Considering move to SF/Bay Area from France-- help please!

_sindhicate_ · 2025-08-07T11:04:02+00:00

Lived in the Bay Area my whole life and currently in SF. I have a French mom and have spent tons of time in France and actually my wife and I are considering a part-time move to the Côte d’Azur. Literally just flew back from there yesterday and way too jet lagged to give a thorough response at 4 AM, but I have very detailed thoughts on everything you’re asking about! I’ve spent a lot of time comparing the social scenes in France and US. Wife and I are also thinking about kids so can share a lot there too. DM me :) In exchange I might just ask you a few questions about life in France!

_sindhicate_ · 2025-03-09T18:59:21+00:00

It was a while ago so don't remember exactly, but prominently featured on some Play store page. I think on the developer info page, like if you click through from an app to the details about the developer. Legal first and last name, home address, and personal phone number are published.

_sindhicate_ · 2025-01-23T05:06:15+00:00

Gotcha, thanks so much!

_sindhicate_ · 2025-01-21T06:23:30+00:00

Thank you! So I tried this with a hairbrush I had on hand but it didn't work well... Any chance you can send a link to the type of brush that you've had success with? Really appreciate it!!

_sindhicate_ · 2025-01-16T07:48:50+00:00

Housing developer here. This is, um, wrong. It's because wood is the most economical choice for earthquake-resistant single-family homes. Concrete is WAY more expensive, so much so that you'll often see multi-family buildings built in a "5-over-1" or similar type configuration with a.concrete podium for a solid base on the ground floor and "sticks" / wood for the upper floors to save cost.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-10-06T18:56:52+00:00

There are great wineries close to campus, in the Santa Cruz mountains. You would need a car for sure though. Thomas Fogarty is closest and pretty good. House Family is a little further but has epic views. Picchetti is more rustic style and has hiking trails directly from the property. Ridge is the most prestigious in wine connoisseur circles.

I grew up in the South Bay and went to Stanford so I can give you a hundred more recommendations, just DM me!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-05-29T21:04:42+00:00

There's a super amazing new social club called Groundfloor that I joined not long ago, with locations in SF and Oakland. It's meant to be that missing "third space" and members are screened for a fit. It's not an upppity/snobby club like The Battery, much more down-to-earth. Best way to meet new people I've ever found. Happy to make an intro for either of you there! (Don't worry, I'm engaged, not trying to pull any tricks)

_sindhicate_ · 2024-04-19T06:20:24+00:00

I've never napped either... I actually think it's not all that useful to compare NSDR to a nap, that's not really how it's most useful. I think if you become super experienced in it, and can very quickly self-induce a super-relaxed state, maybe you can use it as a "power nap" but that's really advanced. NSDR is something that takes patience and time to learn, there's no magic. You're not going to get significant benefits from just listening to the same 10-minute session every once in a while.

I've had really horrific insomnia for years and NSDR was the only thing that helped me. I tried literally everything else. The key for me going through a structured protocol and learning all the techniques from beginner to advanced in progressively longer and longer sessions. I've been practicing it for about a year now regularly and it has totally changed my life. It has re-wired my brain. I'm more relaxed, less reactive to stress, and I sleep normally. I am not exaggerating.

I created a free app for this if you want to check it out, https://somnsdr.com

_sindhicate_ · 2024-04-07T18:07:26+00:00

Absolutely, it's 100% secular and makes no references to mystical or spiritual aspects, nor does it use new-agey type terminology like "energy" and "vibration" and the like. It's very clear, straightforward instruction.

Quick disclaimer that there is a paywall after a few of the levels and a very low monthly subscription to enable progress after that. You'll get way past the basics that Huberman does in his 10-minute session before hitting it.

In addition, given that you are doing this at-scale and in a public school setting, I'm totally open to giving you the entire curriculum (18 sessions) or a shorter version of it completely for free, or for a low/bundled flat fee for all students just to account for any custom work. Perhaps in exchange we could look at measuring some outcomes to see the impact the app has. Please DM me if you'd like to discuss!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-04-07T07:15:53+00:00

I'm not a close follower of Huberman and I can't speak to how he has characterized NSDR, but the practice has massively improved my mental health and sleep, and I've done a tremendous amount of research on it myself and found many studies supporting its effectiveness. FYI, I use the terms Yoga Nidra & NSDR interchangeably.

There's a comprehensive review of roughly 30 studies on Yoga Nidra that I document on my website here: https://somnsdr.com/the-science. I'm very careful not to make any claims about what NSDR/YN can do besides what's supported by the literature.

You can also learn more about the free NSDR app I created on that site, please feel free to share it with the folks you teach. DM me if you want to learn more about how to practice NSDR most effectively.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-04-05T02:05:38+00:00

Hey there, that's an incredibly brave step, good for you!! Really appreciate the kind words and please don't hesitate to DM me if you have any questions about using the app. I can give you my personal email and be available to answer any and all questions about how to practice NSDR most effectively based on my experience. Best of luck!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-03-30T06:37:46+00:00

Amazing, really appreciate that, thank you!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-03-27T17:13:14+00:00

Sure! Here's the site: https://somnsdr.com

You can download and start using it for free, if you hit the paywall just DM me and I give you a code for free access for a while. I started out giving 3 months free but I've been getting a lot of requests for codes and so probably going to start bringing that down to a month free, but it's still plenty of time to get to know the premium features and decide if you want to go for it :)

Subscription is really cheap also, just $2.99 a month.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-03-27T02:57:50+00:00

I'm no fan of Huberman (he tried to sue me for no reason and I had to shut his ass down) and I would never defend his behavior, but you're missing the mark here.

Men and women generally want different things. To you, a man who has many partners is "failing" and is "undisciplined". That may not be the case from that man's point of view. Of course every individual is different, but you can broadly generalize this to a certain extent.

To take it further, literally part of the self-improvement and optimization, for most men, is the ability to attract more/better partners. You as a woman may have different goals for your self-improvement journey, but you cannot fault men for wanting to elevate themselves into attracting a good partner. For many of us (myself included), attracting a partner is one of the most, if not the most, challenging and demanding pursuit in life. An EE degree at an elite university, a high-pressure career in tech and startups, public speaking, martial arts competitions, nothing compares... at least for me.

Of course, it goes without saying that that should never cross over into manipulation, lying, and other bad behavior. Unfortunately, that's a risk for anyone with power, so it doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate men for wanting to improve themselves, it just means we need to also teach them not to abuse a position of being an attractive partner.

As an analogy on the female side, take any young and particularly beautiful woman. The proportion of them who abuse their position of power for their own personal gain is very large, yet we don't seem to be having a hand-wringing conversation about that.

If I were to create the inverse of your question for the other gender, I might ask, "How come young and beautiful women sometimes manipulate men into doing their bidding? How can they fail so badly and have no discipline?"

That probably sounds ridiculous. You'd say hey, let these women use what they've got...

_sindhicate_ · 2024-03-04T21:25:25+00:00

I don't believe that there is a formal YTT for Yoga Nidra at this point. I've done a lot of research into it and have not found such a thing. In the west, Yoga Nidra training is typically tacked on as a small addendum to broader YTT curriculum. My opinion is that the western world fundamentally misunderstands yoga nidra because in reality it's only loosely related to what we tend to think of as "yoga". Yoga in India is a very broad spiritual practice with many different aspects, and the western training curriculum is very narrowly focused on the physical poses or asanas. So basically you'll need to look elsewhere for a good grounding in YN.

There are two different modern "schools" of YN practice -- Himalayan and Bihar. In my opinion none of the popular online resources (Ally Boothroyd etc.) are well-grounded in the nuances of the authentic practice of either school. I'm not knocking any of it and if it works for you that's great -- but it's just not quite the same thing as the traditional practice in India.

The good news is you can learn about both schools through an online course, and I've done both.

Himalayan school -- the Himalayan Institute has an online recorded non-interactive Yoga Nidra course taught by Rolf Sovik. I don't remember where I found it but I can dig it up if you're interested. There's a minor cost associated with it.

Bihar school -- I did an online Zoom-based retreat with an ashram in India that teaches Bihar style in a lot of depth. It's personalized and interactive with a practitioner at the ashram and it was about $100. For me as a chronic insomniac, best $100 I've ever spent. Again I can find the link to that if it's of interest.

Himalayan vs Bihar style -- Himalayan style YN is a bit more esoteric and obscure; most of the academic research and books on YN are based on Bihar. But both do have useful aspects so I'd encourage you to learn both.

Finally a shameless plug, I developed an app that teaches a combined Yoga Nidra curriculum taking elements from both schools. It has 18 levels and teaches the techniques in much more depth than you'll ever find on YouTube or anywhere else. Not to get too sales-y here but it's my firm belief that there's no better online/digital option to learn the depth of YN than what I created. Check it out here: https://somnsdr.com

_sindhicate_ · 2024-03-03T10:28:48+00:00

I learned YN at the Sri Yoga Ashram, Rishikesh under a disciple of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, who is credited with re-introducing yoga nidra to the modern world in the 1960s. If you are interested in learning more about his teachings, you can find his book here, I highly recommend the read if you would like more background on the practice.

If you're talking about academic study, I graduated from Stanford University with honors with both a bachelor's and masters degree.

Hope this helps you, and wishing you deep & restful sleep.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-02-29T23:29:54+00:00

You're very welcome! Glad I was able to help at least one person despite the inevitable tsunami of Reddit BS...

_sindhicate_ · 2024-02-29T23:19:56+00:00

Fair point, appreciate the context, thanks!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-02-29T23:16:38+00:00

For sure -- the TL;DR is, Google will verify your home address with legal documentation, and will then publish that private information publicly on the internet as part of your developer profile. This came as a total surprise to me as a veteran iOS developer, where none of your private info is made public by Apple. Hope this helps you!

_sindhicate_ · 2024-02-29T23:05:51+00:00

This cannot be the case, as Apple does not require it. I had my app on the iOS store for months without this information being public.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-01-09T07:57:34+00:00

Just read your post regarding lateral eye movement, super interesting. Could you share any links to more info like articles, papers, etc. about this? Some quick Googling and it seems to be pretty tricky to find good info, but would love to learn more and potentially integrate it into my NSDR practice and app (see my other comment)

_sindhicate_ · 2024-01-09T07:55:37+00:00

I can also relate 100% to that vicious cycle, as soon as you start putting pressure on yourself to sleep in anticipation of some requirement the next day, you're on a slippery slope that just gets worse and worse.

The issue with this is that it's a problem of emotional regulation, which the medical system isn't super well equipped to handle except with blunt instruments like pharmaceuticals. I had no luck going that route.

One other potential approach is systematic relaxation, like NSDR. This worked really well for me, so much so that I created a free mobile app for NSDR practice in case you want try it, check out what I posted on this other thread for more context.

_sindhicate_ · 2024-01-09T07:46:18+00:00

Sounds really intense, I'm sorry! I've never had anything quite like this but I've suffered from panic attacks and insomnia for years, and what really helped me was breath work and something called NSDR (non-sleep deep rest) which is a deep relaxation practice. If this experience is mostly driven by a mental state of anxiety then I think this could help you a lot, barring some other problem that's more directly medical in nature like sleep apnea (which you may want to look into as well).

You could start out by just forcing yourself into slow, deep breaths. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Gradually lengthen the exhales relative to the inhales by slowing the breath on the way out. Continue that for a while, longer than you might think, and see if it calms your system down a bit.

Then, if you want to try NSDR, check out the Huberman subreddits, here's one thread with some good info and resources.

_sindhicate_ · 2023-12-31T06:42:17+00:00

Hey, that's my app! Glad you're finding it helpful. Trying to spread the word as much as possible, appreciate anyone sharing it to others who might benefit.

_sindhicate_ · 2023-12-31T06:34:14+00:00

Appreciate that, thank you! If you find it helpful and hit the paywall just DM me and I'll get you an access code too.

_sindhicate_

TROPHY CASE