oura ring (nina hersher, bt#6)
Thanks for all your support on the book so far. Last week, its pre-order was listed as #1 new release on both Amazon and Kobo! Good start 🚀
Fresh off announcing the new Digital Resilience Certification Program this week, Nina Hersher joined me to answer our better-tech questions. She’s a deep meditator and a co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by the level of ease and lightness she can bring to this sophisticated piece of tech normally used for self-optimization! -JV
JV: What is a personal favourite technology where you get a lot of joy, connection, and meaning in your personal life? Does anything come to mind? What is it? What do you love so much about it?
NH: What comes up for me is actually my Oura Ring. It allows me to feel a sense of connectedness to myself and my husband, who also has one. We'll kind of look at it together and compare.
For me, it’s especially interesting because I began to use it during pregnancy when I felt very disrupted and confused. I didn't know what was real.
I would be tossing and turning and have no idea if I had slept for 2 hours or 12 hours. I wanted to keep track in a place where I could really measure, quantify, and see what was happening with my body.
I think about it as a health lab on my hand. It helps to see the hard data when I’m wondering how something impacts me. If I want to take a shot of Tequila, even if I'm pretty sure I'll be fine, the Oura Ring helps see how it actually impacts me.
With Tequila, usually the answer is that it’s going to disrupt my sleep. Though occasionally it makes me sleep more deeply, especially if I drink more heavily for the holidays or some celebration.
The Oura Ring shows me the data, but of course then I have to bring in my own intuition to move it forward into something that's truly actionable.
JV: An interesting choice. You said you and your husband both have one? How are you comparing? How are you and your partner using the Oura Ring together?
NH: I don't wear mine as much as my husband does. I use it primarily to see how Yoga Nidra, food, alcohol, and exercise impact me.
My husband's been doing a lot more traveling and flying lately. And so he likes to see how the pressure of travel can impact his body. And he's recently gotten into specific wellness treatments and it’s been interesting to see how those actually impact what's happening for him internally.
It's almost like a mirror of sorts. We talk to each other about some of these insights we’re getting from the Oura Ring’s app. We share what we’re learning and it makes us a bit more curious about each other.
I go through seasons with it because I find that sometimes it makes me feel really, really empowered. And then other times I feel almost accountable to it in a stressful way.
If I wake up and I see that I slept terribly, but I actually feel great, sometimes it convinces me. I'm a pretty impressionable person, so I'll say “wait, you're right. I don't feel that great. Maybe I shouldn't go to the gym…” even though internally I feel wonderful.
So I only use it in times when I think it's additive to my life. It doesn’t tell me how I actually feel. It just gives me insight into what’s going in my body, like “hey, you might want to slow down because you didn't sleep as well last night.”
JV: Right. I actually tried the Oura Ring when my son was really young and I had a lot of similar positive experiences with it. But I also remember waking up to soothe the baby, and it would say “get a few more hours of sleep”. It was infuriating. Like, I would get more sleep if there wasn’t a baby crying in my ear right now! What have you learned in terms of how to use it well without falling into these kinds of traps?
NH: Avoid checking your data first thing in the morning. I like having an unplugged morning routine anyway, using the first hour—sometimes it can’t be an hour, but even 10 or 20 minutes—to ground and do practices that give me energy and introspect and explore how I actually feel before checking the device.
I also think this practice allows my husband and I to connect more as a couple. Because once we’re up and running and finally do look at the data, we usually talk about it and laugh about it together. It's playful when we look at it together.
We're wired very differently and it helps a lot to make light and explore those differences together in a light-hearted way, helping us understand each other but also not take those differences too seriously.
We’re intuiting how we really feel before we let the algorithms tell us about our bodies, and then we’re comparing and discussing together. That’s helping us take it lightly.
JV: These wearables present as so serious and self-optimizing and perfectionist. Love that curious, light-hearted approach.
Okay, last question. The elephant in the room. You’re an expert in digital wellness and literally co-founded the Digital Wellness Institute and now you’re launching the Digital Resilience Lab. How do you contextualize your relationship with Oura, knowing all the potential problems with technology in our lives? What does your interaction with the Oura Ring teach us about our overall relationship with tech?
NH: *laughs* That is such a tech-mindfulness expert question, Jay. But I do have an answer for you. Oura uncovers raw data around what my body is trying to tell me. But how I use it is up to me.
That’s the key: How we use tech should be up to us.
My general approach is very very focused on digital resilience and digital flourishing, meaning that in everything I do, I try to be healthy tech, not anti-tech. The Oura Ring is great, but we have to know when to take it off or when to not check the app.
My phone is pretty intensely designed to not alert me to anything that I don’t need, and that’s true with Oura too. I choose when to check it. It never notifies me.
It’s a love-hate sidekick. All of these tools, ChatGPT even, are our love-hate sidekicks. How do we make sure that we hold on to the parts of us that are human, cultivating that intuition, that self-knowledge, and using the tech to amplify that, not replace it?
JV: Seems like you’re able to have a positive relationship with what is in actuality a very sophisticated piece of technology. You're prioritizing agency, making sure it's still you who’s choosing how to interact and interpret and respond. That feels really important.
NH: Yeah! I try to make informed choices, whatever that means is a little bit different for each person. For me, that means being able to track something really tangible without losing my intuitive nature. Whether that’s my Oura Ring or reading my Kindle in the hot springs.
JV: *laughs* That sounds nice. I hope you didn’t drop it!
NH: It was, and I didn’t! But it was sort of a no-tech place we were staying at. If you look up the facility online, there are no pictures that guests have taken because they really do try to get you to unplug completely. Plus, there is no service, which is incredible. Even if you wanted to check your phone… nope.
But obviously it wasn’t really no-tech, as there’s tech all over the place. Just not phones and computers and tablets. So even if we don’t talk about it, we’re all acknowledging there’s a middle ground here.
The Kindle felt different from using my phone, so I asked first: “Is this okay?” They said it was sort of a gray area, and I said “is that because the Kindle is gray?” They didn’t laugh. But I laughed.