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Healing + Human Potential
Neuroscientist Explains How 5 Mins of Meditation Can Rewire Your Brain + Reality
00:49:51
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- [00:00]
A
The Dalai Lama asked you to study monks who have been clinically dead and showing slow decay. Can you unpack that for us?
- [00:09]
B
In the Tibetan tradition, there's a very unusual state called tuktam. These practitioners will often die in a seated posture, yet their bodies don't decompose. I've witnessed one of these in my life. He was in tuktam for eight days. He was upright. His body looked completely fresh. There was no odor at all. And then on day eight, the tuktam ended and he collapsed. He no longer was sitting upright and his body began to immediately decompose. But prior to that point, there was no decomposition.
- [00:41]
A
Why you think over all these years, people have a hard time meditating?
- [00:45]
B
Meditation is not about getting rid of thoughts. That's really a misconception. Our brains generate thoughts. That's what we do. Thoughts are not bad. It's simply how we relate to our thoughts that really is the issue. We've shown in scientific research that even five minutes a day of practice, if you do it consistently, is sufficient to produce real, measurable change.
- [01:10]
A
Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast. What if a few minutes of meditation a day could rewire your brain and change the way you experience life? Today, we explore the science of meditation, consciousness, emotional resilience, and the untapped potential of the human mind. Joining us is Dr. Richard Davidson, Harvard trained psychologist whose groundbreaking research has revealed that the mind can be trained for greater resilience, joy, and well being. I hope it serves you. I know that you've spent decades studying neuroscience and meditation, even with people like Ram Dass or the Dalai Lama, and I'm curious to hear from you why you think over all these years, people have a hard time meditating, like sticking to a practice or feeling like they're doing something wrong, it's not working for them.
- [01:55]
B
Our minds are really quite chaotic. In today's world especially, there are so many forces around us that are influencing our mind. And we are all part of a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And so that is one of the important sources of challenge that creates chaos in our minds. And so when people say that they have a hard time meditating or they're very distracted, I think they're reporting something real. And it is, sadly, the. The current state of the world.
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, And I think a lot of the times people have this idea that their mind should shut off. And I, and I've, you know, I've been meditating on and off for many years, probably done 20 silent retreats and love meditation. And there's some resistance to it. Yet the benefits are so powerful. And I can even feel that even if the mind is busy during a meditation, which that' it does, right? It's like digestion, it just happened. And so I'd love to hear from you around. If somebody decided to have a daily meditation practice, what are some of the most powerful science backed effects or benefits it could have on someone's mind or life?
- [03:14]
B
The kind of practice they do and the amount of time that they commit to practice, all of those are important issues. And the bottom line here is that the work suggests that it's really not good to fight with your mind. We really can be gentle with our minds and still have a lot of benefit. We've shown in our hard nosed scientific research that even five minutes a day of practice, if you do it consistently, is sufficient to produce real measurable change. It's really important when a person is just starting out that that they appreciate this and that they not try to push themselves and hold themselves to unrealistic expectations. And we've seen changes with five minutes a day, not just in reports of experience and in behavior, but also changes in biology and in the brain that really are important and that likely will lead to more enduring change. That's something really essential that beginning practitioners appreciate.
- [04:29]
A
Is there any other kind of benefits that you want to share that you guys have discovered in your research that would inspire people to carve out those five minutes?
- [04:37]
B
Well, you know, we have this new book that just came out called Born to Flourish. I wrote it with my colleague Cortland Dahl. And there are really three key points in this book. One is that flourishing is a skill. It actually can be cultivated. The second is what we've been talking about now, which is that it's easier than you think. And the third is that flourishing is contagious. And this is something really important because when people are around others who are flourishing, they feel good in their presence. It brings out the best in others. We actually have data showing that when we train K through 12 school teachers to improve their skills of flourishing, they don't just improve themselves, but the students they teach improve. The students didn't even know there's research going on. And yet their performance, their academic performance, is benefited by having a teacher who shows up and is more fully present, more connected, comes in with a strong sense of purpose. Those are all qualities that are really key to flourishing. So the other thing we do in the book is we name four key skills of flourishing and the skills Are awareness, which is where mindfulness would be, connection, which are qualities that are important for healthy social relationships. Qualities like appreciation and gratitude and kindness. The third skill we call insight. And insight is a curiosity driven understanding of ourselves and of our mind and particularly of the narrative that everyone has about themselves. Although some people don't recognize that they have a narrative. But we all have a set of beliefs and a set of expectations of ourself. And we know there are people on one end of a continuum that who have very negative beliefs about themselves and low expectations of themselves. And of course that's a prescription for depression. But what's really important for flourishing initially at least is not changing the narrative, but it's changing our relationship to this narrative so that we can see the narrative for what it is. And finally, the last skill is purpose. And purpose is not so much about finding something grand and more purposeful to do with your life, but how can you find meaning and purpose in the everyday activities of daily living? Even in the most pedestrian activities of daily living, can taking out the garbage be connected to your sense of purpose? And of course it could be. It just requires a little bit of reframing. Those are all the key, the four key skills that are necessary for flourishing and they all can be cultivated.
- [07:39]
A
That's beautiful. And I love that with this work it's like the mind can do what it does. And when we start to see space between us and the thoughts, the thoughts happen, like digestion. We're not even in control of them, they just happen. And it's not the thoughts that hurt, it's believing them that does. And so I hear that yes, first having space between you and your mind to say, oh, there are times where the mind is active, times where it's not, and get curious in that space where it's not active. Like what is aware of itself. We can go there. And two, you don't have to not believe it. I know for me, I used to drown out the voice in my head because I had such low negative self talk that I didn't want to be in the car with my mind. And so I would listen to books on tape. This is like, this is probably 20 years ago just to drown out the voice. And then I started learning inquiry, how to question my thinking, which was also really powerful and affirmations. But affirmations were in some ways trying to manage and avoid versus just noticing that it's. It's not even personal, it's just a thought that's passing through. Like the gardener outside the street. The cars driving by, it's all just one noise happening. Not personal, even to me. And so I just have found meditation so incredibly valuable. I think it's meditation and inquiry, questioning who I am as the deepest spiritual practices that I've ever discovered.
- [08:58]
B
It's beautiful to see.
- [09:00]
A
And I love that you actually bring hard science and research behind it. I think it's a really great bridge for people because sometimes they're meditating, they don't feel the effects, but over a long period of time. And so I know that in your research you've studied with monks who have had thousands of hours of meditation practice. I'm curious what surprised you the most around how the brain can be trained or what you guys discovered in that research?
- [09:24]
B
Yeah, so actually tens of thousands of hours of practice. The average lifetime hours of practice of the long term practitioners we studied is about 34,000 hours. So viewers can go do the arithmetic at home. But 34,000 hours is a big number. These are people who spent a very significant part of their life informal meditation. So our very first paper with long term meditation practitioners was published in 2004 and it revealed these very high amplitude gamma oscillations in their brain electrical activity that we measure from the scalp surface. And this was a big surprise to us because these gamma oscillations are seen in everyday people, but they're typically seen for really short periods of time, typically less than one second. And they often are associated with these moments of insight. So if you're doing a task and you suddenly arrive at an answer, you have a kind of little aha moment. You might have experienced this if you're doing a crossword puzzle and all of a sudden you recognize what the word is, you just instantaneously know it. In that little, you know, teeny moment, there's a burst of gamma activity and it's very short in most people. In these long term practitioners, they're showing gamma oscillations continuously. And they also show heightened gamma oscillations when they're not meditating formally, just at baseline. And this was a really novel finding. No one had seen it before. We then discovered that these gamma oscillations were also present during deep sleep, which suggests that there may be a residual thread of awareness that is persisting during sleep in these long term practitioners. And so these were some really early, really novel findings that were very surprising to us. And in fact, we didn't believe our findings initially. And we spent a year trying to discover if it was caused by artifacts which can occur in this kind of recording. And it only was after we spent a year doing all these control experiments that we convinced ourselves and convinced the scientific community that this was real. And it ended up being published in a very high profile scientific journal.
- [12:25]
A
I'm curious, was there a certain type of meditation that was practiced or were there a variety of types of meditation practices?
- [12:31]
B
This is a kind of practice. First of all, all of these were practitioners in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and they were doing a practice that we've called in other publications, open awareness, where the aperture of awareness is really widened. And so they're not focusing on any specific thing. And they often describe this as a very panoramic kind of awareness.
- [13:05]
A
I also know that the Dalai Lama asked you to study monks who have been clinically dead, and they were the ones that were showing slow decay. Can you unpack that for us or what you've discovered and how that could correlate to consciousness itself?
- [13:20]
B
Yeah. So in the Tibetan tradition, there's a very unusual state called tuktam in Tibetan, which means the clear light stage. And this is a stage of. Of being that some individuals enter into when they die. And these are people who have met the standard Western clinical criteria for death. They're no longer breathing, they no longer show a heartbeat. We've put electrodes on their head and their brain activity to the best that we can tell, at least at the time that we measured them. And that's a whole other story. But just for now, we have only been able to get to the bodies the soonest, roughly one day after they've died. It may be that we might be able to measure brain activity if we were able to get to them sooner and will. We are now in a different chapter of this work. We're trying to be there sooner. It just was not feasible with this kind of field work in India, these practitioners will often die in a seated posture. And I've witnessed one of these in my life. If I didn't know this practitioner was dead, I would have thought he was simply meditating. He was actually upright. There were maybe six people in a room who were also meditating at the time, who were alive. And I was, you know, is like three or four feet away from him. This is someone I knew when he was alive. And his body looked completely fresh, totally intact. His skin looked totally, you know, like he was just meditating. His face looked quite beautific. There was no odor. I. He was in Tukdam for eight days. I saw him on day three and day seven. And, you know, there is no odor at all. And then at on day eight, the tuktam ended. And the way the people around him know it ended is that he collapsed. He no longer was sitting upright, and his body began to immediately decompose, but prior to that point, there was no decomposition. This is a very unusual state. And, you know, the honest truth is we have no idea what the mechanisms, in conventional Western terms, might be contributing to this. The Dalai Lama asked me to study it many years ago, and we've been doing our best to. To study this. We have labs set up in India in some very large monasteries, Tibetan monasteries in India. And so that's what we're doing. And so far, the main thing we've been able to document is the slow rate of decomposition. And many of these monasteries are in the south of India, and it's super hot there, it's tropical, and, you know, there's no air conditioning where these monks are, and yet their bodies don't decompose. So these are the conditions where you'd expect rapid decomposition based just on the environmental circumstances. But that's not what we see.
- [17:32]
A
And we have a mutual friend, Tenzin, who I think that you've studied her aunt, or from what I've heard from her, and I'd love to hear your experience or if more about this, because I think it's fascinating is that with Tenzin, her. Her aunt was one of the women that were studied, and she knew she was going to die, so she let the family know, and then she went into. How do you pronounce it?
- [17:55]
B
Tuktam.
- [17:55]
A
And I've heard that it can go up to six months, to a year. I don't know. I'd love to hear more. Just the. The knowing that, okay, I'm going to go into Tuk Dun. And then, like, even that I think is fascinating. And then to be able to meditate at such a level where you're still alive but you're not alive. Like, I'm. I want to. I want to hear more. This is very new in sort of Western world.
- [18:19]
B
Yeah. I don't know how long tuktam can persist. You know, there are claims of it persisting for six months or a year. The longest we've ever seen it persistent was for about 18 days, which is still pretty long.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah.
- [18:43]
B
And that's, you know, with our observations we have, we videotape all of these and various kinds of scientific measurements. We confirm that there's no heartbeat, there's no breathing. We put electrodes on the head to see if there's Any measurable brain activity. And so far there has not been any. So, you know, I don't know how long it could persist for. It has implications for understanding what the relation is between the mind and the brain. I mean, one of the important questions that it raises is around organ donation, which, you know, from one perspective is a beautiful act and compassionate. But it's also the case that typically organs are harvested within seconds after a person stops breathing and their heart stops. And, you know, if we believe these data, which we do, at least some people, for some people, there's something still happening. You know, even in strictly materialist kind of perspective, biology doesn't work like an on, off switch. It's inconceivable that one moment we're fully alive and the next moment we're completely dead. It just doesn't make any biological sense from even the most basic first principles of biology. So it has to be the case that things die at different rates, for example, that not everything dies all at the same time.
- [20:27]
A
Yeah.
- [20:28]
B
So those are some of the questions it's beginning to raise that I think will be important for us to take more seriously in the West.
- [20:39]
A
Yeah, I'm always fascinated with death dying in the afterlife. I studied. I had a course in undergrad called Death Dying in the Afterlife. And just from different cultures, just understanding, like Tibetan. I know that moment of death is so important that they believe that sets them up for the next life. And so it's just fascinating. And also I think in other cultures they will sit with a dead body for a period of time. So it's just a great. Now that you're bringing science to it, because a lot of this stuff has just been passed down as oral tradition from many different cultures. And now we're starting to study it and find out more. And so thank you for the work that you're doing. I think that it is important and this can raise a lot of different questions. I'm wondering, for people that feel just in common, everyday world, they're feeling really anxious, disconnected, overwhelmed. What do you think that that's doing to the brain over time? If you're feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or just simply longing for more peace, presence or intuition in your life, you're not alone. So many people are seeking something deeper, whether it's clarity, self trust, or a deeper sense of spiritual connection. But oftentimes the answers feel like they're out of reach. But what if I told you that the peace and clarity that you're craving are already within you? You don't need to search outside yourself for the answers. You simply need to reconnect with the power of your own pres. That's why I created the Miracle of you. Six guided meditations designed to help you embody your wholeness, rediscover your sense of direction, and develop a deeper trust in life so that you can bring that energy into your relationships, into your work, into every area of your life. And today, I'm gifting it to you for free. So if you'd like to take advantage of it while it's still available and free, just click the link in the Show Notes below or scan the QR code on the screen to download the Miracle of youf and start your journey back home to yourself.
- [22:24]
B
Neuroplasticity happens wittingly or unwittingly. So it's always happening. Most of the time, it's happening unwittingly most of the time. Our brains are being shaped by forces around us over which we have very little control and about which we're typically only dimly aware, if we're aware at all. And, you know, this relates to what we were talking about earlier with the media and what it is doing to our minds and our brains. We know that these kinds of influences, particularly if they accumulate over time, can really have a deleterious effect on the mind and the brain. Our work, the way we position our work, is that we are inviting people to harness the power of their own mind. There are things that we can control and things that we can't control. We obviously can't control the larger forces around us, but the one thing we can control, at least to some extent, is our own mind. And so we can make intentional choices about how we deploy our awareness.
- [23:42]
A
I think that's an important distinction, how we deploy our awareness, our attention. Right. Yeah, Right. Because awareness, there's this backdrop of awareness that's always here. Our attention, like that flashlight, can be focused or more open, and thoughts happen. It's not the thoughts that hurt. Right. And so. But where. What we do with the thoughts we have agency over. We can question them, we can investigate them.
- [24:04]
B
Exactly.
- [24:05]
A
But they still come up.
- [24:06]
B
And your comment is so, so on target. And I just want to call it out for viewers that the meditation is not about getting rid of thoughts. And that's really a misconception. Our minds are, you know, and our brains generate thoughts. That's what we do. And thoughts are not bad. It's. It's simply how we relate to our thoughts that really is the issue.
- [24:35]
A
That's right. And I want to share one quick insight Here, because having done so many silent retreats for a while I kept thinking it was. The goal was to just quiet because it's so good on the nervous system. And there's a moment of deep rest in your being and it feels so replenishing. I'm sure you've studied all of this, but there was times where I was fighting with my mind. Those were really difficult retreats. And there'd be times where I'd go in, like, I'm gonna get a vacation. I'm going on a silent retreat. And then just like, grilled me. And. And then other times where I was like, this is gonna be really hard. And just peace. But it was always pointing back to what was my relationship with my. With the mind. And I wanted to share this for people that are genuinely interested in meditation. This was a key insight that I got from one of my retreats where the thoughts would come up. And the moment I saw it, instead of judging that I was. That I. I was thinking or the mind was active, I used that as a moment to celebrate that I was aware there was awareness prior to that, noticed the. The thinking mind. So that celebration, that mini relational shift, created so much peace in my meditation practice. And really, meditation, the intention is to, yes, support your nervous system and nervous system regulation and experience more peace, but it's also intended to support the way you live. And so when the mind gets active, use that as a moment to celebrate that you noticed that the mind was active. And then just come back to the breath.
- [26:03]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's beautifully put.
- [26:06]
A
And it sounds like you're saying, and it can be reversed because of neuroplasticity.
- [26:10]
B
So neuroplasticity is neutral. It can be harnessed for the good, or it can be the engine of suffering. And so it really depends on how we harness it. And so the invitation in all this work is that we can use our minds in the. A more intentional way to cultivate these qualities that support our flourishing and harness the power of neuroplasticity to lead to enduring positive change.
- [26:44]
A
It's so valuable to cultivate a practice like this so we're not just living out of conditioned past or being. It's almost like you're walking the dog, but the dog is the mind, and the dog's walking you. It's like taking dominion over your mind. So it doesn't just. You're living unconsciously. You can have a beautiful life, but without training your mind, without a meditative practice, you won't really experience the beauty of that. And So I just can't highlight the value of meditation. And I'm also publicly calling myself out to I, you know, I'll do some type of morning practice. But I can feel what's true is that my life is completely different when I sit for a minimum of 15 minutes a day. Completely different. And those times that I don't think I have time are the moments that are more important than I do it. Because it's, it's almost like it. If I'm caught up in a busy life, then I will go unconscious into Patterning and programming versus actually if I take the 15 minutes or 20 minutes to meditate, I can feel how time slows down in my day and I have more conscious choice not just to react, but also to respond. And I'm more regulated.
- [27:51]
B
We have an affiliated nonprofit organization that's now called Humin H U M I N. And we have created an app called the Healthy Minds Program, which the New York Times Wirecutter named as one of the three best meditation apps for several years in a row. And it's totally free.
- [28:12]
A
I would love to share that and experience it.
- [28:14]
B
Yeah, wonderful.
- [28:15]
A
For somebody just talking about high stress in sort of the modern day world, in at least western world, if somebody practices meditation at that sort of high stress moment, does that have stronger effects on how it changes the brain?
- [28:29]
B
Yeah, it's a wonderful question. And we actually have really good data on this. And the data show that if you start off with higher levels of anxiety and, or depression, the same amount of meditation practice will lead to greater benefit than if you start out at a, at a better baseline, so to speak. And it's in, in some sense it's not that surprising because there's more room to move. You see bigger changes with people who are starting out with higher levels of anxiety and depression.
- [29:03]
A
And I love the five minute invitation to start there. I've had a practice for a while, so I'm just lovingly calling myself into a 15 to 20 minute practice. But for people who maybe have really active minds, are there various styles of meditation you have found work for different people or that's not been studied as much?
- [29:21]
B
Yeah, actually in our app we have, you can elect to do practices as active practices where you're not sitting at all. In fact, you can do it where you're never sitting. You can be doing it as you're commuting, you can be doing it as you're doing physical exercise, you can be doing it as you're washing the dishes. And we've studied this and we found that the benefits of these practices are comparable. Whether you're doing it as formal meditation or as active practices, at least at these early stages of practice. There's absolutely no, no significant difference in the magnitude of benefit that you derive from this. So that's great news for people. And even for people who say they can't possibly sit still, that's fine, you don't need to sit still. You can be doing it anywhere, anytime, or as I sometimes say, everywhere, all the time.
- [30:26]
A
I love that because I know some people are so pent up in their body and so sitting still feels like they're just trapped in their mind and having different types of meditation that they practice to see what really supports them and feeling more calm, more peaceful, I think is, is helpful. So I would invite anybody to test things out and see what works best for your composition.
- [30:46]
B
Yeah. And the important thing is consistency. You know, I'll often say that the best possible form of meditation that you can do every day is the form of meditation that you actually do. You stick with it. That's what's really important.
- [31:02]
A
Yeah, it could be a, it could be an eating practice. Right. It can, it could be anything incorporated, a conscious shower, really. Just fully being present with what is, what's here. Yes, I know that you have said also that mindfulness alone isn't enough. Can you talk to us about what's missing in terms of meditation and mental health that hasn't been taught?
- [31:22]
B
Yeah. So, you know, mindfulness is important, but it's not sufficient by itself. In our framework, we have awareness, connection, insight and purpose. And mindfulness would be within the awareness pillar. But there's three other pillars that are absolutely critical for human flourishing. Connection is about nurturing qualities like kindness and compassion. Appreciation. Insight is having a curiosity driven understanding of the narrative that we all have about ourselves. So important. And purpose is really about connecting our core values to our activities of daily living. And each of these can be separately nurtured. They're each instantiated in different brain systems. We know that there's plasticity in those systems and they're all equally important. And if you just did mindfulness, it would be like going to the gym and just working out on your upper body, you know, for your upper body. But after a while it would lead to some imbalance if that was all you were doing. So you critically need all of these pieces.
- [32:38]
A
It sounds more integrative. This is similar to what I do with psychotherapy and coaching, where it's gotta be an integrative approach. So it's not just from the mind or just from the emotions. It's more well rounded when you're talking about this. Is this your healthy minds framework? Is that what you're speaking to?
- [32:53]
B
That's the health.
- [32:54]
A
Okay, great.
- [32:55]
B
The core of it is describing each of these four pillars of flourishing.
- [32:59]
A
Yeah, I would love for you to, if you want to share anything more about the four but specific or simple practices just so people can get a real grounded taste of what's being invited in the book. And we'll talk more about that.
- [33:11]
B
So for awareness, it's. That's probably what's most familiar to viewers. It would be where mindfulness practices are. And you can be aware of your bodily sensations like your breathing. You can also be aware of external sensory phenomena like sound. That's often a very grounding sort of practice, just simply being aware of sound. So that's awareness with connection. Connection is about these qualities that are important for our social relationships, for our sense of interdependence. One of my favorite connection practices is around eating. Just simply spending a few moments appreciating all the people that it took to have food on the plate. And it doesn't matter if you don't know them, but just envision all the people that it actually took to have food on the plate and you realize what an extraordinary collection of people that must be. And it helps to appreciate that we're so interdependent. It gives a positive flavor to the experience. And it doesn't take much to call up that sense of appreciation. In the workplace you can do this by simply imagining people you might be meeting with in a meeting and just think of something positive about them, a positive characteristic. And it's amazing how simple this is and how it can really just change the whole tone of a meeting. We do this all the time here in our center on a regular basis before any important meeting. So that's connection. Insight is about this curiosity driven self knowledge. So one of the simple ways of practicing insight is if you're. If you're confronting some challenge in your life, whatever it might be, it might be at work or at home. Imagine someone that inspires you and how they might approach this same situation, perhaps with a different set of beliefs and expectations. And that simple kind of shift is so powerful because first it can teach you that one's own beliefs and expectations are just one way of seeing a situation. There are other ways of seeing a situation and there might be other ways of seeing it which are less fraught with conflict and maybe helpful in Thinking about solutions. So that's insight. And with purpose, it's really about framing our everyday activities in a way that allows us to connect to a transcendent purpose. Why is this something important for not just me, but for something beyond me? So, you know, taking out the garbage, why it. I'm not doing this just for myself, you know, for the people I live with. It's, it's really helpful. It's helpful for the community to, you know, have a clean space and all these things. And it's a very simple kind of practice. And, and just the act of taking out the garbage can be the elicitor, the stimulus which calls forth this little practice that you can do by yourself. Just as you were describing earlier. When you have a distracting thought, rather than blaming yourself or being judgmental, you use it as a reminder that you're aware, which is beautiful. And it's a very similar thing with purpose. You can use these everyday activities as a reminder that we're doing this not only for ourselves, but for the benefit of others. And then it becomes connected to compassion. And it really can change what might be a really menial, even kind of unsavory task into something really beautiful.
- [37:45]
A
Just hearing you talk, I get that. The awareness, the mindfulness practice, in my experience, it can be incredibly helpful, but it can also be incredibly dry. And some of these practices that you're sharing also evoke the heart, evoke connection. And so those two together feel like a recipe for more fulfillment. And also, as humans, we want progress, we want that purpose gives us more of a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. So these aren't just practices in meditation. These are ways of living, new ways of being which include the heart and the mind.
- [38:19]
B
Yeah, it turned out that purpose was one of the most important pillars for work we've done with school teachers, where we invited them to reflect on their purpose in becoming a teacher. And we asked them to do this every day before they started school. And many teachers reported that this was like an elixir for their soul. It just gave them a sense of vitality that helped them get through their day.
- [38:45]
A
I know in your work you've been talking about this even here, that we're born to flourish. And you say that that's easier than we think and that it's contagious. I'm curious what the research is that led you to believe this.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah. So thank you for asking me that. The best, most convincing data, hard nosed scientific data, are data in very young infants, before we've had a chance to be socialized and to learn all kinds of negative habits. So there's data showing that in six month old babies, if you show them, expose them for example to puppets playing, where the puppets are cooperative and warm hearted versus really selfish and aggressive. Using clever behavioral strategies, you can essentially query a six month old baby and ask which it prefers. Does it prefer the cooperative warm hearted puppets or the selfish puppets? And there's, you know, the data are super clear. 100% of 6 month old babies prefer the pro social encounter. And it's super robust. And these papers have been published in the very best scientific journals in the world. They're really powerful data. And so these are the kind of data that lead us to the claim that flourishing is innate, that we're really born to flourish. We come into the world with all of these capacities, but it's similar to language. Scientists agree that we all come into the world. Humans come into the world with a capacity for language, but for that to be expressed, it needs to be nurtured. Similarly, for qualities like kindness, we come with a predisposition to be kind, but it needs to be nurtured. And if it's not nurtured, then it can lead to problems. So it's really important.
- [40:58]
A
Yeah. And I also think play is one of those other things where I look at dogs and babies that naturally there's a playfulness and somehow in our conditioning there's become more of a seriousness and just coming back to what's natural. And what are we nurturing in terms of how we live, Cleaning out. I think of like meditation as taking out the trash, just kind of doing a reset every day, brushing our teeth. It's like, are we tending to the mind or is the mind taking over?
- [41:24]
B
And it's interesting you said playfulness. You know, I think one of the marks of a person who's flourishing is that they're playful.
- [41:33]
A
And that's contagious too.
- [41:34]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [41:35]
A
I want to talk about emotions just because I. This is one of the things I love the most. What do you think people misunderstand when it comes to their emotions. Is there anything that you've seen in your work?
- [41:46]
B
Well, I think one of the key misunderstandings is the sense of strong identification with emotions. So when we experience an emotion, we often will use a phrase like I'm sad. We hear people say stuff like that. Right. Well, what does that actually mean? Is all of sad? Is there any part of you that's not sad? You know, maybe even a teeny part, and so beginning to really investigate what that actually means. Can be really helpful in not being fused with the emotion. Emotions are there to serve important functions, but they can perseverate for longer times than they're useful and they can get us into trouble when that happens. And so one of the characteristics of real flourishing is what we would call emotional flexibility. People who are flourishing are not emotional zombies. They have lots of emotion, but they tend to have emotion which is context appropriate. It, and it can change. It can vary a lot. The Dalai Lama, for example, has the most dynamic range of emotion of any human being I've ever met. You know, he can go from crying to laughing or laughing to crying, just like that, just based on differences in what's going on in the context. And there's no, like, latching on, no attachment to the emotion, no lingering beyond the point where it may be really useful.
- [43:29]
A
It's so important to highlight what you just shared, that not identifying with the emotion, it's like, not, I'm sad, sadness is here, but it's not who I am. There's also other emotions when emotions come and go. Just like thoughts come and go, sensations come and go, but what do they come and go within? What is the greater context? Not the content, but what is aware of emotion or thoughts or sensations? And hopefully a meditation practice invites that depth of inquiry, of questioning, because then if you're not identified with it, it's a lot easier to let it go, to let it move through the body.
- [44:02]
B
Exactly.
- [44:02]
A
It's a key to being happier. Right. It's not like something's wrong with me. I'm sad, or I have thoughts again, or this pattern comes up again. It's like, oh, it's just a pattern. It's not who you are. I'm not a perfectionist. The pattern of perfectionism is playing out and you can investigate how is it trying to serve you. So I love the spirituality and the psychology and how those play together. Because at the heart of it, the, the real freedom and the real key is questioning who are you?
- [44:29]
B
You know, I think it's also important to add that flourishing is not being happy all the time. So, you know, if you, if you are grieving and you lost a loved one, you know, it's not happy. And it's, it's really. Those are the occasions where it's appropriate to be sad. But just as you say, it's not who I am, it's sadness is happening and it will change. But it's not about being any particular emotion. It's just being more of a vessel through which these emotions Are it transpiring? It's like, you know, the analogy is between it's like a sky in the clouds. Emotions are like clouds in the sky. They come and they go, but the pristine nature of the sky doesn't change. And that's true in terms of the mind and emotion.
- [45:33]
A
Yeah. And I love that you brought up, you know, even anger. Like, I think that's the most disliked emotion, one of the most disliked emotions in our human collective. And so even anger, there's. It's just feedback that a boundary has been crossed or that you care about something. It's not bad. And the more we open to and allow what's here, the less it gets caught in terms of trying to avoid, or even using meditation to avoid feeling our full human range, totally indulging, like, ruminating and staying locked in it. And so, and I know neuroscientists have found it only takes 90 seconds to feel an emotion before it moves through the body. So it's like, can I fully be with what's here with an open heart? And then it moves, and it doesn't have to stay locked in your experience. That's the fluidity.
- [46:15]
B
Exactly.
- [46:16]
A
In closing, I just wanted to hear if there's any research that you guys are discovering or that you're hearing about or you've already tapped into that we haven't spoken about here that you think would serve people to know. My audience loves data and science, and so I just want to invite anything that I haven't asked that you think it would be valuable for people to know about.
- [46:35]
B
Well, one area that we have not talked about is what you might call personalization or precision kind of training. There's more and more evidence in this realm, but also in many other realms of. Of sort of biomedicine, broadly defined, that suggest that we can do better with more personalized approaches. And that's true, we think, in this realm as well. And so one of the things that I think we'll be seeing a little bit more of in the future, and we're actively studying this now in our center, is figuring out ways to be more precise about the kind of training of the mind that we may be able to suggest to people, to invite them to practice based on knowing more about them and what may be called for right in the moment. And so this is really a new domain of scientific inquiry. And, you know, just to give a kind of very simple example of this, we talked about four pillars of, well, being, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. In our app, the Healthy Minds program, we present these four pillars in that order, starting with awareness, moving on to connection, then to insight, then to purpose. But maybe that's not the best order for some people. Maybe it's better to start with connection for some people. And maybe we can actually find out scientifically what's best rather than having people just use trial and error, which can be frustrating. So that's something that is on the horizon that we're excited about.
- [48:31]
A
I think that will be a game changer for a lot of people that haven't been able to connect with meditation because maybe it's just not the way that they've been doing. It hasn't been aligned for the stage that they're at. And so I think that it's more tailored and personalized. That's beautiful. Well, it's such a pleasure to connect with you. I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. Talk to us about. We'll put the app below in the show notes. But anything else that you're up to that you want to share?
- [48:54]
B
Well, if you can put the app and also our book, which came out two weeks ago, Born to Flourish. And yeah, we really appreciate your interest and I so appreciate your. Your beautiful insight and wisdom, Alyssa, and all that you're doing to help people flourish.
- [49:17]
A
Thank you. Same. I'm really grateful that we've connected and I'm going to check out the app as well myself. I look forward to more. Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself. It truly does make a difference. And if this podcast has supported you, one of the most impactful ways to help us reach more people is to simply press the follow button. It really does help us grow and we are so grateful. I just want to say thank you for being a living example of what it means to walk through the world with an open heart and mind.