By Jeff Bercovici, San Francisco bureau chief, Inc.
Phil Wagner is a man who believes in controlling his physiological responses, not letting them control him. Each night, he uses a technique called coherence training to harmonize his heart rate and breathing to maximize the restorative delta sleep phase. Upon rising, he spends the first three hours of his morning under red lights to stimulate the mitochondria in his retinas to produce more energy. This regimen allows him to limit his sleep to four hours and still feel refreshed. Wagner also fasts 18 hours a day so his stomach won’t distract him when he’s too busy to eat. “The mental constructs around eating are actually pretty interesting,” he says of the condition most of us simply think of as “hungry.”