Why Your Brain Stops Taking Everything Personally

Speaker 1 · 0:00Welcome everyone. We're really grateful to have Dr. Sarah Lazar with us. Actually, on the recommendation of Margaret Cullen, who spoke with us about equanimity. Dr. Lazar is a neuroscientist who studies the impact of mindfulness meditation on the brain. She is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital. She also serves on the board of directors for the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. And her talk today will be on the neural correlates of equanimity in relation to pain and fear. So maybe we'll get answers to this question. Does mindfulness meditation protect the brain from pain and fear? But I'll let her take over. I'm really interested in hearing what she has to say. And so, Dr. Lazard, thank you again for being here.

Speaker 2 · 0:53Thank you for inviting me. I always love talking with teachers. I'm told that a lot of teachers start with science because it helps break down doubt and resistance. So hopefully some of these will be useful for conveying to your students. Okay.

Speaker 2 · 1:06We're talking about maturity and ego dissolution. I start practicing and oh my God, it completely changed my life. You hear this a lot from people. And oftentimes people say things like, I see things more clearly now, I don't take things so personally anymore. I'm vibrating at a higher level. And oftentimes we'll give questionnaires to people about anxiety and depression. And like I said, it decreases stress, it decreases depression, it recreases anxiety. But none of the questionnaires that I encountered came close to explaining, oh my God, this completely changed my life. And when you ask people, it's like, yeah, okay, you had less stress, but there's something more, right? It's like this. I see things more clearly. I don't think things so personally. Like something is really shifting. And for me, that was what happened. Then I heard about a model of personality development. And I was like, ah, that's what we're talking

Speaker 2 · 1:56about here. And so to understand it, we're going to talk about Piaget. Piaget was a developmental psychologist from about 100 years ago, and he studied his kids. So babies start, they're on their back, they're completely uncoordinated, they cannot move on their own. Then they turn over and they start to crawl. Anyone who has a kid will tell you, like the kid is lying on their back, and all of a sudden one day they flip over and they're crawling, is a very distinct shift. And then they're able to hold on and stand up by themselves. And then they take their first step. And that is a big day. My son, when he took his first step, his face just lit up. Like he knew something had shifted and changed. It was obvious. It's a shift, it's a very abrupt shift. And they practice standing. It's not like they go from this to this. You have to go through the stages, but it's a very specific shift that happens when they're able to start walking. And then, of course, they run and then they dance and they start kicking balls. And all this happens automatically. All this happens more or less to everyone at the same rates, unless there's some sort of disease or something happens. All this sort of just happens spontaneously, naturally. It doesn't stop here, right? I mean, pretty much everyone goes through here. But then most people in high school will start playing a sport. And on the surface, he's kicking a ball, just like this little kid. But we know that he's not just kicking the ball. Because before he was kicking the ball, but now he's aiming the ball. He's controlling the ball. And then also there's all sorts of rules about who he kicks the ball to and you know being off sides and being in the boundaries. And he's not just kicking anywhere, he's specifically aiming for the goal, right? So there's all this stuff going on. So on the surface, it looks like he's just kicking a ball, but there's a lot more going on. Most of us get to this level sport, maybe not with soccer, but most of us do some sort of sport or activity like this in high school. But then once we get to college, some people continue, some people stop, some people go on and get into professional soccer. But even within soccer, there's like multiple layers of professional soccer players. And then even within soccer, we know that there's only a handful of people who can pull off this kick in competition. And you get the Messies and Buppies and the Cristiano Ronaldo, I believe. This is apparently a very, very, very famous kick. But on the surface, he's just kicking a ball. So if you're just looking at what he's doing, he's just kicking a ball. But we know that there's a lot more going on than just kicking a ball. And so clearly there's levels of skill that go into just kicking a ball that are sort of hard to define. But people within the soccer world can distinguish like this level of player versus the next level down, the next level down, the next level down. There's signs of skill that are maybe not visible to the rest of us, but you know, people who really follow soccer, they'll see and understand that, oh yeah, what I did was just really amazing. In the 70s and 80s, a whole bunch of people said, Well, you know, it's not just physical. He also showed this for cognitive development. You start with addition and subtraction. This is supposed to build up slowly. And then multiplication and then algebra and then geometry. With addition and subtraction, you can see that with your hands. I can show you three fingers and four fingers and count them. Then when you get to multiplication, you could do that with blocks. But then when you get into algebra, it gets a bit more abstract. And then geometry, again, it's a little bit more abstract. And so in each case, you're building on the prior level. It's a step up. And there's a little bit more complexity, a little more nuance, a little bit more abstraction. But importantly, you never leave the early levels behind. Even when you get into really advanced physics, you still have addition, subtraction, multiplication. And so the idea is that what we're doing is that we're building. Just as with this, he's kicking the ball, but there's all these other layers of stuff that's happening. This was the original hypothesis and the original model. But then in the 70s and 80s, people say, well, it's not just physical, it's not just cognitive development that personality goes through the same thing. Spiritual development, moral development, multiple other forms of selves go through these different levels. Spiritual faith, worldviews, orders of consciousness, needs, cognitive complexity, social cognition. In each one, you see the same thing that it starts off very simple and concrete. And at each layer, you're getting a little more complex, a little more nuanced, a little more abstract and multifactorial. But the simple, concrete is always there. Kicking the ball is always there, no matter how far up you go. But all this extra stuff that's happening, in addition to kicking the ball. So similarly with all these other models.

Speaker 2 · 6:20Why there's this world of implementation? Jane Levinger back in the 80s said the ego itself also matures and develops. And that just like all these other systems, it starts off really simple and basic, and then at every little level gets more and more nuanced, more and more complex, more and more abstract. And so you see this little kid. If you ask a little kid, who are you? They point to themselves, me, this body, I'm me, right? Very simple, very concrete. Then a little bit older, they say, Well, my name is Sarah. I like to play with dolls. Again, very simple, very concrete. Then more later it might be about relationships. I'm a member of my family. I like to play soccer. I'm on the soccer team, the social thing. But then it might also get more complex and more nuanced to like, okay, I'm an American. I'm in a certain political party. I hold certain views about different things, you know, my religion, these sorts of things. And so I'm all of those things, but I'm also still this body at the very, very high level stages that also, you know, it's like I'm a human being. You know, I'm a member of planet Earth. And it's more and more abstract. Most of us get through the first several stages, you know, to like to the high school level stage of sports. You know, then some people go into the college levels and a few people go into the professional. But even there, there's more and more and more layers. So, similar with all these other forms of development, including ego development, we go through the early stages, pretty much all of us. But then at some point, we kind of slow down and stall. And there's certain places where a lot of people stall, and then other people go beyond that, and all of us are capable of going beyond that, but we go at different rates. We go from a very egocentric, so it's all about me perspective, to social-centric, to world-centric, and then to unitive, like I said. So, like we're all one. And she says the lens through which we view, interpret, and interact with the world. Some people are very much from a very egocentric perspective, some are from a social perspective, some are from a world-centric perspective. And again, we can all take any of these perspectives, but the question is which one do we habitually respond from? And how do we habitually see the world? And what's interesting in this model is that what shifts with each level is perspective taking and meaning making. I said before with equanimity, it's all about getting the bigger and bigger and bigger perspective. If I see the bigger perspective of myself, that's basically what's happening. And then also how I make meaning of that in terms of how then that influences my everyday way of being. It's kind of a hard model to convey in a short period of time in just words. And so the examples are better, and I'll give you some examples. Early on, it's very self-centric, it's all about me, then group-centric, skill-centric, self-determining. 80 to 90% of the population is at these levels. This is basically the high school level of college. And then when you get here into the college, into the college level, and then you get into this professional sports, but of the ego and understanding the ego and understanding the self. We know in this model, because there's a way to test it, that this is not the highest state. There's reasons to believe that there's several states beyond this one, but this is what we're able to detect with the test that I'm going to tell you about. All right. Most people are in these first states. About 15% are here, like in this red zone. That's about 15% of results. They talk about stuff, it's all about me. It's not autism. They're capable of understanding other people's point of view. They don't care, it's all about me. I don't care if you're the world expert in some topic. If my opinion differs from yours, I'm right, you're wrong. And so again, they can understand, but they typically don't. You see this a lot in reality television, where everyone's complaining about everyone else, but then they turn around and they do the thing back to the woman because they don't think about, okay, if I do the same thing back to her, she's going to be just as upset as I once. Because it's all about, no, I need to get revenge on that person. Then in the middle, you get about 70% of adults. And so it's not just about me. I understand that my actions impact other people. There's definitely some self-reflection, some self-awareness. And again, understanding that there's this interconnection. When you get into the late stages, which is only about 15% of adults, it's not about me. And there's a lot of self-reflection, a lot of self-awareness, of understanding that, yeah, not only okay, my actions impact others, but really understanding in this particular instance how I'm going to impact you and then how that's going to ripple and impact the people around you. And understanding all the cultural influences that impact my relationship with you. Like so if I'm the boss and you're my employee, the fact that I'm the boss and you're my employee, and there's certain things you can't say or you can't do because it would be inappropriate, right? Or you know what is appropriate, what's not appropriate, what's culturally acceptable, like all of that. And so all of us are capable of thinking about that. Most of us don't habitually think about that. And again, the people who are at the early stages, it's not that they can't, they don't habitually do that. What they found is that with each stage, people exhibit more compassion and more altruism. They're less judgmental, they're more world-centric, and they're able to see other people's point of view. And there's increasing awareness of what's going on inside and how the mind constructs perception and how it constructs the self. And that this thing we call a self is an illusion. And so when you hear this and see this, like when I learned about this model, I was like, ah, that's that is what meditation is doing. That's was the, oh my God, this changed my life. Was that I saw when I started practicing very quickly that this new perspective, I gained a new perspective. That's what was life-changing for me. Not so much the stress deduction or the anxiety reduction. That was good, but seeing the world in a new way, that was what was life-changing, life-altering for me. That's why I've been really excited about this model, because I feel like this is what meditation is really all about. You talk when you hear about the yogis and the sages, this is what they're talking about. You know, they're more compassionate, they're more altruistic, they're less judgmental, like all these things about meditation practice. This is what happens with these later stages. So the question is can meditation promote this development? And is it somehow relevant to meditation? So before I go into the actual data, I want to show you the test so you understand both the test, but also you'll understand these stages

Speaker 2 · 12:19a little bit better. The test is very simple. There's just 36 sentence stems: a good boss, my mother, and I, education. And the instructions are just finish the sentence any way you want. A good boss works hard, makes a lot of money. Let's pause for a moment. What does it mean to be a boss? A boss means you're in charge of other people. This person does not mention anyone else. They're only thinking about themselves. A good boss makes a lot of money. I'm working hard. I'm a good boss because I'm working hard. I'm making a lot of money. And therefore, I must be a good boss. Nothing about my interaction with others. Someone in the middle stages, a good boss mentors their employees, knows how to juggle their employees' needs with their own. They're thinking about their employees. Not just me. It's me and them. My interaction with them is going to impact their performance. But then when you get to the later stages, they might say something like, the good boss sees the whole and the voices that are needed to complete the task. They're not just thinking about this particular employee, they're thinking about the system as a whole, how this person fits in with everyone else on the team and how you make the whole team work together. And not just at this level, but also how do we all fit into the company as a whole and into society as a whole? Like how does all of that fit together? And so again, all of us are capable of thinking that way, but many of us don't habitually think that way. When I'm criticized, I get mad. I criticize back. Because again, it's all about me. You don't like me, then oh yeah, screw you. I don't like you. Versus someone who's in the middle says when I'm criticized, well, I try to accept it, at least with outward grace. And later they might say something, well, my initial reaction is to defend my position, but then I try to separate my position from my person and change my position when warranted. Let's pause for that and digest that for a second. There's a lot here. So first of all, they see here's the equanimity and the mindfulness coming in. Like you see that initial, oh, I do not like that. But then you pause and you don't respond. And then you try to say, okay, well, there's my idea, but that's not who I am. I have this idea, but I don't need to hold on to that idea. Maybe my idea is wrong. And so can I look at that? And maybe it's wrong, maybe it's right. I don't know. But can I just be okay with the fact that okay, maybe I was incorrect and this person's correcting me and that's okay, and I can just update it. No big deal. No reason to get upset, no reason to get defensive, no reason to criticize the person. So you're seeing there's greater equanimity, not because they're not getting upset, but it's just because they're just not seeing things the same way. Someone criticizing me, that's about them. It's not about me. Or okay, I'm wrong, whatever. It's a different mindset, a different way of seeing the world. So again, we're sort of seeing this maturation and this evolution of the ego from, oh my God, how dare you attack me to okay, whatever. Again, there's 36 of these stems, but most of the answers are at this stage, at stage three, four. And again, typically you see more or less a bell-shaped curve because there's always sort of a trailing edge and a leading edge because we're growing and developing. And so as we first get this new perspective, okay, well, maybe I see this perspective in this particular context, but it's going to take time for me to then see the world with this new perspective and then clean up everything and how I responded to everything else. So it takes time to shift all of that. What we see though is that at each stage, there's this right word shift. So someone who's at stage four, yeah, they still have some stage three answers. But then similarly, you get more and more answers at these later stages. But again, no one is 100% one stage. You know, talk to people about a lot of different topics before you get a sense of where they really are. You can even see sometimes in a single topic, a single conversation, that people might go through a couple of different stages. It has to do just how they're thinking about things and how they see things. All levels are equal. So we like to think that, oh, these levels are better than these levels. No, they're all good. It's sort of like saying, oh, you know, as a baby, not a good level, right? Or as someone who only does high school level of soccer is somehow inferior to the person who plays soccer at the professional level. They shouldn't judge people. That's just who they are, that's where they are in life. And every level has certain strengths and capabilities. And good society, healthy society requires all of them. Someone like Elon Musk is probably at one of these early stages. And you need that 100% assurance in yourself and that drive and that egocentricism to create something like Tesla. And the world has benefited from Tesla. So if he was just abstractly thinking about, oh, you know, all these things, we wouldn't have electric cars and batteries that are really making an impact on the environment. We need people who have that drive to create these things and to actually get things done. Again, it's how we typically see the world and typically respond. All of us are capable of taking later views and earlier views. But the question is when you just encounter a new situation, how do you initially respond?

Speaker 2 · 16:58So the study we did was can we actually demonstrate this? Do long-term meditation practitioners score at later stages than the general population? And what are the neural correlates? Can we find some brain imaging? One of the questions in the last part was about different types of meditation. As a first stab at that, we looked at people who practice meditation and people who are long-term yoga practitioners. There were 16 people who do vipassana meditation and 16 people who practice Krapala yoga, the very gentle form of yoga. It's not power yoga. It is based on a whole yoga system. So it's not just asana. They also do devotional practices, they meditate, but it's more the flickering candle and the breath awareness. They sometimes do meth awareness. It is kind of mindful. And then we had 15 controls. And you'll see this does make a difference. And the groups are matched with age, gender, education, and race. So what we found was that indeed the meditation practitioners scored at later stages than the yoga practitioners and the controls. And this surprised me because by chance, the yoga practitioners actually had twice as many lifetime hours of practice compared to the meditation practitioners. And this is a significant difference. We shouldn't put too much into this because it's cross-sectional. So it could be that people who are at later stages are more likely to meditate than do yoga. That's one explanation. But there's also the question about mindfulness, because again, this was specifically mindfulness meditation. And mindfulness meditation, it's about going inside and being aware of your thoughts and ideas. The later stages are all about getting in tune with your inner world. And so with the asana practice or the yoga practice, if it's mostly just looking at the body, but not really going inside and really evaluating what's going on in your mind, definitely there's some benefit to that, that it's better than the controls. But it seems like the mindfulness gives some extra benefit beyond just the yoga practice itself. And so again, it's cross-sectional, it's only 16 people. So take all that with a grain of salt, but it's suggestive. The other thing we found was that the scores on this test correlated with self-reported mindfulness and suggests that the mindfulness is key to getting into these later stages, I should say.

Speaker 2 · 19:04So what about brains? The posterior cingulate is the part of the brain that's all about me and self-referential processing. So we were really interested by chance, you know, was this related at all to the score? First, we took all 45 people and we just said, okay, is there any correlation whatsoever between scores and the structure of this region of the brain? And the answer is yes. And this is exactly the same region we saw changing in just eight weeks. So now we're starting to get a sense of, okay, you go through this eight-week program, you're changing this part of the brain, and you're getting that, oh my God, this changed my life. Now we're starting to understand why and how maybe we're getting this, oh my God, it changed my life. Because here it is, this part of the brain that's important for how I see the world and how I interpret the world, that that is changing in just eight weeks. So this is brain structure. Brain structure, as I said, it might represent the structure of the neurons and who the neurons are talking to. And so the question is, okay, so what does this do to the rest of the brain? How this part of the brain talks to other parts of the brain. We then looked at activity and said, does connections between that part of the brain and any other part of the brain correlate with the score? And we found this part of the brain. And this is the part of the brain that's about narrative self. So if I ask you, if you ask me, who am I? My name is Sarah. I live in Boston. I'm a scientist. As I explained all of that, this part of my brain was lighting up. This test is getting at that. Of course, as I'm going to answer those questions in relationship to how my own experience. So it makes sense that this part of the brain, the connections between this part of the brain and the subpart of my brain, that makes sense that that would be connected. Next, we asked, what about the meditation and yoga practitioners are different than the controls? And we found this part of the brain. This is the SMG. This is the part of the brain I showed you is about perspective taking. And do I pay attention to my outside world or my inside world? It's also important for empathy and compassion, being able to see things from other people's point of view. And again, this is a region that's changing in just eight weeks. This was activity, not structure. And it's the connections between this part of the brain and the PCC. So we're talking about the me part of the brain and this perspective part of the brain. The connections between these regions are changing, and how they change is related to this test. And finally, we found that also with this region, which again is meaning making, I have this new experience. How do I interpret it? And how do I internalize it, make meaning of it, and make it relevant to me? And again, this is another region that was unique to the meditation in yoga practitioners compared to controls. They're better at getting perspective and making meaning of their experiences compared to the controls. And then that seems to be what's driving their growth through these stages.

Speaker 2 · 21:46You know, is this at all relevant to meditation? Like, is this really relevant to meditation? Within the different meditation traditions, they talk about the meditative path. You don't just sit down and boom become enlightened. That you practice and gradually over time, you become more and more enlightened over time. There's something called the ox hurting pictures, which are part of the Zen tradition. So at the first stage, it's the boy, initially he's looking for the bull, and the bull represents the mind. Last time it's early people, you know, you'll say, What are you thinking? I don't know what I'm thinking. You know, they don't have any awareness whatsoever what's going on in their mind. And then you see footprints, right? A little bit of like, okay, I know what I am saying right now, right? And you have a little like a sense of it. But then you really start to see your mind, especially with meditation practice. And when you first really get into your inner life, as you know, it's a fight, it's a struggle. I'm having these thoughts. I have these thoughts. I'm a nice person. Why am I having mean thoughts? I am being so judgy. All of that, that's this stage and the self-questioning and you know, who am I and what's going on here? But then that settles down and you start to get some equanimity. And that's what's happening through these stages. But like I said, there's probably several stages beyond that we can't get with this test that get at full enlightenment. So again, we don't know, but it's again, it's consistent with this idea that somehow this path is related to the waking up process. When the pandemic first started, it was just like, oh my God, it's all about me, hoard food in toilet paper. And then the next one is skill-centric and expertise. We all became world experts in virology. Right? And then it was a mask, flying the curve. And so we all masked up, at least some of us did. And that's the thing. So the people who are at the early stages, that's when they balked and like, no, because they're still it's all about me. And heaven forbid I should have to wear a mask versus, okay, I understand that I'm wearing a mask, not because it's gonna protect me, but in case I'm infected, I'm not gonna infect you, and it's gonna help all of us be healthier. That took a certain level of understanding and care about the people around us, and it's not just about me. And then some people got to the silver lining point where it's like, oh yeah, look at this. We all stopped commuting and the environment got better. Or you start to see some of the habits that we do and some of the things the our day-to-day grind and starting to look at our world in a new way. And some people, you know, really went pretty far in terms of seeing the fruits of the pandemic and really going into new ways of thinking about it. And we all kind of did it together in unison. But then some people stopped at certain places. Everyone can grow slow, but don't give up on them. It is possible for everyone to grow. Science, I must say, is a very two, three, three or three, four of the expert stage. It's like, okay, I'm right and I've got the data to prove that I'm right. And there's a lot of scientists who are at that stage. You gotta get beyond that. Also, I'm the lone scientist doing this right versus okay, we can start to collaborate and then starting to realize that I have hypotheses, they may or may not be right. And there's lots of different ways to interpret data. Sometimes you do experiment five times and you may not always get the same answer. So taking all that more lightly. But early people are just like, no, this is the data, the data says, so it must be true. So definitely you can see that evolution

Speaker 2 · 24:42in people.

Speaker 1 · 24:42Well, thank you, Sarah. It's awesome. Not too much science at all. Did you have any like closing words or anything you want to share?

Speaker 2 · 24:50Thank you for teaching. You've benefited from it. So being able to take, you know, send out into the world is great in ripples. You don't know how far the ripples will go.

Speaker 1 · 24:57Thank you.