Dr. David Vago (10:16)

Foreign.

Unknown (10:22)

Listeners I am absolutely thrilled to bring back on the show. Dr. Dave Vago. Welcome Dave.

Dr. David Vago (10:31)

Great to be here again with you John. Really great time to think about being passion struck.

Unknown (10:37)

Thank you for that. And last time you were on the show was episode 123 and today I recorded episode 54046 a little bit of time has passed and there have been a lot of changes in your life since then. When I recorded this last one, you were at Vanderbilt. You've now moved, if I have it right, across the country. I was hoping maybe we could start off by you getting the audience up to speed on some of the major changes in your life.

Dr. David Vago (11:05)

Oh sure. Well, I was saying before we started this, how we forget there was a pandemic that happened that shut down the whole world for two years since 2020. Yes. I was an associate professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a faculty member at the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. I was a director of research for the Osher center for Integrative Medicine. I was really excited about all the opportunities to do research specifically looking at mechanisms by which mind body practices like meditation, yoga, breath work function to improve health and well being outcomes. What I realized though at 2020 during the pandemic was aside from being stuck and not being able to do any research, was that there was a great need for scaling what we're finding in the sciences, in the neurosciences, the neuropsychiatric sciences, also in integrative medicine, to bring that to the world more in a scalable way. There was lots of people who were consuming meditation, mind, body practice from apps and digital health companies that were starting to emerge. That's where people were getting information, that's where they were getting their practices and content. But they weren't really backed by a lot of science. In fact, there was very little science happening there. So I had the opportunity to start working remotely for the digital health industry and my wife's a clinical psychologist. So we decided we also, we were living in Nashville, Tennessee, so we had some desire to leave politics of the United States and move to Canada. So that's what we did. We picked up, we got in the car, drove to Canada. My wife's Canadian, I'm now a permanent resident. We live in beautiful British Columbia where our family's very happy living here, it's beautiful. We're very attracted to the mountains and the lifestyle and the community here is just fantastic. But I've now moved full time into doing consulting for the digital health industry, helping develop science not only in product design and being doing things in an informed way, but also making sure that the metrics of health are embedded into these kinds of products that people are consuming at very large rates. People really are looking for solutions and we want to provide scalable ones that have real credibility, that actually move the needle for living well, for health span, for longevity, for the most profound deep experiences. Of well being that we last time referred to as self transcendence or spiritual health. Especially now that we look at the data of who's suffering in the world, it's one out of every four people in the entire world are experiencing a debilitating mental health crisis of some sorts. Whether it's actual diagnosed condition or whether they're just having existential angst or dealing with trauma, being around war, it's happening in our direct family units and we have to address it in the most approachable, relatable, scalable ways. And that's where I'm really at right now. I still do a lot, a lot of academic work. I consult on research grants at Vanderbilt still. We're looking at the effects of meditation and sleep and breath work on the glymphatic system of the brain, which is a metabolic waste clearance system. I'm also an advisory board for the Thich Nhat Hanh center of Mindfulness at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Sadhguru center for a Conscious Planet, also part of Harvard Medical school, working with UPenn and their masters in Positive Psychology program, the Mind and Life Institute still. And I'm president now of also the International Society for Contemplative Research, which is an academic society that's focused on studying contemplative practices across the spectrum of different modalities within society. So education, healthcare, and even in the humanities. So we're really trying to focus and broaden how contemplative practices can be researched across the spectrum of society.

Unknown (15:37)

Well, thanks for going into all of that and a lot of changes. You got your hands in a lot of pots, but ton of what you're now into are things I have become extremely passionate about, passion struck about and inquisitive about and trying to get into deeper understanding of this because I think contemplative science, self transcendence, meditation, all these things are becoming more and more important to our human system. I think, and I don't think I told you the story, Dave, but the whole reason I got into what I'm doing now is at this point, almost 15 years ago, I, I started to get these visions and this inner calling. And at the time I was this Fortune 50 executive, so I didn't know what to do with it. But what I was being told is that there are so many people out there who are lonely, helpless, broken, battered, bored, etc, and you are supposed to help them. And when you first hear that, it's like I'm supposed to do what to who? And who are these people? And as I've gotten further and further into this, I think what you're saying is true. I think we've got existential crisis happening all around the world. And when I started to go deeper and deeper into this, I started to look at all those things as symptoms of something greater. And it really led me down this rabbit hole of starting to explore human significance or our longing to belong, our longing to matter not only to ourself, but how we show up for others and then in turn how that influences how we make other people feel like they hold significance. So I thought maybe I'd start out today with when you think of that and you think of the term matter or mattering from your lens, what does that mean to you?

Dr. David Vago (17:50)

It definitely weighs heavy on me to think about what matters and that I try to think about waking up in the morning and thinking about how can you have the most impact today and starting there, given everyone has certain skills. And there, there is this sense that I think as humans we all have a calling or feeling inside that says this is something that you're really attracted to do this. Mine really has been about science and human flourishing. One of the premises that I tried to live by is the mission of Mind and Life. I used to have the Mind and Life Institute used to have a mission. Right now it's bridging science and contemplative wisdom to foster insight and inspire action towards flourishing. I'm much more interested in the science and using my neuroscience background to help provide a scientific understanding of the mind and the mind, body, brain connections to help reduce suffering and promote human flourishing. So what are the ways that we can accomplish that kind of mission? We can do it through dialogue, we can do it through science and research and especially with interdisciplinary groups. Right. So everyone from the philosophical traditions, the wisdom based contemplative traditions, but then the neurosciences and the clinical sciences, how are we all speaking together to accomplish this goal we have for humanity? Which if depression and anxiety, if one out of every four individuals is experiencing a depression and anxiety, that's debilitating and life debilitating meaning like they, it affects how they even get up in the morning and not be able to take care of themselves. People are suffering at higher levels than any time ever in, in human history. And it's increasing dramatically. Like between 2019 and 2020 it was 1 in 8 back in 2020 and that was a 35% increase of rates of depression and anxiety just due to the pandemic starting. And the World Health Organization just put out data for last year that showed that it's no longer one in eight, it's one out of every four. And so no matter what we think we're doing to help, the world is still in need of dramatic changes in order for not only us to, to sustain life in a capacity where everyone's happy and flourishing and well fed and just living a life of peace and comfort. But in order for humanity to flourish, the Earth has to be taken care of too. The planet is going to die. So there's a lot of real critical opportunities here for us to leverage our feelings of calling, of to do something for not just ourselves, but for the sake of humanity. I just try to bring my own scientific lens to that calling and provide insight from that perspective.

Unknown (20:58)

Dave, yesterday I had Dan Heath on the podcast and he has a new book out coming out that I'll put here. It's called, it's not showing up Very well, but it's called Reset, how to Change what's Not Working. And I started to think about that. He's doing this for like organizations, but I mean what you're talking about is we need a global reset because there's so much that's not working right now. And he was talking about in order to solve these major stuck points, you have to find some leverage point. And we were talking about the analogy of it's like your car getting stuck and you're out of gas and you have no one to wave down, your cell phone's out of battery and you gotta start pushing it. And at first, in order to get momentum, you have to have a burst of energy to get it going. And then after that it gets easy. But I keep thinking to myself, what is this burst that needs to happen to get people to start waking up to the enormous number of things that aren't working? Because there's got to be something that's tying through all of it. I feel I'm not sure your thoughts on that. Kind of a deep question.

Dr. David Vago (22:09)

It is a deep question, but it's total relevant 1. One of the opportunities I had recently was to talk to the NIH about a contemplative perspective for a whole person health model. The nih, and specifically the national center for Complementary and Integrative Health, is interested in a fuller picture of what it means to be healthy, to be a healthy human in an integrative way, meaning not just focusing on one system or organ system or one cluster of symptoms, but to think about how we live as good human beings from every dimension, from the social aspects of our health to, even to the physical and even whether it comes to financial health. But most importantly, something that's been left out of the equation is spiritual health. And I was asked to talk about what does it mean to have spiritual health and well being and what are the aspects of spiritual health that we can really begin to research in a really rigorous way. And that's, I think, the opportunity here. If you think about what people report, Even in the 16th century, you know, Michelangelo was talking about the relation between humans and God, the divine. And that connection between the divine and humanity is a context that spiritual health can really facilitate the belief in something better than this inevitability of decline that we're all prescribing to this narrative. We over the ages, right, we know that spirituality and connection to God or some aspect of the divine or something greater than ourselves has been helping us fuel our constant attempts to do something better or to feel something more meaningful, right? And so I think there is a level of that we can work to at using spiritual health as a lens to foster improvement in not only our own personal well being, but as one humanity. One of the ways that we now can separate sort of ways of thinking about spiritual health is through spiritual experiences which are much more fleeting and ephemeral. Short term. They leave lasting impressions or they have high levels of insight and durability. They can be intense, powerful, transformative experiences. This is the kind of experience that we've talked about in the past, the self transcendent one where you feel connection or union to something greater than ourselves. And this could be the divine, it could be just nature, like how you feel when you are outside, just surrounded by trees or the ocean or just watching a sunset. This is what Dacher Keltner refers to as awe. That experience of just being overwhelmed by just the raw, undomesticated energy of nature. The Peruvian, the Cataro philosophy also talks about this raw undomesticated energy. And they have a word for it called salka. And it's that feeling that you have when you're in nature or surrounded by something that is more profound than the narratives that we create about our own ego or self. And when that ego or self and experience of who we are, our identity starts to dissolve in that context of being surrounded by something profound in nature. That's when we have this dissolution of the self. The dissolving of that sense of self, combined with a feeling of union and connection to something greater than ourselves is really the spiritual experience that we're talking about. And there's something healthy about experiencing that more regularly. That it doesn't have to be something that you experience when you go to church or that is dictated by certain dogmatic principles in religion. But it's something that can be ordinary, that you can experience watching a sunset or the smile of a child, or the taste of something that was prepared by master Chef. Something that profound can also be transcendent throughout our normal everyday life. That's one aspect of spiritual health. The other one that we've trying to define is a sense of spiritual well being. That's more trait like that provides a sense of purpose, sense of meaning, a harmony with others. And this is really more based on spiritual religious belief systems where you're countering despair or uncertainty. And it's found more in healthcare or palliative care settings when people are nearing death. This is why we have chaplains and rabbis in hospitals. This is the faith in healing, perhaps believing in a miracle or at least less suffering for oneself or family members. This also is the hope of this kind of spiritual experience also is to replace the despair with the with something that's more trusting in a possibility of better outcomes. It's the level of acceptance and peace that we can embrace amidst all the uncertainty in the world. We are surrounded by uncertainty. It's hard to even think about what our children's children may experience on this planet when the planet is in jeopardy of dying and losing its resources to sustain itself with natural disasters that could take over the entire planet or whether or not humans are going to destroy our existence through some sort of existential threat of nuclear holocaust. With all this uncertainty, spiritual well being and spiritual experiences like the self transcendent ones are, I think offer the best opportunity for a real capacity for human.

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Unknown (30:32)

You just said was so profound I'm almost speechless on where to go with this. But I'm gonna take follow up on a number of different things and have you seen David Attenborough's documentary on Netflix?

Dr. David Vago (30:44)

The recent one? Some of it I've watched a lot of David Attenborough's work in the past. I love his narration and it's always capturing that spiritual or divine raw and domesticated energy of nature which I love. Good stuff.

Unknown (31:02)

Well what I've been telling everyone I know that I can to watch this because profiles his whole life being out in wilderness and he showcases just the tremendous awe he experienced when he was in his 20s first going out and then he profiles what has happened in areas around the world and the magnitude of the changes that are happening and what he was saying, the undercurrent of impact that it's having not only on the planet but nature and the spiritual elements that connect all inhabitants of the planet. And I thought it was one of the most profound things I've watched in a while. First first people I told to watch it were my kids, but I'll put that out there. But I am so glad you brought up the spiritual angle because it is something that I've started to make more a focus and is going to be a core focus in next year's episode. I have Andy Newberg coming on Rick Hansen. I've got a whole bunch of people Coming on to talk about spirituality and science recently had Lisa Miller talking about the science of spirituality as well. Okay, so I want to go back to Dacher for a second because when I interviewed Dacher, and I love to bring him up on this podcast because I love his research, we were talking about the different forms of awe and how it presents itself. And the most prevalent, he told me, was moral beauty. Meaning the most common way we experience is by observing moral beauty, which is acts of kindness or compassion that either we are doing or we're witnessing someone do it for another human. And when I get back to what you were talking about and us feeling a connection, I can't help but think of this term mattering again and that moral beauty, because to me, when we are performing acts of service or we're witnessing others perform acts of moral beauty, that really does ignite that sense of mattering, so to speak. Do you see that connection as well?

Dr. David Vago (33:28)

This comes back to even the sort of contemporary mindfulness movement that talks about process and human connection and speaks a little bit to altruistic motives at least. The meditation practices that we focus on integrating into clinical interventions are intended for self specific purposes. They are intended to help us reduce stress, improve our concentration, and give us a few tool sets to help live a good life for ourself. So it's very self serving. But in essence the core of these practices are intended to not just help you reduce stress and sit on a cushion with your eyes closed. They're intended to provide you the most profound connection. And we're talking about a level of unconditional love that say a mother has for their child. That sense of connection that, that a mother has for their child is the same sense of love and connection and unconditional love that we're trying to achieve with the people in our life, the people in our direct life, our spouses, our children, our neighbors, but even the people that you have difficulties with as well. So I think we're really at a point in our lives where that sort of moral beauty is essential to our humanity to survive. Right? Because that human connection, without it, we just, we're setting up walls and creating polarization between our worldviews that don't allow us to resonate with the most fundamental aspect of being human, which is social connection. So I, I think the mindful practices that are very trendy, that are leading to the best evidence for health outcomes are also deeply rooted in this sense of cultivating moral beauty and pro social behaviors. And that's where I think altruistic Motives to help others instead of just ourselves start to emerge. So we'll more likely feel that connection with others when we do these practices. And there's just much more sense of true happiness when we help others and we see it in ourselves when we do these kinds of actions. Even just putting a tip in the tip jar in the beginning, it's really self serving because you want someone to see you do it. But when you see just the reaction of somebody who may receive your blessing or a tip from the tip jar and how it makes them feel, that's where the genuine level of transcendence actually happens. And it's that moral beauty I think that Dacher is talking about that taps into that.

Unknown (36:30)

No, I agree. And earlier in the week I was interviewing Allison Wood Brooks. Not sure if you're familiar with her, but she's a professor at Harvard Business School and teaches this fun class called how to Talk Gooder in Business and Life. But what we were talking about is the science of conversation. And she said to me, the thing people don't really get with conversation is that it helps you either to be seen or in its absence to be unseen. And it, and it really got me thinking of how surface level the way people listen to others is today. Meaning we don't really do deep listening, deep probing. And I think when we don't allow others to hold space, when we truly aren't involved in what they're saying, it, it does impact their self worth and causes people to shut down. To me, it was an interesting way to think about it. Have you ever thought about that from that standpoint?

Dr. David Vago (37:34)

Oh, for sure. The whole philosophy behind mindful communications is based on this idea that we're always thinking about what to say next when somebody's speaking. You know, we're not trying to deeply engage with others. In fact, there's new evidence that a particular style of communications through mindfulness is really efficacious is one that's called dyadic work, right? So where two people actually sit across from each other and really stare into each other's eyes to really have profound impact, right? And to really hear somebody and listen deeply, that takes a lot of work. It's really hard for someone to feel completely heard, right. That you understand me, that you resonate with me at a deep level. And we're starting to see this even in neuroscience as to how best we can measure these kinds of connections, right? The deep level of connection that somebody has when they resonate deeply. You start to actually see intra cortical synchrony between individuals, meaning that their brains are synchronized between people. And that's where you start to see that deep level of connection. But often in conversation, you're right, it's not frequent where you have true connection between, you know, people that, who are just having a conversation.

Unknown (39:03)

It's interesting. I was doing, just getting into improv a couple years ago and one of the first exercises that we had to do was what you just described. They, we had no idea it was coming, but they made us dance around the room and then they said stop and turn around. And then they made us stare at the other person for five minutes. And they made us try by not using words but just looking at each other to try to convey a piece of ourself to the other person. And when you do that, especially with someone you don't know, it's really uncomfortable, I have to say, but really profound in what it's like to be in quiet, in the presence of someone else's space, so to speak.

Dr. David Vago (39:53)

It's not easy to do and that's, that's why it's so uncomfortable for people to do. But imagine with if you had Kamala and Donald Trump in the same room staring at each other and being fully present in the moment, maintaining eye contact and just sitting in silence with each other, right? What a model that would be for people to engage right at that level. Even in the debates on say like gun control, for example, there's a lot of people who you are adamant against guns are horrible, guns are terrible. All they're meant to do is to for killing. And then you take people who really believe strongly in the power of guns to protect them and why they believe so strongly that they should have them. And if you just put them next to each other and have them debate, they're not going to agree. But imagine putting them in a situation where you deeply had to sit and just connect with them at that profound level. It changes the dynamic to the point where once you feel finally vulnerable and comfortable to connect at that level, there's opportunity to ask questions, to understand more. Where are you coming from? And in some cases, there was a great example of this. I think it was an NPR sponsored event where they had gun control people from both sides engage in a conversation and what they found was when they gave them the real space to share their experiences together, the one individual who was advocating for keeping guns and having guns on them was talking about their experience of trauma in their childhood where they were beaten and abused by their father and the one time that he felt Empowered was when he was able to get hold of a gun and threaten his father that if you ever hurt me again or my mother, I will kill you. And as threatening as it may sound, it was empowering for the individual to say that they had some way to protect them who was beaten all the time. And it was interesting just to witness that individual sharing that experience. As somebody who was a strong advocate for gun control and taking guns away and why that gun was so powerful, it gave another perspective to just human connection with different perspectives. So there is something powerful about taking the time to really be present with an individual and listening so people feel completely heard. And that changes the dynamic in any respect. Relationship.

Unknown (42:37)

Yeah. And the way I was trying to wrap my head around this is I was thinking of Louise Hay's mirror work. And in her practice, you're really putting a mirror in front of yourself to look at yourself. But when we're speaking with someone, we're really not only putting a mirror up to them, but through what they're saying and their experiences, we're really putting a mirror back onto ourselves and how we can relate to the other person. Because there is this, I think, commonality in certain things that make us all feel like we belong. And I see. I think even though someone else's story is different, I think we can see ourselves in it is where I'm going with it.

Dr. David Vago (43:20)

I think we're always seeing reflections of ourselves in others. And the whole mindful communications model focuses on just making space for presence, for awareness, for acknowledging people's emotions without the judgment, the immediate evaluation of what somebody's saying. Just to listen, right? To listen fully without reacting. That also involves intentional speech. Right. Just to ask yourself, is this really necessary for me to say, why do I need to say this in order to make a point or just to maintain awareness or connection? Is it helpful for this particular relationship to improve by what words I choose to use at this point? So there's presence, awareness, empathy. Right? Listening to what people are experiencing, this intentional speech. So you can moderate. Is this an absolutely necessary thing to say? Regulating, Right. If something intensifies in our speech, can we stay composed? Adapting, really to that particular, maybe controversial or emotionally evocative kinds of speech that may that come out in a conversation. And then reflecting is how you can follow up, really, to evaluate any resolution to disagreements about things. Things. So this model of mindful communication should not only reduce conflict, but it's supposed to improve collaboration. It's supposed to achieve deeper connection. And these dyads are in. Are Showing evidence that they work even better than just practicing on a cushion by oneself. But if the intention is to find and nurture pro social types of connections or altruistic types of behaviors, that kind of connection may be necessary. Right. In order to facilitate that kind of personal relationship with others.

Unknown (45:26)

Yeah. Not only essential, it may be foundational. And to do it. I'm just hearing you talk about it. Well, Dave, in contemplative practices, the concept of de centering plays a significant role. How does that ability to decenter from one's thoughts and emotions impact our view of our self and our self worth and how we're showing up for others?

Dr. David Vago (45:53)

Oh yeah, de centering for those in your audience who don't know, it's a psychological process that involves really two components. One is this sort of disidentification from one's internal experience and the other is reduced reactivity to those thoughts that you may be having. So the idea here is that we all have, if we take stock of our mental habits, we have sensations, thoughts and feelings that are not always really helpful. Things like I am stressed, overwhelmed, but other things that are very personally deconstructive in some ways, so we say, or destructive in some ways. I'm not good enough is one of the most common feelings that people experience. And the thoughts that go along with it are always connected to some negative self worth or levels of unhappiness. Things or even just feelings of I'm angry, I'm worried. It becomes reified into our own self identity that I'm an angry person, I'm a worried person. And the idea behind decentering is to provide a healthy distance, psychological distance between oneself and one's thoughts. So you can then take your thought and put it out in front of you and say, well, I'm not angry, I am having a thought that I'm angry. Or it's not that I am not good enough, it's just a thought that I am not good enough. And that distance, that disidentification from that internal experience is probably one of the most critical mechanisms by which any clinical intervention functions to improve our relationship to our own thoughts and feelings. And this requires strengthening the capacity of what we refer to as meta awareness. Right. And we've now put these into our models for mindfulness. We've identified areas in the brain that are important for developing this skill, but it allows us to have that decentered experience with our thoughts and feelings and sensations so we don't get tied into or feeling obstructed by or those thoughts getting in the way of just everyday behaviors. Right. There's data in our lab and others that show specifically that there's a particular brain network called the frontal parietal. A brain network that allows you to gain insight and awareness of your sensations, thoughts and feelings without being entangled by them or having those thoughts, feelings and sensations be part of your own self narrative. And there's another network called the default mode network that is responsible for activating that self reflective narrative. And usually it's associated with those negative types of thoughts. I'm angry, I'm worried, I'm not good enough. And that becomes part of our experience. And if you have those kinds of thoughts of anger, sadness, anxiety and fear, I'm not good enough. These negative sort of self worth thoughts, they are actually influencing our, our physiology at the, even at the cellular level that they're leading to contributing to the risk factors for premature mortality. Right. We're going to lead to chronic inflammatory responses to those experiences that are leading to rises in blood pressure that contributes to our chronic stress states. Yeah. Meta awareness and the process of decentering is probably one of the most critical skills that we develop through mindfulness practice or even any behavioral intervention like cbt, where you gain a healthier relationship to those thoughts. And you see the dynamics with these different brain networks very clearly in models of disease and dysfunction and health and wellness interacting. So you have a better way of flexibly switching out of that narrative that could be destructive and into something that just allows you to be aware of those thoughts without identifying with them or letting them control us.

Unknown (50:21)

So I guess a good way to think about this is I think about it in myself is what you're talking about is the sticky nature of thoughts. And it's these thoughts that create the self critical thought patterns that really at times undermine our feelings of ourselves flourishing or perhaps having purpose or being as good as we could be. And I remember when I was going through cognitive processing therapy, which is a sub layer of cbt, this whole concept of stuck points which to me relates to those sticky thoughts that you're talking about. And in order to break the stuck point, I had to start, like you were saying, decentering, start releasing that the, the probability of that stuck point happening 99% of the time compared to the 1% of time that it happened that was holding me back type of, of thing and letting it go. And once you process it and you let it go, it's a freeing mechanism, so to speak.

Dr. David Vago (51:35)

Yes, we talk about the, the letting go process as one of the most critical. Again processes for the practice without getting stuck. Right? So we know that whatever our attention grabs onto attention, the attention economy of our own brain and physiological system is such that whatever our attention grabs onto or gets a hold of is creates a level of engagement, so much so that it starts to be blind to everything else. Right? And we see this all the time. And there's a phenomenon called change blindness. Right. There's a classic study where you're asked to do a very specific thing that takes a lot of effort counting the number of times a ball is thrown back and forth between individuals. And there's this big gorilla that comes in the room and stares right in the middle of the room and starts beating his chest and then walks off the camera. And you don't even see it. Often people don't even see that the. That that big gorilla came in because of this phenomena of how engaged we are when we're focused and some of the thoughts that are negative in content, we stick to so much so. And we start ruminating right into this sort of reiterative cycle of stickiness that we often are no longer present to anything else that's happening around us. Right. That level of stickiness is strong. We're measuring it. We can see it that you're not responsive anymore to other things in your environment. We get tunnel vision and stuck in particular ways of seeing the world that we no longer can engage with things around us. So mindfulness has been shown to reduce that level of stickiness that you can, and so much so that in advanced practitioners, it's at the level of milliseconds that you can see a difference of how people get stuck on an object or a thought. And in the practice you talk about, the training happens with. Often the idea is rising and passing. That's what I was looking for. In the insight tradition, arising and passing is the training of learning to see an object. Right. Okay. I always use this. An example. Here comes the cup, and it's arising in your mental space. Space. You pay attention to it and then it passes. Right? The arising and passing of an object in space is exactly what we do with thoughts. We train to observe a thought as it arises and as it passes. And the more training you have in that technique, the better you're going to be able to let go of thoughts and just watch them as passing clouds in the sky. That is the essential mindfulness practice is to not suppress anything that's in there, that's all those different thoughts, because that's not going to help you. It's just going to come back to haunt you later but is to become more familiar with all those thoughts and just be aware of them, welcome them in. Right. That's the Rumi poem that is often described in these mindfulness interventions. It's the welcoming in of anything that arises in your mind, whether it's negative or positive, it doesn't matter. But to just become familiar with your own mind and to then just watch these thoughts, feelings and sensations move across your conscious awareness as if they're passing clouds in the sky. That is the ultimate practice of learning to let go of the all the different obstructions that get in the way of cultivating that more fundamental part of practice which is the pro social connection, which is the experience of awe of just of the things that are all around us, the feeling of gratitude that we're living and breathing and able to share that kind of experience with each other. So that's. You have to wipe away all the cobwebs first before you can really get into those more transcendent experiences. So it's essential to cultivate that level of attention and stability first. And that's why Vipassana mindfulness, these practices always start with just a concentration practice where it's just learn to stabilize attention first, then gain insight into your mental habits and then work on the non dual experience of dissolving a sense of self. And, and that speaks to really where the, the science and the field is going like we are now. Contemplative science and contemplative research thinks about the introduction of psychedelics as a way to manifest the mind with intensity. So you become very aware of what's happening in your mind and gives you the opportunity to go beyond it, to let those things go. They're just thoughts, just feelings, just sensations and connect with something deeper and more profound.

Unknown (56:36)

Isn't that some of the work David Yadin is doing?

Dr. David Vago (56:40)

Yeah. So David Yaden, Jonathan Haidt, Andy Newberg and I actually wrote a paper on the experience of self transcendence and that created a model on this experience like I referred to in the beginning, which was a feeling of being connected or union with himself and others and this dissolution of dissolving a sense of ego or self. And that. Yes. So that now David Yadin is at Johns Hopkins doing work with psilocybin specifically to look at the whether that kind of experience, those sort of self transcendent experiences can contribute to health outcomes. And the data seem to be suggesting. Yes, and much faster than a lot of the more behavioral interventions. So the question now with contemplative research is how best can we combine the meditative and cognitive behavioral practices with psychedelics in clinical context to help improve outcomes? So self transcendence again becomes a critical piece to how health and well being affecting our experience in everyday life settings for people. It's no longer this esoteric kind of experience you might have on a meditation retreat on the top of a mountain in Nepal, but it can be just going outside and looking at the sunset that contributes to your better health and well being.

Unknown (58:11)

So maybe, I guess as a connector to that, you have a model that combines self awareness, self regulation and self transcendence.

Dr. David Vago (58:20)

Yes.

Unknown (58:21)

Can you describe that model? And I guess what I'm looking for is, can you describe them? And then how can these principles, when applied to someone, maybe help someone overcome this feeling that they don't matter or that they don't hold space or they're stuck? How could these benefit someone who's in that position?

Dr. David Vago (58:45)

Sure, the way I described this model. And now I've actually added another final piece to that, which is self integration. So if you think about conventional self, right. We can think about I, me and mine. Those are three ways to describe our conventional sense of self that arises from identifying with one's thoughts, emotions and possessions. And this is foundational in the way we experience self identity as separate from others and the world at large. We have ourself. You have yourself and I, me. Mine can be thought of in this sort of metaphoric way as a house. So the house can represent the eye. It's the agentic feeling I am. It's the structure, the foundation. This primary sort of identification points what you identify with. That's who I am. It's my house. And each room in the house represents the me. There are various roles and attributes that we identify with. You may be a father, you may be play sports, so you're an athlete. And each one of those sort of attributes or selves are like different rooms. A kitchen, a bedroom. Study. We all have different roles or Personas and they all fill these different rooms. The mine is the stuff we put in the house. It encompasses all of our possessions that belong to us, material objects. It could be our car. It could be intangible possessions. It could be like beliefs or memories even. That's the mind, the stuff we put in the house or in the rooms. And so the. From the Buddhist perspective, this I, me mind complex is problematic because it leads to attachment. We cling to the positive experiences, we fear the negative ones becomes this roller coaster of emotions. It gives rise to the dualities, the separation of self and other, of mine and yours, good and bad. It's impermanent. As we know everything in our reality is impermanent. And so we cling to those things and it causes suffering. Self awareness allows us to step outside the house and just we're not just one room or another room. We have this composite right that the ourself is comprised of this entire house. And that's insight into our true nature of what's expansive or interconnected. More than we realize on an everyday basis. We realize how ourselves kind of work in different contexts and that we're not just one room or even the entire house. We're actually realize that there are other houses also in the neighborhood. That their other selves and that we're all part of this vast neighborhood. And that all of our experiences are interconnected and interdependent. All the different windows that we can look out into the world provide us perspective. But that the individual really is the community and the community is the individual. This is actually a fundamental principle by the Ubuntu practice to realize how we are one. And there's some really great panishad stories that talk about how ourselves are connected to the greater whole. And so through awareness we recognize our own needs, our wants, our fears, our expectations that our self identity and how it's distinct from needs, wants, fears and expectations of others. And this is our relative reality. And once once you gain insight you into our own mental habits then and realize that there this is a very relative view of the world there. One of the biases that we come to the world with is that is the whole world is only what we see. But there is this absolute reality that's beyond our own senses, right? So we hear between 20 to 20,000 hertz, for example. It doesn't mean that sound doesn't exist below 20 hertz or above 20,000 hertz Earth. It's just our reality is relative to what our sensory apparati can detect and translate into something meaningful. So once you realize that there's an absolute reality, we expand our awareness and this leads to what we refer to as self transcendence. It's the ability to recognize that there are boundaries between self and other and that we can dissolve them or begin to dissolve them when our perspective becomes more non dual and more unified. That that's something that we can investigate also with a scientific lens. This is the self transcendent. And we can't forget about self regulation which is critical to just surviving in this world is how do we manage our impulses? How do we be mindful of our tendencies to act, our habits and to regulate them in ways that are are going to lead to better health outcomes. So these are all techniques that we can use to just be better humans in this reality. So with self awareness and the insight that you get the self regulation that necessary to survive in this society and in the community and the self transcendence you get from the non duality of our experiences all leads to one real great view of navigating all these perspectives of self and integrating them into a unified embodied narrative that is really holistic in nature. Right. We see the whole individual and our relationship to all others on the planet. And that gives us a more full picture of our experience in relation to the world. That is the model, the SART model. Now start to I that helps us better understand and integrate all of these different insights and perspectives into one coherent sort of experience of self or the I me mind complex and transcending it, not attaching to it. It's really just a practice that through that decentering process gives you a pathway for allowing you to become aware of ourselves, our mental habits and to work with that kind of experience to be more aware. Just a better human being in general. Right?

Unknown (65:06)

Absolutely. And I had a really interesting conversation with Angela Duckworth because I was telling her that I really love her work on grit. But I in this conversation said I think you missed an important ingredient. Angela and I call it intentionality. And she equates intentionality to self regulation or self control which I learned as a whole major focus of her. And she said I'm not going to disagree with you that it doesn't play a profound role because it does. But she looked at it as two different things. I look at it as combined, meaning you've got to have self regulation on where you're applying your grit or you're going to apply it to the wrong areas of your life anyway.

Dr. David Vago (65:49)

There's some resistance, of course. Grit is just another technique. Right. To help you with self regulation. Right. To get to really develop resilience. The only problem I see with grit is that it could lead to conflict with one one's own goals. It may not be able to get through a difficult challenging experience with grit. And that could leave you feeling unsatisfied or unsuccessful in your attempts to to reach those goals. And that's where acceptance practice can be very helpful. And there's aspects of even co regulation with others or connection that can help you so you're not completely relying on just oneself for grit. And there's always a growth mindsets that help with the tools to develop self regulatory capacity. And again, this is all about just calming the mind, right? All the mental afflictions that come with having a mind have to be tamed in some way. So inhibitory control, learning how to deal with impulses, but also just learning to regulate and stabilize flexibly. Your attention is critical. And that leads to the most fundamental part of self regulation, which is equanimity. To be able to respond to challenges without reacting and to weather the storm, even maybe the sound of a dog barking in the background without letting it disrupt your level of calm. For example.

Unknown (67:20)

Unfortunately, I lost my sister to pancreatic cancer earlier in the year. And one of the things she asked me to do before she passed was to interview Sharon Salzberg, which I did. And one of her questions that she wanted Sharon to explore was equanimity. And my sister was a Buddhist and she was trying to, I think about how do you deal with the human condition of suffering and how equanimity factors into it. And Sharon did a great job explaining that. So that was a real fascinating discussion we just had on your Sardi framework. I know another area that you have really looked at is, is the temporal nature of memory. And I guess where I want to go with this is how does the way we remember our past influence our sense of self or sense of mattering in the present?

Dr. David Vago (68:20)

Let's try to unpack that a little. So memory, of course, has its nuances and complications of how a memory is formed in different modalities, right? So you have different sensory modalities that you haven't experienced with. And each one has a unique way of consolidating into some permanent trace in your brain. And that's subject to retrieval later. You can recall that experience in some reconstructed way and think about it. And unfortunately, if you really think about memory enough, you realize how very little we can recall about our life. You think about some of the most profound moments in our lives that we can recall. And they're always associated with intense arousal or some sort of high level of emotion and often some sort of trauma, unfortunately. So it's the way that memory is or that experiences are encoded in, into our memory really depends on those factors of intensity and arousal and emotion. If there's a need for there to be a learned experience that we want to be able to recall later in an episodic way, meaning there's a feeling state associated with it. There's a. There's Some, maybe some visual kind of representation that we can recall. Maybe there's other sensory aspects of the memory that we want to bring back. That's very unique to say something like riding a bike and learning how to ride a bike because that's also a memory, but it's a skill based memory that we refer to as procedural or skill based type of memory. And in fact even automatized thoughts can also engage the same circuitry as riding a bike or skill based procedural types of memory. It's. But those are fundamentally different types of memories that are created and we just have to recognize that they're different and involve different circuitry. There's basal ganglia, for example, that are really important for skill based learning. And you don't have to explicitly recall them. They don't use language to know how to ride a bike. When you get on it, your body knows, right? So it's very much more an embodied kind of form of memory. The more explicit forms of memory that are declarative in nature that you wrote memorization that were used to is reading facts and being able to regurgitate. Those are also much more complicated for humans because it just takes much more effort to encode and consolidate and then be able to retrieve them later. There's a whole biochemical cascade of events that happens during an event of memory over experience in order for it to be consolidated into short term or, or working memory and then later stored into long term storage where it's where you can recall it easily. There's also habits of thinking that repeat themselves over time that become much more difficult to change if they happen over and repeatedly. The metaphor for this actually was created by Ralph gerard in the 1940s and Donald Hebb when they talked about long term potentiation and how cellular processes work to in to create a memory trace. And the metaphor is the sand castle. It's really nice way to think about the experience of water trickling down over a sand castle. And at first it creates grooves in that sand castle. And then over time the water as it repeats the same patterns, it will make deeper and deeper grooves. Another theoretical model that just came out more recently by Robin Carhart Harris. He talks about canalization. And this sort of station is the deepening of the canals of those memories. And so if it's traumatic, it's going to be even deeper groove and much harder to change if it has that intense emotion or a level of arousal tied to it. That's what happens with memories that are especially destructive mental habits that related to trauma and that's why psychedelics may actually have a real profound ability to extinguish those types of traumatic memories because they have a dramatic way of inducing neuroplasticity to change that canalization that may have happened over time over trauma or, or intensity. And you have. The only way to get out of that deep groove is another sort of intense kind of experience. That's what happens with exposure therapy as well. When you expose yourself to something that was previously traumatic, it allows you to experience the same sort of sensory modalities of the experience, but reconsolidate them in a more adaptive kind of trajectory. Not an easy thing to do, but much easier to do when you're exposed to the same context and then changing the outcome, changing instead of something that was deeply hurtful, you're making something positive out of it. That's how extinction works to replace or compete with existing. There's controversy over whether the actual original trace is, is actually deleted or that you're just competing with the old memory trace with something more adaptive. That's how the memories will change. So fundamentally we can say different types of memory, episodic, declarative, procedural. These are very different circuitries involved. We can say that there's a very clear time course of having experience to the point where you consolidate the memory and can recall it. And anywhere along that biochemical cascade you can interfere with it. And in fact sometimes you, if you interfere at the right time with the right chemicals, you could really weaken the memory through like protein kinase blocking or like CAMK2 or PKA PKC. These are different kinase or enzymes that are responsible for helping the memory trace encode. And then you can also use those kinds of chemicals to help either facilitate a recall later or to block it even more after the memory has moved into long term storage. So there's a lot of research that's still happening along those lines to help people. How do you reduce the impact of something that may be traumatic? Is there something you can take right after a traumatic event to reduce the traumatic nature of it affecting later behavior or thoughts? Or how do you stop it from being over overwhelming later on when you have to expose to that memory that is intrusive into your everyday life?

Unknown (75:12)

Thank you for going there. And I was thinking as you were talking about prolonged exposure therapy, because I've done it and it sucks. It's really painful. It's really painful to live through the same traumatic thing again and again and again. But as you were talking about it, I wonder how different it would have been if I had used psilocybin to help with the process. And it's interesting, Dave, I have been a supporter of the Warrior Angels foundation and they had this retreat. We were at my friend Andrew's farm outside of Houston, Texas. And There were about 80 veterans there, almost all of them special operators. And it was amazing as I was talking to these guys, how many of the symptoms we share overlap. And I would say out of the group who were there, about 90% of them were in clinical trials using psilocybin or MDMA or something like that. And the amount that were not getting helped through classic talk therapy and who this was working for was really eye opening. And I think what David Yaden told me is that there's almost close to a 70% efficacy rate that they're seeing through the use of using some of these drugs to help with getting over some of these traumas, which is great.

Dr. David Vago (76:35)

It is incredible. It's not legal yet, but once it does get approved by the fda, it's likely to revolutionize how we work with trauma and treatment protocols specifically to. To help reduce the impact, the long term impact of trauma. The Stanislav Grof, one of the pioneers in the field Psychedelics will be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy. I believe that because it has a profound ability to hijack the neuroplastic sort of effects of serotonin in the brain. And there's. Not only is there an ability to help reconsolidate memories that have been traumatic, but there's a sense of meaningfulness that comes out of those transcendent kinds of experiences that most participants will say that it's among the top 10 or 5 most meaningful experiences of their life. Right. And that compared to placebo is true. Dramatic difference, right? So it's not only is it hijacking this special circuitry that this, the 5HT2, a serotonin receptor binding induces this real change in neuroplasticity where there's now a real sort of what you call is you take a memory trace that may be traumatic, you make it labile, meaning you make it temporarily pliable or plastic, such that you can now change it. And you're taking that memory, you're using pharmacology to make a traumatic memory susceptible to a more adaptive type of experience that you remember not in a positive way, but in a way that's more easily. You can more easily cope with. It has these dramatic abilities to work along with the behavioral approach that you get in psychotherapy to Augment the necessary changes in those kinds of traumatic memories that are going to be therapeutic.

Unknown (78:41)

Well, I think the other thing I think it does is part of the reason some of these therapies are difficult for people to go through. I found it with myself, is you have to be. If you want prolonged exposure therapy to work, you've got to be really vulnerable. You have gotten to put yourself out there and put your truth out there. And for some people it's hard to do. But I think when you're in an altered state of mind, it may lessen the burden that you feel on opening the mind to talk about those things, so to speak.

Dr. David Vago (79:13)

That's a really good point. And psilocybin and MDMA have shown to do that. In fact, even mdma, which has been even more successful in the VA system or people who experience trauma especially related to war, there's this increased feeling ratings of loving, sociability, friendliness that come with them. So that decreases the ability to detect hostile faces. It decreases that feeling of rejection even after playing competitive games. So it helps really I think break down some of the boundaries or that or walls that people put up to defend them. That the fragility of that sense of self that's been wounded and then allows you to work with that. Right. In use leveraging the plasticity that happens just from using those. But again, it's always done in the context of psychotherapy. A lot of scaffolding around help. What does it mean to break down this I me mind complex? Right. That's transformative. And I think as we talk about integration of spiritual well being into our concept of whole person health, that kind of self transcendent experience that contributes to deep profound shifts in our traumatic memories are really going to be how it's going to. It's bringing the sacred into the everyday. It's helping us promote sense of meaning, facing something greater than oneself, but also a level of just overall being from the deeply profound experiences that we can have that are beyond the self.

Unknown (81:00)

Dave, it's been such an amazing opportunity to interview you again. I had one last question I wanted to ask you. Through you I met Jeff Walker, who's become a really good friend. And you and he shared a similar mission to put an end to human suffering. How do you see this concept? We've talked about meaning mattering significance, feeling value and connected as central to alleviating suffering both at an individual level, but maybe also at a societal level.

Dr. David Vago (81:35)

Yeah. One of the ways that I think are really critical right now is when, well, dialogue is really critical. Interdisciplinary dialogue from diverse disciplines and studying the mind consciousness from multiple perspectives I think contributes to the alleviation of suffering. And one of the ways directly, especially right now given all the conflict in the world is the emergence of this new technology AI. We haven't really talked about it but AI artificial intelligence is starting to be designed or with consciousness like qualities and how we integrate that into our everyday experience is going to be critical to the future of humanity. So there are ways of thinking about empathy, emotional complexity, meaning making, purpose, moral agency, responsibility, even creativity. All of these kinds of fundamentally human characteristics are now being translated into these AI systems. And I think the big opportunity for us is to use those for good. I think there are ways that we can leverage our technologies that will help us rather than harm us. And that is an opportunity that I think even the contemplative research field can contribute to in a positive way. And I that's where I think there's the sort of a real shift in our society and our in driving sort of digital kinds of therapeutic tools for health and well being to really scale all of the wisdom based traditions that are out there in, in, in dramatic ways. We can't. We know that the best teachings are great wisdom holder and one individual and that relationship is going to lead to improving people's suffering. But if we really need scalable solutions then we have to embrace the fact that technology is going to be part of that equation. And I think contemplative research is one perspective that will help design AI systems that for example can embody those human qualities but in a more ethical kind of way. The ethics piece is critical though.

Unknown (83:56)

It sounds like I could bring you on for around three and just discuss AI.

Dr. David Vago (84:00)

Yeah. That the society actually is, is trying to create research networks around AI and contemplative practice or what it like to be human and using those kinds of characteristics to really think about ethically and responsibly integrating those kinds of human like characteristics into into AI systems that are being built. So yes, let's connect again in the future. I'll let you know how that's going. The ISCR is really trying to build lots of these kinds of opportunities for working groups where we focus on high priority research topics like self transcendence and spiritual health or AI and human consciousness to figure out the best ways that our society will benefit from those conversations. In fact the dollar there's going to be a mind and life meeting next year that's going to focus on AI systems and consciousness from a contemplative perspective. So I'll be happy to come back and report to you on how that goes.

Unknown (85:01)

That would be awesome that I. I can't wait for that discussion. Well, Dave, if a listener you are involved in so many things now. If a listener wants to get a hold of you and understand what you're doing, where's the best place that they should go?

Dr. David Vago (85:15)

The best place. If you're interested in what I've been doing with contemplative research and digital health industry, you can go to contemplativeneurosciences.com or if you want to really connect with the community of contemplative research, check out iscrsociety.org that the society is really doing the bulk of connections with across both meditation, mindfulness, integrative health and psychedelics science to really benefit humanity. So check that. Check them out when you get a chance. Icr.org and contemplative neurosciences.com if you want to see more about my work personally.

Unknown (85:53)

Dave, thank you for joining us again. It's always such a profound opportunity for deep discussion when you come on the show.

Dr. David Vago (86:00)

Really great. I love your questions. Thanks, John, and thanks to all your community members who are out there listening. You could always reach me through my website. So I look forward to continuing the dialogue and we'll come back another 500 episodes later, see where we're at.

Unknown (86:14)

Awesome.

Dr. David Vago (86:15)

Okay, thank you for the opportunity.

John R. Miles (86:19)

What an enlightening conversation that was with Dr. David Vago. His profound insights into the intersection of neuroscience, mindfulness and human flourishing provided such a powerful lens through which to explore the concept of mattering. One of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is the role of meta awareness in and contemplative practices and fostering a sense of self worth, connection and significance. Dr. Vago's discussion on dissolving the self other divide, the adaptive mind, brain, body interactions, and how mindfulness rewires the brain to overcome feelings of insignificance was truly inspiring. His practical advice for integrating these practices into daily life reminds us that cultivating mattering for ourselves and others is a journey rooted in intentionality and awareness. As we wrap up, take a moment to reflect on today's insights. Where in your life can you practice more self awareness or build deeper connections with others? What steps can you take to ensure that you and those around you feel seen, valued and significant? Remember, mattering starts with small deliberate actions that ripple outward into transformation. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please Take a moment to leave us a five star rating and review and share how these insights are impacting your journey. And if you know someone who could benefit from Dr. David Vago's message, please share this episode with them. Your support helps us grow this community and inspire meaningful change. For links to everything we discussed today, including Dr. Vago's research and the tools he shared, check out the show notes@passionstruck.com youm can also support the show by visiting our sponsors@passionstruck.com deals where you'll find discount codes and special offers. Every resource fuels the show and helps us bring you these inspiring, inspiring conversations week after week. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you that I'm passionate about sharing these insights with organizations and teams through speaking engagements. If today's episode inspired you and you think my message could bring value to your company, visit johnrmiles.com speaking to learn more. Let's work together to create intentional change and ignite growth. And lastly, for those of you who want to find your starting point on the path to becoming passion struck, take our quiz@passionstruck.com next episode. I am thrilled to welcome Francesca Sitma to the Passion Shark Podcast. Francesca is a transformational coach and founder of Hypno Breathwork, a groundbreaking method that combines hypnotherapy, breathwork and neuroscience to help people release limiting beliefs and uncover their purpose. In this episode, we explore how this innovative approach can break through subconscious blocks, foster self awareness, and ignite the clarity needed to live with intention. It's a conversation filled with powerful insights and practical tools you don't want to miss.

Dr. David Vago (88:52)

You need to use Hypno Breathwork to heal because if you've been numbing out, if you have a big ego, if you have a lot of protective strategies, you can't get into that higher state.

John R. Miles (89:00)

Of clarity because all of that energy.

Dr. David Vago (89:02)

Is just working on suppressing that ability to access your highest states. So you have to heal first and then you can start to make creative connections and discover how your skills and your experiences and your obstacles and then turning those out outwards will help you discover your purpose.

John R. Miles (89:19)

Remember, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value in today's episode, share it with someone who could benefit. Together, we can spread the message of intentional living and create a ripple effect of positive change. Until next time, live life Passion Struck did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult.

Dr. David Vago (89:48)

Life skill to teach?

John R. Miles (89:50)

Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending. With real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money. With guardrails in place, sign up for Greenlight today@Greenlight.com podcast.