The Manosphere Report

0:00We actually have really good data on this that at least for beginning meditators, if

0:05you do it for 30 days and you do it just five minutes a day,

0:09you will see a significant reduction in symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety and symptoms

0:16of stress. We've shown that repeatedly in randomized controlled trials.

0:21You'll see an increase on measures of well -being or flourishing and we can talk

0:26about what those actually mean.

0:28You can even see, just with this amount of practice, a reduction in IL -6.

0:35IL -6 is a pro -inflammatory cytokine.

0:38Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science -based tools for

0:43everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford

0:52School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr.

0:55Richie Davidson. Dr. Richie Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University

1:00of Wisconsin -Madison. He is a pioneer in the study of how meditation impacts the

1:05brain, both during meditations, but also how it changes your brain over time, what we

1:10refer to as neuroplasticity. Today, we discuss the incredible health and neuroplasticity benefits that come

1:15from regular meditation, including very brief meditations of just five minutes per day.

1:20Dr. Davidson also dispels many common myths about meditation.

1:24For example, contrary to what most people believe, the point of meditation is not to

1:29clear your mind or to feel inner peace during the meditation, but rather to observe

1:34your thoughts and any stress you might experience during the meditation.

1:37And in doing so, it's kind of like the final hard repetitions of resistance exercise

1:41or the burn you might feel during cardio, which comes from lactate.

1:45In that sense, the stress you feel during meditation and your ability to observe it

1:50acts as a sort of lactate of the mind that in turn makes you adapt.

1:54It makes you more stress -resilient, focused, and peaceful outside of the meditation.

1:58Dr. Davidson also explains how your brain changes during different types of meditation, such as

2:03open monitoring meditation or eyes open meditation, walking versus seated and standing meditations and more.

2:10I've been doing meditation over many years, but this conversation with Dr.

2:14Ritchie Davidson changed my daily routine.

2:16Afterwards, I immediately started implementing a five -minute -per -day meditation of the sort that

2:21Dr. Davidson describes specifically for stress resilience.

2:24And I have to say it's had a profound impact on my levels of mental

2:27clarity, focus, and sleep, and stress, just as he explains.

2:32In fact, it's proved to be one of the most beneficial practices I've taken on,

2:35especially on days when I wake up with tons to do, a little bit stressed

2:39or a lot stressed, and if I didn't sleep quite as well as I would

2:42have liked. So today, you're going to hear about the incredible science of meditation, the

2:46brain and bodily changes that occur, but also how you can rewire your brain using

2:50meditation. Dr. Ritchie Davidson is a true pioneer in this field, being one of the

2:55first to bring brain imaging and studies of mindfulness and meditation to the West.

2:59He has, of course, authored some of the most impactful research papers on these topics,

3:03but also popular books, including a new book coming out later this month entitled, Born

3:08to Flourish, How to Thrive in a Challenging World, which I myself look forward to

3:12reading. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my

3:16teaching and research roles at Stanford.

3:18It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer

3:22information about science and science -related tools to the general public.

3:25In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.

3:29And now for my discussion with Dr.

3:31Ritchie Davidson. Dr. Ritchie Davidson, welcome.

3:34Thank you, Andrew. I'm honored to be here.

3:37It's an honor to have you here.

3:39I am a longtime fan of your research, of what you've built at the University

3:45of Wisconsin, Madison, the books you've written.

3:48We'll talk about your new book.

3:49I didn't even know you had a new book.

3:50This wasn't a book tour invite.

3:52I had seen you give a seminar at Stanford, and I said, great, here's my

3:56opportunity to finally get you on the podcast.

3:59But you really transformed the way that I think about not just meditation, but all

4:04states of mind and how that relates to our individual traits and how those can

4:10change over time. Today, we'll talk about concept and protocols.

4:14But I'm curious how you think about states of mind generally.

4:21I think it's really important that we frame the discussion with this because we all

4:25know what sleep is. Most people have heard that sleep has different components, REM sleep,

4:30et cetera. We know what it is to be awake, stressed versus calm.

4:33But how should we think about states of mind?

4:36And then once you tell us how you think about that, perhaps then we can

4:41better place this thing we call meditation into a particular bin.

4:46So thank you first for having me, Andrew.

4:49And I just want to say, I've been a long -term fan of yours, so

4:52I'm really happy to be here.

4:55In terms of states of mind, I think that at the outset, it's really important

5:00that we also remind listeners that there is a thing called traits too.

5:08And so we can't talk about states without also talking about traits.

5:13And we'll get to traits in a moment.

5:15But I think with regard to states, we can think of them as organized patterns

5:21of activity in the brain.

5:24that have corresponding organized mental correlates, if you will, or subjective correlates.

5:34And there are certain states that occur with regularity that are part of our biological

5:42rhythms. And so most human beings will have states of wakefulness, of deep sleep and

5:51of REM sleep every day.

5:53And that is regulated by well -known kinds of biological rhythms.

5:58And there are other kinds of states that are sometimes described that are states during

6:05what we normally think of as waking.

6:08Although I think, honestly, the concept of state is often used loosely without rigorous boundary

6:17criteria for what constitutes a state and how it might be distinguished from another state.

6:23There are certain states which, if they occur with regularity, will lead to a trait.

6:30They'll lead to a shift in the baseline for the next state.

6:36There was a paper I wrote many, many years ago with my dear friend and

6:41colleague, Daniel Goleman, who I wrote the book Altered Traits with, and the origin of

6:47Altered Traits is really in a sentence that we wrote in a paper 20 years

6:52earlier where we said the after is the before for the next during.

6:59Yeah, after is the before for the next during.

7:02Let's drill into that for a second.

7:03Yeah, so what we mean by that is that the how you are after a

7:09state, say you do a little meditation practice and it leads to a state change,

7:16that state change may persist in some way and that becomes the next before for

7:26the next during. The during is the state, is the, say, the meditation state.

7:31And so it's a description of how a state can lead to a trait.

7:37In the domain of emotion, you might think that frequent bouts of anger, which you

7:43can think of as a state, can lead to the trait of irritability, which is

7:49sort of chronically having a low threshold.

7:52You can think of a trait in certain cases as altering the threshold for the

7:57elicitation of a state. So a trait of irritability would be a trait where you

8:04have a lowered threshold for the elicitation of anger, for example.

8:09Yeah, I love that example because I know that many people will resonate with it

8:14because so much of what we see online nowadays is designed to capture our attention

8:20by engaging a negative affect, mild anger, frustration, or even outrage.

8:26There's other content online too, of course, and this podcast is online after all.

8:31And many other sources of what I consider benevolent educational information.

8:36But it is so true that, you know, what we experience in one portion of

8:45our day impacts how we are in the rest of our day.

8:48And perhaps the simplest correlate for all of it, for me anyway, is sleep.

8:54You know, if I sleep really well for three or four nights in a row,

8:57I wake up in a certain state that certainly makes my day go differently.

9:01And the inverse is also true if I don't sleep well.

9:04I feel like we have such great nomenclature and understanding of brain activity and how

9:11that impacts emotionality for sleep.

9:14We know that REM sleep -based dreams are very vivid.

9:18Slow -wave sleep -based dreams are less vivid perhaps.

9:21We know the electrical activities associated with those different states of sleep.

9:26I'm aware of a lot less information about brain activities and clear definitions of waking

9:34states of mind. Do you mind if we talk about this for a little bit?

9:37Sure. It's been a few years since I've heard about, and I don't think we've

9:40ever really talked on this podcast about alpha waves, beta waves, theta waves.

9:44Maybe you just educate us a bit on some of the waking brain states that

9:48we've all experienced, perhaps are in right now, but we just don't hear about that

9:53much anymore. So, yeah, we can talk about those oscillations of brain electrical activity, and

10:00there are broad suggestions for what kind of state they may reflect.

10:08And, you know, I'll go through that, but it's also important to recognize that you

10:13can be showing alpha activity in one part of the brain and beta activity in

10:18another part of the brain simultaneously.

10:20And so it's a bit coarse to talk about these as general characteristics, but there

10:26could be times when we see predominantly one oscillation or another, and so talking about

10:34generalized states in that context may be more reasonable.

10:37So with that as a caveat, let me say that in humans, we see a

10:44broad range of frequencies that go from approximately one hertz, one cycle per second, to

10:50approximately 40. And so with that, let's finish that the question.

10:51hertz. And from roughly 1 to 4 hertz is delta activity that is typically not

10:58seen during waking. It's predominant during deep sleep.

11:02And there is data that suggests that the density of delta activity or slow wave

11:11activity during deep sleep is actually diagnostic of how restorative that sleep is, which is

11:17a whole separate set of issues and super cool.

11:20And there are actually some really interesting, highly novel strategies now using neurostimulation to actually

11:28boost slow wave activity during deep sleep, which may actually help to potentiate some of

11:36the skill acquisition that we do during the day, including meditation.

11:40And we're doing some of that work now, which is actually you had asked earlier

11:44before we started about some novel new work that we're doing.

11:49And that's also one of the really cool new things.

11:52So we can dive into that.

11:55I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors, David.

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14:30I saw a paper recently that described a...

14:34And forgive me if this was one of your papers.

14:36I don't think it was.

14:38It described a pre -sleep meditation that one could do to significantly increase the amount

14:44of growth hormone that's released once one gets to sleep.

14:47And I thought... Yeah, that wasn't ours.

14:49And then I realized this makes total sense, right?

14:53I mean, it has to do with...

14:55I forget the sentence you wrote, but that how we exit one state impacts how

15:00we encounter the next one, and perhaps even our trait within that next event of

15:06life. So we'll definitely get back to this when we talk about protocols, because I

15:11think that people vastly underestimate the extent to which different...

15:16Let's call them meditations, for lack of a better word right now, how that can

15:21impact how we show up to work, how we show up to relating, how we

15:24show up even to sleep.

15:26Absolutely. And it's not just about being calm so you can fall asleep.

15:29It turns out this meditation that was described boosts growth hormone in an, you know,

15:36incredible way without altering some of the other features of sleep.

15:41I saw that paper too.

15:42Oh, okay. It wasn't ours.

15:43Yeah. But yeah, super interesting.

15:46I agree. Yeah. So just to continue with the brain oscillations, I talked about delta.

15:51The next brain, the next faster brain rhythm is theta activity, which is roughly between

15:58five and seven hertz. Theta activity is often seen during transition from wakefulness to sleep.

16:06And it's associated with these, as you were saying earlier, these liminal states.

16:13It's also been associated with certain kinds of meditation.

16:18Alpha. Beta activity is roughly between 8 and 13 cycles per second or hertz and

16:25it's often characterized as quote relaxed wakefulness.

16:31Beta activity is typically defined as roughly 13 to roughly 20 hertz and it's associated

16:40with activation. If there is a cognitive task that a person is engaged in, you

16:48will typically see increases in beta activity, particularly in the cortical regions that are engaged

16:55in those cognitive tasks. And then finally there's gamma activity.

16:59Gamma activity is especially interesting.

17:02We see that in meditators, long -term meditators.

17:05Gamma activity has as its peak frequency roughly 40 hertz.

17:11It is seen in a number of contexts.

17:14One of them is during what some have called insight.

17:20And insight is where I think most viewers have had the experience of working on

17:26a problem and all of a sudden they just have an aha moment and things

17:30sort of gel, they congeal, they come together.

17:34And there have been some clever experimental designs where investigators have created tasks that increase

17:41the likelihood of aha moments.

17:43They're sort of trivial in the experimental context or simple cognitive tasks where all of

17:48a sudden you just recognize the answer.

17:51It might be something like a crossword puzzle.

17:53And, you know, you're trying to get something, a word to fit and suddenly you

17:57get the word. It comes in a moment and it's kind of an instantaneous recognition.

18:02And you typically would see a burst of gamma oscillations that is very short.

18:08The average duration would be around 250 milliseconds.

18:12Really short. What we see in these long -term meditators is the prevalence of high

18:18amplitude gamma activity that goes on for seconds and minutes.

18:23When we first saw that, by the way, and there's a lot of interesting history

18:27here, but we first reported this in 2004 with very long -term meditators where the

18:33average lifetime practice of this group was 34 ,000 hours.

18:38Listeners can go to the arithmetic later, but 34 ,000 hours is a big number.

18:44And in these practitioners, we saw these really high amplitude gamma oscillations that actually were

18:52visible to the the naked eye, which is unusual for this kind of measurement.

18:58And in the original paper, which was published in PNAS in 2004, we actually had

19:04a figure of the raw EEG from one practitioner just to illustrate how prominent it

19:10is that you can see it with the naked eye.

19:12And we've subsequently replicated that.

19:15It's been replicated by others.

19:16We've also seen that this gamma activity is found during slow -wave sleep.

19:22It's actually superimposed on delta oscillations.

19:26Is there any evidence that meditation can actually replace sleep or that it can offset

19:31some of the negative effects of mild sleep deprivation?

19:35This is a great question.

19:36I think about it a lot.

19:37I don't think that the evidence is clear on this at all.

19:43And I'll give several examples.

19:45First, the Dalai Lama, who probably meditates more than anybody I know, he has a

19:50practice of literally doing approximately four hours of meditation every day.

19:55And he's been doing that for more than 60 years.

19:58I'm reassured by that. If you told me the Dalai Lama meditates for, you know,

20:0240 minutes a week, I'd actually be concerned about the role of Dalai Lama.

20:07So the title, you know.

20:08And he very proudly says, I sleep nine hours a night.

20:13Wow. Okay. Nine hours a night.

20:15And he gets nine hours of sleep.

20:17That's his regular sleep. And he gets it all the time.

20:21And, you know, I don't know whether he would say he needs it, but he

20:25gets nine hours a night.

20:26And he's very proud of that.

20:29Okay. That's one counterexample. You know, myself, I have done a bunch of sleep science

20:35collaborating with some sleep researchers.

20:38And many years ago, one of these people said to me, Richie, you really should

20:42give up an alarm clock.

20:43Just don't use an alarm clock anymore.

20:45And I was getting at that time between five and a half and six hours

20:49a night of sleep. And I gave up the alarm clock and my average length

20:54of sleep increased by about 30 to 45 minutes.

20:58And I feel much better.

21:00Oh, sure. Especially since the extra sleep tends to be toward morning, you're getting more

21:05REM sleep. Exactly. The difference for me between five and a half and, you know,

21:09six or six and a half is, in terms of just subjective well -being and

21:13focus, et cetera, is tremendous.

21:16Slightly related question. If one were going to choose to meditate and had the option

21:22to do it at a sort of liminal state between, let's say, being awake and

21:28going to sleep at night or between sleep and shortly after one wakes up and

21:34starting the day versus in the middle of the day or in the middle of

21:38the morning, is there any advantage to placing meditation in one of these what I'm

21:42calling liminal states or transition states between sleeping and awake in either direction?

21:46I would say - I would say - I would say - I would say

21:47- I would say - Probably for most people, yes is the answer, but I

21:51think there's a lot of individual variability.

21:54In general, I would say it's useful to meditate when you're feeling most awake and

22:03less sleepy. Sleepiness is an important obstacle in meditation and there's a lot to say

22:09about that. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear that.

22:11I expected you to say that one should meditate at a time when the brain

22:17is closest to sleep because you want to be in a state of mind that's

22:22less about controlling your thoughts.

22:24But then again, I could also see an argument for how meditation involves a redirect

22:29of attention. So let's actually drill into this a bit.

22:33What is the meditative state that one is seeking for quote -unquote effective meditation?

22:40Yeah, so first let me say that just like there are hundreds of different kinds

22:46of sports, there are hundreds of different kinds of meditation.

22:49They don't all do the same thing.

22:50They have different effects on the brain and the body.

22:53And so I think it's really important that we not lump all of meditation together.

23:00So that's one really important thing.

23:03Can we divide it up?

23:05So for instance, if we were gonna draw the parallel with exercise, maybe we'll do

23:09that several times today. We can broadly lump exercise into cardiovascular and resistance training.

23:15There's also mobility work and then there's a bunch of other stuff.

23:18With meditation, can we create some broad bins?

23:22Yes. And what are those broad bins?

23:24And then we can go into specific practices.

23:26Yeah, so yes, we can create some broad bins.

23:28So, and we've done that.

23:30We've published some papers that offer typologies for classifying different meditation states.

23:38So one kind of meditation we call focused attention meditation.

23:43And focused attention meditation is where you are narrowing your aperture of awareness to a

23:52specific object. It could be an external object.

23:55It could also be an internal.

23:56It could be, for example, your respiration.

23:59It could be a sound.

24:01And there is a narrowing of the aperture.

24:04And this is all broadly within the category of practices that we would say are

24:09cultivating aspects of awareness. So another awareness practice is what we call open monitoring meditation.

24:19And open monitoring is where there is no specific focus.

24:24But rather, the aperture is broadened.

24:28And there is no specific intention to focus on any one thing or another.

24:35The invitation is to simply be aware of whatever is arising as it arises.

24:41One of the aspirations there or the invitations is not to try to get rid

24:46of thoughts because our minds and our brains are built to generate thoughts.

24:52So there's no goal, if you will, to get rid of thoughts, but rather to,

24:57if thoughts arise, that's another object that you can be aware of.

25:02You know, we talked about sleep and sleepiness and that earlier.

25:06You can even, you know, you can do, you can be aware of being sleepy.

25:10You can be aware of being distracted.

25:12The goal, if you will, is not to change or to fix anything.

25:17If you will, the invitation is to shift from a mode of doing to a

25:22mode of simply being. I want to talk about this thing about doing to being

25:27because the language can sound a bit mystical and vague to people, but as a

25:34longtime practitioner of Yoga Nidra, I've talked a lot about on this podcast, there's this

25:40instruction inside of Yoga Nidra to shift from thinking and doing to being and feeling.

25:47Exactly. Which is beautiful language, poetic, et cetera, but also as neuroscientists and for the

25:53general public, I think it might be useful for us to just maybe just double

25:56click on that for one second.

25:58As a neuroscientist, I think of thinking and doing as, okay, doing is action.

26:04So that would, the opposite of that would be stop moving the body.

26:10Thinking, well, there's a whole discussion to be had about what is thinking in neuroscience,

26:16but certainly you wouldn't want to plan.

26:20You wouldn't want to be ruminating on the past.

26:24Presumably you would want to be more in a state of sensation and perceiving what's

26:29happening right now. So is that an appropriate breakdown or is it wrong?

26:36Is it insufficient? I'm not trying to score an A with the professor here.

26:40I'm just trying to, I'm trying to figure out when we hear move from thinking

26:42and doing to being and feeling.

26:44What does that mean in terms of actionable steps that people can take?

26:49Yeah. So I think that the way you describe it is basically accurate with a

26:56little bit of perhaps tweak.

27:00So if, if when, if one is invited to do this and one finds oneself

27:07ruminating or planning, for example, which is supposedly an activity you're quote, not supposed to

27:13be doing. You know, rather than trying to stop it, it's simply to be aware

27:18of it. Wow, I'm now planning or I'm now ruminating about something that happened in

27:23the past. What really is most important is the invitation not to change it, not

27:29to actively try to shift it, but to simply be aware.

27:35And one of the, I think, conjectures in all of this is that there's so

27:39much going on under the hood that we're typically not aware of.

27:44You know, our lives are moving at such a pace that the information that is

27:51transpiring is occurring at such a rapid rate that we are typically aware of only

28:02a small fraction of that.

28:04And this is a practice that's inviting you to simply be aware of that.

28:10And, you know, not doing is a helpful kind of thing because if we're acting

28:20in the world, we obviously need to navigate.

28:22And there are things we obviously need to do to be safe and to protect

28:27ourselves and so forth. And so that will engage other mechanisms.

28:31I'm interested in the possibility, or maybe you've seen this in the data, that there

28:36are at least two different types of people.

28:39People who, for instance, go through life feeling, doing, being, thinking, and projecting things out

28:48into the world. Or maybe they're quiet people and they don't project much out into

28:50the world, but they're just doing their thing.

28:52And they're not thinking about their thinking.

28:54They're not thinking about their doing.

28:55They're just doing. We know people like this.

28:57Then there are people who are always multi -tracking.

29:02Like, you know, they're self -conscious.

29:05They're very self -aware. And I'm wondering whether or not a form of meditation where

29:09somebody arrives at the meditation very self -aware, like, oh, there's my thought about that

29:15again. There's my thought about that again.

29:16And working, perhaps, on not judging it could be beneficial.

29:21But perhaps what that person, quote -unquote, needs or would benefit from was just being

29:26in a state of freedom from their self -monitoring.

29:30Whereas the other person, perhaps, could, you know, clinician here, could afford to be a

29:36little more self -aware and realize, oh, you know, I'm in this mode where –

29:40and see their thinking a little bit.

29:42Totally. Totally. And you're naming something super important.

29:46And, you know, I think that the way you characterize the second person who is

29:52more self -aware, it's – there's more than just self -awareness in your description.

29:58There's a kind of holding back there.

30:02There – it's not just monitoring, but there's a kind of suppression almost.

30:07It's a lot of work.

30:08It's a lot of work.

30:09And it could be stifling for their creativity.

30:11Absolutely. We had my friend David Cho on the podcast.

30:14Now we're friends. That was actually the first time we had met.

30:16But we've become good friends.

30:17And he's a brilliant artist.

30:19Brilliant artist. And he talks about how the best art comes from just forgetting what

30:26anyone thinks or wants. You know, Rick Rubin talks about this.

30:30Just getting the audience out of your mind and just letting it flow through you.

30:34Yeah. And I think great artists do that.

30:37And it's what we pay money to see.

30:39We want to see that form of expression.

30:41We don't want to see the self -monitoring artist.

30:44Yeah. That's great. And I totally resonate with that.

30:48And there is a phrase in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that is called undistracted non

30:59-meditation. Undistracted non -meditation. And that's said to be the highest form of meditation where

31:06you just drop all the crap.

31:08You know, all the techniques, all the control, all the tightness.

31:16This is my goal in life.

31:17Watch out, folks, if this ever happens.

31:20But you're totally awake. You're fully aware.

31:24Yeah. But there's no artifice.

31:27There's no... It's just complete freedom.

31:33And there are, you know, I think there...

31:36I've had the honor of just hanging out with some people who I think are

31:42really in that as a trait.

31:45That that's who they are.

31:47Rick Rubin's like that. He's a close friend.

31:49And I can tell you, I've spent a lot of time with Rick.

31:52And how he appears to people and his kind of mythical status, I think a

31:56lot of people, his magneticism is because that's real.

32:01Yeah. He can be in very, very close proximity to things, online, in person.

32:07He can see all of it.

32:08He's in real touch with it.

32:10But he's still him. Somehow it doesn't invade him in a way that changes the

32:16way he shows up. You know, like if we were to paint little beams of

32:20energy, now we're really sounding woo, coming out, there's stuff coming out, there's stuff going

32:24in, and they're interacting, but they're not contaminating one another.

32:28Where they interact, it just makes both things better.

32:30Yeah. And that's a very, very rare trait.

32:33Yeah, I agree. You know, there's a term that I often use, which, you know,

32:38I can talk about how we can define this more technically, but for lack of

32:42a better word. word I call stickiness.

32:45And it's kind of an affective hysteresis, if you will.

32:50It's kind of where, you know, you're hanging on to emotions that may not be

32:57useful. You're carrying stuff from a previous experience into a current experience and it muddles

33:04things. And, you know, our emotional lives are so infused with this kind of stickiness,

33:10but with like with Rick Rubin or with other people who are showing this, there's

33:17no stickiness. There's no stickiness.

33:21And, you know, that's a kind of freedom that I think is very much what

33:30we're talking about as the trait manifestation of these kinds of practices.

33:37Yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of people mistakenly use drugs to try and

33:44access that state. And I also think that we have a real, as a species,

33:50as a culture, but also as a species, we have a real affinity to people

33:53who can embody this freedom that you're talking about.

33:59Great comedians. Like when Richard Pryor was on, you're just like, I mean, maybe he

34:05had a subscript in there.

34:06Maybe he was devoting like 2 % of his prefrontal cortex to monitoring, but it

34:10just seemed like, we call it flow, but we're in their flow, they're in ours,

34:14whatever it is. There's a, there's a powerful interaction there that there seems to be

34:18very little self -monitoring. Then there are a few other, I mean, I, we see

34:23it in athletics. Yeah, totally.

34:26We, we just see it, we can feel it and it's super powerful.

34:29And that's from the perspective of, you know, performing arts or comedic arts.

34:35But for people who want to approach meditation, would it, do you think it's useful

34:40at all to ask themselves before they go into the meditation, you know, are they

34:46in a, are they in a mode of self -monitoring or are they in a

34:50kind of, or are they more, feeling more free, more present to just whatever their,

34:56it is they're experiencing it, experiencing, not questioning it.

35:00And asking them for. Do you think it's useful in order to get the most

35:04out of a meditation practice?

35:06I guess what I'm getting at indirectly here is most meditation practices involve shifting from

35:12doing one thing to maybe you're walking, maybe you're, you're open eyes, but typically I

35:16think people either sit or lie down, close eyes and start focusing on their breathing

35:20and trying to quote unquote, get present.

35:22Is there anything? Well, the kind of practice that I most often do is actually

35:26with eyes open. Really? Yeah.

35:28Oh, well then just tell us about that.

35:29What would be a good, let's use the parallel to cardio again.

35:35I would say if somebody is really out of shape and wants to get in

35:39shape, I would say the first thing is take two 20 minute walks a day.

35:42And then we could talk about getting on a exercise bike and then maybe doing

35:47some resistance or you'd start layering things in, right?

35:49But what would be the equivalent of the two 20 minute walks a day for

35:53meditation? So this is the protocol question, I guess.

35:56It's not, you know, I would say it's really important to start modestly.

36:01And we often will ask a person, what's the minimum amount of meditation that you

36:06think you can commit to every single day and do it for 30 days consistently?

36:12Five minutes. Perfect. Whatever that number is, perfect.

36:17Start with that. And then the next question is, are you comfortable doing it formally

36:24as a seated practice or would you prefer to do it while you're walking or

36:29while you're doing another non -cognitively demanding activity?

36:33It could be commuting. It could be washing the dishes.

36:40There are lots of those kinds of activities that we often do on a daily

36:44basis that you can actually intentionally use your mind in this way while you're also

36:52doing those activities. And by the way, we've shown, we actually have really good data

36:57on this, that at least for beginning meditators, it doesn't matter if you're doing it

37:03as a formal meditation practice or as an active practice, the benefits are absolutely comparable.

37:10And what are those benefits?

37:11So if you do it for 30 days and you do it just five minutes

37:16a day, you will see a significant reduction in symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety,

37:23and symptoms of stress. We've shown that repeatedly in randomized controlled trials, you'll see an

37:30increase on measures of well -being or flourishing and we can talk about what those

37:35actually mean. You can even see, just with this amount of practice, a reduction in

37:41IL -6. IL -6 is a pro -inflammatory cytokine that is important in systemic inflammation.

37:51And with just this minimal amount of practice, you see a significant reduction in IL

37:55-6 over the course of 28 days, five minutes a day.

37:59We've actually seen changes in the microbiome and we've seen changes in the brain with

38:07just this minimal amount of practice.

38:08But the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

38:10the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

38:10the, the, the, the, the, the, important point is that you're doing it every day.

38:13When people ask me what's the best form of meditation that they should do, if

38:19they're just beginning, I say the best form of meditation that you can possibly do

38:23is the form of meditation that you actually do.

38:26So figure out what that form of meditation is and then stick to it.

38:31Do it every single day.

38:33I love this. I actually am going to challenge our podcast audience to five minutes

38:39a day for 30 days.

38:40I'll put something out on social media.

38:42Rob, please remind me to put something out on social media to do five minutes

38:48a day for 30 days.

38:50Because what you describe are significant health effects.

38:53Yeah, totally. And as you describe them, it made me remember this set of experiments

38:59from neuroplasticity. Do you mind if I share these?

39:03Because I have a, this is a theoretical slash practical question as we move into

39:07these protocols. But before we do that, what should we call this protocol?

39:12It's the Richie Davidson. Five minutes a day.

39:15Five minutes a day. Richie's five.

39:17It's the Richie's five meditation.

39:20I'm going to start that.

39:22Later I'll share what I've been doing, but it's not even that.

39:25I've been doing 10 breaths upon waking.

39:2810 breaths before I get out of bed.

39:31I'm like, if I can just do 10 breaths of focused meditation before I get

39:34out of bed, the whole day will go better.

39:36And it, and it tends to, um, there's this wild set of findings in the

39:41neuroplasticity, uh, research that most people don't talk about because it's very inconvenient for neuroscientists.

39:48We're all familiar with the enriched environment thing where you give rats a bunch of

39:52toys or mice, a bunch of toys or monkey, monkeys, a bunch of toys.

39:55And the idea would be if you give kids a bunch of toys or listening

39:58to Mozart that their brains will develop more, you see more physical connections, you see

40:02improved cognition, et cetera, et cetera.

40:05A really smart guy down at university of California, Irvine, Ron Frosting did an experiment

40:12where he said, maybe this is all backwards.

40:16Maybe the normal cages they live in without all these toys are just deprived environments.

40:22And it turns out that's, that's probably the case.

40:25So all this enriched environment stuff, it's not that it's BS.

40:29It's just that the experimental conditions were so deprived that what you had was most

40:34animals just deprived in a certain way.

40:36Then you give them what they needed naturally.

40:38And all of a sudden you saw more connections, et cetera.

40:40If we applied that to meditation, something that we think of as kind of an

40:44enriched mental environment, okay, I'm going to now do this exercise.

40:47I'm going to do five minutes a day or 10 or 20.

40:50We think of it as kind of adding exercise, but riding a treadmill, doing resistance

40:55training. I mean, we used to just farm and go get water and do things.

40:59So in some sense, all of that is a replacement for a quote unquote deprived

41:03environment. Exactly. So is it possible that what you're describing is not something that people

41:11developed over time, but rather something that was core to our experience as humans and

41:18that the brain needed, but that with the advent of technologies and busyness or whatever,

41:24we've gotten away from. And so when you talk about doing five or 10 or

41:2720 minutes of meditation a day and seeing all these health effects, what we're doing

41:30is we're actually just putting back what needed to be there in the first place.

41:34This is like the equivalent of you getting your 30 minutes more sleep because alarm

41:37clocks weren't really a thing 2 ,000 years ago.

41:41Does that make sense? It makes sense.

41:43But, you know, and I think that there's an element of truth to it, but

41:46I also think that there's some additional discussion that we should have about it and

41:53dialogue. So first of all, these practices have been around for, you know, 2 ,500

42:02years or more. It's not like they've been invented in the modern era to deal

42:08with the separation that has occurred between humans and the natural world that is a

42:16distinctly modern kind of invention.

42:20So that's one thing. The second thing is that, yes, I agree with you that

42:26the characteristics that we're talking about as traits that are outcomes of these practices, there

42:35are many ways to get there.

42:36And there are probably natural ways to get there that don't require meditation.

42:41And in fact, you know, when we, in our early days, we interviewed these practitioners

42:46around Dharamsala India who were practitioners that the Dalai Lama referred us to, who are

42:53spending 30 years in retreat.

42:57They're called hermit monks. And, you know, they're, you, you have to hike for three

43:02hours to find their cave.

43:04And we interviewed these, these people, you know, they, they told us, well, you know,

43:09I need to meditate, but many others are just born where they're just naturally have

43:16these qualities. They don't need to meditate as much as me.

43:19I'm just a simple, you know, um, poor monk who really needs to do this

43:24because I'm inferior to those people, if you will.

43:27Um, and it's kind of modesty, but also, you know, there may be some truth

43:32truth to that. Uh, uh, and so I think that that is, is real.

43:37you know, But I also think that the qualities, like, for example, kindness, I believe,

43:44and this is the subject of this new book that I wrote with my colleague,

43:48Cortland Dahl, Born to Flourish, qualities like kindness are innate.

43:53They are part of our innate repertoire.

43:55But in order for them to be expressed, they require nurturing.

44:00And it's very similar to the way scientists talk about language.

44:03Language is innate. I think most scientists would agree with that.

44:07But we know that there have been case studies, for example, of feral children who

44:12are raised in the wild, and they don't develop normal language.

44:15So in order for the language to develop normally, it requires nurturing of some kind.

44:21And kindness is the same thing.

44:23It requires nurturing in order for it to be expressed.

44:26And similarly, for other qualities that we're cultivating when we meditate, I think those qualities

44:32are innate, but they require nurturing.

44:35And in certain cases, I think that in order for those qualities to really be

44:42expressed at high levels, if you will, intentional nurturing may be required for at least

44:49the vast majority of people.

44:51There may be, you know, statistically very rare people who emerge who are like this

44:57from the start for whatever reason.

45:00But for most of us, I think this kind of nurturing is important.

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46:30Why do you think it is that so many people find it challenging to maintain

46:36a meditation practice? I mean, five minutes a day is nothing.

46:39Ten minutes a day is barely anything.

46:41Even for the very busiest of person, and the positive effects that you describe, and

46:47we could also layer it and reduce stress, anxiety, lower resting heart rate, increase, you

46:53know, feelings of well -being, and on and on.

46:57I mean, there are just so many great studies now, including, like you said, you

47:02know, double blind trials. I mean, it's incredible.

47:07So why do you think it's so hard for people to maintain this practice of

47:11just saying, okay, you know what?

47:12I'm going to just go into this atypical state.

47:14It's not being stimulated by anything in my environment.

47:18I have to do this internally.

47:20There aren't gyms to go to for this.

47:23I mean, there are things, there are breathwork classes and things like that, but people

47:26don't tend to stick to it.

47:28That's the challenge. So I do have a theory about it, which I'll share, but

47:31before I do that, let me just say that I often use the analogy of

47:36brushing our teeth. When humans first evolved on this planet, none of us were brushing

47:40our teeth. And somehow, a very large swath of humanity has learned to brush their

47:48teeth every day. It's not part of our genome.

47:50I think most people brush their teeth so that their breath isn't bad.

47:53I think they like the idea that their teeth look cleaner and they get less

47:58gum disease, et cetera. But all the scary stuff is actually very ineffective public health

48:05messaging. I mean, that's my guess.

48:08Yeah. So actually, that's quite interesting, that view.

48:11But getting back to your question, why do people find it so hard?

48:14So there was a study published in Science not too long ago by a group

48:18of social psychologists. And it was a study of, quote, boredom.

48:24And what they did essentially in this study, the core of it was, they took

48:28people into the lab and they said, we had a little problem and you guys

48:34are going to have to wait for like 15 or 20 minutes before the experiment

48:38starts while we fix some piece of equipment.

48:41And they were in a waiting room.

48:43There were magazines and books around.

48:46And they also said that their, you know, social psychologists are really good at creating

48:51these scenarios. And so another experimenter came in and said, you know, they're from another

48:59research group and they understand that they have to wait a little while.

49:03And we have another experiment that.

49:05you can do in the meantime, and it involves receiving electric shocks.

49:10And of course, it's completely voluntary.

49:13You are free to participate or not.

49:16And the bottom line is that this is particularly male undergraduates in the United States

49:24prefer to shock themselves than to sit alone and not do anything.

49:30It's a robust finding. People could not sit without doing something is the bottom line.

49:38And the reason, I think, is that once we actually begin to inspect our own

49:45minds, most people are frightened at the chaos that they see.

49:52One of the things we found when we look in a very granular way is

49:56that when people start to meditate, we see a statistically reliable increase, increase in anxiety

50:05in the first week. Interesting.

50:08And that's often when people say, I can't do this.

50:12It's making me crazy. And, you know, what we tell them is that's exactly, you're

50:18doing exactly the right thing.

50:20You're, you know, you're noticing the chaos in your own mind.

50:23This is the soreness that comes from a new exercise program.

50:27Yeah, exactly. But people know to associate the soreness with, okay, the exercise was effective.

50:32It's going to lead to an adaptation.

50:34And we haven't changed the narrative yet about this, but what we're trying to, where

50:40we say, this is great that you're feeling anxious.

50:43It's exactly what you should be feeling.

50:45Forgive me. I'm doing all this in real time.

50:48So if I'm slow, there's a reason.

50:53The analogy to exercise feels ever more important now because thankfully the narrative has been

51:00embedded in people's minds that you lift objects or you cycle or run or row

51:06or swim, et cetera, to stimulate an adaptation.

51:10I think that the exercise scientists, the fields of health and wellness, whatever it is,

51:15has been very effective in getting the message out that the burn in your muscles

51:19is the thing that's going to lead to an easier run the next time, to

51:25more fitness, more longevity, more well -being, et cetera.

51:28But it's discomfort in the moment.

51:31For a long while now, I've been trying to convince people, because it's true, that

51:35the agitation that one feels trying to solve a problem or read a hard page

51:40or passage in a book, the one that you have to return to three times

51:42that you can't wrap your head around, that that agitation is the stimulus for neuroplasticity.

51:46If you could just breeze right through it, the brain has no reason to change.

51:49It's not stimulated to change.

51:51I can, after all, just do the thing you're trying to do.

51:54So it becomes sort of a duh when you compare, when you look at exercise

51:58or you look at cognitive development.

52:02But somehow when it comes to meditation, maybe we can accomplish this today.

52:06I think you're doing this for us.

52:09Just knowing, for me, just knowing that in the first week, anxiety is going to

52:13go up. But that's the equivalent of lactate accumulating in the muscles.

52:17Exactly. It's the lactate of the mind.

52:19The burn, it's the lactate of the mind.

52:21Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.

52:26Perfect. I believe that languaging and messaging is so critical to get people to adopt

52:32practices that require this discomfort adaptation loop that needs to be repeated over time.

52:39I love that. Yeah. I knew we'd get someplace in that one.

52:43Thanks to you. So glad you're here.

52:46So week one, five minutes a day, expect and embrace the anxiety.

52:53Yeah. Is it the thing that's going to produce the adaptation?

52:56I think it's contributing to it, yes.

52:59And, you know, it's also being aware of the anxiety without being hijacked by the

53:06anxiety, without being lost in the anxiety.

53:09So being able to see the anxiety as it's arising.

53:16And that's, you know, this is training in meta -awareness.

53:21Meta -awareness is super important.

53:22I actually think meta -awareness is a necessary prerequisite for any kind of human transformation,

53:32mental transformation. Could you define it for us?

53:34Tell us a bit more about it.

53:35I'm very curious. Yeah. So I would say meta -awareness is the faculty of knowing

53:41what our minds are doing.

53:43And to some listeners, that may sound a little strange, but how many of you

53:49have had the experience of reading a book where you might be reading each word

53:53on a page and you read one page, a second page, and after a few

53:57minutes, you have no idea what you've just read.

53:59Your mind is lost. It's somewhere else.

54:01But then you wake up.

54:02The moment you wake up is a moment of meta -awareness.

54:06And it turns out that that's a trainable skill.

54:12And that is one of the really important prerequisites for all other forms of training,

54:22of mental training. Do we know where this meta -awareness resides in the brain?

54:27Is it prefrontal cortex? You know, it's a network of prefrontal cortex.

54:33I'm looking forward to it.

54:33anterior cingulate, insula, I think those are all structures that are participating in meta -awareness.

54:43It's interesting because I feel like, as we were discussing earlier, people crave forgetting about

54:50themselves and just being inexperienced.

54:52It's just such a powerfully and, I think, positive, seductive thing.

54:58I often think about, you know, like at a party, dancing.

55:02Like people who can just dance and enjoy themselves versus people who are self -conscious

55:06about how they're dancing. Even people who are good at dancing.

55:09You can be meta -aware without being awkwardly self -conscious, if you will.

55:14So, you know, you talked earlier about flow.

55:18I didn't jump in then, but flow can occur with or without meta -awareness.

55:24Really? Yes. A lot of flow, I think, occurs without meta -awareness.

55:28So, you know, Csikszentmihalyi, who first studied flow, he studied rock climbers.

55:33And like a rock climber who is, I mean, think about this.

55:37Why do people do stuff like rock climbing?

55:40I think that the reason why people do stuff like that is to produce this

55:47state of flow where most of those kinds of states of flow, I think, are

55:53states of flow without meta -awareness, where you're completely absorbed in the activity.

55:59And for a rock climber, if there's even a momentary lapse in attention, it could

56:04be potentially lethal. And so by arranging one's physical environment in that way, you are

56:12basically forcing the default mode to be suppressed.

56:18And the default mode is a mode that we know is associated with a lot

56:23of self -referential thought. And self -referential thought often is anxiety -provoking.

56:30And so this is a way to transiently suppress the default mode.

56:36But flow can also occur with meta -awareness.

56:40And so, and it doesn't diminish the quality of the flow.

56:45And one analogy that we can use is in a movie theater.

56:50I mean, viewers have had the experience of being in a movie theater.

56:54And I'm sure people have had the experience of being in a movie theater where

56:57you're so engrossed in the movie that you may actually, you're not aware that you're

57:03in a theater. And you may not be even aware that you're watching a movie.

57:07You're so, you are totally absorbed in the plot.

57:13And we've actually come up with a term to define that.

57:17And we call it experiential fusion, where you're fused with the experience.

57:23And that is a kind of the analogous to flow without meta -awareness.

57:30But imagine being in the movie theater where your attention is riveted and there's absolutely

57:36no lapse in attention. But in the kind of penumbra of awareness, you are aware

57:41you're in a movie theater.

57:42You're aware that you're watching a movie.

57:45But that doesn't diminish the quality of your attention.

57:51I want to ask about this thing about chaos, noticing the chaos of one's mind.

57:57Because you said that sits at the seat of the anxiety that people will feel

58:01when they first start to meditate.

58:02Now everyone knows in the Ritchie meditation, a push through the first week.

58:07Expect the lactate of the mind, push through it.

58:10I love that so much.

58:11Thank you. The idea that the mind is chaotic and getting comfortable with that and

58:17not reacting to it, not feeling like we have to get away from it.

58:21And we've heard this before, but I think it's somewhat of a novel concept to

58:25me to think that a goal of meditation is to be able to see that

58:29and sit with it, not necessarily eradicate it.

58:32You know, I think you said you know the Dalai Lama.

58:34I think for most of us we see the Dalai Lama and other monks in

58:37robes and you say he sleeps nine hours per night and he's meditating four hours

58:41per day. And we think, all right, he looks very blissed out and that's great

58:44for them. Do you think he has chaos in his mind?

58:48Is the idea that extreme meditators or even, you know, well -practitioned meditators are free

58:59of the chaos or that they're just comfortable with the chaos?

59:02I would say that it's a developmental process that changes longitudinally.

59:08So initially there's a lot of chaos and I think it gradually subsides.

59:13I don't think it's like a step function.

59:15I think it really occurs gradually over time and the chaos just sort of naturally

59:22diminishes. But that's a long -term process.

59:28And I think for most of us there's always going to be some chaos.

59:34But part of the chaos also is, I think, a source of creativity.

59:39And, you know, when we talk about meta -awareness and awareness of all that's going

59:45on in our mind, you know, I often give my students the permission to, even

59:54if they're not meditators, to just spend a couple hours a week inspecting your mind.

59:59Just in... Inspect your mind.

1:00:02Pay attention to what's going on in your mind.

1:00:04Don't do stuff outside. And if you come up with some interesting thought, write a

1:00:10little note to yourself as you're doing this.

1:00:12You know, not a lot of words, but just a note to remind you when

1:00:16you're finished with this session.

1:00:19And I have the conviction that there's a lot of creative work that humans do

1:00:25on a regular basis that's kind of like dreams.

1:00:28Most people don't remember their dreams.

1:00:31But they occur reliably. And I think that there's a lot of creative thought that

1:00:36occurs on a regular basis, but we just don't pay attention to it and we

1:00:40forget it, just like we forget our dreams.

1:00:43But if we have the invitation to really inspect our mind in that way, I

1:00:49think this chaos actually often contains the seat of real creative insight that potentially could

1:00:59be valuable. I do too.

1:01:01I mean, I wake up every morning with at least one idea from the transition

1:01:08from sleep to waking. Sometimes it's from a dream.

1:01:11I often will record my dreams as voice memos.

1:01:14After I die, if somebody ever finds these voice memos, they're so crazy.

1:01:18Every once in a while I'll try and listen to one.

1:01:19I'm like, this is crazy.

1:01:20But I don't want to forget things.

1:01:21And sometimes I don't want to wake up and turn the lights on and I'll

1:01:23go back to sleep. And so I'll just record something in the voice memo, sometimes

1:01:26write it down. I think there's so much learning to be had from what's coming

1:01:31up from the unconscious mind in dreams, but also just having a mode of capture

1:01:36during the day, some way to just capture the things that spring to mind.

1:01:40The great Joe Strummer from The Clash, he said this.

1:01:42He said, you know, if you are walking along and an idea comes to mind,

1:01:46you have to write it down because you think you'll remember it later, but you

1:01:49will remember it in a form that is not nearly as potent.

1:01:53He said something like that.

1:01:55That this is the mind throwing you ideas and you have to capture them.

1:02:00I love that. I think it's wise advice.

1:02:03Friends of mine who are songwriters, poets, they do this all the time.

1:02:07They're constantly writing things down that they may or not develop something from, but they

1:02:11understand that there's information being thrown up to the surface for them.

1:02:16If you don't write it down or capture it in some other way, it goes,

1:02:20it's evanescent. I actually have, I mean, this may seem contrary to views of how

1:02:28meditation is done, but when I meditate every morning, I actually have a little notepad

1:02:33by my cushion. And occasionally, I don't do this every session, but maybe twice a

1:02:40week, I'll actually write down something during the meditation, one or two words just to

1:02:46remind me, because something comes up in my practice, maybe an idea, and I want

1:02:52to remember it. And I know also that I won't remember it after in the

1:02:57same richness. And so I'll just jot it down and then go back to my

1:03:01practice. Is meditation something that kids can do and benefit from?

1:03:06Has that been studied in a formal way?

1:03:08Yes, it's been studied. We actually developed a, what we've called a mindfulness -based kindness

1:03:17curriculum for preschool kids. Preschool.

1:03:20Preschool. And we've actually published a randomized control trial in a public school system of

1:03:27this curriculum. And the curriculum is available freely on our website in both English and

1:03:33Spanish. So if any teachers are out there or you know teachers and want to

1:03:39use it, please feel free to download it and see how it is.

1:03:44But yeah, so it looks very different.

1:03:47So for example, what we do with a three -year -old, one of the exercises

1:03:52that they love is we ring a bell in a classroom and we have them

1:03:58listen, tell them, listen to the sound.

1:04:00And as soon as you no longer hear sound, raise your hand.

1:04:06And it's amazing to see this because you can get 25 three - and four

1:04:13-year -olds sitting perfectly still for around 10 seconds.

1:04:20But, you know, they could taste it.

1:04:22There's a palpable, you know, sense of quiet in that 10 seconds.

1:04:27And then they all raise their hand excitedly.

1:04:30But they can really taste it.

1:04:33And so I do think it's possible.

1:04:35The other thing is, and this is something really important, there's something we've discovered empirically

1:04:43recently, which is that flourishing is infectious.

1:04:47It's contagious. Flourishing is contagious.

1:04:52Can you explain what that means and how you study that?

1:04:54Yeah, yeah. So in the example of you asked about meditating in kids, and the

1:05:01reason I'm bringing it up in this context is one of the best things I

1:05:05can think a parent can do for a kid is not to have the kid

1:05:09meditate, but meditate yourself and just be with the child and be fully present, be

1:05:16connected, and really show up in that way.

1:05:21And you will osmotically transmit through your demeanor and...

1:05:28and your interaction, you will transmit these qualities to the child in a completely implicit

1:05:37way. And that's what we mean when we say flourishing is contagious, but how we

1:05:42studied it. So let me actually share one of the, this is a finding that

1:05:46we're super excited about, and it's not yet published, but the paper is just under

1:05:53review. So one of the things we're deeply interested in these days is how can

1:05:59we scale human flourishing? So we're doing this kind of sector by sector, and one

1:06:04sector that we're doing a lot of work with is educators.

1:06:07And educators around the world, and particularly in the US, but we've done this in

1:06:13Mexico too, so it's not just US -based, but they're super stressed, they're not well

1:06:19-paid and all of that.

1:06:22So we did a study with public school educators in Louisville, Kentucky.

1:06:29And there are many reasons why we went to Louisville, but Louisville is a complicated

1:06:33school system. It's diverse, there are a lot of problems in it, and it's a

1:06:38big urban school district, the Jefferson County Public School District in Louisville.

1:06:44And we did a randomized control trial with 832 educators in Louisville.

1:06:51And we had them use our Healthy Minds Program, which is a digital offering, which

1:07:00is freely available as the Healthy Minds Program, where we had them cultivate four key

1:07:06pillars of well -being, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose.

1:07:11We can take a deeper dive into each of those after.

1:07:15But they practiced for around five minutes a day.

1:07:18The average was a little less than five minutes a day over the course of

1:07:2228 days. And we measured standard outcomes like depression and anxiety and stress and measures

1:07:30of flourishing. And we find what we found in other studies, which is that depression

1:07:36and anxiety and stress went down and measures of well -being and flourishing went up.

1:07:41But the real kicker is that we, by prior agreement, had access to the student

1:07:49-level data in the school system.

1:07:51So we were able to look at the performance of the students who were taught

1:07:57by teachers randomly assigned to the well -being training, and we compared them to students

1:08:04who were taught by teachers randomly assigned to a control group.

1:08:07The students had no idea that there was any research going on.

1:08:11And what we found is that on standardized tests, this is in middle school children,

1:08:17and the sample size for the students was around 13 ,000.

1:08:22And what we found is that the standardized math scores of the students who were

1:08:33taught by teachers randomly assigned to the well -being training was significantly greater than the

1:08:39scores of the students who were taught by teachers randomly assigned to the control group.

1:08:44Same curriculum. Identical. So what do you think is being transmitted there?

1:08:49Is it that the teachers are calmer, therefore the students are calmer?

1:08:53Is it that the teachers are calmer, therefore they're clearer?

1:08:56So the students, I mean, there are a lot of variables.

1:08:58And we don't need to isolate them.

1:08:59I mean, this isn't, we're not trying to do, you know, pharmacology here.

1:09:04But what do you think could be going on?

1:09:07Yeah, I think everything you said is likely to be going on.

1:09:11I think the students, the teachers are likely calmer, they're more connected.

1:09:18And what we know is that, you know, it was interesting because we looked at

1:09:22reading scores and the data for the standardized reading measure was in the same direction,

1:09:27but it wasn't as robust.

1:09:29The biggest signal was in math scores.

1:09:32And we know that math performance is degraded by stress more than reading performance in

1:09:40this age group. And so it, you know, could be is something as simple as

1:09:45the kids who were taught by teachers that went through the well -being training are

1:09:49simply calmer and less stressed when they take the exam.

1:09:53And so their true competence is more likely to be reflected in the test and

1:10:00not have it degraded by this kind of added stress and anxiety.

1:10:05So, so this is, you know, an illustration that flourishing is contagious in this way.

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1:11:33It's so interesting. And again, I can think of so many different variables that could

1:11:37be at play. We did an episode, one of our most popular episodes ever, with

1:11:45a guy named James Hollis.

1:11:46Are you familiar with James Hollis?

1:11:48No. He's a probably by now 85 -year -old Jungian analyst.

1:11:53Okay. Brilliant guy. He wrote, he's written a number of books.

1:11:56The Eden Project, which is about relationships and relating under Saturn's shadow on the, about

1:12:03trauma and healing. Just, just an incredible soul and incredible human and just an incredible

1:12:10educator. And I'm not alone in, in believing that just spectacular.

1:12:16And I said, you know, he's a Jungian analyst.

1:12:18So I said, you know, what's the key to a really good life?

1:12:21Like, but can we talk protocols?

1:12:23And he said something really interesting that I think will resonate with what you're saying

1:12:28and perhaps shed some light on what happened with these students and flourishing in general.

1:12:32He said, it's so important that we wake up each day and we suit up

1:12:39and we show up and we work in school, in relationships, in life.

1:12:44He said, but it's also just as important that we take a short amount of

1:12:48time every day and get out of stimulus and response, because by getting out of

1:12:55stimulus and response, and I'm not being nearly as eloquent as Hollis, we come to

1:13:01know ourselves in a certain way that lets ourselves show up so much more effectively

1:13:05for everything else. And so maybe, just maybe, what these teachers achieve is by sitting

1:13:12in this anxiety, because now I'm thinking about the lactate of the mind, they're doing

1:13:16a practice which lets them experience the anxiety, not respond to it.

1:13:21They're getting out of stimulus and response.

1:13:23Exactly. And perhaps in the classroom, they're able to teach more, teach more effectively because

1:13:32they're not paying attention to the things that don't matter.

1:13:37Or maybe it's because they're also paying attention to the things that do matter.

1:13:41Their signal to noise is higher, so to speak.

1:13:44Anyway, I couldn't help but reference the Hollis thing, because to not do that would

1:13:48be remiss. But also, here's a guy who's saying, you got to go to work

1:13:53each day. This is essential to building a good life, and you have to do

1:13:55all these things. And he's also saying, but getting out of stimulus response is what

1:14:00makes you effective in everything, and of course, improves your self -understanding.

1:14:05And I think what you're saying, I don't want to put words in your mouth,

1:14:07but what I think you're saying when you talk about meditation is that it's a

1:14:11way of getting out of stimulus and response.

1:14:14Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great analogy.

1:14:17Yeah. Well, he deserves all the credit for all of that.

1:14:21You deserve all the credit for running all these experiments, because I feel like what's

1:14:25been so frustrating over the years has been to hear how powerful meditation is, but

1:14:33that for people in the West, the word meditation brings up ideas of mysticism and

1:14:43ancient things, and people think, well, that's not for me.

1:14:47That's not going to benefit me now in this world.

1:14:51But I would argue we need it even more so now.

1:14:56I agree. I think that the divisiveness and polarization that is just eating away at

1:15:06our society underscores the critical importance of this.

1:15:13I think it's needed now more than ever before in human history.

1:15:17And I think that it will, you know, with just modest amounts of practice, and

1:15:23one of the other, you know, kind of slogans that we think is really important

1:15:28is that it's easier than you think.

1:15:30It really is. Five minutes a day has a measurable impact.

1:15:37And so I think that if we really take this to heart, you know, if

1:15:42everyone practiced for five minutes a day, I have the strong conviction that this world

1:15:46would really be a different place.

1:15:48Oh, absolutely. I think the challenge is convincing people, and that's, you know, you're doing

1:15:54it. We're trying to do that little by little.

1:15:56I mean, for a zero -cost tool, it's just outsized positive effects.

1:16:02I think most people come to the table because it will lower their blood pressure.

1:16:06They hear that it will reduce their stress, maybe make them more effective, make them

1:16:11smarter, sleep better. But there are also the higher order effects that people talk about,

1:16:18gaining some understanding of consciousness and what it may or may not be.

1:16:23So, let's see. When do those effects tend to arrive, if they ever do?

1:16:29Is it true that by meditating, by getting out of the stimulus and response and

1:16:33just watching one's thoughts and not responding to them and just non -judgment, that we

1:16:38can actually gain some fundamental insight into how our minds work?

1:16:42I do think that that's possible and I think that it does occur.

1:16:47And, you know, I think that if we're really good scientists, there is an important

1:16:57element of humility as we approach this that underscores really how little we know.

1:17:05And I think that these kinds of practices help us tap into something that I

1:17:12think is part of what it means to be a human being and part of

1:17:17it is, honestly, you know, we can use the words spiritual in some way and,

1:17:26you know, or transcendent. And by that I mean something connected to something larger than

1:17:33oneself. And I know that this is getting into a little bit of woo -woo

1:17:38territory and but people do have a taste of this and it helps to give

1:17:49their life more meaning and to infuse it with a kind of purpose that I

1:17:57think is really beneficial. I wonder, and I love your thoughts on this, whether by

1:18:03doing meditation and seeing that the mind is chaotic and that it's difficult to control

1:18:11and that perhaps the best thing we can do is just observe and not respond

1:18:14to it but not try and control it, that inevitably in one's meditation practice that

1:18:21the reality surfaces that we're all going to die.

1:18:25And I think for a lot of people the fear of death is terrifying.

1:18:30I mean, it's inevitable and it's terrifying.

1:18:33And I do sometimes feel that a lot of the stuff in the world that

1:18:38we're offered, whether or not it's drugs or alcohol or excessive work or whatever, that

1:18:45just all the stuff is that a deeper layer of that offering is that it

1:18:51distracts us from that reality because it's terrifying, right?

1:18:58I don't, most, any healthy person doesn't want to die.

1:19:02Although I don't think it's terrifying for all people and I think that it's, this

1:19:06is actually one of the dimensions that is shifted by long -term meditation practice, unquestionably.

1:19:14Is it shifted because people come to some understanding of energy and the fact that

1:19:19they will likely become part of something else or do you think it's that they

1:19:23can just accept the reality that we're here, then we're not here?

1:19:27I think it's more the latter.

1:19:30And also imagine that this is the last day we're living right now.

1:19:35Friday the 13th of all days.

1:19:37Of all days. It happens to be Friday the 13th.

1:19:39And, you know, are we, are we showing up in a way that feels right

1:19:47for us and making the most of our lives and not squandering the opportunity that

1:19:55we have? And if we can live every day in that way, it really will

1:20:01change, I think, how we approach our mortality.

1:20:07And I know for me personally, I mean, we, I'm not, well, I feel very

1:20:15differently about dying today than I did like 15 years ago.

1:20:20It's that that's one dimension where there's been a dramatic shift.

1:20:24Would you mind elaborating on that?

1:20:25How so? How did you feel about it 15, 20 years ago?

1:20:28Yeah, I was terrified, you know, in the same way I, you know, I had

1:20:32a family, I have two kids, I have all these, you know, responsibilities.

1:20:37And I reflect on this.

1:20:40I really do. And, you know, if I died today, I would feel like I've

1:20:46lived a very fulfilling life.

1:20:51And, and I'm fine with that.

1:20:55But that's a great thing to be able to say.

1:20:59That's a great thing to be able to say.

1:21:00I don't think most people would probably be able to say the same wholeheartedly.

1:21:06Yeah. And you attribute some of that sense to meditation.

1:21:12Definitely. But it's been gradual.

1:21:14You know, I've been at this, my, my very first meditation retreat was in 1974.

1:21:21And I've been practicing daily ever since.

1:21:24Every single day? Well, I may have missed, you know, one or two days a

1:21:29year when I had a 6 a .m.

1:21:30flight. But other than that, yes.

1:21:32And what is your practice, your most consistent practice been?

1:21:38You know, my practice has changed many times over these, the course of these years

1:21:44and very different traditions in which I've practiced.

1:21:48So what about time of day?

1:21:50Is it typically morning? It's always been morning for me.

1:21:53You get up, use the bathroom, have a drink of water and start or you

1:21:56go right into it? No, I get up and I make myself these days a

1:22:02cup of strong black tea and I drink the tea which takes maybe 15 minutes

1:22:08and then I meditate. Got it.

1:22:11Do you set a timer or a chime?

1:22:13Yeah, I do set a timer and, you know, I meditate at various lengths but

1:22:19my modal time sitting is about 45 minutes a day.

1:22:26Sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's shorter, but usually around 45 minutes a day and maybe

1:22:33three or four days a week I do a really short practice at night, maybe

1:22:37five minutes before I go to sleep.

1:22:41Since everyone that takes on the five -minute -a -day, 30 -day meditation challenge will

1:22:46do it, once they reach 30 days, does it make sense to update that to

1:22:51a longer meditation or would you just suggest that people stay with that as long

1:22:54as possible? What I would suggest is check in with yourself and see how you're

1:23:01feeling about it and how it's resonating with you.

1:23:04And if you feel like you can't really do much more, just stick with five

1:23:12minutes a day and keep doing that.

1:23:14The important thing is to stick with the daily practice.

1:23:18And one of the things that we talk about in this new book, Born to

1:23:22Flourish, is a lot of people have a really difficult time coming up with really

1:23:28being able to do this daily.

1:23:30And one of the things that we talk about based on our finding that it

1:23:35doesn't matter, at least in the early stages, whether you're meditating as a formal practice

1:23:42or doing it while doing other activities of daily living that are not demanding, like

1:23:48walking or commuting, you tie this to regular activities that you do every day, whatever

1:23:57those activities are. And we talk about this idea of social zeitgebers.

1:24:01A zeitgeber, as you know, is an environmental event, a signal that marks, in the

1:24:11classical literature, a biological rhythm, like light is a zeitgeber to set our biological rhythms.

1:24:21But in the modern world, we have social zeitgebers that are human -created zeitgebers.

1:24:26So eating, for example, is a zeitgeber.

1:24:30We eat typically at roughly similar times every day, at least most people.

1:24:35And that's an opportunity. You do that every day.

1:24:39You compare a little practice with that.

1:24:42And, you know, one of the practices that you can do, which I do every

1:24:47time I eat virtually, unless I'm meeting with someone and it's awkward, but I do

1:24:52it at home, is do a little appreciation practice.

1:24:54Spend just 30 to 90 seconds reflecting on all the people it took to have

1:25:03food on your plate. And it also gives you a sense of interdependence.

1:25:08And when I sit down, you know, and have my breakfast, it's a cue for

1:25:14me. It's a social zeitgeber.

1:25:16I do my appreciation practice every single time.

1:25:20And then there's crazy things you can do, like I have a cat at home.

1:25:25I'm the one who scoops the litter every night.

1:25:27I actually do that as a practice.

1:25:32And it literally takes no extra time.

1:25:35I do it while I'm doing the scooping of the litter.

1:25:38But I honestly do this in a very authentic, genuine way.

1:25:43I reflect on, you know, the cat really appreciates this.

1:25:46My wife appreciates this. And people who go into the room with the cat litter

1:25:53appreciate that it's clean and scooped on a regular basis.

1:25:56And, you know, I just reflect on that intentionally.

1:26:01It doesn't take much. It's easier than you think.

1:26:06Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, I don't want to contort the message you're offering

1:26:12because it's a powerful one about bringing awareness to the things that we have to

1:26:17do anyway and allowing that to make us more effective and happier and more present.

1:26:23But there's also this idea around disciplines.

1:26:27And the word discipline is kind of heavy.

1:26:30Nobody really likes it because we got disciplined or something.

1:26:34But I used to pride myself on working longer hours than everyone.

1:26:39And as the years have gone on, I pride myself in just I can –

1:26:44consistency is my superpower. I may not show up with the most intensity every time,

1:26:50although sometimes. But intensity kind of waxes and wanes.

1:26:55But there's something about just showing up anyway and just doing it anyway that is

1:27:01so powerful. And I sometimes wonder whether or not the mind is just – it's

1:27:06our foe until we embrace that piece.

1:27:09It's kind of a little bit of what you're saying.

1:27:11Yeah. And I love the consistency theme and also the discipline.

1:27:15And yes, I think you're naming something.

1:27:18Because of視察book or the influence, especially in view of New Turkey.

1:27:19And... real and important. And there's a delicate calculus that ranges between kind of letting

1:27:27go and discipline. And each person, I think, falls at a different point in this

1:27:35continuum. And what works for one person may not work for another.

1:27:40You know, with regard to meditation, I always say that what's best for one person

1:27:46isn't necessarily what's best for others.

1:27:49And we have to discover what works for us.

1:27:53You know, what we do know is that in terms of meditation, that consistency is

1:27:59really important. You know, I was never a particularly good athlete or bad athlete, but

1:28:03I've just been really consistent at exercise.

1:28:06And I mean, I play fewer sports these days than I did, but just continuing

1:28:12to show up allows you to be the person among your peers.

1:28:16Not that it's competitive where you, everyone else seems to have quit and they're talking

1:28:19about how much this hurts and that hurts.

1:28:21And you're like, and all you really had to do is just kind of keep,

1:28:24keep going. And I, I sometimes think that the people that are max intensity and

1:28:28they, you know, it's like gold medal or bust, they're always the ones are often

1:28:33the ones that we don't hear from anymore.

1:28:35They're like gone. Yeah. So I, I love the examples of the Dalai Lama and,

1:28:39you know, the, the Michael Jordans of every domain, but I don't know.

1:28:43I mean, I, I'm more interested in, um, being the person that at 50, 60,

1:28:49I mean, you're in your mid seventies, you look incredible.

1:28:52You're super vital, cognitively sharp.

1:28:54You're in shape. You're excited about life.

1:28:56You're not afraid of death.

1:28:57Clearly you're onto something, you know?

1:28:59So, and I doubt it's just the black tea.

1:29:01I'm guessing it's to some extent, I mean, there you have all the other aspects

1:29:06of your life, but this consistency of meditation practice.

1:29:09Yeah. No, I think it's been super important.

1:29:11I do think that the discipline that you're talking about is really important and it

1:29:16is part of it. Uh, um, but again, I think we need to find the

1:29:21right balance for each person.

1:29:23And initially it's really important to, um, have people, um, uh, invite them to taste

1:29:32this with the lowest possible friction so that they can, can really, um, experience the

1:29:39benefit and then it can gradually progress and, and they can, you know, um, uh,

1:29:46harness some discipline, which eventually will be important.

1:29:51I'd like to talk about online culture and social media just briefly because I don't

1:29:59want to demonize it. I teach on social media.

1:30:01This will be aired on various online platforms and clips of it will appear on

1:30:07social media, but I have this, um, sneaking suspicion that by going online, um, the

1:30:16mind starts to believe this thing that's not true, that if we're not online, either

1:30:26posting or looking at what people post or both that somehow will disappear.

1:30:32And it gets to this idea of the anxiety that one feels when you just

1:30:36go into your own mind and it's chaos in there for so many people.

1:30:40It's like, it's chaos in here.

1:30:41And then just learning to sit with that.

1:30:43I think a lot of people go into the world because the chaos of the

1:30:46world can occupy their attention.

1:30:48And then it's not about the chaos that's in them.

1:30:49Exactly. Again, I don't want to demonize online platforms because I use them.

1:30:54I educate on them. I learn from them and I'm, and I gain entertainment from

1:30:58them too. But I wonder whether or not the net effect of social media at

1:31:05the internet over the last, let's say 10 to 15 years has been to trick

1:31:09the mind at an unconscious level into thinking that if we're not on there, we're

1:31:14going to miss out, but it's not FOMO of not like, we're not going to

1:31:18be included, but that I actually think it may run much deeper than that, that

1:31:21it's that we will, that we don't exist, that life is there.

1:31:25And if we're not aware of it, we don't exist because I see parents looking

1:31:31at their phones while their kids are running around them.

1:31:34So you can't say, oh, well, this is only, you know, well, we have kids

1:31:37and you're attending to your kids and some parents are great parents, but I see

1:31:40a lot of kids that are clearly being, you know, babysat by devices.

1:31:46And the parents will say, listen, it's the only thing that quiets them down and

1:31:49gets them to settle down while I can tend to things.

1:31:51So I can relate. But, you know, what do you think about the idea that

1:31:56the internet, while powerful and can be used for great good, may have convinced billions

1:32:04of human minds that they don't exist if they're not observing or engaging on there?

1:32:11I mean, I think that that's something super important.

1:32:15And I think, you know, with regard to attention, we talk about two big buckets.

1:32:26One is stimulus captured attention.

1:32:28And the folks who design products online have been really good at capturing our attention.

1:32:38And our attention gets hijacked by that.

1:32:43And it leads to the kind of infirmation.

1:32:47that you're talking about, which is that people feel that they may not exist unless

1:32:52they're online. And I read some survey study that was done within the last year

1:33:02that reported that the average American opens their phone 152 times a day.

1:33:08I think most people would agree they don't need to open their phone 152 times

1:33:12a day, but we do it for those kinds of reasons.

1:33:19And, you know, I often say we are all part of a grand experiment for

1:33:23which none of us have provided our informed consent.

1:33:27And I think it's serious, and I think that we don't know what the long

1:33:31-term consequences are going to be, but we do know that, you know, the short

1:33:35-term consequences, at least in certain cases, are not very good.

1:33:39And I'm someone who is also, like you, Andrew, a great believer in the potential

1:33:45value of technology. And I believe that technology is basically neutral, and we can use

1:33:53it for the good, and we can also, it can be used for harm.

1:33:58But, you know, the previous Surgeon General of the United States, who I miss, Vivek

1:34:04Murthy, issued a health advisory in 2023 on social media.

1:34:12The title was Social Media and Youth Mental Health.

1:34:14And he has scary data that was reported in that report.

1:34:22Some of the data show that the psychiatric problems in adolescents scale linearly with the

1:34:32hours of social media consumption per day.

1:34:36And so it is really eroding the mental health of our youth, not to say

1:34:44of our adults, too. Yeah, I think a lot of adults now are hitting those,

1:34:50hitting the black ice of Internet use.

1:34:53It's just like even among peers of ours, even professionals.

1:34:57I mean, it was wild to see how many people who were chairs of departments,

1:35:03brilliant creators, academics, people from all domains of life, demolished their careers by getting caught

1:35:15up in stuff online and not being thoughtful about what they were posting.

1:35:18You just go, I can't believe it.

1:35:19I mean, they threw away their professional lives with their thumbs.

1:35:25It was wild, right, if you think about it.

1:35:27And this is happening less nowadays, but just people just nuking their careers that they

1:35:35had spent 20, 30 years building.

1:35:36These were very successful, very smart people.

1:35:39Yeah. But somehow got caught up in it.

1:35:41We see that less, but I do see a lot of people getting into the

1:35:46whole polarization thing to the point where there really is no common ground online.

1:35:52It's impossible. You can't take a nuanced perspective on something.

1:35:58I try. You know, I said, oh, I thought the new food guidelines could afford

1:36:03to include a few more vegetable suggestions and some fermented foods.

1:36:07And like immediately that the fact that I didn't completely attack it, right, was I

1:36:12got attacked for that. But then I got attacked for the other side for not

1:36:15completely embracing it. So it's like you can't win.

1:36:18Yeah. You can't win. Yeah.

1:36:19But getting offline is not an option.

1:36:22It's not an option. And the younger generation has been very clear with me about

1:36:26that. It is not an option.

1:36:28To not be on social media platforms, to not be texting much of the day

1:36:33is to not exist in the social milieu.

1:36:35And so how do we reconcile that?

1:36:38Yeah. So these are really complicated issues.

1:36:44I think that, you know, I certainly don't in any way pretend to have the

1:36:49answer. But I do think that we need to take digital hygiene seriously.

1:36:55And we need to figure out ways of, as part of standard school curricula, of

1:37:02educating our youth in how to change their relationship or how to be, to say

1:37:09it a different way, how to be in healthy relationship with their digital devices and

1:37:15the products and features that are available on those devices.

1:37:20I have the conviction that it's a trainable skill.

1:37:24But we need, particularly in youth, to start early before they get their first phone.

1:37:29Is there any evidence that meditation, because it allows somebody to sit with the lactate

1:37:35of the mind, can also afford someone less impulsivity and sort of being less prone

1:37:44to getting hooked by the chaos of the world around them?

1:37:47Yeah. I don't think there's any hard data on that.

1:37:51But I think it's a great question.

1:37:52I think it's actually empirically tractable.

1:37:55I think it's really worth studying.

1:37:57My conviction is yes. I think it would be helpful.

1:38:02But the data don't exist.

1:38:05What would an experiment like that look like?

1:38:07I feel like we should run that experiment.

1:38:09That would be cool. I'd love to collaborate.

1:38:11Yeah. I feel like there's got to be established...

1:38:14In -lab measures of impulsivity.

1:38:16Yeah, there are good measures of impulsivity.

1:38:18And actually with impulsivity, there are measures that go beyond self -report measures.

1:38:24There are behavioral measures of impulsivity, which may have more validity.

1:38:28And so it would be extremely interesting.

1:38:32And, you know, with device use and with a person's consent, you can actually get

1:38:37back -end data so you don't rely on self -report.

1:38:40So it can be really robust kind of evidence.

1:38:45The word discipline comes to mind again.

1:38:47And I think so many people, when they hear discipline, they think about doing certain

1:38:51things, waking up at five, exercising, meditating, eating clean, et cetera.

1:38:56But to me, the most interesting aspect of discipline are the don't do's.

1:39:02It's all the stuff you don't do.

1:39:04You know, we're in the Winter Olympics now, and I haven't been watching.

1:39:07I like the Summer Olympics.

1:39:07But inevitably, when they do the Olympics, they interview the people who win gold medals,

1:39:14or they'll do a day in the life of, and they'll say, you know, they

1:39:17wake up at 5 a .m., and then they train, and they always want to

1:39:20say, what do they eat?

1:39:21You know, they go, I have four eggs in my oatmeal, or whatever it is.

1:39:25What they really need to show is all the things they don't eat, right?

1:39:28Because, sure, what they eat is interesting, perhaps, but far more relevant to their performance

1:39:34is all the things they don't eat.

1:39:36It's all the things they're not doing.

1:39:37And, of course, that makes for much less entertaining shows, so they don't do that.

1:39:42But I feel like the training that would be so valuable is to train up

1:39:47the no -go response. Absolutely.

1:39:50One of the things in my own life that I'm very aware of is, and

1:39:53apropos not doing, is not taking out my phone.

1:39:58And I'm very intentionally aware of that.

1:40:02I actually do a little practice of feeling my phone in my pocket, and I

1:40:07really will not take it out unless I actually need it.

1:40:11I remind people, when I have meetings at our center, you know, often it's just

1:40:15the cultural habit, particularly with young people, you know, they put their phone on the

1:40:19table. And there are data showing that even if you have all your notifications turned

1:40:24off, the simple presence of the device is enough to impair the interaction in some

1:40:33way, to have a discernible impact.

1:40:36And cognitive ability. There's this really, I don't know if you've seen this study, it's

1:40:39pretty cool. They looked at cognitive performance and people that had the phone upside down

1:40:45on the table in their backpack beneath their chair or in a different room.

1:40:50And only by having it in a different room do you see the normal level

1:40:56of cognitive focus, not even an improvement.

1:40:58It turns out that people can focus just as well.

1:41:02It's really interesting. They focus just as well if the phone is on the table

1:41:06or under their chair in their backpack.

1:41:09But that the brain is using additional resources to keep suppressing the thought about the

1:41:15phone. So their cognitive performance is diminished.

1:41:19So the phone is really a cognitive detractor under those conditions.

1:41:22I think about that a lot.

1:41:24It's also why I have a lockbox for my phone.

1:41:26I keep it in a separate room.

1:41:27It's one of the reasons I love this podcast more and more with every passing

1:41:30week because no phones in here.

1:41:33We can really drop into things.

1:41:35Yeah, I think that training the no -go response, having that level of discipline is

1:41:40the superpower. All the other stuff, the to -dos, I mean, yeah, it's important.

1:41:46You can't just not do anything, obviously.

1:41:48But we focus so much on what to take, what to do.

1:41:52People always want to know, what should I take?

1:41:53You know, what should I do?

1:41:54What's the ideal workout routine?

1:41:56What's the... And here we have this five -minute -a -day meditation.

1:41:59Great. But it's also all the things you're not doing when you can sit for

1:42:04five minutes. You're not responding to the impulse to get up.

1:42:07Yes. The discomfort of body that can come up during meditation, a pain in the

1:42:12back, your hip getting tight.

1:42:15Should we look at those as an opportunity to train up the mind and our

1:42:20ability to not go into stimulus response, or should we get comfortable?

1:42:24That's a great question. And, you know, my very first meditation retreat in 1974, I

1:42:32just went into this cold, and it was like meditation boot camp.

1:42:37It was a kind of retreat where we were practicing for 16 hours a day,

1:42:41and my body was on fire.

1:42:45It was so painful physically.

1:42:47That was, you know, the most predominant experience I had, just intense, intense physical pain.

1:42:53And then in this style of practice, after the third day, you had to make

1:42:58a vow that you're not going to move during each hour -long session.

1:43:03So the meditation sessions were hour -long, and you had to make a vow that

1:43:08you're not going to move.

1:43:09Man, the pain was so intense, the physical pain.

1:43:13And, you know, eventually, after the, like, the fourth day, there's a kind of breakthrough

1:43:19that most people have, which is this remarkable kind of experiential insight where you directly

1:43:28look at the pain, and you see that it's not exactly what it's cracked up

1:43:33to be, and it's actually much more differentiated.

1:43:36And you begin to see all of its constituents.

1:43:40And that's when there's... kind of release.

1:43:43The other thing to say is that we've done imaging work with physical pain and

1:43:51meditation. It's one of the most robust kind of probes that you can use to

1:44:00interrogate the quality of the practice and also the longer term trade effects, if you

1:44:07will. And I liken it by the way, you know, when you go to a

1:44:11cardiologist, you often do a cardiac stress test.

1:44:14And so one of the best ways to probe the integrity of the system is

1:44:19by challenging it and not just looking at it at baseline, so to speak.

1:44:24And it's true of the mind and the brain.

1:44:26And one of the best challenges is physical pain.

1:44:30So we've done work where we've primarily used heat as a painful stimulus because it

1:44:37can be delivered very precisely and very safely.

1:44:41In imaging data, there is a signature that is quite specifically tied to the physical

1:44:48pain itself. And that there's another signature that is associated with the emotional reaction to

1:44:55the pain. The interpretation of it.

1:44:57The interpretation. Got it. And when we subjectively experience distress in response to pain, it's

1:45:05actually mostly contributed by the secondary response.

1:45:10That is the emotional response to the initial noxious stimulus itself.

1:45:15And that is the set of neural changes that we most dramatically see transformed by

1:45:23meditation meditation as a trait effect.

1:45:27And it's particularly, and this is published data, we've, we, this was done with long

1:45:34-term meditation practitioners. And we show that actually it's specifically retreat practice.

1:45:40So we can have two people who are matched on the total number of hours

1:45:45that they've practiced in a lifetime where in one person, it is much more, um,

1:45:52uh, during retreat compared to another person.

1:45:55And it's specifically retreat practice where you're doing more intensive practice that contributes to the

1:46:02transformation of this emotional pain signature.

1:46:05What would a good retreat practice look like?

1:46:08It would be presumably a course, but I guess if somebody didn't have the resources,

1:46:12they could take a weekend.

1:46:14And what does that look like?

1:46:15They're meditating a couple hours a day, more than a couple of hours a day.

1:46:19Okay. So it'd be kind of hard to self -direct.

1:46:21Yeah. Although there are a lot of online resources, uh, for this and actually for

1:46:26a person who is unable for whatever reason to go physically to retreat, there are

1:46:32online resources, but of course, you know, I think it's probably more beneficial to do

1:46:37it in person because you're more likely to comply with the, uh, with the expectations

1:46:45of like not checking your phone and things of that sort and being silent.

1:46:49I'm always impressed by people that can sort of self -direct so much discipline.

1:46:54It's pretty cool. I have rules in my house.

1:46:57Like I have a study area in my basement where I draw and prepare podcasts

1:47:02and I, I don't allow phones down there, mine or anyone else's.

1:47:06That's wonderful. It's just, it's an electronic free zone.

1:47:09I also now, um, I noticed I like working out.

1:47:13It's a pleasure for me.

1:47:14Um, and I have a gym and I noticed that my workouts would take much

1:47:18longer if I brought my phone in.

1:47:20So now I allow myself to turn on an album or two and leave the

1:47:25phone outside, but there's no phones allowed there either.

1:47:28And now I'm thinking about also making that the rule for, uh, the loft for

1:47:32the bedroom, like no phone.

1:47:34So there's fewer and fewer areas where, where things are allowed.

1:47:38But I think unless you set a real constraints that it just starts to permeate

1:47:43everywhere. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

1:47:46And I grew up in Silicon Valley, so I'm not anti -technology.

1:47:48I just, I want to have the richest experience of life possible.

1:47:53And so I just find that harder and harder to do when it's like inviting

1:47:58all these other things and people into the room when you, when you have a

1:48:03phone there. Well, I love those examples.

1:48:05And I think, uh, you know, you are setting an inspiring example for others.

1:48:10And I think that things have gotten so bad with, uh, the deleterious impact of

1:48:17technology that, um, you know, we've, we've been led to, to do those kinds of

1:48:24things, which I think are so important.

1:48:27And I think the more examples of that, the better.

1:48:30Yeah. I feel like, um, it took us a while to, uh, to become the

1:48:34country with such, um, excessively high rates of obesity that we finally went, oh my

1:48:38goodness, you know, and we need to do something about this.

1:48:41So better eating exercise, of course, critical.

1:48:44The GLP drugs have been, I believe have been very helpful for a lot of

1:48:48people. I don't, I would hope people first embrace lifestyle tools and then, and in

1:48:53any case embrace lifestyle tools, but I don't think we're going to have the so

1:48:57-called ozempic for, um, for, uh, addiction to devices.

1:49:03There isn't going to be something to come along and knock us off that place.

1:49:06I think it just requires a lot of self -control.

1:49:10but I can promise everyone that your workouts get way better, way better.

1:49:14Your work gets way better.

1:49:16I actually think that for the younger generation, it's become easier than ever to excel

1:49:21simply by not doing a lot of the things that other people around you are

1:49:25doing. Totally, totally. You know, it used to be, you know, how do I succeed?

1:49:29How do I succeed? And you're the, I'm joking these days, the shortest, you know,

1:49:33how to become the best at your craft book is going to be by turning

1:49:37off your phone 22 hours a day.

1:49:39You will become best in class.

1:49:41I know it. I absolutely know it.

1:49:43And people say, well, then you can't access certain things.

1:49:45There are ways around it.

1:49:47And because it's really the presence that you bring to things that allows you to

1:49:53be effective. Yeah, absolutely. And regarding self -control, I think that self -control is a

1:49:58trainable skill and it is a by -product of flourishing.

1:50:03And one of the central capacities, I mean, we talked about meta -awareness earlier and

1:50:10I think meta -awareness is really a key ingredient for self -control and self -control

1:50:15will, or self -regulation will improve as a consequence of that.

1:50:20And that's a superpower. You know, there was a study done by these two psychologists,

1:50:27Moffitt and Caspi, who are developmental sort of lifespan psychologists.

1:50:33And they've been studying this cohort in Dunedin, New Zealand.

1:50:37It's a birth cohort. So these folks have been studied since birth.

1:50:41They're now, I think, in their 60s, but there's amazing longitudinal data on these people.

1:50:48And they had a paper in PNAS a number of years ago that looked at

1:50:54measure, behavioral measures of self -control in this cohort when these people were four and

1:51:01five years of age. And this particular paper was looking at outcomes when they were

1:51:0732 years of age. And what they found is that the individuals who are in

1:51:13the upper quintile of self -control at four and five years of age had significantly

1:51:20less drug abuse were significantly less likely to be involved in, um, in, uh, court

1:51:29proceedings. They earned on average 6 ,000 us dollars more per year, and they were

1:51:37matched on socioeconomic status of their families of birth, um, more successful, more successful.

1:51:43So all of these amazing outcomes, uh, and they, I remember this paper was published

1:51:49many years ago, but I remember the, um, there's a line in the paper that

1:51:54says, um, uh, strategies which will improve self -control will lead to all these, these,

1:52:02uh, important outcomes and save taxpayers money.

1:52:06I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up.

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1:52:23And by now there are thousands of quality peer -reviewed studies that emphasize how useful

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1:53:28Super impressive. And I do think that nowadays we hear so much about the do's,

1:53:34you need exercise, you eat this and five minutes a day meditation.

1:53:38I think the self -control component that's an outgrowth of meditation seems like a distinct

1:53:45benefit of meditation. Because when you're exercising, yeah, I suppose if you really hate it

1:53:52and you're constantly forcing yourself not to quit, that's a form of self -control.

1:53:55I feel like most people, once they get going, they're kind of moving through it.

1:53:58But who knows? I do want to use this notion of self -control as an

1:54:04opportunity to look at the other side of it.

1:54:06And I was planning on doing this at some point.

1:54:08I think now's the point.

1:54:09I'm fundamentally confused about something about life.

1:54:13Maybe you can help me.

1:54:16I'm still not sure how much of life, of a really good life, should be

1:54:23forcing ourselves to do things versus kind of, quote, unquote, honoring what's right for us.

1:54:32Now, obviously, you know, with respect to morality, with respect to the, you know, the

1:54:37big stuff. in life, those are easy answers.

1:54:40But when it comes to moving through the day, we're now talking here today about

1:54:46starting the day doing something that you probably don't want to do or that you

1:54:50would reflexively not do as a means to gain some other larger benefit.

1:54:57We're talking about going against the reflex, against the impulse.

1:55:02In the Buddhist traditions, in the field of meditation, how is this kind of thought

1:55:10about? And just personally, how do you think about this?

1:55:13Because I think a lot of people listening are probably thinking, okay, great.

1:55:17Like I'll do this if it gives me some benefits.

1:55:19I'll lower my heart rate.

1:55:21I'll have less stress. I'll learn some additional self -control.

1:55:24But I think people are also feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff they feel like

1:55:28they have to do and fight themselves.

1:55:31And I think people are tired of fighting.

1:55:33And I think part of the reason they're tired of fighting is that they're not

1:55:36picking up the phone and going, oh, this is cool.

1:55:39This is great. This is great.

1:55:40I think that they're, they feel slightly out of control, that they're just can't resist

1:55:47it. And it's just happening.

1:55:49And so we've lost the muscle, so to speak, the mental muscle of resistance, but

1:55:54I think that of overcoming resistance.

1:55:58But it's also kind of a philosophical question.

1:56:01I mean, how much of our lives should we be forcing things upon ourselves to

1:56:04be better? And how much of life should we just live and be free like

1:56:09a bulldog, which is the best breed of dog?

1:56:12When I first started meditating, I was fighting with my mind.

1:56:16And I thought that that was great.

1:56:18You know, I'm, this is, means I'm really doing the work that's necessary and sitting

1:56:24through the physical pain, you know, forcing myself to sit for an hour while my,

1:56:30you know, feeling like my knee was on fire and my back was killing me.

1:56:36And, you know, I had a kind of sense of pride.

1:56:39I'm able to just tough this out.

1:56:42And I was miserable. You know, I did that kind of practice for quite some

1:56:47time and it may have had some benefit in shaping my skills of self -control.

1:56:55But, you know, at some point I discovered that maybe there's another strategy that can

1:57:05be effective that is, um, that, that, that's not about fighting with your mind and

1:57:12not about fixing anything, but it's, the invitation is really to make friends with your

1:57:17mind, to welcome this, to have a completely different stance toward it and to do

1:57:23it with ease rather than with, you know, um, this kind of attention -ridden stance.

1:57:34I think that that is possible.

1:57:36Uh, and, and the approach that we are taking in the Healthy Minds program, for

1:57:42example, is we're trying to do that.

1:57:45So there is a bit of discipline involved, but it's kind of, um, really at,

1:57:52at the most minimal. It's inviting people to, uh, to be where they are and

1:58:00not, and not, and to really, um, make friends with their mind, uh, and not

1:58:05to fight against it. It's not about pushing away thoughts.

1:58:09It's not about, um, you know, sitting down to meditate.

1:58:14If, if you, if you're restless and can't sit, that's fine.

1:58:18Do it while you're walking.

1:58:20So the discipline is the intentional use of the mind.

1:58:24Um, and there is discipline involved in that, but it's kind of, what is the

1:58:28minimum level of discipline to begin to get these networks going?

1:58:34And that's kind of the question that we've asked.

1:58:37Yeah, because your lab has been focused heavily on the neuroimaging and understanding what brain

1:58:41networks are activated, as well as the positive outcome.

1:58:44So this five minute a day meditation could be done.

1:58:49Eyes open could be done.

1:58:50Eyes closed could be done while you're walking, while you're commuting.

1:58:53And it shuts down the sort of default mode network and brings higher levels of

1:58:59activity in, in these awareness, uh, attentional networks.

1:59:04Is that, I mean, broadly speaking, I'm a neuroscientist, but I want to translate this

1:59:07for, for people. Yeah. So because the names of the structures actually are somewhat meaningless,

1:59:12right? Unless we're, we've got someone in a stereo tax, right?

1:59:16Yeah. Yeah. Just to be, uh, transparently honest, there's been very little imaging work on

1:59:23the five minutes per day.

1:59:24We've done some, uh, and what we've seen in the work we've done is the

1:59:29biggest, and in general, I think this is true.

1:59:32The biggest changes that you see, particularly in the early stages of practice are in

1:59:36measures of connectivity. And it could be functional connectivity, which, um, uh, has to do

1:59:43with the functional integration across different networks, or it could be in measures of actual

1:59:49structural connectivity that we can image with diffusion weighted imaging, uh, and looking at white

1:59:55matter, uh, connectivity. And what we've actually seen with the five minutes a day is

2:00:00changes in, um, in diffusion weighted imaging, looking...

2:00:05and looking... and looking... and looking...

2:00:05and looking... I mean, the biggest change we see is in the superior longitudinal fasciculus,

2:00:10which, as you know, Andrew, connects the prefrontal and the parietal regions, and it's basically

2:00:17a major pathway through which the central executive network is interacting with the default mode.

2:00:25And that's what we see with just five minutes a day of practice.

2:00:29We can see measurable changes in diffusion -weighted parameters with just five minutes a day

2:00:35for a month. It's super impressive.

2:00:37More and more incentive to doing the five minutes a day meditation.

2:00:41I guess that's the protocol we're weaving through this entire episode.

2:00:44And of course, people could do seven, could do 10.

2:00:46I'd like to see people do six months every day.

2:00:49That would be impressive. That's what I'm going to shoot for.

2:00:51Six months every day? Yeah, just do five minutes a day for, you know, hit

2:00:5530 days, and then six months later.

2:00:59I don't know. I feel like if it's just the repeated showing up, that's really

2:01:05it. I mean, I have a prayer practice I do every night before I go

2:01:08to sleep. If I fall asleep, I get out of bed.

2:01:10My girlfriend knows this. I'll get out of bed and I pray.

2:01:13Like, I've not missed a night since I started doing this.

2:01:15I love that. I think that's beautiful.

2:01:17And I, you know, I'd love to see a study done with pre -sleep prayer

2:01:21and see how it affects sleep.

2:01:23My sleep is definitely better than ever, but there are probably a variety of reasons

2:01:27for that. But sometimes I find that I'm falling asleep while I'm praying, and I

2:01:33just tell myself, okay, just, it's the consistency.

2:01:36It's like, I have this script in my head that I'm showing devotion by showing

2:01:42up. Yeah. It's just the repeated showing up.

2:01:45And it's one of the few areas of my life that I was able to

2:01:48really remove the need to do it perfectly.

2:01:51I mean, what would that even look like?

2:01:53I realize how ridiculous that is, right?

2:01:54But some perfectionist tendencies in me, you know, were showing up.

2:02:00So for me, the, I won't even say the pride in it, the joy in

2:02:06it is from the consistency.

2:02:08Yeah. I love that. And I feel exactly the same way in my consistent practice.

2:02:14I think that's so important.

2:02:16I wanted to mention one thing about sleepiness, because you mentioned that sometimes when you're

2:02:21doing the nightly prayer, you're sleepy.

2:02:24And sleep, sleepiness is, is often something reported when people are meditating and particularly in

2:02:31the early stages of practice.

2:02:33And, you know, I've dealt with sleepiness a lot.

2:02:39And particularly before I changed my routine of, and when I gave up the alarm

2:02:44clock, because I was getting too little sleep.

2:02:46And you were sleep deprived.

2:02:47Yeah, exactly. And I felt it and I struggled with it.

2:02:50And so I have this meditation teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, who, one of the things he's

2:02:57taught is, is sleep, sleepiness meditation.

2:03:02And sleepiness meditation is simply to be aware of sleepiness.

2:03:08Just be aware of sleepiness.

2:03:10And, and don't try to fight it.

2:03:13Just simply notice what it, what is sleepiness, what is, how is it feeling and

2:03:19investigate it with curiosity. And that completely changed things for me.

2:03:26There just seemed to be this, this thing where when we fight our state or

2:03:32our nature, it gains power.

2:03:35Yeah. But when we, we don't want to give into it, but when you acknowledge

2:03:39it, but you don't completely give into it, somehow it, it changes.

2:03:43Martha Beck was the first person to really teach me this first in her books.

2:03:46And then on the podcast, this idea that like, if, if a feeling sucks or

2:03:51you don't want it to be there, that rather than trying to suppress it, you

2:03:54really look at it and let yourself feel it until it changes shape just a

2:03:58little bit, her language. Yeah.

2:03:59And then you start to look at it through that different, slightly different lens.

2:04:04And then it morphs and it goes away.

2:04:07Exactly. And I think in her, I didn't, again, didn't describe it as well as,

2:04:11as she did or would or could, but what we're talking about over and over

2:04:16again today is the mind looking at the mind.

2:04:19And it does seem to have this ability to, you know, humans have this ability.

2:04:24Do you think other animals have this ability?

2:04:26I know you can't answer that question for sure, but do you think one of

2:04:29the reasons dogs are so wonderful is because they're not self -conscious?

2:04:34My conjecture is that, that our ability to look at our minds is way more

2:04:43developed than in any other species.

2:04:45And there may be some rudimentary kinds of meta -awareness in other species.

2:04:52And, you know, some scientists have suggested that it may be correlated with successful performance

2:05:00on the self -test, you know, recognizing yourself in the mirror.

2:05:05You know, there's a recent report of elephants passing the self -test.

2:05:10So they are smart after all.

2:05:11Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that's an interesting story.

2:05:15They did this actually in the Bronx Zoo in New York and they had to

2:05:17construct a mirror that was the size of an elephant too.

2:05:21How do they know if the elephant knows it's itself?

2:05:23Because they don't attack it if it's itself?

2:05:25So they put rouge on the trunk and they expose the elephant to the mirror.

2:05:32We've just had to take on a bit of action.

2:05:32They've got to collect thatGR's number, uh, a name, and they support it if it's

2:05:32accrued and it'sreh chord. And definitely go ahead, you know.

2:05:33And if the elephant touches the point where the rouge is, it's recognizing itself in

2:05:39the mirror. And there are very few species that pass the self -test in that

2:05:45way. Most species don't. We were talking offline a little bit earlier about a course

2:05:51that you're teaching about this very thing that you're calling flourishing.

2:05:55So what do the students get in that course and what components could you possibly

2:06:00educate us on right here, right now so that we can benefit without having the

2:06:05opportunity to take the course?

2:06:06Yeah, absolutely. So the course is built on a framework that we've developed on the

2:06:12plasticity of flourishing. It holds that there are four key pillars of human flourishing.

2:06:20And each of these pillars exhibits plasticity.

2:06:23And these are the key trainable ingredients that constitute human flourishing.

2:06:30So what are these four pillars?

2:06:32The first pillar is, and we've talked about some in the course of our conversation

2:06:36already, but the first we call awareness.

2:06:39And awareness is where mindfulness would be.

2:06:45It's where voluntary attention, the capacity to focus resides.

2:06:49And it also includes our capacity for self -awareness and for meta -awareness, which we've

2:06:55spoken about. The second pillar we call connection.

2:06:59And connection is about the qualities which are important for healthy social relationships.

2:07:06Qualities like appreciation and gratitude and kindness and compassion.

2:07:11You can think of the opposite of that being, at least in part, social isolation

2:07:17and loneliness. Again, these are elements that we know can be trained.

2:07:22They are importantly connected to our well -being.

2:07:27The third pillar we call insight.

2:07:30And insight is about a curiosity -driven understanding of the narrative that all human beings

2:07:39have about themselves. The narrative that we carry around in our minds.

2:07:44And we know that we all have a set of beliefs and expectations of ourselves.

2:07:51And we know that at one extreme of the continuum, there are people that have

2:07:55very negative beliefs and expectations of themselves.

2:07:58And, of course, that's a prescription for depression.

2:08:01But what's really critical for well -being is not so much changing the narrative, particularly

2:08:08at first, but it's changing our relationship to the narrative so that we can see

2:08:13the narrative for what it is, which is a set of beliefs and thoughts and

2:08:18expectations. And then, finally, the last pillar is purpose.

2:08:23And purpose here is not necessarily about finding something grand to do with your life

2:08:29that's more meaningful and purposeful, but rather, how can we find meaning and purpose in

2:08:35even the most pedestrian activities of daily living?

2:08:38And we actually talked about some of this earlier, but can taking out the garbage

2:08:42be connected to our sense of purpose?

2:08:46Cleaning the kitty litter. Cleaning the kitty litter.

2:08:48And, of course, it can be.

2:08:50It just requires a little bit of reframing.

2:08:52And that's a learnable skill.

2:08:54There are really three things that we've discovered in this work that can be easily

2:09:01summarized. The first is that flourishing is a skill.

2:09:04The second is that it's easier than you think.

2:09:07And the third is that flourishing is contagious.

2:09:10So that when you're flourishing, it's going to have beneficial impact on the people around

2:09:15you. And our course, The Art and Science of Human Flourishing, is built on each

2:09:21of these pillars. To give students not just an intellectual understanding, but an experiential practice,

2:09:32a taste of what these pillars actually are.

2:09:36One of the important insights that the course is built on is that there are

2:09:43two major forms of learning that we know from modern neuroscience.

2:09:48One we can think of as declarative learning, which is learning about stuff, it's conceptual

2:09:53learning. The other we call procedural learning.

2:09:57And procedural learning is learning that is skill -based, it's acquired through practice, and we

2:10:03know that it's instantiated in different brain networks compared to declarative learning.

2:10:09And human flourishing requires both.

2:10:13And most of the academy privileges declarative learning over procedural learning.

2:10:20And so this course that we teach is an unusual course because it includes a

2:10:26lab every week, so to speak, a little section where students do the procedural learning

2:10:34for the stuff that they're learning declaratively in the lecture part of the class.

2:10:40I love that. I've long wanted to do a course that had information and practices

2:10:46involved. Sounds like you've built that course.

2:10:48If people who are not able to take the course wanted to access these different

2:10:53bins with some practical tools, you already gave us a tool for awareness, so meditation,

2:11:00five minutes. would be a great place to start, done daily, and just to be

2:11:04aware of what's, of the chaos and be able to observe it, but not go,

2:11:11not follow it. How does one incorporate connection?

2:11:14So I actually talked a little bit about connection in earlier, but there's a lot

2:11:20more to say, but one kind of connection is doing a little appreciation practice when

2:11:25we eat. That's one I talked about earlier, where we connect to the people, even

2:11:30if we don't know them, who have brought us food to the table.

2:11:34Some we may know, some we might not know.

2:11:38There are formal kinds of connection practices that we, there are meditation practices that we

2:11:44call loving kindness and compassion practices.

2:11:47And so we can, we've shown in a randomized control trial that just a few

2:11:55hours of this practice over two weeks is sufficient to produce a measurable change in

2:12:00the brain. And so here's a way you can do this.

2:12:05You can begin with a loved one and bring the loved one into your mind

2:12:09and your heart and envision a time in their life when they may have had

2:12:14some challenge or difficulty, and then cultivate the strong aspiration that they'd be relieved of

2:12:21that difficulty and that they have, um, a life of ease.

2:12:27That's it. And you can use a simple phrase that you can repeat to yourself,

2:12:33um, that embodies, that captures that theme.

2:12:38It could be something as simple as may you be happy, may you be free

2:12:42of suffering, but the words don't matter.

2:12:45Whatever words are most well -suited for each person.

2:12:50Um, but then you move on to different categories of people.

2:12:53So you start with a loved one.

2:12:55You then move on to yourself.

2:12:58You then move on to, to a category of person that we call a stranger.

2:13:02And a stranger is someone you recognize whose face you recognize, but you don't know

2:13:08them well. It could be someone that works in the same building that you work

2:13:13in. It could be a classmate.

2:13:15It could be a bus driver.

2:13:18It could be the cashier at a local, um, store that you go to, a

2:13:23barista. Um, you don't know anything about them, but you recognize them and you can

2:13:28envision a time in their life when they may have had, they may have had

2:13:32some difficulty, even if you don't know anything about their life.

2:13:35So you do that with the stranger.

2:13:37And then finally, you move on to what's probably the most important category, which is

2:13:43a difficult person, someone who pushes your buttons and you genuinely bring them into your

2:13:51mind and your heart. And you recognize a time you imagine a time when they

2:13:56have been having some challenge and you cultivate the aspiration that they be relieved of

2:14:03that suffering. And that practice just done a few minutes a day can change your

2:14:09brain and it changes your behavior.

2:14:12And it changes the brain.

2:14:13How makes it, um, uh, capable of more empathy.

2:14:17So one of the key regions of the brain that's been implicated in empathy is

2:14:23the, um, the temporal parietal junction.

2:14:26What we see is that in this kind of compassion practice, there's significantly enhanced activation

2:14:33of the temporal parietal junction, particularly in response to stimuli of people in distress.

2:14:41There's also, uh, networks in the brain that are involved in positive affect that are

2:14:47activated by this kind of practice.

2:14:50Uh, and behaviorally we've shown using hard nosed, um, tasks that are derived from behavioral

2:14:58economics and neuroeconomics. We actually have demonstrated and other scientists have demonstrated this, that people

2:15:06behave more altruistically using, you know, these hard nosed behavioral measures.

2:15:12Uh, we've also shown that on a hard nosed behavioral measure of implicit bias, that

2:15:19there's significant reductions in implicit bias practice.

2:15:22And those reductions are sustained for at least six months after the formal period of

2:15:30practice ends. So there's really hard nosed evidence to suggest that both the brain and

2:15:36behavior change. So the third pillar, um, insight is, um, really about, it's, it's, and

2:15:45I should say, just backing up for a moment, that two of these pillars, connection

2:15:50and purpose, are found in virtually every other framework for understanding well -being.

2:15:56Two of them are unique.

2:15:58Uh, and the two that are unique are awareness awareness and insight.

2:16:04And I should just go back to awareness for one moment to just point out

2:16:08one other thing. There was a very famous study that was published in science many,

2:16:13many years ago by Killingsworth and Gilbert, two psychologists at Harvard.

2:16:19And they did a study with around 3 ,000 people.

2:16:24Uh, and they texted them at different points.

2:16:28during the day with their consent over the course of several days, and they asked

2:16:33three questions. The first question they asked people is, what are you doing right now?

2:16:38And they checked off from a list of activities.

2:16:40Second question is, where is your mind right now when I queried?

2:16:47And the third question is, right at this moment, how happy or unhappy are you?

2:16:53And the finding from this study, the two key findings are that the average adult

2:16:58on these measures reports that they're not paying attention to what they're doing 47 %

2:17:04of the time. And when they're not paying attention to what they're doing, they're significantly

2:17:10less happy. Even if what they're doing is boring, even if what they're doing is

2:17:15washing the dishes, if their mind is distracted, they're less happy.

2:17:20And the title of this paper is, A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.

2:17:27Does that mean that a focused mind is a happy mind or a happier mind?

2:17:32I would say a happier mind, but not necessarily happy.

2:17:37I love that study. Yeah, I'm sure you know it well.

2:17:39Ever more important with each year that we have more opportunities for distraction.

2:17:44Exactly. Which also, to be fair to social media, means that if you want to

2:17:48sit down with your phone and handle some texts or scroll social media for a

2:17:53bit, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

2:17:56It's the intrusion of that stuff into other activities that's likely to be the issue.

2:18:03Exactly. Totally agree. Totally. So just to finish this insight, so practice that is easily

2:18:10accessible, that can really help with insight, is if you're in a difficult situation, whatever

2:18:17it is, at work, in a relationship, imagine what a person who is different from

2:18:25you that you may know, or it could be some famous person who you know

2:18:29something about, imagine how they would view the situation from their perspective and just allow

2:18:39yourself to get a taste of how their view of the situation is different from

2:18:46your view of the situation.

2:18:48That's it. And that is really helpful in giving us some distance from our own

2:18:58beliefs and expectations and helps us recognize that when we see the world, we're actually

2:19:04not seeing the world. We're seeing how we construct our own construction of the world

2:19:09through our filters of beliefs and expectations.

2:19:12And so it helps us become less fused, less identified, which is really an important

2:19:19ingredient for well -being. And finally, with purpose, you know, a simple practice is whatever

2:19:26you're doing, whether it's a pedestrian activity like washing the dishes or doing your laundry,

2:19:31just simply reflect on how this is beneficial, not just to yourself, but to others

2:19:38in your ecosystem. That's it.

2:19:40Simple. So much of what you just said, which by the way was spectacular, awareness,

2:19:47connection, insight, and purpose, who wouldn't want to cultivate more of those?

2:19:52Especially given that awareness is correlated with more happiness, lack of awareness and presence with

2:19:59less happiness. So much of it seems to be about getting outside ourselves and at

2:20:06the same time, not letting the things outside ourselves pull us away from ourselves.

2:20:11You know, and I feel funny even with that language.

2:20:14I mean, the language becomes so loop -de -looped.

2:20:16We don't have... Unfortunately, we don't have real language for this.

2:20:22I love lactate for the mind because it's simple, it's accurate, and it's actionable.

2:20:27But so much of what I think you're describing in these four bins is, you

2:20:31know, I think of it as like trying to ride the crest of a very

2:20:34kind of, in some cases, choppy terrain until you're there, right?

2:20:40We can get pulled into the, you know, the news, and it's important to be

2:20:43aware of what's going on in the world, but pretty soon you can just be

2:20:46lost in it and then carry forward the angst, the feelings of despair, or having

2:20:51gotten one over on the other team, whatever it is.

2:20:53On the other side of things, we're in our heads and our problems seem so

2:20:57monumental that we forget that we have agency, that there are things we can do

2:21:03right there and then to handle ourselves and show up better.

2:21:07So, you know, it can feel like a pretty narrow bridge to walk.

2:21:12And I'm wondering if any of the data from meditators shows that that bridge gets

2:21:19wider with time and maybe even easier to access.

2:21:25In the same way that somebody who's fit, right?

2:21:27I mean, they can do a really hard workout for them, but somebody who's really

2:21:31fit, they know, okay, when I get there, I'm kind of achy, but I know

2:21:37after five minutes of warming up, I'm going to be fine.

2:21:39So there's less resistance to the warming up and therefore there's more energy for the

2:21:43actual workout and then it goes much better.

2:21:45Yeah, I think what you're saying is so important.

2:21:48One of the things you're saying in the exercise analogy is that you're becoming more

2:21:52familiar with what happens. And as you become more familiar, there's less resistance because you

2:22:00know that the initial, I mean, I do, when I go out on a bike

2:22:05ride, you know, the first 10 minutes are agony for me, honestly.

2:22:09I think that's helpful for people to hear.

2:22:12I think I, you know, Rob, who's my producer and close friend, he's done multiple

2:22:17Ironmans, he runs all the time.

2:22:18And I asked him, do you feel good when you run?

2:22:21He's like, no, usually for the first 20 minutes, I feel like garbage and then

2:22:24I feel great. And I'm like, oh, that's good because I thought I was the

2:22:28only one. Although for me, it's a little bit shorter, but I don't run the

2:22:31way that he runs. I don't cycle the way that you cycle.

2:22:33I'm out there just to, you know, do it, not to, you know, perform at

2:22:37an extremely high level. But I know that because I'm familiar with it, I know

2:22:40that, you know, at a certain mile distance, it's going to change.

2:22:44And it does very reliably.

2:22:46And we also similarly can become more familiar with our own minds.

2:22:50The familiarity is the same kind of concept.

2:22:55We can become more familiar with our own minds.

2:22:57And when we become more familiar with our own minds, our capacities become more readily

2:23:03available, more spontaneously available. And one of the challenges when we first start this work

2:23:08of intentionally cultivating flourishing is that we forget.

2:23:12We know the things that we could do to be helpful, but we forget to

2:23:17use them in the moment, in the friction of the moment, or even if the

2:23:21moment is not so friction -like.

2:23:23But, you know, I've seen people, even meditators, you know, when they're, if they're coming

2:23:30to a meal and they sit down, they just immediately start, you know, very unconsciously,

2:23:36instead of just taking a moment, you know, for a little appreciation.

2:23:41But the more you do it, the more it becomes spontaneous and literally the sitting

2:23:48down to the meal is a cue, which elicits this response.

2:23:55And it really becomes more spontaneously available.

2:23:59It takes some time, but I think that this is really a reliable outcome of

2:24:05doing this with regularity. Fantastic.

2:24:09Yeah, I'm a big fan of ritualizing things.

2:24:11I have my pre -podcast ritual.

2:24:13It doesn't matter what it is.

2:24:14And the consistency is what matters.

2:24:18Because I think it probably, the neuroscientist in me wants to say that it probably

2:24:24allows a lot of networks that don't need to be active to be less active.

2:24:28And probably allows the networks that do need to be active to get some of

2:24:34that energy. Literally. I mean, we had Martin Picard on here.

2:24:39He's an expert in mitochondria.

2:24:40He's a good friend of mine.

2:24:41Oh, yeah. He's terrific. I love Martin.

2:24:43And, you know, when we used to talk about energy, it sounded kind of woo

2:24:47and, you know, but it's mitochondria.

2:24:49I mean, we're talking electrical and chemical signaling between neurons and mitochondria are handling so

2:24:53much of that. And so we're no longer living in the space where the names

2:24:59don't have substantiation in the textbooks and in biophysics and in molecules.

2:25:07And while that might not be the most important aspect, I think people that would

2:25:10otherwise say, oh, well, you know, this meditation stuff sounds kind of out there.

2:25:14No, this is the stuff of biology.

2:25:17It's the stuff of physics.

2:25:18It's the stuff of chemistry.

2:25:22Speaking of chemistry, I'm curious what your thoughts are on psychedelics.

2:25:26We've talked about them before on the podcast, and I always use the usual disclaimer

2:25:30that there's some very, very compelling clinical trials, psilocybin for major depression, maybe for other

2:25:38things as well. Ibogaine, very dangerous unless done correctly with correct, you know, health monitoring.

2:25:45So it hasn't been shown to be helpful for trauma, for addictions, MDMA and pathogen,

2:25:53not a psychedelic, for trauma, but that we still don't have FDA approval on these

2:25:59things. Many of them are still schedule one, so no known medical application and still

2:26:05very illegal to possess or sell.

2:26:07So that's the warning. And certainly populations that shouldn't go near them, people with predisposition

2:26:12to psychosis or mania, that's very, very clear.

2:26:15With all of that said, the data are pretty exciting.

2:26:19People's ability to access an understanding of patterns in their unconscious mind, to rewire their

2:26:28default mode and resting networks, to reduce anxiety, and on and on.

2:26:33And psychedelics and meditation have a somewhat overlapping past.

2:26:38I'm curious what your thoughts are, given all the disclaimers, what your thoughts are.

2:26:44And is there a place for combining them with meditation to achieve more accelerated results?

2:26:51Yeah, those are great questions, which I have thought a lot about, as I'm sure

2:26:57you suspect. So I have a few nuanced views of this.

2:27:02First, I'm excited about the new research in the way you are.

2:27:08And I also completely agree with you that there are really promising data from some

2:27:13of the clinical trials. So, you know, you mentioned severe intractable depression, and there are,

2:27:20I think, really good data there.

2:27:22There's also good data for alcohol.

2:27:23There's also good data for alcohol.

2:27:25and I think that this resurgence of research is a great thing and I'm convinced

2:27:32this is something that really could be helpful in a number of clinical situations.

2:27:37I'm less sanguine about the use of psychedelics in quote normal people or individuals who

2:27:46are doing it for kind of their own self -development or flourishing or spiritual development.

2:27:54I'm less sanguine for the following reason.

2:27:59I think that psychedelics can produce a kind of glimpse of a different mode of

2:28:07being which could be helpful but I think a lot depends on what happens after

2:28:14that so to speak and how that experience is actually worked with and integrated and

2:28:21one of the things that concerns me about the stuff happening with psychedelics today is

2:28:29the relative lack of training of the folks who guide psychedelic sessions and you can

2:28:41look in the United States today and see that many major universities including my university

2:28:49not through my involvement are offering these one -year kind of certificate programs to become

2:28:56a psychedelic guide for people with very little prior training and this is something that's

2:29:02occurring all over the place.

2:29:04It deeply concerns me because I wouldn't trust the kind of people who I mean

2:29:11it's not to disparage these people I'm sure that they have good motivation but I

2:29:16just don't think that taking a person with no prior training and putting them in

2:29:21a program for a year is sufficient to cover all of the issues and nuances

2:29:28that are going to arise.

2:29:30The other related issue is that when a person has a psychedelic experience what happens

2:29:38after and what is kind of the residue of that and what I sense is

2:29:45the residue is that they have a memory of the experience and so they remember

2:29:53aspects of what happened during the experience and the recollection of an experience is very

2:30:00different than the embodied transformation that is required to produce real change.

2:30:09You know for me there's a simple question you can ask is this person kinder?

2:30:16Does their spouse report that they're more enjoyable to be around?

2:30:24Is their flourishing contagious? Those are the questions that I think can be asked and

2:30:31I haven't seen a lot of convincing evidence of that.

2:30:35I'm a big fan of the research going on and continuing to use these substances

2:30:41for treating people who are in various states of significant distress but I'm cautious about

2:30:49their use in a broader way to promote human flourishing at scale.

2:30:55Thank you for that. Very, very thoughtful response.

2:30:59I, yeah, I'm enthusiastic about these compounds.

2:31:03I just still have a lot of questions about, you know, like what proper integration

2:31:08really looks like, how to standardize that.

2:31:13And then of course there are many people who perhaps are hearing this and will

2:31:17say, well, you know, there's a longstanding tradition of how to do this correctly and

2:31:22now people in standardized medicine in the West are now trying to, you know, overtake

2:31:27this or change it and raises a lot of interesting questions.

2:31:31I think clearly it's growing in its use.

2:31:35I haven't heard of any standard ways of meshing it with meditation.

2:31:41Certainly there are people also at Stanford combining it with transcranial magnetic stimulation because these

2:31:47compounds opened up plasticity to some extent and the idea that one could direct the

2:31:52plasticity towards specific networks in the brain is pretty exciting.

2:31:56I mean, what's cooler than that, right?

2:31:59Combining chemistry and brain -machine interface too and people's, you know, self -report and a

2:32:05really good practitioner and driving the neural circuit changes so that they can emerge from

2:32:09that better. But yeah, we're not quite there.

2:32:13We're not quite there. And I think in general the use of neurostimulation, neuromodulation methods

2:32:21in conjunction with other modalities of intervention, whether it be psychedelics or meditation, for example,

2:32:29is a very promising avenue for exploration.

2:32:36And we're doing some research right now combining neuromodulation with meditation to see if we

2:32:42can boost the impact of meditation with some targeted neuromodulation.

2:32:50And it's specifically... Neuromodulation to help facilitate sleep.

2:32:55What device are you using to stimulate?

2:32:57So we are using this, I'm sure you know something about it, but it's actually,

2:33:04there are very few groups in the world currently using this.

2:33:08It's called transcranial electric stimulation with temporal interference, testy.

2:33:14And the basic idea of this is that if you have two electrodes that are

2:33:20stimulating at a very high carrier frequency, say 15 kilohertz, which is essentially from all

2:33:27we know, the brain is not responsive to a 15 kilohertz signal.

2:33:33So that's the carrier frequency.

2:33:35And the way it works is we're stimulating one electrode at 15 ,000 kilohertz and

2:33:41another electrode at 15 ,001 kilohertz.

2:33:44So there's just a one hertz offset.

2:33:47And the geometry of the targeting is such that we can target deep brain structures

2:33:52where the delta frequency is maximal.

2:33:57We are targeting structures that are specifically structures where we know slow waves are generated

2:34:05and are therefore an important ingredient in deep sleep.

2:34:13And we're doing, and this, the other cool thing about this stimulation is you cannot

2:34:19feel it. It has no subjective sensations.

2:34:21So it's very different than TMS, which is, you know, you feel it big time.

2:34:26You don't feel a thing.

2:34:27So we are delivering this during sleep.

2:34:30People don't know when they're getting stimulated.

2:34:32They of course know they're being stimulated because they're giving informed consent, but it doesn't

2:34:37wake them up. And it increases slow wave sleep.

2:34:40We've definitively demonstrated that it increases the density of slow wave activity during deep sleep.

2:34:48How do they feel in their wakeful subjective life?

2:34:51Better? Yes. And how do I become a participant in this study?

2:34:55I mean, I get plenty of slow wave sleep.

2:34:56My sleep is great lately and has been for a while.

2:34:59But what, are you recruiting subjects?

2:35:02This is a, yeah, it's a big complicated protocol.

2:35:06I don't care. Are you recruiting subjects?

2:35:08We are recruiting. I'm just kidding.

2:35:09I'm just kidding. I do care.

2:35:11I'm just teasing. People are probably thinking, how do I get that?

2:35:14How do I, well, maybe this pre -sleep meditation protocol should be looked at because

2:35:20that's something anyone can do.

2:35:21I'll provide a link to that paper.

2:35:23And that's exactly what we're doing in this study now.

2:35:26We're using a, this is a little technical, but we're using a micro -randomized design.

2:35:35So in a single participant on some nights, they get pre -sleep meditation just before

2:35:41sleep, just a five -minute practice.

2:35:43And in other nights, they do not receive that.

2:35:46And we are looking at the impact of that on slow -wave sleep and also

2:35:52looking at the synergistic effects of pre -sleep meditation with the testy stimulation to increase

2:35:59slow -wave activity. And we're getting experience sampling measures during the next day to see

2:36:05if the pre -sleep meditation has a demonstrable impact on their mood the next day

2:36:12and how that interacts with our boosting of slow -wave activity.

2:36:15Very, very cool. I should just say, this is work that's being done collaboratively with

2:36:21Giulio Tinoni and his group in Wisconsin.

2:36:26He's a very well -known sleep and consciousness scientist.

2:36:31Great lab. Great lab. Yeah, great lab.

2:36:33Are you able to share any preliminary findings about what the pre -sleep five -minute

2:36:40meditation does to deep sleep?

2:36:42We don't know yet. And honestly, it's not me being, you know, super cautious.

2:36:47We just, this is a new study that we're just in the middle of.

2:36:51We have roughly 20 -something participants who've completed the protocol, but it's ongoing right now.

2:36:57Well, given what you just described and given that this other paper described that some

2:37:05pre -sleep meditation can have a really impressive impact on growth hormone release, I'm encouraged

2:37:13to do the five minutes before sleep.

2:37:15So I suppose that if you want to double up on the benefits, you could

2:37:19just do the five -minute -per -day meditation, folks, in the hour before sleep.

2:37:23Why not? I think it would be great.

2:37:24What are your thoughts on open monitoring meditation for increasing creativity?

2:37:30Honestly, the data on open monitoring meditation or, for that matter, any meditation and creativity,

2:37:37I would say are very limited.

2:37:40In part, it's because, you know, the measures of creativity that are used by psychologists

2:37:48typically are honestly, I think, pretty crappy measures of creativity.

2:37:53So we're quite limited by the measurement tools that we have.

2:37:58Having said all that, I do think that open monitoring meditation can really boost creativity

2:38:07primarily by helping people become more aware of the associative thoughts that they have.

2:38:16And this relates to... And this relates to...

2:38:19something we talked about earlier, I often tell students of mine to spend time inspecting

2:38:26their own mind, just watching their own mind and writing down thoughts that may occur

2:38:32that may be interesting. And this is a kind of open monitoring meditation.

2:38:38It's having no specific object and just being open, aware, awake, and not distracted, not

2:38:47getting lost in a train of thought, but simply being aware.

2:38:52I believe that we probably have much more creative thought occurring than we give ourselves

2:38:58credit for and it's simply because we forget.

2:39:02And I think this can really improve that.

2:39:05But the data are pretty meager.

2:39:08But you still recommend it if people want to increase their creativity.

2:39:12Yes, I do. Because this is one of those things where there's essentially no downside

2:39:17to it. We know there'll be other benefits that have been empirically documented.

2:39:24Awesome. Well, Richie, thank you so much for coming here today and educating us on

2:39:31meditation, but really much more than that, you've educated us on states of mind, how

2:39:35to access different states of mind, what they mean, how they impact the state of

2:39:41being and our traits that we will enter after we meditate.

2:39:45And now everyone should be inspired to do at least five minutes per day of

2:39:49meditation, maybe in the morning, maybe before sleep.

2:39:52Would love to get the update on this study that you described, looking at slow

2:39:55wave sleep. And I'm really excited about your book.

2:39:58It's so great that you have a new book coming out because I, of course,

2:40:00read Altered Traits. I've talked about it on the podcast.

2:40:03I love, love, love the book.

2:40:04We'll put a link to that.

2:40:04But Born to Flourish, How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to

2:40:10Thriving by you and we should give credit to your co -author.

2:40:14Cortland Dahl. And he is a neuroscientist as well?

2:40:18Yes, he's a neuroscientist, contemplative scientist, and chief contemplative officer of our nonprofit, human .org.

2:40:28Awesome. Well, you're a real pioneer in this space.

2:40:32The field, as it were, of meditation really needed a serious scientist to break in

2:40:38and study and share so that everyone can learn about and adopt meditation.

2:40:44And you've just done so much to educate so many people.

2:40:48And coming here today, you've just done more of that.

2:40:50So I have immense gratitude for you.

2:40:51And I know millions of other people do as well.

2:40:54So thank you so much.

2:40:55Thank you. And I want to express my immense gratitude to you for bringing science

2:41:00that can make our lives better to so many people.

2:41:03And that is such a gift and such a wonderful service that you are providing.

2:41:09So thank you. Thank you.

2:41:11Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr.

2:41:13Richie Davidson. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his

2:41:17new book, Born to Flourish, please see the links in the show note captions.

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2:41:56For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out.

2:41:58It's my very first book.

2:42:00It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

2:42:03This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and

2:42:06that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience.

2:42:10And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related

2:42:16to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols

2:42:22that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook .com.

2:42:27There you can find links to various vendors.

2:42:29You can pick the one that you like best.

2:42:31Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body.

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2:43:06call protocols in the form of one to three -page PDFs that cover everything from

2:43:10how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

2:43:14We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training.

2:43:19All of that is available completely zero -cost.

2:43:22You simply go to HubermanLab .com, go to the menu tab in the top right

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2:43:28And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.

2:43:31Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr.

2:43:34Richie Davidson. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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Science-Based Meditation Tools to Improve Your Brain & Health | Dr. Richard Davidson