this is me running I’m relatively new to
the sport I started about eight months
ago
and have you ever heard of this thing a
runner’s high
when I started I definitely didn’t feel
a runner’s high
my legs were really painful in a few
minutes after starting to run I ran out
of breath and I constantly had this
dialogue in my mind like when is this
gonna stop but after a few months you
know I was running and something changed
and there came this moment when I could
feel every movement in my body it was
actually during this race 10k and I was
in a quiet stretch there was a cool
breeze I was alone and all of a sudden
the internal dialogue in my head stopped
and I could feel every movement in my
body now this feeling when you’re
totally in the moment is called by
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow and flow
refers to strong yet effortless
attention so you’re very concentrated
there’s a fit between the demands of the
task and your ability so it’s not so
hard that it’s impossible but it’s not
so easy that it’s boring
finally this kind of activity is
rewarding in itself so there’s a lot of
activities that can be flow as you can
see it could be playing an instrument or
woodworking or even cooking
however these the one thing that’s
important about flow activities is that
you’re very involved and you’re active
so unfortunately watching Netflix does
not constitute a flow activity so I
study ancient Chinese religions
especially Taoism and this theory of
flow reminds me of an idea that occurred
in ancient China called Wu Wei now Wu
way is literally translated as non
action but I prefer the term effortless
action and Wu Wei is a state of being in
which one acts perfectly and
spontaneously according to the situation
so this term appeared in the warring
States Period
between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE
and during this time there was not one
country called China but there were a
bunch of different states that were
competing for dominance and it was in
this context that a lot of philosophies
were developing about how best to rule
the state and there was also in this
context that the term Wu Wei developed
in fact some philosophers argued that
the best way to rule a state is to be Wu
way so how can we do this one of the
things that Taoist talked about was
reducing distractions and they say that
in this ancient Chinese text it says the
organs of seeing and listening are the
eyes and ears if the mind does not
interfere with these these organs they
can keep to their duties so basically if
you have distractions then you cannot
focus on the thing that you need to be
focusing on so so this is basically like
the doors of sense perception the these
organs are related to towards a sense
perception but the door the perception
is also related to your desires so this
reminds me of concept in modern
psychology called selective attention
and there’s a video which you may have
seen where you are asked to count the
number of times a basketball is passed
and however during this time there is a
person in a gorilla suit that walks
across the scene and if you’re like me
when you saw this video you didn’t even
notice the gorilla it was like you were
just focusing so much on the basketball
so what these ancient Taoist texts show
us and also what this modern
psychological experiment shows us is
that when we’re focusing on one thing
it’s impossible to see the big picture
and focus on other things and this did
not just apply to desires but it also
applies to emotions and cognitive biases
so how can we reduce desires there’s a
story in the drama
about woodworker ching and he is a
belston carver now bell Stan carbo
stands were a very important part of
ritual in early China and he created a
beautiful Bell stand everyone asked him
how did you make this like by what art
did you make this Bell stand and he said
I’m just a craftsman how would I have
any art however there’s this one thing
when I am about to make a Bell stand I
never let it wear out my energy and I
always fast to still in my mind and
after fasting for three days I have no
longer any thoughts of congratulations
or rewards of stipends or titles and
after five days I have no longer any
thoughts of praise or blame of skill or
clumsiness and after seven days of
fasting my mind is so still that I
forget I even have four limbs in a form
in a body so what does this say about
becoming a way he talks about stilling
his mind and fasting the mind and I
think this means not just keeping the
body still but also keeping the mind
still some of these texts talk about
focusing on the breath I think in the
world of modern distractions of
information overload wouldn’t it be
great if we could be away if we could
focus on things without being distracted
wuwei and flow actually have a lot of
things in common there’s this idea of
attending to an action effortlessly
there’s also the idea of a reduced sense
of self and also finally there’s this
idea of not having any external
distractions or extrinsic motivations
there are some differences for example
flow is morally neutral and hue is a
spiritual ideal however for the most
part they map well on to one another so
in recent years there’s been a lot of
scholarly attention on meditation and
the effects that it can have on the body
and on the in on the mind one way in
which meditation is beneficial
is its effect of of deactivating the
default mode Network what is the default
mode Network deformer network otherwise
known as the dmn is a group of brain
regions that are activated when you’re
not actually involved in any particular
activity so it was first discovered in
the early 2000s when researchers noticed
that participants who are in MRI
machines who weren’t doing any specific
tasks these parts of the brain lit up
and it’s implicated in a sense of self
and it’s also associated with some
mental health symptoms related to ADHD
anxiety and depression so basically it’s
thinking to yourself and this kind of
discursive thought that goes on in a
very interesting study there were 12
meditators compared to 13 controls and
they noticed these meditators who were
very experienced that they had a
decrease in the dmn related to the
controls and what they found was there
was this decrease in Indiamen activity
not just during the meditation but also
during the resting States so that
suggests that engaging in this kind of
meditation practice enables you to
reduce these kinds of discursive
thoughts and this is kind of what we
were seeing in the story of the Boston
Carver who he was getting rid of these
self-conscious thoughts would weigh and
flow both of them are present when
you’re so absorbed in an activity that
you you don’t have these other
distractions and this leads to a
reduction in the dmn but I want to go
back to the story I had about running
and now I think that was something in
which I was in this kind of state but I
want you to I want to do a quick
exercise so I want I need your help
though so I want you to please sit
straight in your chair
and I want you to close your eyes for a
minute
and just take a few deep breath and I
want you to remember something that you
love doing and call that to mind and
think about how that it makes you feel
and try to relive that experience okay
now open your eyes so I think that this
kind of activity in which are so
involved that you don’t do things like
you don’t want to check your cell phone
these are things these are the kinds of
activities that can make us happier in
our lives not just during that activity
but also when we’re doing other
activities so in this world of constant
distractions I think being a little bit
more wuwei enables us to be present in
our lives so that’s it thank you [Applause]
the sport I started about eight months
ago
and have you ever heard of this thing a
runner’s high
when I started I definitely didn’t feel
a runner’s high
my legs were really painful in a few
minutes after starting to run I ran out
of breath and I constantly had this
dialogue in my mind like when is this
gonna stop but after a few months you
know I was running and something changed
and there came this moment when I could
feel every movement in my body it was
actually during this race 10k and I was
in a quiet stretch there was a cool
breeze I was alone and all of a sudden
the internal dialogue in my head stopped
and I could feel every movement in my
body now this feeling when you’re
totally in the moment is called by
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow and flow
refers to strong yet effortless
attention so you’re very concentrated
there’s a fit between the demands of the
task and your ability so it’s not so
hard that it’s impossible but it’s not
so easy that it’s boring
finally this kind of activity is
rewarding in itself so there’s a lot of
activities that can be flow as you can
see it could be playing an instrument or
woodworking or even cooking
however these the one thing that’s
important about flow activities is that
you’re very involved and you’re active
so unfortunately watching Netflix does
not constitute a flow activity so I
study ancient Chinese religions
especially Taoism and this theory of
flow reminds me of an idea that occurred
in ancient China called Wu Wei now Wu
way is literally translated as non
action but I prefer the term effortless
action and Wu Wei is a state of being in
which one acts perfectly and
spontaneously according to the situation
so this term appeared in the warring
States Period
between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE
and during this time there was not one
country called China but there were a
bunch of different states that were
competing for dominance and it was in
this context that a lot of philosophies
were developing about how best to rule
the state and there was also in this
context that the term Wu Wei developed
in fact some philosophers argued that
the best way to rule a state is to be Wu
way so how can we do this one of the
things that Taoist talked about was
reducing distractions and they say that
in this ancient Chinese text it says the
organs of seeing and listening are the
eyes and ears if the mind does not
interfere with these these organs they
can keep to their duties so basically if
you have distractions then you cannot
focus on the thing that you need to be
focusing on so so this is basically like
the doors of sense perception the these
organs are related to towards a sense
perception but the door the perception
is also related to your desires so this
reminds me of concept in modern
psychology called selective attention
and there’s a video which you may have
seen where you are asked to count the
number of times a basketball is passed
and however during this time there is a
person in a gorilla suit that walks
across the scene and if you’re like me
when you saw this video you didn’t even
notice the gorilla it was like you were
just focusing so much on the basketball
so what these ancient Taoist texts show
us and also what this modern
psychological experiment shows us is
that when we’re focusing on one thing
it’s impossible to see the big picture
and focus on other things and this did
not just apply to desires but it also
applies to emotions and cognitive biases
so how can we reduce desires there’s a
story in the drama
about woodworker ching and he is a
belston carver now bell Stan carbo
stands were a very important part of
ritual in early China and he created a
beautiful Bell stand everyone asked him
how did you make this like by what art
did you make this Bell stand and he said
I’m just a craftsman how would I have
any art however there’s this one thing
when I am about to make a Bell stand I
never let it wear out my energy and I
always fast to still in my mind and
after fasting for three days I have no
longer any thoughts of congratulations
or rewards of stipends or titles and
after five days I have no longer any
thoughts of praise or blame of skill or
clumsiness and after seven days of
fasting my mind is so still that I
forget I even have four limbs in a form
in a body so what does this say about
becoming a way he talks about stilling
his mind and fasting the mind and I
think this means not just keeping the
body still but also keeping the mind
still some of these texts talk about
focusing on the breath I think in the
world of modern distractions of
information overload wouldn’t it be
great if we could be away if we could
focus on things without being distracted
wuwei and flow actually have a lot of
things in common there’s this idea of
attending to an action effortlessly
there’s also the idea of a reduced sense
of self and also finally there’s this
idea of not having any external
distractions or extrinsic motivations
there are some differences for example
flow is morally neutral and hue is a
spiritual ideal however for the most
part they map well on to one another so
in recent years there’s been a lot of
scholarly attention on meditation and
the effects that it can have on the body
and on the in on the mind one way in
which meditation is beneficial
is its effect of of deactivating the
default mode Network what is the default
mode Network deformer network otherwise
known as the dmn is a group of brain
regions that are activated when you’re
not actually involved in any particular
activity so it was first discovered in
the early 2000s when researchers noticed
that participants who are in MRI
machines who weren’t doing any specific
tasks these parts of the brain lit up
and it’s implicated in a sense of self
and it’s also associated with some
mental health symptoms related to ADHD
anxiety and depression so basically it’s
thinking to yourself and this kind of
discursive thought that goes on in a
very interesting study there were 12
meditators compared to 13 controls and
they noticed these meditators who were
very experienced that they had a
decrease in the dmn related to the
controls and what they found was there
was this decrease in Indiamen activity
not just during the meditation but also
during the resting States so that
suggests that engaging in this kind of
meditation practice enables you to
reduce these kinds of discursive
thoughts and this is kind of what we
were seeing in the story of the Boston
Carver who he was getting rid of these
self-conscious thoughts would weigh and
flow both of them are present when
you’re so absorbed in an activity that
you you don’t have these other
distractions and this leads to a
reduction in the dmn but I want to go
back to the story I had about running
and now I think that was something in
which I was in this kind of state but I
want you to I want to do a quick
exercise so I want I need your help
though so I want you to please sit
straight in your chair
and I want you to close your eyes for a
minute
and just take a few deep breath and I
want you to remember something that you
love doing and call that to mind and
think about how that it makes you feel
and try to relive that experience okay
now open your eyes so I think that this
kind of activity in which are so
involved that you don’t do things like
you don’t want to check your cell phone
these are things these are the kinds of
activities that can make us happier in
our lives not just during that activity
but also when we’re doing other
activities so in this world of constant
distractions I think being a little bit
more wuwei enables us to be present in
our lives so that’s it thank you [Applause]
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