Sona with Jane Ollis

Welcome to Keeping It Real On Purpose, where we have honest conversations about the experiences, the questions, and the decisions that shape our lives. Today, we're talking about the nervous system and the technology designed to support its regulation. We hear a lot about stress burnout, sleep disorders, and feeling overwhelmed, but what happens when slowing down or telling yourself to relax doesn't seem to be enough. You see, I was one of those people, and I want to tell you that I joined, I got on board. I really got on board with this new product, I'm going to tell you, is Sona. Thank And it's a device that explores how to calm yourself down, and I didn't think anything of it. But today, we're going to talk to the VP of Sona to explore how the device works. What the science is behind it and how it actually supports you. who it may be appropriate for and what consumers need to understand before investing in it. And I've also, like I said, been using Sona myself. So this conversation is very personal to me. And I think I'm going to be their very next best friend, okay? So welcome, Jane, Alice, to Keeping It Real On Purpose. Thank you, Edna. And it is an absolute, I feel very humbled to be here and to sharing having this conversation with you. Yeah, I am so excited. So audience, I want you to know that this is not, It's an opportunity to ask real questions and be honest about the conversation we're going to have around technology, the body and well-being, because I'm going to tell you, all of those things are going to work. I'm telling you, once you hear about what Jane has created for this life. So, Jane, take us where maybe let's start when someone puts Sona on their ear, what is actually happening inside their body? Let's start there. Okay. Well, Sona is designed to tap into this nerve called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve, its name comes from the word vagabond. It's like the longest wandering nerve in your body. And it's a pretty cool nerve because it connects all of your organs to your brain. And it's a sort of communication highway. And its role in life, it has two roles in life. One is, you know, most of the information our brain gets, you think about it, it's like sensory information, things around us. But the vagus nerve is about sensing things inside our body. So it's always, you know, doing check-ins with all of your organs, your heart, your lungs, your stomach, bowel, all of those organs, to ask how things are. And so it has this communication role. But it has this second amazing role. It makes up most of your calming arm of your autonomic nervous system. So it's responsible for turning on things to do with healing and growth and repair. And so if you can access it, it gives you a way to be able to improve how you show up. Certainly if you're feeling really stressed, really anxious or, you know, living with trauma, that it's a way to help improve how your brain responds to those things. And the great news about the ear where Sona sits is that we have a branch of the vagus nerve. So we have a branch of the vagus nerve called the auricular branch. And that runs from the ear into the brain. So when you put the sonar on. you're able to access that part of your vagus nerve and then real time we're measuring some data as well to see how it's working so you can sort of see you can feel it but you can see it as well which was one of my missions when I set about trying to trying to figure out how to solve this problem of stress. Absolutely absolutely I'm going to tell you that that information is new to me and it's very important to me because I was like I don't know how it did it but it did it for me. And I think our pre-show we're talking about how it really added to my meditation. Can you tell us how physiologically that feedback guides itself to stimulation? So feedback works by showing some physiology so that there are some ways that you can look at how well your nervous system is balanced between your flight and fright, which is this sort of stress arm, and this calm arm. And we can measure, we've got a proxy measure for that. You can measure through your heart called heart rate variability. So the device measures your heart rate variability. And so we can see how it's working. But I love, Edna, that you pair it up with doing some meditation. Because your brain is a multi-sensory bit of a kit. It's an amazing bit of a kit, our brains, aren't they? But they can get into bad habits, and that's what we can fix. But when you do the stimulation with your meditation, it amplifies the brain's response to these things. So it's great to hear that you've been doing vagus nerve stimulation and meditation. Yeah. I'm going to tell you. And I'm saying this from my heart is that I woke up one day and I was like, wait, it's the first, you know, because I will say that I'm a childhood sexual abuse survivor. Everyone knows, you know, that watches me and some things trigger me. And so the first is always always having like with my with my parents. It's always the first was like iffy and unsafe. So I carried it to adulthood. Right. And I'm like, on the first night, I kept saying, why am I like this, right? Go back in my memory, there you go, there it is. And so even now in my own personal life, it could be nothing going on. But the first, I'm like this. And, of course, that delivers to other people, hey, I'm anxious with them, not only with myself, but I'm anxious with people around me. There could be nothing going on, right? Right? Yeah. When I realized that and luckily I have So... this new device it's right here sitting right here and luckily for me trying this made a difference when I meditated even when I feel anxious I take five ten it takes 15 minutes it takes 15 minutes guys 15 minutes and I sit down and I center myself And I'm good and then I can go along the day. It's an added relief. You know, we talk about, you know, the nervous system all the time, you know, regulation and we talk about it. But some people like me and like you out there are chronic stress. Poor sleep, feeling as though they can never switch it off. I felt, I was one of those. I felt like I could, I kept saying the words, it's part of me. If you've heard that, it's part of me. And then I was like, I'm not supposed to say that. Because, you know, that's not part of me. It's something that was given to me, you know? So, but what you guys have created, or you have created, It's so, so evident that It's great. It's just so evident in my life anyway. I'm so pleased to hear that, Edna. And I think the thing about our brains is they only operate based on experiences they've had and what new information you're feeding them. And... It's a survival tool, isn't it, so that it keeps you running that threat detector. So we have a little bit in our brain called the amygdala. It's a really weird word. I'll say it again, amygdala, a really weird word. But anyway, that's our little threat detector in our brain, and that's what fires off signals to release cortisol and adrenaline if we think we're under threat. But if you have experienced trauma or really, you know, uncomfortable experiences in your life, it's like your brain remembers that. And you even need to think about it and it will trigger it. But I think the great news is that our brains do and our bodies have infinite capacity for healing. This is one tool that can really help with that. It's actually about changing how your brain responds to your thoughts through changing, you know, genuinely changing how it adapts. And I think we all have a gift for healing, and it's how do you tap into it. Sometimes it's hard to find that way in, isn't it, to find out. But the vagus nerve is a good route in for healing. I've been really lucky to work with some amazing people consultants and professors and my favorite consultant, she says, Jane, the vagus nerve is the master switch in the body. And I love that phrase. You know, it's just like, how to turn it on, start it up, then you've got a better chance to find ways to heal, to recover, to feel good. Great. Jane, tell us who is sauna actually designed for? Who did you create it for? I created for anybody feeling that they're really struggling to bring the best version of themselves to life each day. My journey actually started because I, as a mother, I'm now a grandmother as well, I would like to add that in, but my eldest daughter was really struggling at school with mental health anxiety at school, and that really showed up for her as really, really bad tummy pains. To the point, you know, she couldn't function in life. And the stress has that way, doesn't it? A showing up in the body. Oh, yeah. It really does for her. And when I took her to the doctor, he wanted to prescribe her. You know, antidepressants and I was like, this isn't to do with, this isn't because she's depressed. It was, you know, because her nervous system wasn't able to communicate properly. Her brain was, you know, telling her that she was stressed and unwell and that was communicating via the vagus nerve into her tummy. Anyway, that started my journey of healing for someone living with anxiety and a lot of stress. And of course, living with trauma. It's just another deeper layer of those things which can compound over time and can be really quite hard to find a way through, to find a way to not have that amygdala switch on on the first day of each month, to give you some more headroom. And that's what it's about. I'm going to tell you, I've tried, listen, through this journey of me healing, I think in the last 15 years, I started going through that and really digging in. Let me just say, I knew I had to do it, but I mean, I'm talking about digging in and I was trying everything, yoga, I was trying everything and I knew that I had this edginess always in a flight mode and I couldn't turn it off. And I'm telling you, 15 years and even having, you know, meditation in my life for 10 of I still was on edge, and it was like the magic pill that just popped in, and I can't explain it. I just can't explain it, and I want you to share with the audience what I'm saying to you. I know you could probably put it in better terms what that is to be. I feel so relieved that I am not jumpy. Can you tell us what that feedback is and how it's? What the measure is, you know what I mean? Like how to just like to share with that, like what I'm really saying, because I'm just feeling great, but I know it's- I am so pleased you're feeling great. I mean, that is how you feel is the real thing, isn't it? You can measure things and we can say the data's going in one way, but how you feel is important. So I think what's happening for you, Edna, is that you've got more headroom before you feel stressed. So we've managed to make sure that your vagus nerve By your parasympathetic, this is the calming arm of your nervous system, is more of an equal voice now in the conversation. So when you live with a lot of stress or trauma, you have a very active voice. sympathetic or that's the stress arm. So what's happened is you've got two more equal players now having a conversation. And what that will show up for if you if you're looking at the data is your heart rate variability will start to rise. And that's a really nice sign. If you are wearing an overnight tracker or doing anything that allows more, then you'll see an improvement So sleep, both deep sleep. And that part of your deep sleep, which is where your brain does all its housekeeping, storing, sorting out, get ready for the next day. We see that consistently increase as well. But ultimately, you know, you can look at the data, how you feel. What is the most valuable feedback? I've always always say you know are you waking up feeling you've got energy, you can you can live the day, you can bring your best to you know however you want to serve the world in the day and your stress response isn't being continually kicked off because you've got a stronger arm, you've got the vagus nerve having a much more sensible grown-up conversation. With your sympathetic arm of your nervous system. Yes, that sounds about right. Now. I want to talk about the technology versus the work of healing, because I know I'm going to hear this from other coaches and holistic people and therapists, all of this. I'm going to hear this. Yeah. If someone has spent years living with stress, painful experiences, or the pressure of always having to be strong, can a device meaningfully support their recovery without addressing all the habits, the relationships, or experiences? Can it do that? I think if it does one thing, which is to improve sleep, because sleep is often the first thing that can go wrong if you're feeling like you're living under a lot of chronic stress, it's the quality of the sleep, it could be the duration, but it's more likely the quality of the sleep that you're getting. So if it does nothing else but help improve that, that's going to put you in a stronger position each day to be able to have energy. To have, you know, to be able to tackle whatever the challenges are that life's going to keep throwing at you because life does keep throwing things, you know, and so it's about having a bit more capacity and a bit more resilience. So then if the day does throw something at you that's a bit of a curveball or a situation that you felt uncomfortable that you might have to deal with, it's the fact, can you bounce back faster afterwards? So those two elements that are really, you know, what we look for. So a bit more headroom through better sleep and that ability to bounce back after something, you know. So then you don't have the anxious feelings about that event just to start to fall away because, you know, you can deal with it. That's good. So the evidence that you're talking about should be, you know, a lighter feeling, you know, being able to talk through things and then sleep. Is there any other evidence that we should be looking for once we grab onto this machine? I'm starting to speak now. Is this working mechanism? Is there any other evidence? Well, definitely around anxiety, mood. I mean, clinically, it is approved in the States for very hard-to-treat depression. So there is evidence out there, although we're not a medical device making any medical decisions at this stage. And it's approved for opioid withdrawal, so for people, you know, so there are a number of clinical indications, not with so much, just to be clear again, that it's improving. And I think we're learning more. We're learning more about how to use these types of tools. Maybe it's part of your... If you like to meditate like you do, don't feel you need to substitute. Do them together. If you like to do yoga, keep doing it. If you do slow breathing, use breath work. Use all of these and work out how to fit it into your toolkit. How does it make it? How does it speed up your response to these things? Mm-hmm. That's good. That's really good. Thank If you could correct one misconception people have about their nervous system and give them one practical next step for taking better care of themselves, what would that be? I think a lot of people, I hear this phrase a lot, like a nervous system reset. And I don't know, have you heard of that phrase? you. I have, I have. Like, go on a reset, and I think, guys, your nervous system is not got a, you know, it's not got a restart button, like you press on your laptop. That's good to know. It does not have a restart button. And so I think that's a complete myth out there. And... You know, if you want, we all have this capacity to improve how our nervous system operates, but it's a training thing. It's a bit like going to the gym. And the great way to start is always through using your breathing. It's a great, powerful tool to start off and put on the, you know, if there's one thing you do each day and you don't want to, you know, make an investment, then start with the slow breathing. So a nervous system can not be reset. It has to be trained or reprogrammed. Not reprogrammed. Tell us what word should go with what. Because I want to be really clear. Right here. Well, it's about building capacity. It's a bit like going to the gym. You go to the gym to build up strength over time, don't you? Gotcha. And what we're doing here is building up that capacity of your nervous system To be able to have these two arms. in a much better adult conversation and equal players in the room and that comes with the time. We've seen with early Sona customers with some amazing stories but sometimes it will take four weeks before we start to see any shift and that's because you can become You know, your sympathetic arm of your nervous system is a loud, noisy voice, and it's used to owning the show. It's used to being the loud child in the room, and it takes some time. Absolutely. And it's done that to protect you. I mean, it's done that, you know, your nervous system is there to protect you, to keep you alive for survival, but over time that becomes unhelpful. It's beautiful. Now, is there anything else about this device that you want to share? Because I think that, you know, to make a great decision for anyone, give us, you know, because you're the best person to do that. I'm just experiencing it. But if there's anything else that you could tell us about this device that would help anyone that's out there, please let us know. Oh, well, only to say that I started this from a mission of helping and healing and It's been a really tough journey building Sona. It has to be because it's going to help. And it's designed so it's super easy to put on and off. You can put your headphones over the top. You use it 10 minutes a day or 15. You know, it's thought with a lot of care and with a lot of people who've experienced all sorts of things in their lives to help us build something that is easy to use and fit into your life. And that's, you know, uses data to say, is it working, is it not working, alongside how you're feeling. And if it can help dial up your heart rate variability and improve how your brain responds to stress, it's going to open up a whole lot of health benefits. Customers who've used it for all sorts of reasons from PTSD through to people living with very severe migraine through to anxiety, menopause or women like myself, you can tell with the grey hair, use it for sleep, use it for sleep and improving sleep. We have got the most incredible set of stories now coming to life with how this type of approach can really, really, really provide relief. That's beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing Sona with us and bringing it into the world because I know it's going to be a great experience and lend to so many recovering lives. I know that. My experience with Sona is part of my story, guys. It's part of my story, but it can actually be part of yours. And it doesn't guarantee you're going to get the same feeling like me, but there has been some experiences. And you've heard it from Jane, who is the creator of it. So, I want you to do your homework. You know, I'm not telling you to do anything more than that. Do your homework. Reach out to Jane. The information will be under this video in the show notes. So, reach out to her. Ask the questions. And then give me the answers. Make an informed decision. And I'm guaranteeing you, you're going to feel some great expectations that I didn't expect a lot of them. But you're going to feel a whole lot different. You know, I'm here just to give you that information, and thank you, Jane, again, for coming on and just sharing that with us, because, you know, we're all about making changes and adding to our lives, and if this can add to our lives. Get it, get involved, do it, get the, get the device, get it, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, and once you have it, you can actually start sharing it with your family, I'm telling you, it's just amazing, but get it, just get it, I promise you, you will not be disappointed, again. This is Keeping It Real On Purpose. I'm your host and my guest today, Jane Allison. We're going to say goodbye for now. But keep growing, keep healing, and keep it real on purpose. Thank you, Eithne.