one you’re not going to meet two nicer
smarter people in your life than these
two guys and the two guys that I’ve
known a long time Richie Davidson not
really well but we’ve known each other
long time Dan Gomer is one of my closest
friends and and I learned more in this
I’d love to start you know the
discussion here just one of the beauties
of this book is that they’re incredibly
self effacing with great humility about
how they started thinking about these
things and how they started as as
students at Harvard and how it took over
their lives and got to this point I love
to just hear what what was that first
impulse that started this thing rolling
for you guys that led to a this
extraordinary friendship and the wisdom
that is in this book well for me it
started in college I don’t know if you
know this but I started to meditate
because I was anxious like an undergrad
you know I was yeah uptight and I found
it relaxed me I did it twice a day
morning it prepared me for the day
afternoon I took a nap every time I
couldn’t get who was it what kind of
meditation whether I started with TM
yeah that’s great beginning practice
when I got to Harvard I was lucky enough
to get a pre-doctoral traveling
fellowship to India and I I was really
interested since I was studying clinical
psychology which is the most downer
thing you can studies like you meet
someone like what’s wrong with this
person and I and I went to Asia went to
India and I met people who were off that
map yeah one of them was famous yogi
neem Karoli Baba was Rhonda’s guru he
was extraordinary he was loving he was
super present and when you’re with him
you felt like you loved everybody – that
was magic hmm and I met Kuno Lama who
was this very humble Tibetan monk in
Bodhgaya
this crude alum is a very very famous
lama and he’s famous for being the most
humble of the humble
and there was a story of his Holiness
the Dalai Lama coming to board gaya to
teach and there’s a long entourage and
people were lined up for a quarter of a
mile to see his holiness and out of the
corner of his eye he saw this very
humble humble monk way in the back and
he broke the crowd and came over and
started doing prostrations himself to
Kundu lama he’s that extraordinary of a
man the Kuna Lama became the dalai lamas
teacher on compassion shanti devi and to
this day he’ll acknowledge Kuni lamas
sorry i met people like that and I came
by to harbor I said hey guess what
there’s great news there’s an upside to
human potential it’s not all what’s
wrong with you and they were stunned and
totally disinterested but Ricci was
there and they told me that if I wanted
a successful career in science doing
this was a terrible way to begin and
they told me that after I spent three
months in India and Sri Lanka with Dan
after my second year of graduate school
but when it first began my very first
day of graduate school I took my first
course and I knew about Dan before I got
to Harvard because he published a few
articles in this really obscure journal
called the journal of transpersonal
psychology I thought one of our
top-ranked journalism doesn’t exist
anymore but these were articles on
meditation that I had read as an
undergraduate and so I knew Dan was
there this was before the Internet I had
no idea what he looked like I saw no
pictures of him
and I sat down and there was someone
that sat right next to me and I turned
to him and I said you’re Dan Goleman
he knew that because I was wearing these
outrageous corduroy pajamas which were
the only chance I had they’ve been made
in India they were dirt cheap I was a
graduate student couldn’t afford
anything else my hair was like Jimi
Hendrix if you can believe it now so so
and I got back from India dressed the
same way that Dan was dressed
and I go into a seminar at Harvard on
psychopathology clinical psychology and
the professor in this graduate seminar
looking directly at me said you know
there’s some evidence to indicate that a
person’s clothing habits are a good
indication of their psychiatric status
schizophrenia I think those that was
what it was like when we first began
yeah there’s a very hostile environment
and how many of you were there that
we’re interested in this stuff I know
John kabat-zinn was also so he was a
third friend
so John kabat-zinn some of you may know
of his work with mindfulness based
stress reduction MBSR
it’s in hospitals around the world but
back then he was just a graduate student
he hadn’t done molecular biology but we
met and we’re all interested in
meditation and the three of us did a
project together which was a Swami had
come to town we’ll call him Swami X
Swami who is that exactly
Swami X I know but who is that a day and
I’m not telling
but this Swami wanted to be studied by
scientists at Harvard so we commandeered
a lab and I had to convince our
professors that they should allocate
valuable laboratory time to studying
this Swami
so that was one evening the problem but
the other was this was in the days of
biofeedback when people would get a
signal of their heart rate or something
and learned to control this Swami
exclaimed I can control my autonomic
nervous system with no feedback so we
got him in the lab and we asked him to
raise his heart rate and he’d lowered it
and we asked him to lower his heart rate
and he raised it and then he did a
special thing for us which he called dog
Samadhi which is otherwise known as
atrial fibrillation it’s not a great
talent a V can die from that so that was
our first understanding because that you
can height research on meditation
afterward wherever he spoke he said and
scientists at Harvard have studied my
brain
which would say what we found so one of
our motives for writing this book
altered is there a book here there is a
bar yeah sheltered traits right knees
and gentlemen yeah thank you was to put
together the best research there’s now
6,000 peer-reviewed articles there’s
more than a thousand a year now when
we’ve done our dissertations there were
two remember that both really bad and
our dissertations by the way would not
meet the standards to get in this book
today
would you agree totally yeah so
standards of a ratcheted upward and we
wanted to put together in one place the
evidence that you know meditation
actually is a value it’s not all hype
there’s good research and in fact it
shows real benefit this is this is a
tough we actually met as meditators
that’s true and so I’m I’m looking at
this whole process from a slightly
skewed angle where I’m not really
interested in the data I’m interested in
my own personal experience and I know
there’s no way that you could have the
energy to go through this process of
finding a way to bring Western science
and Eastern Sciences together in a way
that that is definable measurable just
to find that way for them to communicate
to each other unless you had had your
own experiences and I don’t know if you
want to share something of that just
what that has to be the springboard for
you it’s not just academic for you guys
yeah what one really poignant example of
the predicament that this brings is in
2005 we played a role in an important
role in having the Dalai Lama speak at
this Society for Neuroscience the most
prestigious organization under
neuroscientists in the world I and
Washington in Washington times yeah yeah
so there was an article I don’t know if
you remember this but there was an
article in The New York Times about him
speaking at this meeting it was on the
front page in the New York Times a
little bit before because there was a
petition that was started of scientists
objecting to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
speaking at this meeting of nurse
now the fact that the first 400 people
who signed it were Chinese scientists
probably had something to do with this
but in any case in this article in The
New York Times it also talked about some
of the research that was going on and
specifically singled out some of the
research that we were doing in our lab
and it said Davidson has admitted in
public that he himself meditates
scandalous oh my god and how can he
possibly be objective in this research
if he himself meditates and that would
be like I had such a great time with
this it would be like telling a
cardiologist who studies the effect of
physical exercise on the heart that they
can’t exercise for the rest of their
life because there’s they’re studying it
or or for that matter a scientist who
studies perception should stop
perceiving so it’s you know we think of
this as obligatory that if you’re gonna
do scientific research in this area you
really need to have your own practice
you know the Thurman I think is one of
the guys Robert Thurman professor at at
Columbia he often translates the word
yogi as yogi scientists and from the
eastern point of view these great Yogi’s
in a tradition of thousands of years of
refining their understanding and
experience of consciousness of what mind
is nature of mind what is nature of mind
and and how does that how does that
interact with our sense of ourselves as
a separate being is in fact this is
separate being or not but but they
didn’t have the machines to measure
these things it was a completely
subjective experience for them now the
guides in the lineage were people who
were great experts at this yeah you know
would be the great geniuses of of this
type of meditation that type of
meditation who would be able to to walk
them through the experience and make
sure there was a valid experience based
on the tradition and also what they
wanted in the process of the meditative
sequencing we don’t have that here
our science doesn’t do that it has to be
measurable by machine
and provable and this is I’m most
interested you’re pioneers in doing this
mind and life Institute is it it’s
pioneering of how do you bring these two
different Sciences together and is there
a razor’s edge that they do meet well I
think it’s it’s really important to
acknowledge that you know we feel in our
hearts because of our own experience if
this works it does something
advantageous as you know but it was the
Dalai Lama who said actually straight to
Ricci
in a mind and life meeting and by the
way mind and life is a wonderful
organization that the dalai lama
co-founded to have to create a dialogue
between spiritual traditions and science
and he said to Richie you know our
tradition has many methods for handling
disturbing destructive emotions please
take them outside the religious context
bring them into the lab study them as
rigorously as you can and if they’re a
value spread them as widely as you can
so that’s really what this book is about
well I’m taking with that your think in
your first chapters you talk about deep
meditation and and wide meditation so we
want to speak to that again so there
receive four levels of meditation one is
the you could say the professional the
yogi the full-time nine or monk in a
monastic setting who is a professional
meditator so rich he was able to bring
people like that to his lab in Wisconsin
one by one and he found remarkable
effects from it but that’s a very small
slice of people then there’s the next
level out which are the centers that you
see here there’s New York insight or
there’s many Lamas who are teaching and
they’re bringing the tradition to the
west and they leave some stuff behind
but they reach more people and then
there’s the next remove which is like
Jon kabat-zinn
mindfulness based stress reduction it
takes it outside that spiritual context
and looks at the benefits his method is
used very widely in hospitals for
example in clinics because if you have a
chronic disease like arthritis you’re
living with
paying everyday they can’t help you it
changes your relationship to that and
you have a better quality of life so
that reaches an even wider group they
don’t go so deep and then there’s the
widest group it’s like you know we’re
teaching mindfulness in human you know
HR and our company is bringing
mindfulness in or here’s a mindfulness
app and that actually goes to scale but
it’s a not nearly the depth that you get
at that first level well Dan you say and
we’ve talked about this today and at
other times clearly if if people can be
helped you want them to have the tools
to help them in any way that you can
exactly the most exciting part of this I
think as a as meditators ourselves and
coming out of a tradition is to make the
largest possible change one can make
which is radically change our whole idea
of self another the dualism that we
usually live in are afflictive emotions
and the connection that you guys are
seeing in the data of there’s actually
molecular changes that go on in the mind
in the brain Richie and I Richie please
be honest so this is really the area
that is particularly exciting because
it’s not so much about proving that
meditation may be helpful it’s really
understanding how meditation is
affecting the mind in the brain and in a
permanent way and in a permanent way
which is really what the title of the
book is meant to convey altered traits
is the notion that enduring change is
actually possible there was a book that
this is playing on I don’t know if
probably all of you remember Charles
Tate’s book targeted states aren’t tarts
aren’t yeah of altered states of
consciousness so altered traits you have
to be of a certain age to remember that
well that’s why I was happy to know this
it’s only a rarefied group of people and
altered states of consciousness was this
edited academic volume that I still can
picture with a white cover of sitting in
my office but was revolutionary I mean
first very influential but what we’re
discovering today is that – there are
two major mechanisms that we’re learning
more and more about one is
neuroplasticity and the other is
epigenetics neuroplasticity is the idea
that the brain changes in response to
experience this is very recent is very
recent like completely recently like
there in a decade at last less 10-15
years exactly and neuroplasticity
happens all the time
wittingly or unwittingly and most of the
time neuroplasticity is happening
unwittingly most of the time our brains
are being shaped by forces around us
about which we have little awareness so
if you binge watch Game of Thrones is
that their custody yeah so you know it’s
sorry about that but it’s a it’s a
sobering reflection because we are just
continuously being shaped in this way
and epigenetics is the science of how
genes are regulated and we’re all born
with a fixed complement of base pairs
that constitute our DNA and for the most
part that’s not going to change but what
will change is the extent to which
different genes are turned on and turned
off and so you can think of genes having
little volume controls that go from low
to high and that varies a lot and it
turns out that those variations are
really meaningful for health and one of
the things we found is just a couple of
years ago we published a paper showing
that if we bring meditators to the
laboratory and these are folks like us
who who are not professional meditators
who have day jobs and have them practice
for a full day and we just take a blood
sample in the morning and then in the
late afternoon after a period of say six
or seven hours of practice we actually
can see changes in gene expression and
in these what we call epigenetic marks
that are observable that and we were
specifically looking at changes in gene
expression for genes that are involved
in inflammation which is an important
domain in many chronic illnesses and so
these kinds of data suggest that we can
produce enduring change in ways
were unthinkable Ritchie what was the
change was it good or bad so what we
found is that the genes for inflammation
were down regulated down regulated it
means little less inflamed just to
translate for you
he’s my scientific translator yeah
so it was good yeah it was good so what
about neuroplasticity so neuroplasticity
is not not necessarily good or bad
neuroplasticity is happening all the
time and if we there are certain things
that we can do to stimulate increased
neuroplasticity but if we increase
neuroplasticity fine that a little more
just give people a good definition of
that so the extent to which the brain
changes varies across people it’s not
all the same and it also changes over
the course of development we know for
example that very young kids can learn a
second language much more easily when at
a certain age they can learn a musical
instrument so that’s a form of clusters
that’s a form of plasticity and that’s a
sensitive period in development it
actually may be that kindness and
compassion have a similar sensitive
period and if we nurture the kids during
that period it can be enormous there any
indication that there is a prime period
for learning this there’s some
indication we have developed in our
Center a curriculum that we call the
kindness curriculum which is designated
for preschool kids for kids four and
five years of age which by the way we’ve
just this week have a free public
release of this curriculum so anyone who
wants can go to our Center website and
download the curriculum and and what we
find is that kids four and five years of
age find this really natural it’s it
just comes very easily to them and we
see big time changes over the course of
just 12 weeks of a semester where we’re
introducing this for 90 minutes or do
you find conversely there’s a period or
an age where this is not teachable that
there is no plasticity no that’s the
good news plasticity happens until we
die it’s never too late never too late
and in fact there are some evidence to
suggest that one of the thing one of the
mechanisms of plasticity is actually
impacting cellular and neural aging and
there’s evidence to suggest that with
more practice mechanisms of cellular
aging slow down and also brain aging
slows down one of the things we share in
the book is that one of the great llamas
that all of us know a llama by the name
of minge rinpoche who has given us
permission to use his name was one of
the participants in the research that
we’ve done in our lab and he is what we
would call an Olympic level meditator he
is probably devoted around 75,000 hours
over the course of his lifetime the
informal probably done three three-year
retreats before he was born a hump
they’d like it was insane I mean the
number of hours that he’s put in when he
said his favorite game was to go to a
cave and pretend to meditate he didn’t
know what it was then that kind of kid
yeah that so minger just finished
recently a four and a half year retreat
and we had him come to our lab very soon
after the four and a half year retreat
and we looked at parameters their
objective parameters you can look at in
the brain to estimate the age of a brain
and he was 41 years of age when we
tested him then and we compared him to a
large normative database of people
between the ages of 25 and 45 he was in
the 99th percentile showing the youngest
brain in this group of a thousand pino
and so it’s not that the brain is not
changing and still aging it is we we
actually show that but the slope of the
change is much different than what you
see in a person who’s not been precious
so are you saying that meditation might
keep your brain younger longer
it seems that reminds me of something
Ashley Montagu said
he said I’d like to die young at a very
late age it’s great yeah so there’s
there’s a very important part of this
story first of all the neuroplasticity
means the research that Richie’s done
shows that meditation changes the brain
actually maybe reshapes it strengthens
circuitry in positive ways it was not
always so easy I just want to mention in
1992 Richie and a group of people slept
to Dharamsala India in the foothills of
the Himalayas tons of equipment five
thousand pounds in those days it wasn’t
many it was by trained yes exactly
well there’s not an easy place to get to
yeah and they had a letter from the
Dalai Lama to Yogi’s who are up in the
hills around there and a guide to find
the Yogi’s and the letter said please
cooperate with these scientists they
want to study you meditating and they
went to yogi after yogi each of whom
said no right that’s right and for a
very smart reason they said we don’t
know what you measure and if you if what
we do doesn’t show up on your machines
is any good it might discourage people
so they wouldn’t do it but there was
also a thing about taking blood that in
terms of some of the tantric practices
that they do changing the there’s loud
pressure in the blood actually
interrupts their yogic process and well
we didn’t take any blood samples in that
tree so there’s brain research yeah but
actually there’s a great story that is
part of that that excursion we had 5,000
pounds of equipment we weren’t able to
use any of it to test any of these
Yogi’s so the last day we were there and
the Dali Lama asked us if we would
please give a talk to these young monks
at the Nam gal monastery we said of
course would be happy to give a talk and
we thought rather than giving a dry
academic talk we had all this equipment
we might as well use it to show them how
we record this so Francisco Varela who
is one of the cofounders of the mind and
life Institute great neuroscientist and
also a great meditator student of me
grandpa Shay’s father actually took a
organ
francisco was with us and we decided we
put an electrode cap on francisco so we
put you know this funny-looking cap with
sensors coming out all these wires and
in those days it took a lot of time to
set it up it took about 45 minutes and
then finally we had all of the
electrodes in place and the brainwaves
were being displayed on these clunky
laptops that we had at that time and so
we parted ways and there are 200 monks
sitting dutifully on cushions on the
floor and they just burst out laughing
just hysterically laughing and we
thought they were laughing because
francisco looked kind of funny with this
electrode cap on it turned out that
they’re laughing about something far
more serious what they’re laughing about
is that we were talking about compassion
and we were putting electrodes on the
head and not on the heart and that it
took us 20 years to process that and to
really learn what it is that they were
referring to mind and heart where the
tibetans is almost interchangeable and
if they talk about mind they point here
I remember His Holiness saying and
almost all of his holiness does work
saying that we by nature are loving and
kind and empathic we are taught not to
be in Our Lives our environment teaches
us that way but I think it’s one of the
reasons that these this neuroplasticity
in terms of positive emotions and really
helpful emotions and joyous emotions
it’s not that hard to access will be
there we found very good news when we
looked at the the best Studies on
kindness loving kindness which is a
meditation has become more and more
popular we found that the the brain or
the mind seems to be prepared to learn
to love better it for beginners even the
outcomes of being more generous paying
more attention to people around you
things like that happened very quickly
more quickly than with other aspects
that we measured so it seems
that we’re primed for love which is
wonderful finding we also found for
beginners
things like if you multitask who doesn’t
multitask these days you’re doing one
thing and then oh I better check my
email look on Facebook this is the way
life goes if you’re concentrating this
much on the first thing and then you do
that and that and that and that when you
go back to that thing your concentration
is down here unless you’ve done just ten
minutes of mindfulness that buffers you
it brings you leave your concentration
high so we find that the benefits like
that come right at the beginning and
then the longer you do it the more hours
you put into it over time the more
benefits you get now you’re talking
about meditation is it using a very
broad term meditation you want to go
into more detail about the kinds of
meditation the practices themselves that
you were looking at what the aim of
those practices are it may be a little
bit about how they work with what the
yogic process is that you were
evaluating well they’re there in terms
of the scientific research there are two
kinds of meditation practice that have
been studied the most extensively one is
basic mindfulness kinds of practices and
when we talk about mindfulness practices
we are speaking about practices that
invite a person to bring awareness to
their bodies to their thoughts to their
emotions to external sensations and to
know that they’re aware there’s a
certain quality of knowing that seems to
be intrinsic to our capacity to be aware
and recognizing that that knowing is
really what these mindfulness practices
are about and it turns out that these
simple mindfulness practices even
practice for just a short amount of time
seem to improve aspects of our attention
they also improve what scientists have
called meta awareness which is the
ability to recognize that you are aware
one of the ways that you can think about
this we’ve all had the experience of
being in a movie theater and being
really engrossed in a movie and to the
extent where that were not even aware
that we’re sitting in a theater we’re so
wrapped up in the plot but we also could
be sitting in a movie theater totally
attentive to the movie but in the
background recognizing that we’re
sitting in a theater and it’s that
background recognition that is seems to
be something that we call Met awareness
that’s cultivated with these simple
mindfulness practices that turns out to
provide a kind of leverage to allow a
person to better regulate their emotions
to not get ensnared not get hijacked not
to identify so much not to identify yeah
and that’s something really key and then
the second class of practices that have
been studied extensively are these
practices that are designed to cultivate
qualities of kindness of love compassion
and again the one of the amazing things
is that you see changes after there’s
data showing changes after just eight
minutes yeah and it doesn’t mean that
those changes are gonna last but what it
does show as Danny was suggesting is
that our minds are primed for we’re
ready for it it’s right under the under
the hood and all we need is a little bit
of a wake-up and it’s there we’re all
leaning towards love all of us and it’s
just it’s right there for us I know in
my own process of meditative practice
it’s certainly it does build up over
many years and for me in so many decades
and I can’t say that every meditation
was a great meditation but when I look
at the process of these many years of
doing it certainly there’s a different
quality that I can locate as as myself
that is not identifying with world the
world that I saw before the emotions as
they would be generated and and
obviously being around the Olympic
beings who have perfected these
meditative processes what an
encouragement that is to know that that
is possible if you put in the work you
can do it
you will have those results and I think
that’s the most important thing I’m
getting from the research you guys are
doing is that is available it’s not like
you’re inventing love you’re not
inventing compassion empathy joy it’s
there
it’s part of our being we just don’t
access it very well
yeah and in many ways you know we think
about this and in a way that’s similar
to the way scientists think about
language I mean we all come into the
world with a biological propensity for
language but in order for that
propensity to be expressed we need to be
nurtured in a normal linguistic
community there are case that clear
words you have to hear words and there
are case studies of feral children
raised in the wild they don’t develop
language normally and similarly with
these basic qualities of awareness and
love we’re built to express these
qualities but there sees they need
nurturing and these practices really are
not about creating anything de novo
they’re about nurturing something that’s
really taken that even further I mean
this is meditative process is
essentially an individual private
process one is going through do you have
any studies based on communities and
what that does having communities who
are moving themselves in this direction
and how there might jump start or quick
in the process well you know the
classical traditions all say you know
it’s better if you hang out with people
who are like-minded who are trying the
same thing that if you’re hanging out
with people who are basically dissing
what you’re doing and I think that the
encouragement of having a community that
not only sees what you see but watch
what you want is really invaluable yeah
and the research certainly shows that
the community aspect is really important
and in fact in some of the early stages
it turns out that some of the benefit of
things like mindfulness based stress
reduction which are done in a group
where you go to a class once a week and
there’s you know 15 or so people who are
sharing a lot and there’s a sense of
cohesion and community that arises in
the group it turns out that the group
process in careful studies have been
done is actually a really important
ingredient
even more important in certain ways than
the specific mindfulness techniques
mm-hmm and there’s something about
community which is really key has Jon
kabat-zinn I mean I was actually going
to get into him when we saw him a few
days ago as he found a threshold of the
work he’s doing that I mean it is a
broad kind of thing he’s doing its the
wide version is he as he got into a
threshold whereas you can’t get it to
that next level or is he finding within
his community people who want to go into
the deeper aspect of meditating process
yeah I think Johnny who has probably
taught tens of thousands of people
either him or his students or students
students maybe hundreds of thousands by
now finds that there’s a certain
subgroup of people who get a taste and
want to go deeper but it most people
don’t you know he intentionally he
started out in Worcester Mass and he
wanted anybody from Worcester which is a
pretty like you know working person
working class working class and he
wanted anybody to be able to do this
practice so he came up with a set of
very effective meditations that aren’t
necessarily called meditation but these
are people who on medical problems
highly motivated to do something because
they’re not being helped by medicine
anymore and he found a way of getting
this in a package that people could
accept but one of the important things
that we don’t know about mindfulness
based stress reduction for example is we
don’t know a percentage of people who
take an MBSR course a two-month course
and then are still meditating even a
year later or two years later my
suspicion to be honest about this is
that it’s probably a small fraction and
I think that one of the insights that we
gleaned from the scientific research is
that small amounts of practice done many
times yeah over the course of day may be
particularly helpful for getting people
started
taking it in really sort of bite-sized
chunks and not creating unrealistic
expectations or himself but rather
coming up with a formula that is more
likely to guarantee success one of the
things that we’re investigating in our
own Center now is when a person starts
with with a particular kind of program
that we’re working with we tell them
what is the the amount of time that you
think you can do this every single day
without a break for 30 days even if it’s
just 1 minute a day that’s ok ok but
what we want you to do is to do it every
day for 30 days and then see how you’re
doing
check in and and if it’s valuable extend
it and and that is a way to maximize the
likelihood that a person actually would
be successful rather than having a goal
to do 45 minutes a day where they might
do it for a few days or a few weeks what
do they actually tell you do they tell
you 5 minutes 10 minutes it’s typically
under 15 minutes so and does that grow
naturally or do they stick to that well
we’re just starting this so we don’t
know yet but you know our aspiration is
that it will grow but we don’t really
know from you know a scientific
perspective talk to me a little bit
about where you are you can’t do this
kind of work unless you have some vision
of where you’re going where are you on
the curve now of the voyage that you’re
taking and what is the next big step or
two that’s going to take you further
along this kind of studies that you’re
doing well I would speak as someone
who’s doing meditation practice I’d like
to do a lot more actually I’d like to
step back my my a lot of the things I do
are speaking to different groups my
agent is here in the room Carlton and
Lucie and I want to continue that
Carlton and Lucie but I’d like to do the
rest
and do more my second floor of their
house they’re trying to redo right now
so so yeah after that’s paper or then
we’ll here office please thank you yeah
but generally you know that’s that’s me
personally but Richie you’ve got a whole
you’ve got a hundred people in your lab
yeah Richie invented this stuff he’s
being extremely humble here but this is
a guy who invented he built the field
cocaine template of neuroscience all
that stuff you see where llamas are
being tested and the wires coming on it
that’s all in his lab and you’ve got
hundreds of people working well we have
sent a hundred people now and actually
barb Matheson who’s our executive
director of our Center is here somewhere
in the audience and our aspiration we
have big aspirations at this point in
time and in the back of my mind I hear
his Holiness the Dalai Lama who is
telling me seven million people there
are seven billion people that’s not
not even close maybe you can help so it
we are really trying to figure out ways
to bring this out into the world in
unconventional
using unconventional methods and one of
the things that’s clear and it certainly
comes with all kinds of complications
and limitations but one of the things
that’s clear is if this kind of work is
gonna be deployed at scale it’s gonna
have to use technology in some way shape
or form and exactly how to do that we’re
not sure but we are committed to trying
and we feel like we have a moral
obligation to try the world needs this
kind of practice I think most people
would agree but your point of view is to
prove its value and therefore bring
people in well that’s one of the things
we’re doing we also as part of our
Center we just started a nonprofit
corporation where we are taking the
insights that we glean from the
laboratory and turning them into
products that we’re actually going to
disseminate in the world tell them about
tenacity
Richie loaned me a bit of a pre beta
version of a video game for kids that
strengthens attention it’s it’s a way to
watch your breath you take it it’s on an
iPad and you you tap it for every breath
and you tap it twice on the ninth breath
or something like that and if you get it
right flowers bloom in this desert scene
it’s kind of very reinforcing and I gave
it to our grandchildren yeah thanks you
know there it was a perfect focus group
because there was a seven year old and a
ten year old and a 12 year old and 16
year old and they loved it so I hope you
bring it out soon so these are some of
the things that we’re doing so it’s
we’ll see whether it’s successful but I
think we need to try well this is I
there’s some questions here and there
the first one actually dovetails
perfectly
aside from meditation is there another
way to cure cell phone addiction you’re
looking to be whoever wants to answer it
yeah so does anybody not have one of
these with them I I was talking to a
friend of ours that we mentioned before
Jon kabat-zinn and he said I have a
student who directed the team that
designed the iPhone and he said we were
all in our 20s and we decided to make it
as addictive as we could he said now I
am a parent and I really regret that
because to think about it today’s kids
are growing up not knowing a day you
could not have an electronic device with
a screen on it that would be entrancing
and I think what it means is that we are
a more distracted species than ever in
human history and that we need more help
with not letting ourselves you know what
I’m aware of that the most is in
elevators you know how you used to get
in an elevator and Everett didn’t know
anyone it’s all strangers in you and
yours
I don’t know if you should talk to
someone or nod or whatever but everyone
is like this now no one is making eye
contact there’s no there’s no sense of
social obligation exactly more so I’m
worried about that because you know I’ve
done a lot of work with social and
emotional intelligence and these are
lines of development from birth on and
the way you learn naturally how to
manage yourself how to be a decent human
being how to empathize is with people
it’s engaging and so kids are spending
hours and hours less engaging other
people and I worry that I feel that we
need to be more proactive for example in
schools and give kids lessons in
kindness lessons in empathy and managing
their impulsive feelings because they’re
not getting as much in life and the
distraction is one part of that
absolutely well there’s one of my
teachers talked about about technology
fasting and just putting that stuff away
for a day you know the traditional
Sunday or Saturday that ok we won’t do
that for a day and we’ll have a meal
with each other without the television
on or the cell phones or anything else
how novel hmm I’m novel is there a
minimum time you have to practice
meditation in order to reap the benefits
Richie
oh absolutely not I think you can see
benefits with really short amounts of
practice and the data show eight minutes
for someone who’s never meditated before
is enough to produce a change in the
brain and a change on objective measures
now again it doesn’t mean it’s for how
long
well so you can see transient changes in
eight minutes and it won’t become a
trait unless you continue to practice
and practice it’s just the 10,000 hours
they know looked about no I know we you
see you see trade affects after a couple
of thousand hours which is really a
modest level of practice but there is a
dose-response effect that the more you
do it the stronger and the wider array
of benefits how permanent it is how it
becomes a trip app becomes part of your
being lasts only dude there was an
article
published a number of years ago in the
New Yorker that that is is so pertinent
to this it profile the lives of three
people one was yo-yo ma that tell us the
other was Wayne Gretzky the hockey
player and the third was a guy named Ed
Wilson who’s a famous neurosurgeon in
California at UCSF and these people are
the best in the world at what they do
and it asks what do they have in common
practice practice practice so I think
that there’s ultimately no substitute
for that none I don’t think there is
either I mean anyone who asked me about
meditating there’s a question here it’s
you have to do it and we are such lazy
beings but find a way that you do it
every day the same time you sit on your
cushion it becomes part of your eating
ritual your ritual of taking a shower
brushing your teeth that it’s it is who
you are and and the benefit of my own
experience and the people around me you
definitely have a permanent experience
that that is opens up in ways that you
never would have expected or dreamed
now this there’s a this is an
interesting one I have never meditated
so this reminds me of PS 112 it’s on
122nd Street in Spanish Harlem
seven-year-olds every day they have a
practice where our time where they have
belly buddies
the only buddies means you go to your
cubby you get your favorite stuffed
animal you’d find a place to lie down on
the rug you put it on your belly and you
watch it rise on the in-breath you fall
on the out-breath
that’s for seven-year-olds it’s also for
61 year olds you don’t need a stuffed
animal just start and there’s there’s a
hundred ways to start there’s books
there’s apps there’s you could start
right now in fact let’s do it for a
minute why don’t we do it I actually
asked Mathieu to do this when we we did
one it’s actually vegetate yeah okay
here we go just sit up in a dignified
position so you don’t fall asleep and
close your eyes and bring your attention
to your breath don’t try to control your
breath just watch the natural inflow and
outflow breathing in breathing out stay
with the full in breath the full out
breath the pause between and the next
breath and when your mind wanders just
notice that it wandered and bring it
back to your breath and start with the
and now you can open your eyes that’s
the basic construction Richards thought
meditating no I was just saying what I
said my first teachers were Zen and it
became very important in early Zen
training to think about this place
called the Hara which is it’s a chakra
just below the navel but it’s three or
four finger widths below the navel and
towards the back and if you can that’s
also where your abdomen is and as you’re
breathing through the abdomen is that’s
that’s where you put your mind is right
there and you’ll see that in your mind
will wander and you’ll be up in thoughts
up in here bring it right back down and
you’ll start to activate this very
powerful energy source in in this area
so when you’re breathing think of it
from here not not from up in your head
or anything really from here and it will
start to settle I find that it settles
the mind much quicker but that is an
incredibly powerful source right here of
as Richey said you never too old who you
want to tell you that the 61 year old
who gave the card is he here
I just turned 68 there you back there
it’s a woman or a man it’s a woman great
so this is your your first lesson in
okay now you master meditators how do I
stop my mind from wandering during
meditation huh now who said you had to
stop your mind from wandering I said
what I said who said you have to stop
your mind from wandering I think that’s
a common misconception the mind wanders
that’s what it does it’s you know that
there’s a wonderful study that was done
at Harvard they gave people an iPhone
app and it rang people at random times
of the day and asked two questions what
are you doing now and what are you
thinking about and to the extent those
don’t match your mind is wandered they
found on average people’s mind wander
about 50% of the time the worst the 90%
or so is commuting sitting in front of a
video monitor and I’m sorry to say this
at work so of course the least was
during romantic moments but you have to
ask who would answer an app at a time
like so anyway this is what the day to
claim to show so the mind want is called
the default mode it’s what the mind does
when nothing else is going on right
Ricci and we know exactly what circuitry
is involved the idea is not to stop your
mind from wandering the idea is to
notice when it wandered to be mindful
oh my mind wandered I don’t have to
follow that thought I’ll go back to the
practice to the meditation yeah so in
many ways the essence of meditation is
awareness and we’re not trying to fix
anything we’re not trying to change
anything we’re not trying to block
anything we’re not trying to stop
thoughts it’s simply being aware and
recognizing this very basic quality of
awareness that we all have and simply
through repeated interrogation of our
own mind that becomes
more and more familiar and as it becomes
more and more familiar the mind begins
to settle but that’s really what this
kind of developmental process is about
hmm well the process is twofold in terms
of where the process can’t go and these
early stages of just beginning following
the breath is essentially taming the
mind from being crazy and taking us
places we don’t particularly want to go
but is this there is a certain amount of
concentration and and we’ll associate it
with that I think once once that
concentration has become second nature
of focusing on one thing then you can
use that like a like a wild horse
once you’ve tamed that horse you can do
tricks with it you can do amazing things
with it it will take you places which
are very sometimes quite complicated and
and sometimes just purely delicate that
the mind itself is so close to us that
the vast mind is so close that we can’t
see it but it’s right there and it’s so
subtle that difference between kind of
lost in the world we normally are and
the flip side of that which is vast and
open and unbounded no center no
dimension it’s it’s it can’t even be
described but it’s it’s it’s right there
right right there so subtle great right
there every second could we study your
brain how do I stop this is I’m not sure
what this is about but why the rift
between transcendental meditation and
mindfulness until recently the rift
between TM and mindfulness apparently
there was a rift
and it’s over that’s really good news
so TM is that was my first meditation
and it was mine too yeah it’s a great
meditation practice and it comes from
India and uses what are called
meaningless sounds they’re actually
Sanskrit mantras that you repeat
silently in your mind and when your mind
wishes what what was your mantra you’re
not supposed to tell yet everyone knows
I actually didn’t like it that much but
anyway that’s a different story
so you bring your mind when it wanders
in TM you gently start the mantra again
which is another way of noticing and in
mindfulness which is what we just did
you use the breath or some neutral
anchor in the same way so they start out
as very similar practices and and good
news there’s no rift I don’t know
anymore you guys want to talk about you
know that was pretty pretty good we
covered a lot of time think you covered
a lot of territory what I like about
this book let me just talk about the
book okay what I like about the book is
I’ve even as I said I’ve known these
guys a long time I learned so much about
them as people in this and it’s it’s not
a wonky book it’s kind of an exciting
book of how these guys got to where they
are now and how important it is and I
think they’re very aware of how
pioneering this is and we didn’t even
have translations from the Tibetan until
maybe 15 or 20 years ago really decent
this is the beginning of a whole east to
west process we’ve had his Holiness the
Dalai Lama who’s been really important
to that and also in terms of science
there’s been no one like His Holiness
the Dalai Lama who has embraced Western
science and understands how meaningful
that is to communicate the depth of what
the Buddha discovered the the
extraordinary revolution that and
courage it took to get there of what he
was able to experience
and he went through the same process
once he had he became enlightened he had
no idea how he could communicate what
had happened – that’s right and the
story is is that the the dakinis and the
angels they came to and begged him and
he he really was was at a loss and he
started a very simple way to explain
what had happened to him he called the
Four Noble Truths but then he started to
expand really what happened to him and
it was this the the nature of mind
itself an emptiness that a man is empty
of inherent existence this whole thing
is empty of inherent existence
His Holiness understands the nature of
that is not really Buddhism it’s a
revolution in way beyond Buddhism and it
can’t be explained in a rational way in
a conceptual way it can only be
experienced and this is one of those
pioneering steps along the way to help a
lot of people get closer to having that
extraordinary experience I think people
will look back on this first of all I
think it’s gonna be a really successful
book I like the book it’s smart and it’s
personal and it has great humility and
and I think it’s really going to help
people but I think it’s gonna be one of
those books that along the road of other
books that come along in other books you
guys will do will be one of the really
important ones so I highly recommend
Richard thank you thank you so much [Applause]
smarter people in your life than these
two guys and the two guys that I’ve
known a long time Richie Davidson not
really well but we’ve known each other
long time Dan Gomer is one of my closest
friends and and I learned more in this
I’d love to start you know the
discussion here just one of the beauties
of this book is that they’re incredibly
self effacing with great humility about
how they started thinking about these
things and how they started as as
students at Harvard and how it took over
their lives and got to this point I love
to just hear what what was that first
impulse that started this thing rolling
for you guys that led to a this
extraordinary friendship and the wisdom
that is in this book well for me it
started in college I don’t know if you
know this but I started to meditate
because I was anxious like an undergrad
you know I was yeah uptight and I found
it relaxed me I did it twice a day
morning it prepared me for the day
afternoon I took a nap every time I
couldn’t get who was it what kind of
meditation whether I started with TM
yeah that’s great beginning practice
when I got to Harvard I was lucky enough
to get a pre-doctoral traveling
fellowship to India and I I was really
interested since I was studying clinical
psychology which is the most downer
thing you can studies like you meet
someone like what’s wrong with this
person and I and I went to Asia went to
India and I met people who were off that
map yeah one of them was famous yogi
neem Karoli Baba was Rhonda’s guru he
was extraordinary he was loving he was
super present and when you’re with him
you felt like you loved everybody – that
was magic hmm and I met Kuno Lama who
was this very humble Tibetan monk in
Bodhgaya
this crude alum is a very very famous
lama and he’s famous for being the most
humble of the humble
and there was a story of his Holiness
the Dalai Lama coming to board gaya to
teach and there’s a long entourage and
people were lined up for a quarter of a
mile to see his holiness and out of the
corner of his eye he saw this very
humble humble monk way in the back and
he broke the crowd and came over and
started doing prostrations himself to
Kundu lama he’s that extraordinary of a
man the Kuna Lama became the dalai lamas
teacher on compassion shanti devi and to
this day he’ll acknowledge Kuni lamas
sorry i met people like that and I came
by to harbor I said hey guess what
there’s great news there’s an upside to
human potential it’s not all what’s
wrong with you and they were stunned and
totally disinterested but Ricci was
there and they told me that if I wanted
a successful career in science doing
this was a terrible way to begin and
they told me that after I spent three
months in India and Sri Lanka with Dan
after my second year of graduate school
but when it first began my very first
day of graduate school I took my first
course and I knew about Dan before I got
to Harvard because he published a few
articles in this really obscure journal
called the journal of transpersonal
psychology I thought one of our
top-ranked journalism doesn’t exist
anymore but these were articles on
meditation that I had read as an
undergraduate and so I knew Dan was
there this was before the Internet I had
no idea what he looked like I saw no
pictures of him
and I sat down and there was someone
that sat right next to me and I turned
to him and I said you’re Dan Goleman
he knew that because I was wearing these
outrageous corduroy pajamas which were
the only chance I had they’ve been made
in India they were dirt cheap I was a
graduate student couldn’t afford
anything else my hair was like Jimi
Hendrix if you can believe it now so so
and I got back from India dressed the
same way that Dan was dressed
and I go into a seminar at Harvard on
psychopathology clinical psychology and
the professor in this graduate seminar
looking directly at me said you know
there’s some evidence to indicate that a
person’s clothing habits are a good
indication of their psychiatric status
schizophrenia I think those that was
what it was like when we first began
yeah there’s a very hostile environment
and how many of you were there that
we’re interested in this stuff I know
John kabat-zinn was also so he was a
third friend
so John kabat-zinn some of you may know
of his work with mindfulness based
stress reduction MBSR
it’s in hospitals around the world but
back then he was just a graduate student
he hadn’t done molecular biology but we
met and we’re all interested in
meditation and the three of us did a
project together which was a Swami had
come to town we’ll call him Swami X
Swami who is that exactly
Swami X I know but who is that a day and
I’m not telling
but this Swami wanted to be studied by
scientists at Harvard so we commandeered
a lab and I had to convince our
professors that they should allocate
valuable laboratory time to studying
this Swami
so that was one evening the problem but
the other was this was in the days of
biofeedback when people would get a
signal of their heart rate or something
and learned to control this Swami
exclaimed I can control my autonomic
nervous system with no feedback so we
got him in the lab and we asked him to
raise his heart rate and he’d lowered it
and we asked him to lower his heart rate
and he raised it and then he did a
special thing for us which he called dog
Samadhi which is otherwise known as
atrial fibrillation it’s not a great
talent a V can die from that so that was
our first understanding because that you
can height research on meditation
afterward wherever he spoke he said and
scientists at Harvard have studied my
brain
which would say what we found so one of
our motives for writing this book
altered is there a book here there is a
bar yeah sheltered traits right knees
and gentlemen yeah thank you was to put
together the best research there’s now
6,000 peer-reviewed articles there’s
more than a thousand a year now when
we’ve done our dissertations there were
two remember that both really bad and
our dissertations by the way would not
meet the standards to get in this book
today
would you agree totally yeah so
standards of a ratcheted upward and we
wanted to put together in one place the
evidence that you know meditation
actually is a value it’s not all hype
there’s good research and in fact it
shows real benefit this is this is a
tough we actually met as meditators
that’s true and so I’m I’m looking at
this whole process from a slightly
skewed angle where I’m not really
interested in the data I’m interested in
my own personal experience and I know
there’s no way that you could have the
energy to go through this process of
finding a way to bring Western science
and Eastern Sciences together in a way
that that is definable measurable just
to find that way for them to communicate
to each other unless you had had your
own experiences and I don’t know if you
want to share something of that just
what that has to be the springboard for
you it’s not just academic for you guys
yeah what one really poignant example of
the predicament that this brings is in
2005 we played a role in an important
role in having the Dalai Lama speak at
this Society for Neuroscience the most
prestigious organization under
neuroscientists in the world I and
Washington in Washington times yeah yeah
so there was an article I don’t know if
you remember this but there was an
article in The New York Times about him
speaking at this meeting it was on the
front page in the New York Times a
little bit before because there was a
petition that was started of scientists
objecting to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
speaking at this meeting of nurse
now the fact that the first 400 people
who signed it were Chinese scientists
probably had something to do with this
but in any case in this article in The
New York Times it also talked about some
of the research that was going on and
specifically singled out some of the
research that we were doing in our lab
and it said Davidson has admitted in
public that he himself meditates
scandalous oh my god and how can he
possibly be objective in this research
if he himself meditates and that would
be like I had such a great time with
this it would be like telling a
cardiologist who studies the effect of
physical exercise on the heart that they
can’t exercise for the rest of their
life because there’s they’re studying it
or or for that matter a scientist who
studies perception should stop
perceiving so it’s you know we think of
this as obligatory that if you’re gonna
do scientific research in this area you
really need to have your own practice
you know the Thurman I think is one of
the guys Robert Thurman professor at at
Columbia he often translates the word
yogi as yogi scientists and from the
eastern point of view these great Yogi’s
in a tradition of thousands of years of
refining their understanding and
experience of consciousness of what mind
is nature of mind what is nature of mind
and and how does that how does that
interact with our sense of ourselves as
a separate being is in fact this is
separate being or not but but they
didn’t have the machines to measure
these things it was a completely
subjective experience for them now the
guides in the lineage were people who
were great experts at this yeah you know
would be the great geniuses of of this
type of meditation that type of
meditation who would be able to to walk
them through the experience and make
sure there was a valid experience based
on the tradition and also what they
wanted in the process of the meditative
sequencing we don’t have that here
our science doesn’t do that it has to be
measurable by machine
and provable and this is I’m most
interested you’re pioneers in doing this
mind and life Institute is it it’s
pioneering of how do you bring these two
different Sciences together and is there
a razor’s edge that they do meet well I
think it’s it’s really important to
acknowledge that you know we feel in our
hearts because of our own experience if
this works it does something
advantageous as you know but it was the
Dalai Lama who said actually straight to
Ricci
in a mind and life meeting and by the
way mind and life is a wonderful
organization that the dalai lama
co-founded to have to create a dialogue
between spiritual traditions and science
and he said to Richie you know our
tradition has many methods for handling
disturbing destructive emotions please
take them outside the religious context
bring them into the lab study them as
rigorously as you can and if they’re a
value spread them as widely as you can
so that’s really what this book is about
well I’m taking with that your think in
your first chapters you talk about deep
meditation and and wide meditation so we
want to speak to that again so there
receive four levels of meditation one is
the you could say the professional the
yogi the full-time nine or monk in a
monastic setting who is a professional
meditator so rich he was able to bring
people like that to his lab in Wisconsin
one by one and he found remarkable
effects from it but that’s a very small
slice of people then there’s the next
level out which are the centers that you
see here there’s New York insight or
there’s many Lamas who are teaching and
they’re bringing the tradition to the
west and they leave some stuff behind
but they reach more people and then
there’s the next remove which is like
Jon kabat-zinn
mindfulness based stress reduction it
takes it outside that spiritual context
and looks at the benefits his method is
used very widely in hospitals for
example in clinics because if you have a
chronic disease like arthritis you’re
living with
paying everyday they can’t help you it
changes your relationship to that and
you have a better quality of life so
that reaches an even wider group they
don’t go so deep and then there’s the
widest group it’s like you know we’re
teaching mindfulness in human you know
HR and our company is bringing
mindfulness in or here’s a mindfulness
app and that actually goes to scale but
it’s a not nearly the depth that you get
at that first level well Dan you say and
we’ve talked about this today and at
other times clearly if if people can be
helped you want them to have the tools
to help them in any way that you can
exactly the most exciting part of this I
think as a as meditators ourselves and
coming out of a tradition is to make the
largest possible change one can make
which is radically change our whole idea
of self another the dualism that we
usually live in are afflictive emotions
and the connection that you guys are
seeing in the data of there’s actually
molecular changes that go on in the mind
in the brain Richie and I Richie please
be honest so this is really the area
that is particularly exciting because
it’s not so much about proving that
meditation may be helpful it’s really
understanding how meditation is
affecting the mind in the brain and in a
permanent way and in a permanent way
which is really what the title of the
book is meant to convey altered traits
is the notion that enduring change is
actually possible there was a book that
this is playing on I don’t know if
probably all of you remember Charles
Tate’s book targeted states aren’t tarts
aren’t yeah of altered states of
consciousness so altered traits you have
to be of a certain age to remember that
well that’s why I was happy to know this
it’s only a rarefied group of people and
altered states of consciousness was this
edited academic volume that I still can
picture with a white cover of sitting in
my office but was revolutionary I mean
first very influential but what we’re
discovering today is that – there are
two major mechanisms that we’re learning
more and more about one is
neuroplasticity and the other is
epigenetics neuroplasticity is the idea
that the brain changes in response to
experience this is very recent is very
recent like completely recently like
there in a decade at last less 10-15
years exactly and neuroplasticity
happens all the time
wittingly or unwittingly and most of the
time neuroplasticity is happening
unwittingly most of the time our brains
are being shaped by forces around us
about which we have little awareness so
if you binge watch Game of Thrones is
that their custody yeah so you know it’s
sorry about that but it’s a it’s a
sobering reflection because we are just
continuously being shaped in this way
and epigenetics is the science of how
genes are regulated and we’re all born
with a fixed complement of base pairs
that constitute our DNA and for the most
part that’s not going to change but what
will change is the extent to which
different genes are turned on and turned
off and so you can think of genes having
little volume controls that go from low
to high and that varies a lot and it
turns out that those variations are
really meaningful for health and one of
the things we found is just a couple of
years ago we published a paper showing
that if we bring meditators to the
laboratory and these are folks like us
who who are not professional meditators
who have day jobs and have them practice
for a full day and we just take a blood
sample in the morning and then in the
late afternoon after a period of say six
or seven hours of practice we actually
can see changes in gene expression and
in these what we call epigenetic marks
that are observable that and we were
specifically looking at changes in gene
expression for genes that are involved
in inflammation which is an important
domain in many chronic illnesses and so
these kinds of data suggest that we can
produce enduring change in ways
were unthinkable Ritchie what was the
change was it good or bad so what we
found is that the genes for inflammation
were down regulated down regulated it
means little less inflamed just to
translate for you
he’s my scientific translator yeah
so it was good yeah it was good so what
about neuroplasticity so neuroplasticity
is not not necessarily good or bad
neuroplasticity is happening all the
time and if we there are certain things
that we can do to stimulate increased
neuroplasticity but if we increase
neuroplasticity fine that a little more
just give people a good definition of
that so the extent to which the brain
changes varies across people it’s not
all the same and it also changes over
the course of development we know for
example that very young kids can learn a
second language much more easily when at
a certain age they can learn a musical
instrument so that’s a form of clusters
that’s a form of plasticity and that’s a
sensitive period in development it
actually may be that kindness and
compassion have a similar sensitive
period and if we nurture the kids during
that period it can be enormous there any
indication that there is a prime period
for learning this there’s some
indication we have developed in our
Center a curriculum that we call the
kindness curriculum which is designated
for preschool kids for kids four and
five years of age which by the way we’ve
just this week have a free public
release of this curriculum so anyone who
wants can go to our Center website and
download the curriculum and and what we
find is that kids four and five years of
age find this really natural it’s it
just comes very easily to them and we
see big time changes over the course of
just 12 weeks of a semester where we’re
introducing this for 90 minutes or do
you find conversely there’s a period or
an age where this is not teachable that
there is no plasticity no that’s the
good news plasticity happens until we
die it’s never too late never too late
and in fact there are some evidence to
suggest that one of the thing one of the
mechanisms of plasticity is actually
impacting cellular and neural aging and
there’s evidence to suggest that with
more practice mechanisms of cellular
aging slow down and also brain aging
slows down one of the things we share in
the book is that one of the great llamas
that all of us know a llama by the name
of minge rinpoche who has given us
permission to use his name was one of
the participants in the research that
we’ve done in our lab and he is what we
would call an Olympic level meditator he
is probably devoted around 75,000 hours
over the course of his lifetime the
informal probably done three three-year
retreats before he was born a hump
they’d like it was insane I mean the
number of hours that he’s put in when he
said his favorite game was to go to a
cave and pretend to meditate he didn’t
know what it was then that kind of kid
yeah that so minger just finished
recently a four and a half year retreat
and we had him come to our lab very soon
after the four and a half year retreat
and we looked at parameters their
objective parameters you can look at in
the brain to estimate the age of a brain
and he was 41 years of age when we
tested him then and we compared him to a
large normative database of people
between the ages of 25 and 45 he was in
the 99th percentile showing the youngest
brain in this group of a thousand pino
and so it’s not that the brain is not
changing and still aging it is we we
actually show that but the slope of the
change is much different than what you
see in a person who’s not been precious
so are you saying that meditation might
keep your brain younger longer
it seems that reminds me of something
Ashley Montagu said
he said I’d like to die young at a very
late age it’s great yeah so there’s
there’s a very important part of this
story first of all the neuroplasticity
means the research that Richie’s done
shows that meditation changes the brain
actually maybe reshapes it strengthens
circuitry in positive ways it was not
always so easy I just want to mention in
1992 Richie and a group of people slept
to Dharamsala India in the foothills of
the Himalayas tons of equipment five
thousand pounds in those days it wasn’t
many it was by trained yes exactly
well there’s not an easy place to get to
yeah and they had a letter from the
Dalai Lama to Yogi’s who are up in the
hills around there and a guide to find
the Yogi’s and the letter said please
cooperate with these scientists they
want to study you meditating and they
went to yogi after yogi each of whom
said no right that’s right and for a
very smart reason they said we don’t
know what you measure and if you if what
we do doesn’t show up on your machines
is any good it might discourage people
so they wouldn’t do it but there was
also a thing about taking blood that in
terms of some of the tantric practices
that they do changing the there’s loud
pressure in the blood actually
interrupts their yogic process and well
we didn’t take any blood samples in that
tree so there’s brain research yeah but
actually there’s a great story that is
part of that that excursion we had 5,000
pounds of equipment we weren’t able to
use any of it to test any of these
Yogi’s so the last day we were there and
the Dali Lama asked us if we would
please give a talk to these young monks
at the Nam gal monastery we said of
course would be happy to give a talk and
we thought rather than giving a dry
academic talk we had all this equipment
we might as well use it to show them how
we record this so Francisco Varela who
is one of the cofounders of the mind and
life Institute great neuroscientist and
also a great meditator student of me
grandpa Shay’s father actually took a
organ
francisco was with us and we decided we
put an electrode cap on francisco so we
put you know this funny-looking cap with
sensors coming out all these wires and
in those days it took a lot of time to
set it up it took about 45 minutes and
then finally we had all of the
electrodes in place and the brainwaves
were being displayed on these clunky
laptops that we had at that time and so
we parted ways and there are 200 monks
sitting dutifully on cushions on the
floor and they just burst out laughing
just hysterically laughing and we
thought they were laughing because
francisco looked kind of funny with this
electrode cap on it turned out that
they’re laughing about something far
more serious what they’re laughing about
is that we were talking about compassion
and we were putting electrodes on the
head and not on the heart and that it
took us 20 years to process that and to
really learn what it is that they were
referring to mind and heart where the
tibetans is almost interchangeable and
if they talk about mind they point here
I remember His Holiness saying and
almost all of his holiness does work
saying that we by nature are loving and
kind and empathic we are taught not to
be in Our Lives our environment teaches
us that way but I think it’s one of the
reasons that these this neuroplasticity
in terms of positive emotions and really
helpful emotions and joyous emotions
it’s not that hard to access will be
there we found very good news when we
looked at the the best Studies on
kindness loving kindness which is a
meditation has become more and more
popular we found that the the brain or
the mind seems to be prepared to learn
to love better it for beginners even the
outcomes of being more generous paying
more attention to people around you
things like that happened very quickly
more quickly than with other aspects
that we measured so it seems
that we’re primed for love which is
wonderful finding we also found for
beginners
things like if you multitask who doesn’t
multitask these days you’re doing one
thing and then oh I better check my
email look on Facebook this is the way
life goes if you’re concentrating this
much on the first thing and then you do
that and that and that and that when you
go back to that thing your concentration
is down here unless you’ve done just ten
minutes of mindfulness that buffers you
it brings you leave your concentration
high so we find that the benefits like
that come right at the beginning and
then the longer you do it the more hours
you put into it over time the more
benefits you get now you’re talking
about meditation is it using a very
broad term meditation you want to go
into more detail about the kinds of
meditation the practices themselves that
you were looking at what the aim of
those practices are it may be a little
bit about how they work with what the
yogic process is that you were
evaluating well they’re there in terms
of the scientific research there are two
kinds of meditation practice that have
been studied the most extensively one is
basic mindfulness kinds of practices and
when we talk about mindfulness practices
we are speaking about practices that
invite a person to bring awareness to
their bodies to their thoughts to their
emotions to external sensations and to
know that they’re aware there’s a
certain quality of knowing that seems to
be intrinsic to our capacity to be aware
and recognizing that that knowing is
really what these mindfulness practices
are about and it turns out that these
simple mindfulness practices even
practice for just a short amount of time
seem to improve aspects of our attention
they also improve what scientists have
called meta awareness which is the
ability to recognize that you are aware
one of the ways that you can think about
this we’ve all had the experience of
being in a movie theater and being
really engrossed in a movie and to the
extent where that were not even aware
that we’re sitting in a theater we’re so
wrapped up in the plot but we also could
be sitting in a movie theater totally
attentive to the movie but in the
background recognizing that we’re
sitting in a theater and it’s that
background recognition that is seems to
be something that we call Met awareness
that’s cultivated with these simple
mindfulness practices that turns out to
provide a kind of leverage to allow a
person to better regulate their emotions
to not get ensnared not get hijacked not
to identify so much not to identify yeah
and that’s something really key and then
the second class of practices that have
been studied extensively are these
practices that are designed to cultivate
qualities of kindness of love compassion
and again the one of the amazing things
is that you see changes after there’s
data showing changes after just eight
minutes yeah and it doesn’t mean that
those changes are gonna last but what it
does show as Danny was suggesting is
that our minds are primed for we’re
ready for it it’s right under the under
the hood and all we need is a little bit
of a wake-up and it’s there we’re all
leaning towards love all of us and it’s
just it’s right there for us I know in
my own process of meditative practice
it’s certainly it does build up over
many years and for me in so many decades
and I can’t say that every meditation
was a great meditation but when I look
at the process of these many years of
doing it certainly there’s a different
quality that I can locate as as myself
that is not identifying with world the
world that I saw before the emotions as
they would be generated and and
obviously being around the Olympic
beings who have perfected these
meditative processes what an
encouragement that is to know that that
is possible if you put in the work you
can do it
you will have those results and I think
that’s the most important thing I’m
getting from the research you guys are
doing is that is available it’s not like
you’re inventing love you’re not
inventing compassion empathy joy it’s
there
it’s part of our being we just don’t
access it very well
yeah and in many ways you know we think
about this and in a way that’s similar
to the way scientists think about
language I mean we all come into the
world with a biological propensity for
language but in order for that
propensity to be expressed we need to be
nurtured in a normal linguistic
community there are case that clear
words you have to hear words and there
are case studies of feral children
raised in the wild they don’t develop
language normally and similarly with
these basic qualities of awareness and
love we’re built to express these
qualities but there sees they need
nurturing and these practices really are
not about creating anything de novo
they’re about nurturing something that’s
really taken that even further I mean
this is meditative process is
essentially an individual private
process one is going through do you have
any studies based on communities and
what that does having communities who
are moving themselves in this direction
and how there might jump start or quick
in the process well you know the
classical traditions all say you know
it’s better if you hang out with people
who are like-minded who are trying the
same thing that if you’re hanging out
with people who are basically dissing
what you’re doing and I think that the
encouragement of having a community that
not only sees what you see but watch
what you want is really invaluable yeah
and the research certainly shows that
the community aspect is really important
and in fact in some of the early stages
it turns out that some of the benefit of
things like mindfulness based stress
reduction which are done in a group
where you go to a class once a week and
there’s you know 15 or so people who are
sharing a lot and there’s a sense of
cohesion and community that arises in
the group it turns out that the group
process in careful studies have been
done is actually a really important
ingredient
even more important in certain ways than
the specific mindfulness techniques
mm-hmm and there’s something about
community which is really key has Jon
kabat-zinn I mean I was actually going
to get into him when we saw him a few
days ago as he found a threshold of the
work he’s doing that I mean it is a
broad kind of thing he’s doing its the
wide version is he as he got into a
threshold whereas you can’t get it to
that next level or is he finding within
his community people who want to go into
the deeper aspect of meditating process
yeah I think Johnny who has probably
taught tens of thousands of people
either him or his students or students
students maybe hundreds of thousands by
now finds that there’s a certain
subgroup of people who get a taste and
want to go deeper but it most people
don’t you know he intentionally he
started out in Worcester Mass and he
wanted anybody from Worcester which is a
pretty like you know working person
working class working class and he
wanted anybody to be able to do this
practice so he came up with a set of
very effective meditations that aren’t
necessarily called meditation but these
are people who on medical problems
highly motivated to do something because
they’re not being helped by medicine
anymore and he found a way of getting
this in a package that people could
accept but one of the important things
that we don’t know about mindfulness
based stress reduction for example is we
don’t know a percentage of people who
take an MBSR course a two-month course
and then are still meditating even a
year later or two years later my
suspicion to be honest about this is
that it’s probably a small fraction and
I think that one of the insights that we
gleaned from the scientific research is
that small amounts of practice done many
times yeah over the course of day may be
particularly helpful for getting people
started
taking it in really sort of bite-sized
chunks and not creating unrealistic
expectations or himself but rather
coming up with a formula that is more
likely to guarantee success one of the
things that we’re investigating in our
own Center now is when a person starts
with with a particular kind of program
that we’re working with we tell them
what is the the amount of time that you
think you can do this every single day
without a break for 30 days even if it’s
just 1 minute a day that’s ok ok but
what we want you to do is to do it every
day for 30 days and then see how you’re
doing
check in and and if it’s valuable extend
it and and that is a way to maximize the
likelihood that a person actually would
be successful rather than having a goal
to do 45 minutes a day where they might
do it for a few days or a few weeks what
do they actually tell you do they tell
you 5 minutes 10 minutes it’s typically
under 15 minutes so and does that grow
naturally or do they stick to that well
we’re just starting this so we don’t
know yet but you know our aspiration is
that it will grow but we don’t really
know from you know a scientific
perspective talk to me a little bit
about where you are you can’t do this
kind of work unless you have some vision
of where you’re going where are you on
the curve now of the voyage that you’re
taking and what is the next big step or
two that’s going to take you further
along this kind of studies that you’re
doing well I would speak as someone
who’s doing meditation practice I’d like
to do a lot more actually I’d like to
step back my my a lot of the things I do
are speaking to different groups my
agent is here in the room Carlton and
Lucie and I want to continue that
Carlton and Lucie but I’d like to do the
rest
and do more my second floor of their
house they’re trying to redo right now
so so yeah after that’s paper or then
we’ll here office please thank you yeah
but generally you know that’s that’s me
personally but Richie you’ve got a whole
you’ve got a hundred people in your lab
yeah Richie invented this stuff he’s
being extremely humble here but this is
a guy who invented he built the field
cocaine template of neuroscience all
that stuff you see where llamas are
being tested and the wires coming on it
that’s all in his lab and you’ve got
hundreds of people working well we have
sent a hundred people now and actually
barb Matheson who’s our executive
director of our Center is here somewhere
in the audience and our aspiration we
have big aspirations at this point in
time and in the back of my mind I hear
his Holiness the Dalai Lama who is
telling me seven million people there
are seven billion people that’s not
not even close maybe you can help so it
we are really trying to figure out ways
to bring this out into the world in
unconventional
using unconventional methods and one of
the things that’s clear and it certainly
comes with all kinds of complications
and limitations but one of the things
that’s clear is if this kind of work is
gonna be deployed at scale it’s gonna
have to use technology in some way shape
or form and exactly how to do that we’re
not sure but we are committed to trying
and we feel like we have a moral
obligation to try the world needs this
kind of practice I think most people
would agree but your point of view is to
prove its value and therefore bring
people in well that’s one of the things
we’re doing we also as part of our
Center we just started a nonprofit
corporation where we are taking the
insights that we glean from the
laboratory and turning them into
products that we’re actually going to
disseminate in the world tell them about
tenacity
Richie loaned me a bit of a pre beta
version of a video game for kids that
strengthens attention it’s it’s a way to
watch your breath you take it it’s on an
iPad and you you tap it for every breath
and you tap it twice on the ninth breath
or something like that and if you get it
right flowers bloom in this desert scene
it’s kind of very reinforcing and I gave
it to our grandchildren yeah thanks you
know there it was a perfect focus group
because there was a seven year old and a
ten year old and a 12 year old and 16
year old and they loved it so I hope you
bring it out soon so these are some of
the things that we’re doing so it’s
we’ll see whether it’s successful but I
think we need to try well this is I
there’s some questions here and there
the first one actually dovetails
perfectly
aside from meditation is there another
way to cure cell phone addiction you’re
looking to be whoever wants to answer it
yeah so does anybody not have one of
these with them I I was talking to a
friend of ours that we mentioned before
Jon kabat-zinn and he said I have a
student who directed the team that
designed the iPhone and he said we were
all in our 20s and we decided to make it
as addictive as we could he said now I
am a parent and I really regret that
because to think about it today’s kids
are growing up not knowing a day you
could not have an electronic device with
a screen on it that would be entrancing
and I think what it means is that we are
a more distracted species than ever in
human history and that we need more help
with not letting ourselves you know what
I’m aware of that the most is in
elevators you know how you used to get
in an elevator and Everett didn’t know
anyone it’s all strangers in you and
yours
I don’t know if you should talk to
someone or nod or whatever but everyone
is like this now no one is making eye
contact there’s no there’s no sense of
social obligation exactly more so I’m
worried about that because you know I’ve
done a lot of work with social and
emotional intelligence and these are
lines of development from birth on and
the way you learn naturally how to
manage yourself how to be a decent human
being how to empathize is with people
it’s engaging and so kids are spending
hours and hours less engaging other
people and I worry that I feel that we
need to be more proactive for example in
schools and give kids lessons in
kindness lessons in empathy and managing
their impulsive feelings because they’re
not getting as much in life and the
distraction is one part of that
absolutely well there’s one of my
teachers talked about about technology
fasting and just putting that stuff away
for a day you know the traditional
Sunday or Saturday that ok we won’t do
that for a day and we’ll have a meal
with each other without the television
on or the cell phones or anything else
how novel hmm I’m novel is there a
minimum time you have to practice
meditation in order to reap the benefits
Richie
oh absolutely not I think you can see
benefits with really short amounts of
practice and the data show eight minutes
for someone who’s never meditated before
is enough to produce a change in the
brain and a change on objective measures
now again it doesn’t mean it’s for how
long
well so you can see transient changes in
eight minutes and it won’t become a
trait unless you continue to practice
and practice it’s just the 10,000 hours
they know looked about no I know we you
see you see trade affects after a couple
of thousand hours which is really a
modest level of practice but there is a
dose-response effect that the more you
do it the stronger and the wider array
of benefits how permanent it is how it
becomes a trip app becomes part of your
being lasts only dude there was an
article
published a number of years ago in the
New Yorker that that is is so pertinent
to this it profile the lives of three
people one was yo-yo ma that tell us the
other was Wayne Gretzky the hockey
player and the third was a guy named Ed
Wilson who’s a famous neurosurgeon in
California at UCSF and these people are
the best in the world at what they do
and it asks what do they have in common
practice practice practice so I think
that there’s ultimately no substitute
for that none I don’t think there is
either I mean anyone who asked me about
meditating there’s a question here it’s
you have to do it and we are such lazy
beings but find a way that you do it
every day the same time you sit on your
cushion it becomes part of your eating
ritual your ritual of taking a shower
brushing your teeth that it’s it is who
you are and and the benefit of my own
experience and the people around me you
definitely have a permanent experience
that that is opens up in ways that you
never would have expected or dreamed
now this there’s a this is an
interesting one I have never meditated
so this reminds me of PS 112 it’s on
122nd Street in Spanish Harlem
seven-year-olds every day they have a
practice where our time where they have
belly buddies
the only buddies means you go to your
cubby you get your favorite stuffed
animal you’d find a place to lie down on
the rug you put it on your belly and you
watch it rise on the in-breath you fall
on the out-breath
that’s for seven-year-olds it’s also for
61 year olds you don’t need a stuffed
animal just start and there’s there’s a
hundred ways to start there’s books
there’s apps there’s you could start
right now in fact let’s do it for a
minute why don’t we do it I actually
asked Mathieu to do this when we we did
one it’s actually vegetate yeah okay
here we go just sit up in a dignified
position so you don’t fall asleep and
close your eyes and bring your attention
to your breath don’t try to control your
breath just watch the natural inflow and
outflow breathing in breathing out stay
with the full in breath the full out
breath the pause between and the next
breath and when your mind wanders just
notice that it wandered and bring it
back to your breath and start with the
and now you can open your eyes that’s
the basic construction Richards thought
meditating no I was just saying what I
said my first teachers were Zen and it
became very important in early Zen
training to think about this place
called the Hara which is it’s a chakra
just below the navel but it’s three or
four finger widths below the navel and
towards the back and if you can that’s
also where your abdomen is and as you’re
breathing through the abdomen is that’s
that’s where you put your mind is right
there and you’ll see that in your mind
will wander and you’ll be up in thoughts
up in here bring it right back down and
you’ll start to activate this very
powerful energy source in in this area
so when you’re breathing think of it
from here not not from up in your head
or anything really from here and it will
start to settle I find that it settles
the mind much quicker but that is an
incredibly powerful source right here of
as Richey said you never too old who you
want to tell you that the 61 year old
who gave the card is he here
I just turned 68 there you back there
it’s a woman or a man it’s a woman great
so this is your your first lesson in
okay now you master meditators how do I
stop my mind from wandering during
meditation huh now who said you had to
stop your mind from wandering I said
what I said who said you have to stop
your mind from wandering I think that’s
a common misconception the mind wanders
that’s what it does it’s you know that
there’s a wonderful study that was done
at Harvard they gave people an iPhone
app and it rang people at random times
of the day and asked two questions what
are you doing now and what are you
thinking about and to the extent those
don’t match your mind is wandered they
found on average people’s mind wander
about 50% of the time the worst the 90%
or so is commuting sitting in front of a
video monitor and I’m sorry to say this
at work so of course the least was
during romantic moments but you have to
ask who would answer an app at a time
like so anyway this is what the day to
claim to show so the mind want is called
the default mode it’s what the mind does
when nothing else is going on right
Ricci and we know exactly what circuitry
is involved the idea is not to stop your
mind from wandering the idea is to
notice when it wandered to be mindful
oh my mind wandered I don’t have to
follow that thought I’ll go back to the
practice to the meditation yeah so in
many ways the essence of meditation is
awareness and we’re not trying to fix
anything we’re not trying to change
anything we’re not trying to block
anything we’re not trying to stop
thoughts it’s simply being aware and
recognizing this very basic quality of
awareness that we all have and simply
through repeated interrogation of our
own mind that becomes
more and more familiar and as it becomes
more and more familiar the mind begins
to settle but that’s really what this
kind of developmental process is about
hmm well the process is twofold in terms
of where the process can’t go and these
early stages of just beginning following
the breath is essentially taming the
mind from being crazy and taking us
places we don’t particularly want to go
but is this there is a certain amount of
concentration and and we’ll associate it
with that I think once once that
concentration has become second nature
of focusing on one thing then you can
use that like a like a wild horse
once you’ve tamed that horse you can do
tricks with it you can do amazing things
with it it will take you places which
are very sometimes quite complicated and
and sometimes just purely delicate that
the mind itself is so close to us that
the vast mind is so close that we can’t
see it but it’s right there and it’s so
subtle that difference between kind of
lost in the world we normally are and
the flip side of that which is vast and
open and unbounded no center no
dimension it’s it’s it can’t even be
described but it’s it’s it’s right there
right right there so subtle great right
there every second could we study your
brain how do I stop this is I’m not sure
what this is about but why the rift
between transcendental meditation and
mindfulness until recently the rift
between TM and mindfulness apparently
there was a rift
and it’s over that’s really good news
so TM is that was my first meditation
and it was mine too yeah it’s a great
meditation practice and it comes from
India and uses what are called
meaningless sounds they’re actually
Sanskrit mantras that you repeat
silently in your mind and when your mind
wishes what what was your mantra you’re
not supposed to tell yet everyone knows
I actually didn’t like it that much but
anyway that’s a different story
so you bring your mind when it wanders
in TM you gently start the mantra again
which is another way of noticing and in
mindfulness which is what we just did
you use the breath or some neutral
anchor in the same way so they start out
as very similar practices and and good
news there’s no rift I don’t know
anymore you guys want to talk about you
know that was pretty pretty good we
covered a lot of time think you covered
a lot of territory what I like about
this book let me just talk about the
book okay what I like about the book is
I’ve even as I said I’ve known these
guys a long time I learned so much about
them as people in this and it’s it’s not
a wonky book it’s kind of an exciting
book of how these guys got to where they
are now and how important it is and I
think they’re very aware of how
pioneering this is and we didn’t even
have translations from the Tibetan until
maybe 15 or 20 years ago really decent
this is the beginning of a whole east to
west process we’ve had his Holiness the
Dalai Lama who’s been really important
to that and also in terms of science
there’s been no one like His Holiness
the Dalai Lama who has embraced Western
science and understands how meaningful
that is to communicate the depth of what
the Buddha discovered the the
extraordinary revolution that and
courage it took to get there of what he
was able to experience
and he went through the same process
once he had he became enlightened he had
no idea how he could communicate what
had happened – that’s right and the
story is is that the the dakinis and the
angels they came to and begged him and
he he really was was at a loss and he
started a very simple way to explain
what had happened to him he called the
Four Noble Truths but then he started to
expand really what happened to him and
it was this the the nature of mind
itself an emptiness that a man is empty
of inherent existence this whole thing
is empty of inherent existence
His Holiness understands the nature of
that is not really Buddhism it’s a
revolution in way beyond Buddhism and it
can’t be explained in a rational way in
a conceptual way it can only be
experienced and this is one of those
pioneering steps along the way to help a
lot of people get closer to having that
extraordinary experience I think people
will look back on this first of all I
think it’s gonna be a really successful
book I like the book it’s smart and it’s
personal and it has great humility and
and I think it’s really going to help
people but I think it’s gonna be one of
those books that along the road of other
books that come along in other books you
guys will do will be one of the really
important ones so I highly recommend
Richard thank you thank you so much [Applause]
Please follow and like us: