wound up hiring me.
(05:00):
I wound up there as the uh uhtechnical director of their
federal division.
So I've been in and out ofgovernment service for most of
my adult life.
From there, uh the Germancompany asked me to spend some
time in some other places.
So I've been to, I've worked inuh Hong Kong, Italy, France,
Germany, and the UK, as well asthe United States
internationally, federally, andnow in the last 20-something
(05:22):
years, I've been in the nationaldefense industrial-based market.
After I sold my second company,I became what most people think
of as a CEO in residence, whereprivate equity firms or venture
capital firms sort of have youthere evaluating companies, uh,
eventually dropping into them.
So I've I've been uh a venturecapital CEO, I've been a private
equity CEO, and I've uh now I'mwhat I I think most people would
(05:45):
call just a really expensivejanitor.
I'm the guy that you hire whenthings aren't going so well and
you need the mess cleaned up.
Now, having said that, thecompany I work for now is not a
mess at all.
Intelligent Waves is a veryinteresting national defense
industrial-based company, isstarted by a gentleman by the
name of Jared Shepherd, anamazing individual.
Uh I think I think he has a GED.
(06:06):
I don't think he ever went tocollege.
Got out of the army, uh,invented some amazing technology
that defeated IEDs.
So the entire company wasfounded on uh on the joint IED
defense program in Iraq duringthe war.
And we've grown since then.
We are about 65% of our companyare veterans.
Half of those, I'm sorry, 80% ofthose are combat veterans, half
(06:27):
of those are special operators,Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Marine
Raiders, uh, MarineReconnaissance.
We are essentially people whowore green suits for most of our
careers and then put on bluesuits.
So we're very focused onmission, uh, mission-only work.
Most of our work is done in aclassified environment.
About 90% of our employees holdextremely high clearances.
(06:49):
They work in copper rooms thatare sealed, 26 states and seven
foreign countries.
If you go to Monster.com and youlook up uh best companies for
veterans, I think Boeing orLockheed is number one, we're
number two.
Uh it is a verymilitary-friendly,
veteran-focused, veteran-owned,veteran-run organization that
(07:11):
specializes in mission work.
We do things around the F-35program, we support operations
overseas on in both hemispheres.
Um, we have a quantum resistanttechnologies for secure
communication.
We're the defenders of the U.S.
judiciary system.
We have the cyber contract todefend all of the U.S.
courts and the U.S.
(07:32):
Marshall Service.
So very, very high-tech, uh uhmission focused and critical
infrastructure kind of anorganization.
SPEAKER_02 (07:40):
Yeah, and you were talking about all the specialty
and the Green Berets and uheveryone else.
That gives you a lot ofclearance, but it also gives you
a lot of high-functioning, highachieving type of people, which
might be an interestingenvironmental organ, I'm pretty
sure.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
It gets a little intense.
It's uh the only company whereyou know water cooler
conversation is not like anyplace else you've ever been.
Uh people have conversationsabout uh, let me put it this way
when you're establishing yourbona fetis in our company, if
and by the way, if you're aveteran, you may have you might
understand this, uh, and someonemight ask you which hand you
(08:17):
carried your hatchet in.
And that's uh not a conversationyou're gonna have at a at a
Google or a or a uh or a uhMicrosoft, right?
So it's a very interesting uhcrew of people, but I would have
to say uh with the exception ofthe Marines, almost all of our
employees have a four-digit IQ.
SPEAKER_02 (08:35):
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like they'realso specialized, very, very
specialized, and that IQ is evenhigher because of their
specialty.
SPEAKER_01 (08:43):
They are, yeah.
They're uh our chief strategyofficer is a former Delta Force
operator who uh ran the JointSpecial Operations Center
Innovation Lab for years beforehe got out of the army.
Now he does that for us.
So we our our our job really,our our role in the National
Defense Industrial Base is whatwe call flash to bang.
If you look up here atIntelligent Waves, right?
(09:04):
Anytime, anywhere, any domain,that's that's our tagline.
But what we tell people is we dohard shit in bad places, which
is essentially what we do.
We fix problems that otherscan't solve.
SPEAKER_02 (09:15):
Yeah.
Well, I I'm just impressed by awhole lot of different things.
And then makes me think aboutthis little podcast.
And you're like, hey, I want tobe on this podcast.
What made you decide to come inon this podcast?
I mean, uh I I just feel like uhvery impressed by what you're
accomplishing and what you guysare doing.
So I'm wondering why you wantedto come on to this podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (09:35):
Well, you know, I've um uh I I served in some
interesting places in the in theMarine Corps, um uh not the
least of which was Beirut andLebanon, and then in uh in an
undercover capacity working forwhat you know as NCIS.
Uh back then was known as NIS.
I spent three years undercoverin a fraud and drug
(09:57):
investigation that um was muchmore dangerous than anything I
had done in Beirut.
I was a I was uh temporarilyassigned to Beirut.
I wasn't part of the permanentpersonnel, so I was back and
forth every couple of weeks fora week or two.
Uh not the same as workingundercover when you walk in a
room for three years and don'tknow if you're gonna walk out of
it alive.
(10:18):
And I had some some interestingfallout from my experience
there.
The Marine Corps is very small,everybody knows everybody.
And at one point I was uh uhsequestered in a hotel room with
uh a sergeant who is a friend ofmine, and I think we we went
when we went to the men's room,we stood back to back just to
make sure that nothing happened.
So, you know, you don't realize,and by the way, this was all
(10:41):
before the age of 25.
So that kind of you know, thatkind of responsibility you don't
really see very much, except infirst responders and in military
folks.
And you don't realize what itdoes to you.
I I went 30 years without reallyunderstanding just how much it
had impacted me.
Um, my first wife, my secondwife, my daughter, most of my
(11:02):
friends could tell you how itimpacted me.
I'm sure everyone listening tothis podcast knows a first
responder or a veteran who youdon't want to get in a car with.
Right.
Um, thinks bar fights are funand sport.
Uh maybe their wife told themonce that they'd been in more
fights than all the men she'dever dated in her life combined.
That was me.
Uh, you know, and in my in mywork in technology and in
(11:24):
leadership in companies, uh, youcan keep that in check, right?
You're the boss and you don'tshow people as much as you might
show uh in other places, but itwas something that I didn't even
realize how bad it was until Igot into my 40s and 50s.
Um I went to the VA, I had someuh I actually met a VA counselor
I thought was going to be greatfor me as a Vietnam veteran,
(11:45):
three tours in Vietnam, saw awhole much more, you know, a lot
more uh bad things than I hadever seen.
And three uh three sessions inhe told me he couldn't treat me,
I was triggering him.
So I just sort of went quiet anddealt with it by talking to
friends and keeping it allinside.
And then I found uh I found PeakNeuro.
(12:05):
I found the technology, notnecessarily the company Peak
Norro, but I got to experiencethe technology that was
developed by one of myco-founders, uh Bob Holbrook,
who spent 31 years developingneuroacoustic entrainment
technology with a little bitdifferent focus, more on things
like altered states andmeditation.
But in six days, it changed mylife, and it changed my life so
(12:26):
completely we formed Peak Norroas an organization to take this
out uh commercially.
Uh, Intelligent Waves, thecompany that I run, is a
national defenseindustrial-based company, and we
do this work with uh the UnitedStates Air Force.
We do it with some classifiedcustomers.
We're very focused on thingslike post-combat down
(12:47):
regulation, PTSD treatment, uh,anxiety and stress, and
cognitive resilience, along withsleep.
Sleep is an amazing challengeacross the board.
If you're a, you know, if you'rea cop, you're undoubtedly
working shift work.
If you're a fireman, you know,you got a lot of days off, you
got a lot of days on, but yourcircadian rhythm gets killed and
your sleep suffers.
And when sleep suffers, uh, thatcreates all kinds of physical
(13:11):
problems.
Uh slow wave sleep, the deepestsleep that we get, is what's
most physically restorative forus.
And that's typically what getsimpacted the most when you have
sleep issues.
Uh REM sleep, where you dream,that's you know, that's your
emotional regulation and howyour memories get implanted.
So if you got brain fog andyou're angry all the time,
you're probably not getting agood amount of REM sleep.
(13:33):
And so I went from using thetechnology uh getting around 18
to 22 percent of my sleep isrestorative to into the 53-54%
range.
That it really changed the waythat I interacted with the
world, it changed the way I sawthe world and really made me
feel like I wasn't brokenanymore.
And so the goal here was to makethis available as widely as
(13:54):
possible to as many people aspossible, as quickly as
possible.
And part of the, you know, partof my experience as a Marine and
as a Marine veteran is I have umuh I have some uh philanthropic
things that I do.
I'm on the board of uh anorganization called Warriors
Ethos.
Uh, it's a nonprofit focused onmoving veterans through
(14:16):
transition.
We'll pick you up 18 monthsbefore your end of service, all
the way through 18 months afteryou get out of the service to
help you make that transition.
It's a very difficult period formost veterans.
Um I'm also on the advisoryboard of the Sumperfying
Americas Fund, which is startedby five ICU nurses and Camp
Pendleton during the Iraq War.
They put$500 together, and ifI'm not mistaken, we're up to
(14:38):
about$200 million that they'vegiven directly to veterans.
So looking at those kinds oforganizations and working with
those kinds of organizations,I've been able to establish
relationships with, for example,uh Carlton Kent, the uh retired
sergeant major of the MarineCorps.
And not unusual for him to callme or me to call him several
times a year to say, hey, I havean employee, uh, they're an Air
(15:00):
Force veteran standing on arunway at uh Elmendorf Air Force
Base, they got triggered and nowthey're in crisis and they need
a program.
And the problem with that isthere are not a lot of programs.
Um it's very hard to findsomething, so it's sort of a
network to put uh you know, tofind a place to put veterans
into something.
And it's typically a dedicatedfacility away from home for
(15:20):
several weeks at a time.
And there was a study done by uhan Air Force colonel several
years ago that looked at the uhsuccess rate for PTSD treatment.
And the farther away you arefrom home, the lower your
chances of success.
So we were looking for a way tobring this type of relief closer
to the veteran's home, in fact,in their home.
(15:41):
So there's less of a stigma,you're not traveling somewhere,
you can do it when it'sconvenient for you.
Um and so that you know for me,why did I want to be on the
podcast to make people aware ofit?
I think it's an important uhalternative treatment to
psychotherapy.
And if you just give me a minuteto talk about what's different
between that and psychotherapy,and I know I'm talking to a
(16:02):
therapist, so this ought to befun.
For for most people.
Oh, I it's I don't think you'lltake it personally.
I'm just curious what your uhwhat your uh perspective would
be.
Uh my my daughter is uh is atherapist, and we we work with
uh we work with some cognitivebehavioral psychologists at
(16:23):
major universities likeColumbia.
When you experience trauma,forget about PTSD for a minute,
let's just call it trauma.
I mean put PTSD is a disorderbased on your trauma.
Trauma, stress, anxiety, all ofthose things have an impact on
your neurological system, onyour on the the brain and how
the brain functions.
Um when you go to talk tosomeone, when you want to get
(16:46):
treated or work through yourtrauma, you typically will go to
a psychotherapist, and apsychotherapist, 99% of the
time, works in uh narrativebuilding.
It's it's talk therapy.
And how that works for mostpeople is you've got this
autobiography, I was born, I hadall these things happen to me,
and today here I am.
And within that autobiography,I've got to figure out how this
(17:08):
thing that happened, whatever itwas, uh a fist fight, a gun
fight, I got blown up somewhere,my you know, my wife left me for
Jody down the street.
Uh, all of those things have tobe they have to be assigned a
meaning, right?
So talk therapy is about meaningmaking.
The problem for many veterans, Iwould say most veterans, is that
(17:31):
nobody wants to relive that,especially with someone who
hasn't chewed the same kind ofdirt that you've chewed.
If you haven't worn thatuniform, you haven't been in
that situation, it's very hardfor someone to want to open up.
Um so that makes it even harder.
And then you have people whohave uh they might be on the
spectrum, they'reneurodivergent, they're not
necessarily capable of talkingabout something, either
(17:54):
physically or emotionallyincapable of it.
So how how peak neuro works, anduh just very quickly for your
clarification, are you talkingabout people who are uh on the
spectrum?
SPEAKER_02 (18:05):
Are you talking about the therapist or the
client?
SPEAKER_01 (18:08):
Well, sometimes it's both.
SPEAKER_02 (18:09):
Right, correct.
That's all I wanted to say.
Go on, I apologize.
SPEAKER_01 (18:12):
Uh so you know, at the end of the day, it's really
about narrative building.
Psychotherapy is about narrativebuilding, creating a narrative
where you can inculcate theexperience into your your
autobiography.
And like I said, that's verydifficult, can take weeks,
years, months, and it's also attimes hard to find someone that
you can do that with.
So uh Pete Nora is not areplacement for that.
(18:33):
I think it's an adjunct.
So we just talked about hownarrative making and meaning
making are part of thepsychotherapeutic process.
But what we doneuroacoustically, that is, you
put on a set of headphones allby yourself, sit in a quiet room
30 minutes.
What we do is we entrain yourbrainwaves to suppress the uh
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,the executive network in the
(18:55):
front of your brain, wherenarrative and meaning making
happen.
And by the way, so does anxietyhappen there in high beta, high
gamma wave uh neurophysiologicalexpression.
SPEAKER_02 (19:06):
And so what we do on a loop, but anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (19:09):
Exactly, the rumination loop.
And you know how I love todescribe that?
Anybody who's ever walked out ofa room and said, Why did I say
that?
And they can't get it out oftheir mind.
Or why did that person say tome?
What did he mean?
What was that all about?
Was it a good thing?
Was it a bad thing?
That's a rumination loop.
And that is your brain stuck inthe prefrontal cortex, running
this script over and over againthat you cannot get out of.
(19:32):
Um, so neuroacoustically, whatwe do is we suppress your
brain's ability to even createnarrative, to create meaning, to
create anything that looks likean A, B, C, D, E, F, G kind of a
narrative-building structure.
We suppress that in the front ofyour brain and we open up the
what's called the antigular, I'msorry, uh anterior cingulate
(19:53):
cortex and your parietal andoccipital cortexes.
And your occipital cortex, bythe way, which is kind of
interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (19:59):
By the way, for those who are not on YouTube, uh
it's behind your head.
SPEAKER_01 (20:02):
That's the way your eyes are in the front of your
head, your occipital cortex isin the back, and you've got to
run that connection.
SPEAKER_02 (20:08):
Correct.
SPEAKER_01 (20:08):
Um, so when we shut down your ability to create
narrative, we open up yourability to create what's called
symbolic admission.
And if you've ever, as you'refalling asleep, uh had a flash
of a person, a memory, a movie,uh, something that sort of comes
into your consciousness that'salready fully formed and not a
(20:29):
narrative.
That's what that feels like.
So when you when you processtrauma through talk therapy,
you're doing it semantically.
You're talking about it.
When you process trauma thisway, you're doing it somatically
with your body.
You're virtually digesting it.
So what happens there is overthe course of literally a couple
of months, you can see majortrait level changes in your
(20:52):
neurophysiology that suppressthis anxiety response and open
up what we call the equanimityresponse.
Uh, I'll give you a greatexample.
If you're if you're uh AmazonPrime subscriber, in the, I
think in the spring of nextyear, there will be a show
coming out called Leapfrog.
Leapfrog is based on a bookwritten by Mark Green.
Mark Green is a 24-year U.S.
(21:13):
Navy SEAL, uh, eight years inthe Teams.
I'm sorry, 13 years in theTeams, eight as enlisted, five
as an officer, 21 TBIs and aPTSD diagnosis.
Uh, in two months of using thetechnology at home, um, with
every two weeks getting an EEGto see how his progress is
coming, he has about 80%resolved his TBIs and uh went
(21:38):
from sleeping three hoursfragmented every night to six
hours in a row.
And the only reason he doesn'tsleep more than six hours is
he's got this old dog uh thatkeeps waking up and has to pee.
It's a great dog, by the way.
I've met her.
She's awesome.
Uh but the difference has beenstark, and the reason why I'm
telling you his name is becausehe's given us permission to do
that.
Mark is Mark has had such agreat experience with this, and
(21:59):
he's one of several uh veteransthat we're working with
currently that we have workedwith, where we see these uh
31-day, 42-day trait levelchanges to people's
neurophysiology where they justfeel better.
And that's really what it's it'snot so much even about what
happens to your brain, it's whathappens to your subjective
(22:20):
experience.
Do you do you feel better?
Are you calmer?
And I remember, you know, I wentthrough a six-day program um
that was sort of a prototype forwhat we're doing now, and this
was just after the pandemic, andpeople who hadn't seen me for a
couple of years, just 100% ofthem would comment and say, You
seem so different.
You know, you're not as uhyou're not as activated, you
seem so calm.
(22:41):
Um the very, very, uh, verystark uh difference between when
you start and when you end.
And it's self-paced, you can doit at home.
By the way, you can you can trythis for free, experience it
yourself.
Go to www.peakneuro,onework.com.
You'll see a download link forthe app store and for uh Google
(23:01):
Play.
There's uh uh an app therethat's gonna have four files on
it.
One's a power nap, one issomething called Let Go, which
was built for the military,which is also, by the way, used
by professional athletes anddivision one athletes today.
Uh Let Go is a prettyinteresting one.
It um if you're it's made, itwas made for two things.
One, post-combat downregulation.
(23:24):
You have to just let things go.
And for athletes from unnamedcollege football teams who get
their butts kicked on a Saturdayand can't stop thinking about
it.
And so LEGO is a rumination loopbreaker.
Those are the two I wouldrecommend people to try.
If you're having troublesleeping, try the sleep one.
It's we we have one uh that's onthe on the app that you can
purchase that's a 10-hour uh uhsleep uh sleep induction
(23:48):
technology.
And I'll I'll tell you aboutthat.
We ran a six-month randomcontrolled trial at a research
institute here in Virginia witha professor from Virginia Tech
who was writing the uh theprotocol for it.
Uh 161 participants in sixmonths.
People's slow wave sleepincreased by 16 percent, their
emo their REM sleep increased by22 percent.
(24:09):
For veterans and firstresponders, their threat
recognition time increased by9%.
And when you're in the military,1% is the difference between
living and dying.
It's not a question of uh of uhum performance uh for those
folks, it's a question ofsurvivability.
Yes.
Um the one of the unintendedconsequences that we noticed,
which we're now working withsome uh some universities and
(24:31):
research on, is that over thecourse of six months we saw
people's neuroplasticityincrease.
And if you're not familiar withthat term, neuroplasticity is
simply your brain's ability toadapt, to create new neural
connections, to learn.
So uh if you think about whatthat really means, the ability
to adapt is what your brain isall about.
(24:52):
Each of us, it's kind of funny.
I I can group uh I you know Ican group Steve and I into the
into a cohort, we're probablyaround the same age, uh similar
background, similar education,that's one cohort.
But our neurophysiologicalsystems are as different as our
looks.
Your brain is the sum total ofthe adaptation of your
(25:13):
neurological system to the lifethat you've lived, which means
the entire thing is plastic.
So if you don't like where youare, you can change it.
And Mark Green and May, perfectexamples.
And there are more, but uh, Ithink Mark is a great one.
He's uh written a book calledUnsealed, it's available on
Amazon.
Uh talks about his transitionand the difficulties that he
(25:35):
underwent.
Uh and that show on Amazon.
Uh, show on Amazon will beinteresting.
Both Warriors Ethos and theSumper Five Fund get checks
every time that show runs.
I'm really proud of that.
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Uh yeah, I'm gonna put that in the show notes.
You you know, like I gotta stopyou here because I let you talk,
and then I already wrote, andfor those on YouTube, you'll see
that I wrote all these notesalready that I want to follow up
on.
SPEAKER_01 (25:56):
Sure.
Well, I'll then I'll shut up andlet you ask questions.
SPEAKER_02 (25:59):
Oh, don't ever shut up.
First of all, I didn't know youwork with uh the UMass Minutemen
because you said teams that gettheir asses kicked uh regularly.
Um yeah, shut up in UMass.
Uh but I there's a few things.
Let me uh share something from atherapist standpoint first and
foremost.
Yeah.
When you talked about, you know,this is different than
(26:21):
psychotherapy, you you'll hearthis, and again, we're about the
same age, and I feel like I'velearned that in reality in life,
you gotta adapt all the time inorder to survive.
You can't, you know.
Charles Darwin never saidsurvival of fittest, he said
survival of those who adapt thefastest.
SPEAKER_01 (26:39):
Most adaptable, yep, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (26:41):
So I tell people that I did online therapy before
it was cool.
I started in 2015.
Now suddenly the pandemic hits,everyone told me I was a fraud
and cheating clients and blah,blah, blah.
And then in two 2020, I wasgetting 10 to 20 phone calls a
day.
Hey, Steve, can you help me setthis up?
So for me, I always think aboutadaptation.
If you're gonna crap on any typeof treatment, I think that
(27:06):
you're disturbing people aroundyou.
So when you said to me, youknow, I want to hear it from a
psychotherapist's standpoint,I'm gonna tell you as a
50-year-old therapist doing thisfor over 26 years at this point,
if it works, I'm all for it.
It's not psychotherapy, it's notfor everyone.
And that's okay.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And for some people, like youmentioned something, and this is
(27:27):
what I really want to address.
And this goes to my all my firstresponder and all my military
personnel.
When you don't have someonewho's culturally competent in
order to treat you, it alwaysbackfires.
Not, I shouldn't say always,most of the time, it's going to
backfire.
I'm very culturally competentbecause of the knowledge I have
with working with firstresponders, but I've never been
a first responder.
(27:48):
I work with the militarypersonnel since 2003.
I am not a military person, Ihave never served, but I
certainly respect their work andI do that.
And I think that that's how Ipicked up my knowledge.
But I'm also not for everyone.
I'm not for, you know, and Ijoked around before the
interview, and I'm going to beserious for a second.
I've worked with a lot ofMarines.
(28:08):
That doesn't mean I work withonly Marines, and that doesn't
mean all Marines like me.
There's nothing wrong with that,by the way.
I think that one of the thingsthat I want to hear about you're
more about, and we're going tokeep on talking about this, that
peak neuros seems to take thatvery seriously, is that we adapt
to the person, and this is a wayfor them to not to have a
creative narrative, or like youtalked about, I call it a
(28:29):
subjective narrative that wecreated.
And sometimes it's up to theclient to say the right thing,
and sometimes it's right, it'sup to the therapist to ask the
right question.
And for me, this is just youknow, at best, a lucky guess.
Um, and that's not because of mycompetency.
It's sometimes when do you askthe right question at what time?
(28:49):
So that takes that away by doinga little bit of that work.
And for me, I almost see it ascomplimentary because maybe
perhaps doing you know, peakneuro and doing that the the
sound waves and everything else,you are able maybe to
communicate more effectively intherapy and you're maybe able to
ask more what you need.
But to me, there's no such thingas psychotherapy or death.
(29:10):
It's whatever works for people.
I'm not a fan.
The only thing I will say thatI'm not a fan of is just
medication that I am not a fanof.
SPEAKER_01 (29:18):
Uh ask anybody who's ask anybody who's been to the
VA.
SPEAKER_02 (29:21):
Right.
And that's what I mean.
My my VA guys, I mean, Iremember a guy coming in who was
uh we'll we'll I don't I I'llsave that he was a marine, I
won't tell anyone, but he was onlike seven different meds, and
he was literally a zombie.
And he's like, Steve, what doyou think the problem is?
I said, at best you should be onthree meds because at one point
(29:43):
you don't even know what's doingwhat, and is it a side effect
versus actually helping?
So that's the only one I willsay that I do not want
singularly medication, and Ireally like to talk about the
frontal cortex and talking aboutthe occipital uh cortex because
that's very Important whenpeople talk about PTSD and
trauma.
And so I can go to so manyplaces here.
(30:06):
But what I like to do is justfinish off maybe on talking
about one thing, because I Ithought that was interesting
when you mentioned aboutcognitive resilience.
This for me is the first timeI've heard that term.
So I again I don't pretend Iknow stuff I don't know.
But can you tell me more aboutcognitive resilience?
Because I have a sneakingsuspicion as to what that means.
But I rather ask someone whoknows than sounding stupid.
SPEAKER_01 (30:28):
Sure.
So I'll give you uh I'll giveyou two um a two-part definition
and a couple of examples.
So cognitive resilience is yourbrain's ability to adapt to
change and fast change, right?
So I didn't expect to see uh thehouse fall down.
I didn't expect to see lightninghit the person next to me.
That's a that's a significantchange that interrupts what's
(30:50):
happening neurophysiologicallyin your brain, and along with uh
chemically as well.
Um the the second is whether ornot you're as we talk about
cognitive resilience, can youlearn at a speed that is
necessary to adapt to yourenvironment?
And that so that's adaptation atscale.
(31:11):
So in in a situation where, forexample, you're uh you're uh uh
a soldier, marine, a sailor,you're deployed somewhere and an
event happens, an IED goes off,uh one of your friends gets
injured or killed.
If you if you've been working onthis and you have cognitive
resilience, you don't get PTSD.
You don't get trauma.
It doesn't traumatize youbecause your brain is capable of
(31:34):
absorbing that impact.
Uh so cognitive resilience isreally around being able to
pre-plan and absorb stress asstress occurs because your
neuroplasticity is very high.
We do this, I'll give you agreat example of sort of how
this works.
So I just I just gave yourlisteners a link to an app
that's got four exercises.
(31:55):
They're real exercises, they'reproduction grade, they're just
something that you can see ifyou like it, then you can buy
the full app.
But that's at the very low endof what we do.
So typically, when we work with,for example, fighter pilots, we
will take a baselinephysiological and neurological
uh uh profile of that fighterpilot.
Neurologically, it's an EEG, andthey'll go out and they'll fly
(32:17):
five training missions and we'llcorrelate the best training
mission to the best baseline,and then we'll reverse engineer
their their brain signals,literally their EEG, into an
entrainment program so thatevery time they climb into that
aircraft, they're at theircognitive best.
And this is built on an AI backend that allows us to look at
(32:39):
your personal neurophysiologyand adapt all of the entrainment
and signals to you as anindividual.
So think of it as tuning anengine or tuning an instrument
over time because your brainchanges all the time too.
Your brain is not static.
So as you get to one point wherelet's say you're resolving, uh,
I I I think when we got cut off,I was talking about how TBI and
(33:01):
PTSD look alike on a on an EEG.
There's a lot of uh asynchronousalpha, beta, way too high on one
side, way too low on the other,and that creates on one on one
end anxiety, and on the otherend, depression, you know,
basically manic depressive.
Uh things like hemisphericsynchrony come into play.
Are both sides of my brainworking together?
(33:22):
Are they working independently?
SPEAKER_02 (33:24):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
Uh, and frontal temporal coherence.
So, what do I mean by that?
If you if you if you've been ina traumatic event, if you had a
concussion, if you had atraumatic brain injury,
oftentimes we hear people talkabout how they have brain fog.
I can't remember names.
I remember a face, I can'tremember name.
You remember the face becauseoccipital cortex, right?
That's where memory getsimplanted.
(33:45):
When your coherence breaks,which is up here in the anterior
anterior cingulate gyrus, whichmodulates uh emotion.
SPEAKER_02 (33:52):
Middle of the when you have give or take, just for
those who are not video.
SPEAKER_01 (33:57):
When you have um uh when you have brain fog, what's
happening is your front to backcoherence in your brain is
essentially disconnected.
And so you can't you can't runuh you can't save memory to the
place where you should.
And so building coherence, uh,that is front to back, left to
(34:17):
right, hemispheric synchrony,creates whole brain synchrony.
And whole brain synchrony allowsyou to be metabolically a lot
more efficient.
What do I mean by that?
Well, and on average, it takesabout 12 watts of energy to form
a thought.
If you're solving a mathproblem, I can I can measure
that with uh with variousdevices, not necessarily on any
EG.
And that energy takes glucoseand oxygen, and that's delivered
(34:38):
by blood and it's delivered uhthrough your venous uh uh
structures in in your brain.
When that happens and you havethat thought, if you can you
think about um uh something uhthat produces anxiety or trauma,
that we just talk about anxiety,something that aggravates you
and you can't get it out of yourmind.
(34:59):
Imagine what that's like.
That rumination loop has highmetabolic cost.
You're spending glucose andoxygen, resources, and energy
that you would otherwise nothave to use, and that creates
headaches, migraines, uh, itmakes you tired, sleepy.
But when you can train yourbrain to return to uh what I
would call a state of equanimitywhere it's 12 watts up and goes
(35:23):
right back down, you become muchmore metabolically efficient,
you sleep better, you thinkbetter, you react less because
you're not already in aheightened state of awareness,
not a lot of hyperviligence, uh,hypervigilance.
As we as we suppress, and notalways, but for certain people,
we suppress that prefrontalcortex.
We really prevent you fromgetting to the point where you
(35:45):
get into these anxiety andrumination loops.
And once you get to the pointwhere you can do that, this
becomes over time, over about amonth's time, it becomes part of
your neurophysiological traits.
So you don't you don't have touse the technology anymore.
It's funny, I mentioned earlier,I think uh I get I started
getting 18 to 22 percent of mysleep was restorative.
And in my age category, that'sabout average.
(36:07):
And last night I had a badnight, it was 47%, which means I
sleep half as long with twice asmuch restorative sleep.
And if you know, if you want toknow uh for listeners who are
curious about what that reallymeans is things like Alzheimer's
and dementia, they're you know,that's a lot about the plaques
that accumulate in the in thefolds in your brain.
(36:30):
And when you engage in slow wavesleep, that dreamless deep, deep
sleep, what happens is that theglial cells in your brain, they
actually shrink.
And what happens when theyshrink?
They pull cerebral spinal fluidup over the top of your brain.
It soaks in there, and thelonger you you sleep in slow
wave sleep, the more theyshrink, the more that that
cerebral spinal fluid soaks in.
(36:51):
That when you wake up, the cellsexpand and they push amylase
plaques, broken proteins, downyour spinal column, into your
liver and kidneys, and yourlymph system will clean what was
going on.
If you don't do that, if youdon't get good sleep, we find
that that becomes in the longterm things like dementia and
Alzheimer's.
So the ability to get good sleepreally is the base of the
(37:14):
mountain that everybody wants toclimb from a cognitive and and
neurophysiological standpoint.
SPEAKER_02 (37:19):
Well, Tony, I'm just gonna end this first part of the
episode because this isfascinating because I want to
continue talking about per a lotof different things.
I like the neuroplasticityconversation, and I know that
lithium also starts playing arole with memory and everything
else, and I have a lot of peopleworking on that that I know of,
but I'm gonna tell everyonecoming back uh Friday for the
(37:40):
second part, and for those ofyou who are not listening on our
order, just the next episode.
SPEAKER_00 (37:47):
Please like, subscribe, and follow this
podcast on your favoriteplatform.
A glowing review is alwayshelpful.
And as a reminder, this podcastis for informational,
educational, and entertainmentpurposes only.
If you're struggling with amental health or substance abuse
issue, please reach out to aprofessional counselor for
consultation.
If you are in a mental healthcrisis, call 988 for assistance.
(38:10):
This number is available in theUnited States and Canada.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.