Speaker 1 · 0:00Let's say you're trying to make a change in your brain using mindfulness training, but you only have 30 minutes to try it. Is it better to do one 30-minute routine or 10 three-minute routines? According to Dr. Rick Hansen, he says. He will talk to us about the power of the mind and the brain. We know how to grow and strengthen a muscle. But what about the brain? How do we develop inner strength? That's one of the topics we cover today in this episode. Dr. Hansen, where do you want to start today?
Speaker 2 · 1:24First, with regard to mindfulness, people use that word in different ways, which is fine as long as we know what we mean. I tend to use it in the sense that I think is most rooted in the original teachings of the Buddha as sustained present moment awareness. Period. Sustained present moment awareness that can be externally directed, internally directed, can be brought to a point of focus and concentration, and can be very, very wide open. Mindfulness itself is supported by other factors such as stability of attention, executive control of attention, acceptance, compassion for what one is mindful of. These all help us to remain mindful. And there are certainly other factors as well. Additionally, we can be mindful while engaging in wise efforts. We can be mindful while talking with a friend, hopefully more skillfully than not. We can be mindful while letting go of tension in our body or letting go of thoughts or resentments that are a burden. And we can be mindful as we engage the wise effort of cultivating gratitude or inner strength or insight or skillfulness with other people. Mindfulness itself is not at odds with wise efforts of various kinds. We can be certainly only mindful in forms of choiceless awareness that are most radical. And I think of that as the fundamental practice, utterly being with what's there as it is entirely, without interfering with it. And sometimes that's all we can do, just ride out the storm. And as practice matures, increasingly people are really rested more and more in just being there in the present as it is. But that's not the entirety of practice. And a kind of misunderstanding has crept in that uses mindfulness in some ways to argue against forms of wise effort and other kinds of skillfulness of different kinds, as if they're at odds with each other. They're not. It's just that there is a technical procedure of choiceless awareness that's really useful and quite profound. And increasingly we can hang out there. And in choiceless awareness, only mindfulness is present, pretty much. But because only mindfulness is present in that meditative procedure, that doesn't mean it should become a way of life. To the exclusion of other beneficial factors that make sense, just grounded in ordinary life, as well as in a hundred years of psychology, as well as grounded in the teachings of the contemplative traditions around the world.
Speaker 1 · 4:10Although sometimes all we can do is observe without acting, mindfulness is not at all at odds with taking wise action in the world. Even the simplest mindfulness practice, watching the breath, for example, requires active effort. We can also direct this kind of effort to do good in the world while still being mindful. So reflect for a moment on how that sits with your own definition of mindfulness. In your own practice of mindfulness, do you differentiate between being and mindfully doing? And if so, what's the balance like between the two? And how does one support the other?
Speaker 2 · 5:03So, one of the more useful findings in just the last few years of brain science is that when we are engaged with task-oriented doing, or when we are ruminating, daydreaming, spacing out, our mind is wondering, when we're caught up in the future or the past, when there's a strong sense of self, there tends to be a lot of activity in the midline of the cortex, the top of the head. But the whole brain is active when we do stuff. You know, it's connected together. That said, there is localization of function, specialization, just like in a symphony. The symphony plays together, but you got the horn section and the woodwinds. Okay. The frontal regions are involved with task-oriented doing. The rear word regions spreading to the side are more the default mode network, the simulator, the ruminator. And there's a place for the capabilities that these midline cortices afford us. It's been one of the two major, broadly stated evolutionary developments in the brain over the last several million years. This capacity which we have that our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, do not have to be able to really imagine multiple futures, or to really reflect on the past, or to have a lot of internal self-referential narratives, for better or worse, about ourselves and how things will be for us, or how they were for us, or how they might be for us in different settings. That's a radical evolutionary advancement. So we have this midnight cortex. It's great, does a lot of good stuff for it, and it's the seed of so much of our suffering. It's the seed of so much stressful task doing, saturated with the sense of self. It's also the seed of all kinds of wandering, spacing out and ruminating, resenting, rehashing conversations, building up a case against others, pounding on ourselves, beating ourselves up, et cetera, et cetera. So from a practical standpoint, if we want to suffer less, we want to get more regulation, in effect, over this midline processes and be able to engage other parts of the brain. Very interestingly, when we drop into mindful presence, we tend to engage networks on the side of the brain, and activity in the midline decreases, both the frontal regions and the rearward regions. So being able to drop into mindfulness is good. And there are other things that support midline activation, which is primarily right-sided for people who are right-handed, and also for many left-handed people. The lateral preferences of the brain are reverse for some left-handed people, but the principle is the same. So when we activate networks on the sides of the brain, especially the right side for right-handed people, and when we do that activation, that's good for us, that's helpful for us being able to do it. One way to do that is by getting a sense of things as a whole. When we have a sense of things as a whole, we're no longer caught up in parts struggling with parts, which is the specialty of the midline. And when we get a sense of things as a whole, we engage the right hemisphere, which also quiets verbal activity, which tends to be left hemisphere-centered, which also tends to reduce suffering and the inner chatter that we get caught up in and which is reinforced again and again and again by many ordinary activities.
Speaker 1 · 8:40Contemplating and thinking about the past and future is a radical evolutionary advancement, but it's also the source of much of our suffering. Resting in mindful presence eases this suffering by engaging entirely different networks in the brain. With advances in MRI technology, we can now see that mindfulness practice not only quiets certain parts of the brain while activating others, but creates new neural connections while dissolving others. Mindfulness even shrinks areas of the brain responsible for spurring reactivity to fear and stress, while enlarging parts related to emotional regulation. Rick specifically connects these benefits to the practice of sensing things as a whole. In your mind, how might that be connected to a reduction in suffering? Why might a perceived reduction in parts equate to increased peace or joy? Having contemplated that connection, let's hear about specific practices we can do to feel things as a whole, activating lateral brain networks, and by extension, our sense of calm and contentment.
Speaker 2 · 10:13Breathing while feeling your chest as a whole, and to be aware of the body as a whole, which is a really cool meditative practice to gradually help people widen out to their body as a whole. It's really powerful for many people because it's not airy fairy, it's incredibly grounded. Some people are more able to do the sense of the body as a whole than others. I suspect people have a background in body-oriented practices, yoga, pilates, dance, tai chi, qigong, and so forth are probably more able to tune into their body as a whole. If you think of it, when we're aware of a site, we take it as a whole with many things in it. In much the same way, we can become aware of the field of sensation as a whole with many sensations in it. So when we're aware of things as a whole, right there, bingo. We're working these lateral networks on the sides of the brain, especially in the right hemisphere. So that first suggestion, be aware of the feeling of breathing while feeling your chest as a whole. Brings us, number one, into sensation itself, which dials down on verbal activity. Number two, when we tune into the internal sensations of the chest rising and falling, we engage a part of the brain called the insula, INSULA, which is a fairly recently evolved part of the brain on the inside of the temporal lobes that is very involved with tuning into our gut feelings and our body sensations through interoception, like where the joints are in space or the internal sense of the chest or the belly, nausea, as well as the gut feeling of really feeling deeply content and kind of the foundation of self-awareness in a lot of ways. What's going on with me is very much involving the insula. And the insula, interestingly, is involved with empathy for the feelings of others. In effect, to be empathic, to simulate over here a sense of what it's like to be you over there, we draw essentially on three different systems for three different kinds of empathy. We draw on the mirror neurons, or more exactly, mirror-like networks, for empathy for action, the actions of others, getting a sense in our own body of what it's like for them to reach for the cup or stand in that way or sit in that way. And those neurons are mainly in the so-called temporal, parietal junction-ish. Then we also have empathy for feelings. We get a feeling for other people, right? In the same way. Neurons that activate in our insula when we are having certain gut feelings, some fraction of them also activate when we are seeing or resonating with gut feelings of other people, deep feelings of other people. Which is very interesting. So we have these parts of the brain that do two things. That's in part why I think Dan Siegel has wonderfully talked a lot about how mindfulness for ourselves can increase our mindfulness for others. He calls it mindsight. Internally directed here helps us be externally directed there. And then more recently, we have prefrontal regions that are involved for empathy for the thoughts of others, so-called theory of mind, tuning into the ideas, the plans, the attitudes, the impact of previous life experiences on another person. So all that said, it's interesting that we get a bonus benefit when we tune into ourselves, especially the internal sensations of our own body, we become more capable of resonating empathically with other people. And research shows that as people literally build neural structure in their insula based on training in their awareness of the internal sensations of their body, they become more empathic for the emotions of other people. That's a good bonus benefit. And as the insula activates or engages, it acts like kind of a circuit breaker and shuts down activity in the default mode network. Thus less negative rumination, self-preoccupation, and dot dot dot suffering. It's quite interesting, actually, and profound that strengthening a sense of me in the sense of in you know be feeling grounded in our own body makes us more available for we. Fences make for good neighbors. The more we're grounded here, the more we can be open to them there. So if we can reduce midline activity, we do tend to reduce the sense of self. And self is very wrapped up in verbal activity, and it's also very wrapped up in mental time travel. We're kind of forecasting ourselves into the future, and then we're reflecting on ourselves in the past. So if we can reduce verbal activity pragmatically, not because there's something wrong with verbal activity, and also there's a place for a sense of self from time to time, surging forward, you know, to deal with injustice or to, you know, mobilize passion or to reflect on one's own life and what one's vision is from here forward. There's a place for that. But we need to hold it really, really lightly. The problem with self-fang is we identify with it.
Speaker 1 · 15:42You too may have noticed an increased capacity for empathy as a bonus benefit of mindfulness. Compassion and awareness are intimately connected. The better we get to know ourselves, the more available we are to pick up on the behaviors, feelings, and thoughts of others. As Rick says, strengthening a sense of me makes us more available for we. That's an interesting paradox to contemplate. Certainly, mindfulness strengthens awareness of the self, but it does something else as well. Minimizing midline activity in the brain reduces our sense of self. And when we hold this identity less tightly, our sense of well-being improves. It might seem like there's a conflict here. Does mindfulness strengthen or dissolve our sense of self? In reality, this conflict is just an illusion.
Speaker 2 · 16:55On the one hand, the ordinary presumption of a conventional self has these three attributes that constitute it. It is unified. There's only one I, there's only one me. Second, it is enduring. The me to I am today is the same me I was a year ago, and is essentially independent. Stuff happens, but it independently exists. When you look closely at your experience, you'll see routinely references to such a self, and I'm using the word self in this narrow sense as the ego. You'll see references to that entity, and you will experience perspectives from it and presumptions of it, but in direct experience, you never see the whole package. In other words, what we experience ourselves, actually, is that we have many subpersonalities. In other words, the self so-called is not unified, it's compounded, made up of many parts. The part that says, I'm going to set the alarm tonight to wake up early tomorrow morning to exercise is one part, and then there's another part of the me who wakes up at 6 a.m. and thinks, who set the damn alarm? Second, the self we are today can be really quite different than the self we were a year ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago, for better or worse. There's change over time. And third, we have a sense that who we've experienced ourselves to be is continually changing, dependently, based on what's happening around us. We're not independent. Those three qualities of compoundedness, impermanence, and dependent arising, which may ring a bell, if you're aware of the Buddha's analysis of our consciousness, those same three qualities that psychologically give the lie to the conventional presumption of a self-entity inside are also found in the brain. In the brain, when people are engaged in self-referential activity or they have a strong sense of eye, or they're describing themselves in some way, activations occur throughout the brain. There's no place in the brain that does self, which is really interesting. There's a lot of localization of function in the brain. There's a place in your brain that focuses on sensation in your right little finger, that focuses on recognizing certain faces. There's no part in your brain that does self in particular. It's distributed all over the place. Also, these neural activations are transient. They come and they go. They light up. It's like lights on a Christmas tree. They light up, then they don't light up, new lights form all over the place. And that lighting and unlighting of the neural activations that undergird the sense of self are very dependent. They depend on stimuli of various kinds, including other people. Really interesting. So as I talk about in the allness chapter in the NeuroDharma book, I think self is like a unicorn. There are many real references to it in consciousness, but they are references to a mythical beast. The realization of this is something that's really develops over time. Okay, so point is there's not a particular place that does self in the brain that said a lot of where selfing is generated is in the default mode network and in the midline. So pragmatically, if we can reduce verbal activity and if we can reduce mental time travel, and if we can, you know, have more of a sense of the whole, in part through right hemisphere activity, especially on those sides of it, we have less sense of self and more of a feeling of being a person process. Entwined with all of reality, interbeing, as TikTok Han puts it, rippling along.
Speaker 1 · 21:14Observing the mind itself reveals there is no self, at least not in the sense of a single, separate and enduring self that exists independently. This can be a challenging concept to grasp, but we can experience it directly, especially through the mindfulness practices of reducing verbal chatter, reducing mental time travel, and becoming more aware of things as a whole. One useful exercise Dr. Hansen recommends begins with observing sensation in the body or thoughts and emotions. By simply altering how we verbalize what it is we notice, we can mindfully create more distance between observer and the thing observed. Notice, for example, the felt difference between I'm having sensation in my chest and there is sensation in the chest. We can do the same exercise with emotions too. Is there a difference for you between I am angry and anger is arising? This practice helps us remove the self from the experience, and it relates to a particular Buddhist teaching, which Dr. Hansen so eloquently describes.
Speaker 2 · 22:57And the Buddha said very succinctly, Alright, you want my teachings? Bahia, you should train yourself thus. In the seeing, let there be only the seeing. In the hearing, only the hearing. In the thought, only the thought, in the wanted, only the wanted. And when for you there is only the heard and the heard, the scene and the seen, the sense and the sense, the thought and the thought, then there's no you there. Because you is continuously constructed. When you're not making a you in the moment, there's no you.
Speaker 1 · 23:32When there's no actor, only the action, we're able to simply be. This state of just being is so valuable. It's the foundation of our practice. And yet, this state of choiceless awareness is not a state in which we can live. What we can do, however, is transform this state of mind into a more permanent, positive trait, carrying it with us even as we act in the world.
Speaker 2 · 24:10So sometimes what's most appropriate is not to try to mobilize some particular state, some particular emotion or intention or thought or attitude. You know, we want to just simply be with what's there in a very non-interfering way. Okay. It's still appropriate sometimes, and certainly in the Buddhist tradition, the one I know best, and I think we can find the same in other traditions as well. There is a point often in being able to evoke or open to or encourage or stabilize certain beneficial states of being, beneficial thoughts, attitudes, sensations, and so forth. So now we have states. And then over time, we can turn those states into traits through helping them to leave lasting alterations of neural structure and function. This is the fundamental process of learning, healing, development, cultivation over time. Social, emotional, somatic, motivational, attitudinal, spiritual learning. We move from states to traits. Negative states tend to become negative traits very quickly. That's the brain's negativity bias, which makes it like velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones, as I say. With deliberate effort, though, we can increase our learning curve, we can steepen our growth curve as we move through life by increasing the conversion of states to traits, of passing experiences to lasting changes in the brain, rather than having a momentarily enjoyable, useful, pleasurable, whatnot experience, which an hour later seems like it never happened. If it seems like it never happened, there was no conversion from state to trade. So the deep question is how can we help ourselves? How can we help our students? How can we help our clients, our patients, our children to increase that conversion from state to trade? My own general sense of it, grounded in animal learning research in general, non-human animal learning, as well as human learning, as well as personal experience, is that repeated episodes of practice spread out over time are better than massing it all together just once. So if somebody said, Hey, I'm going to give my mindfulness training 30 minutes, how should I do it? Should I do 30 minutes in a row or should I do three minutes at a time over 10 days? I'd have someone do three minutes at a time over 10 days. And then inside those episodes of learning, there's probably a threshold. If someone's not in the experience of something for at least a few seconds in a row, it's probably not going to transfer unless it's a million-dollar moment. You know, your child is born, someone asks you to marry them, they'll, you know, it's a white light experience on you know whatever. So at least a few seconds in a row, dozens of times a day, half a breath at a time, a breath or two or three or ten at a time, increasing from states to traits, through, in effect, what I call taking in the good. Again and again and again. We can help ourselves deepen our learning, which is, if you think of it, the superpower of superpowers, because learning is the superpower that grows the rest of them. Effective teachers do that with people. They help them sustain the duration of their experiences, keeping those neurons firing together, so they're more likely to wire together or they wire together more extensively and stably. Supporting the embodied sense of experience. So the more we feel things in our bodies, the more they're going to tend to get internalized in lasting ways. And also through sort of hinting, focusing on what feels good about it. As we have a sense of the enjoyability of our experiences or their meaningfulness, that increases activity of dopamine and neuropinephrine in the brain, which track reward. And as we feel more rewarded by the experiences we're having, they will be more protected. Those experiences will be more protected, and their residues will be protected as they get consolidated into long-term storage.
Speaker 1 · 28:35We can never over-emphasize the importance of consistent daily practice, both as teachers and practitioners. You yourself have likely experienced this first hand. When we're practicing daily, we tend to feel much better. Studies that demonstrate how meditation changes the brain for better focus and attention, improved memory and empathy, and greater resilience to stress involve between 10 to 30 minutes of daily practice over a period of eight weeks or more. Meditation is not a one and done solution, but it's also encouraging to hear there are ways we can amplify the time we do spend meditating. For example, the benefits of mindfulness are more impactful when we intentionally note meditation's rewards. This is just one reason why in many traditions we close each meditation by giving thanks for the benefits we've received, dedicating their impact to our future selves and to others. So practice daily. Do it consistently and celebrate each.
Speaker 2 · 30:00Each time you make it to your cushion to quote Millarepa, this great Tibetan sage, and it really describes the process of change, including the shedding that Brad Montague is talking about. Millarepa said, In the beginning nothing came, in the middle, nothing stayed, and in the end, nothing left. Isn't that the coolest description of any learning process and a life of practice altogether? And it's so hopeful. In the beginning, we try to experience things, but it's like lighting a fire with wet wood. And, you know, I say to you, okay, be aware of your chest as a whole. Like can't really do that. Can do left, can do right, but left and right together? It's not there yet. But then a little effort. In the middle, nothing stayed. You're able to experience it, especially if you're deliberate about it, or you're cued into it, or your circumstances are auspicious, you're listening to a guided meditation. But it's a state. You can access it as a state, but it's not yet a trait. But by the end, nothing leaves. It's cooked, it's stable. And that's wonderfully helpful. And I think it's a very nice instruction for students, for people who are beginning to the in the practice. There's hope. And I would just say getting people interested in their own learning. There's something weirdly difficult for people about tracking their process, which understandably it's it's more cognitively demanding. It takes more executive function because you're tracking trends, you're you're observing your process of internalization and development, but getting interested in your own learning process and also claiming agency over it, which could appeal in a business leadership context, given the culture there. You know, autonomy, being the boss of your own mind. Are you in charge of your own learning process? And are you in charge of steepening your curve and in charge of who you are becoming rather than being buffeted and pushed around by all these other forces? I think this really helps people. And then in particular, focus on the reward. You know, really focus on the felt sense of reward in what you're developing, whatever it might be. We have this amazing power to use our minds to change our brains, to change our minds. We have this amazing power in the innermost temple of our being to shape who we are becoming. Even when the world is falling apart around us, even when we're beset, even when we have little power outside us, internally, we have an amazing power to influence what we are learning, how we are growing, how we are healing, what we are letting go of, what we are developing every day. No one can defeat us there. It's fantastic. And no one can do it for us in the inner temple of our being, which means we're responsible, and it means that we earn the fruits of our practice.
Speaker 1 · 33:02When we become curious and interested in our own growth and healing process, when we celebrate the little things and claim agency over each success, there's real benefit to the brain. And what is success in our mindfulness practice? It may be the choice to set a boundary, or to trust an instinct. Perhaps a quick decision to change the subject when the conversation turns to gossip. It could feel like a greater sense of ease or confidence, a greater capacity for generosity or compassion. Consider what growth and learning mean for you and your mindfulness practice. We indeed have this superpower to shape what we are becoming. And so, what would you most like to become? Thank you to Dr. Rick Hansen, who originally shared this wisdom with the teacher trainees in our Mindfulness Exercises Teacher Training Program. You can access the full recording and get certified as a mindfulness teacher at teach.mindfulness exercises.com. To learn more about Rick Hanson and the science of meditation and mindfulness, visit rickhanson.net.
