Pushkin.
The Dali Lama walks in and he immediately took my hand and he said, I want you to take the practices in my tradition, turn them into a form that anyone would feel comfortable practicing, investigate them with the tools of modern science, and if you find them to be valuable, disseminate them widely. And I consider that to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on this planet.
Doctor Richie Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry, was one of the first people to conduct a rigorous scientific study on the effect of meditation. He's the author of the book Altered Traits, and his research shows that meditation is a powerful and accessible tool that we can use to improve our lives. It can also help us foster more generosity and compassion for others.
What we're talking about is something that we believe is really critical for our personal mental hygiene, and I think most people would agree that their minds are even more important than their teeth. And the science shows that if we spend even as little time as we spend brushing our teeth nourishing our mind, this world would be a different place.
On today's show, a pioneer in meditation science makes the case for how even short practices like one you can do while taking out the trash can have a big impact. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. I'll start with a confession non meditator here. I've tried countless times to integrate meditation into my life and it's just never stuck. But talking to Richie was a turning point for me.
This conversation has something for everyone. It's for the full on skeptics of meditation. It's for people like me who see the value in meditation but haven't been able to adopt a practice. And it's for the meditation pros who want a deep dive into what the science really says about the impact of meditation. While Richie was getting his psychology PhD in the nineteen seventies, he met a group
of people who met up regularly to practice meditation. You might be familiar with some of them, people like Ramdas and John cabot Zin, who later became legendary figures in Western branches of meditation. Richie enjoyed and marveled at the practice of meditation, so much so that he actually traveled to India and Sri Lanka for a week's long retreat. But when he returned to school and wanted to make meditation the focus of his research, academia did not welcome him with open arms.
I came back with a fervent aspiration to study this and with the conviction that this was important for Western psychology and Western science. But it was really difficult in those days, and I didn't have a lot of support from inside the academy.
Tell me more about what the resistance was like and how you engage with that resistance.
Yeah, just to give you one sort of comical example, I was in a graduate seminar on psychopathology, and I'll leave out the name of the professor who was teaching it. It was a regular Harvard faculty member with a named chair. And I looked like I just came back from India. I had long hair at that time. I was wearing Indian clothes and he was commenting on the signs and symptoms of psychopathology, and then he was looking at me and made some comment about how even one's dress can
be a sign of psychopathology. And as he was staring at me, and you know, this was the kind of stuff that I just encountered, And you know, it was made more explicit to me that if I wanted a successful career in science, studying meditation was not a particularly healthy or fruitful way to begin. And I was strongly encouraged to find something else to study that would be
more mainstream, and I actually I did do that. That really was the segue into me becoming a closet meditator, where I kept my meditation practice to myself for the most part and did not share it with most of my professional colleagues.
So what ended up changing for you, Richie, Like what increased your resolve to double down and commit to not only coming out of the meditation closet, as you just suggested, but also conducting research in this space.
The opportunity that I had in nineteen ninety two to meet His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and that meeting was a pivotal meeting that really changed the course of both my professional life and my personal life. He invited me to his residence to meet with him because he learned that I was a serious scientist who also was a meditator, and he knew I interested in doing scientific research in
this area. He was told that's through some mutual friends, and he wanted to encourage serious scientific research on the topic, so he invited me to meet with him. I came with three other scientists and I almost had a panic attack. And I'm not someone who is prone to anxiety. I've never had a panic attack in my life. I was completely overwhelmed by anxiety because I could not envision what
my first words would be to the Dalai Lama. I just couldn't imagine what these first words would be, and I started sweating, my heart was palpitating, and you know, within three seconds after that, the Dhali Lama walks in and he immediately took my hand, and within fifteen seconds, all of this anxiety was completely totally dissipated, gone, but more than gone, I felt like I was in exactly the place I needed to be, and I felt the safest, most secure, and most loved that I've ever felt in
my life. You know, it was not hard to figure out what to say. It just came very organically. But then he challenged me, and he was quite sort of adamant about it and said, look, you've been using tools of modern neuroscience to study depression and anxiety and stress and fear. Why can't you use those same tools to study kindness and to study compassion. And that was a really major wake up call for me because I didn't
have a very good answer for him. And then a few years later, when I was with him, he was more direct, and this time I was alone with him in a room. He took me by the arm and he said, I want you to take the practices in my tradition, turn them into a form that anyone would feel comfortable practicing, investigate them with the tools of modern science, and if you find them to be valuable, disseminate them widely. And I consider that to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on this planet.
So, Richie, later in the interview, we're going to get to the Olympic meditators, the Russian gymnast equivalent meditators, but I want to talk just about those of us who do meditation more recreationally for a moment, in terms of what the research shows. So, what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about what meditation can do and what meditation can't do.
Yeah. So, one of the things that's important to point out at the beginning is that not all forms of meditation are the same. There are literally hundreds of different kinds of menas meditation practices, and only a small fraction of them have actually been investigated in the West. You know, sometimes I think the lay public thinks that we're a lot further along in this research than we actually are. We're still pretty much in kindergarten.
Yeah.
Having said that, it's also important to point out that meditation did not arise over the course of history to treat illness, be it physical or mental. What meditation is good for, I think is in nurturing the core elements of what it means to flourish. And we've written a lot about that, and we have described four key pillars
of well being or flourishing. There is evidence to suggest that meditation can nurture each of these pillars of wellbeing or flourishing, and then they can have beneficial effects in a variety of ways.
Do you mind talking about those pillars?
Yeah, So these four pillars of wellbeing are the following. The first we call awareness, which is where mindfulness would be and it includes our capacity to focus our attention. It also includes our capacity for what scientists call meta awareness and what is met awareness. Met awareness is knowing what our minds are doing. Now, to some listeners, that may seem a little strange. Don't we always know what
our minds are doing. But one of the examples that I often give is reading a book where you might be reading each word on a page, and you might be reading one page, you might be reading two pages, and after a few minutes you realize you have no idea what you've just read. Your mind is lost somewhere else. But the moment you recognize that is a moment of meta awareness. It's a moment of awakening. And it turns
out that metawareness is super important. We think it's actually a necessary ingredient for all other forms of human flourishing and transformation, and we know that simple practices to cultivate awareness can help to nurture this quality of meta awareness.
Do you have a recommendation about the kind of practices that have been shown to have a positive impact on focus.
Yes, These include the most frequently taught forms of meditation in the West, and they would be all the forms of meditation we would include in mindfulness meditation. And so we often would take an object as our focus, and it might be our breath, it could be an external object, it could be sound, and we become aware of that object. We know that we're attending to that object. And then when our mind find wanders, which it inevitably, will you simply gently bring it back to that focus. And that's
what the training is. It's strengthening this muscle of meta awareness. And you do that again and again and again and again and again.
Do you mind sharing the second pillar of well being and flourishing?
Sure? The second pillar is connection, and connection here is about the qualities which are important for healthy social relationships. Qualities like appreciation and gratitude, kindness, compassion, all would be included in connection. And also we like to have a very broad view of connection to not only other social beings, but also to our environment, to our land, to nature, to our planet, which we think actual can help to promote more intelligent ecological decision making.
There's one kind of meditation practice that focuses exclusively on the second pillar, which is cultivating compassion. And I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about this one study in particular, where they compared the effectiveness of compassion and cognitive behavioral therapy or cognitive therapy on people's altruism.
Sure happy to do that. This was actually a study from our own lab, and participants were recruited for a study where they were told that they would learn a strategy to promote their well being, and then they were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was a compassion meditation group and a second group was a
group that received training in cognitive behavioral therapy. The compassion meditation group, they were given classical instructions for a simple form of compassion meditation that began with a loved one, where they were asked to bring into their mind a
person who they're close to. It could be a family member, it could be a very close friend or colleague, and think back and imagine a time in their life when they may have had some difficulty and as you are bringing them into your mind in your heart, cultivate the strong aspiration that they'd be relieved of suffering. And they were taught a simple phrase to use, May you be happy, May you be free of suffering, And then simply repeat that phrase a few times in your mind, and then rest.
And after the first category, which is a loved one, a person moves on to themselves. Often that's very challenging for people in our country in particular. The third category we call a stranger, and it's a very particular definition of a stranger. What we mean is a person whose face you recognize, but you may not know them very well. It could be someone who works in the same office building. It could be someone who's in a class that you're in,
but you really don't know anything about their lives. So imagine that they were experiencing some difficulty, some adversity, and then go through this same process. And then finally, the last category is perhaps the most important one, which is bring into your mind and heart a difficult person, someone who pushes your buttons, and go through the same process with them. And they did it for thirty minutes a
day for two weeks. And the group that got cognitive therapy received the same amount of training from a very experienced cognitive therapist. And in this study we found that indeed the individuals who are randomly assigned to the compassion group behaved in a more altruistic way and they show changes in their brain which the cognitive therapy people didn't show, and these changes in their brain predicted the extent to which they behaved altruistically on the decision making task.
Wow, I'd love to dig in now to the third pillar.
Yes, So the third pillar we call insight, and insight is insight into the nature of the self and the nature of the narrative that we all tell about ourselves. So all of us have this narrative, this story that is who we are, and it's quite normal if you will to have this narrative. Everybody has a narrative. This is what minds do. What insight is having a deep experiential understanding of how this narrative shapes our experience of
the world. And when we can have that experiential insight, it can help to free us from the blinders that are imposed by this narrative. All of us have blinders. The question is, only some of us are aware that we actually have blinders. And if you can be aware of your blinders, you have some possibility of going beyond them.
And so insight is really that. And we also know that there are people who are at one end of a distribution who have a very negative narrative about themselves, They have negative self beliefs, they have low self esteem,
and of course that's a prescription for depression. And the science shows that what is really essential for flourishing is not so much changing the narrative, but it's changing our relationship to the narrative so that we can see the narrative for what it is, which is really simply a bunch of thoughts.
And is there a particular kind of practice that, again you would guide people towards if they're looking for greater insight?
Yeah, now here is a case where the practices from the ancient traditions which are designed to help with this are ones that have essentially not been studied at all in the West.
Oh.
Interesting, And this practice, the primary practice is called analytic meditation, where you actually reflect, using your thoughts about who this self is, where is the self? What form is the self? Can we feel the self? Where does the self end and another self begin? We can ask ourselves all of these questions. And when we ask ourselves these questions and then observe what the answer is, what we come up with is that it is not the unitary, fixed entity
that we might have imagined in the first place. It's a lot more variable, it's a lot more porous than what it's cracked up to be.
Yeah, that's so resonant with the theme of the show, which is in large part about self identity and how we also see our identities as more malleable than we might otherwise. Okay, so now, Richie, let's finish up these pillars and talk about the fourth pillar.
Yes, the fourth pillar is purpose, and purpose is about staying motivated. It's about identifying our true north in life, and it is not so much about finding something more purposeful to do with our lives, but rather, how can we derive meaning and purpose from that which we are already doing, including the pedestrian activities of our daily life. Can taking out the garbage be directly connected to your
sense of purpose? And of course it can be. It simply requires a little bit of reframing, and so there are specific meditation practices that we can do to help more deeply connect our sense of purpose and our four values to more and more of what we do.
Tell me more about this relationship with taking out the trash. I'm curious, so what would be an example of reframing this very annoying task that I have to do in a way that feels more purposeful. What could that look like in theory.
Well, it could look, for example, like I am taking out this trash, which will help the people I live with. It will help the community stay clean, it will help keep the environment. You know, the possibilities are endless. Yeah, and you know, just reflecting on that, this is what we call a micro intervention or the microdosing of well being. You can spend literally thirty seconds reflecting on that just before you do it or as you're doing it, and it can completely change how you do it.
Yeah, and my husband's going to write you a thank you note after this interview, Richie being like, man, I don't know what you guys talked about. All I know is that after her interview on meditation, she's been taking out the trash a lot. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. Doctor Richie Davidson is well known for study he did with what he calls Olympic meditators, people who've meditated for well over thirty
four thousand hours each. While most of us will never achieve a feat like this, his study represented a major step forward in meditation science. It showed that meditation can change the brain in profound ways.
The study of these very long term meditators was one of the first things that we did when we began to fulfill the Dalai Lama's wish to study these practices really seriously in the laboratory, because we reasoned that if we didn't see big differences in people who've meditated for tens of thousands of hours, the likelihood of seeing differences in the brain of more novice meditators was not going to be there. One of the first studies that we
did is a study of pain. Pain is a very well studied phenomenon in neuroscience, and so we know a lot about which areas of the brain contribute to our experience of pain, and we can search for these specific areas very precisely. One of the ways that we can interrogate pain in the laboratory is with a painful stimulus that is very realistic. And what do we use That
we use heat. Every one of us has experienced the pain of touching a hot stove, and this is a very robust response that virtually every human being has, and so we do it with a device that has a metal plate through which very rapidly circulating water is going, and we can vary the temperature of the water very precisely, and in this way we can create a burning sensation
without causing harm. So we brought people into the laboratory and we gave them an experience of this pain, so everybody had the same common experience, and then we brought them into the scanner.
Into the MRI skin the brain scanner, and.
We said that in this experiment, you're going to get a tone, just a beep, and when the tone is a certain pitch, it means that ten seconds later you're going to get zapped with this pain that you just experienced. And it's strapped onto the wrist, which is a very sensitive part of the body, and we present the painful
stimulus for ten seconds. And I've had this done to myself many times, and my experience is that the first two or three seconds is really intense, but you can bear it, and then after like the fourth second, it's so intense you have no idea how you're going to survive this entire period. So that's what we did in this experiment, and we brought novices in who are just learning to meditate. And we brought these Olympic athletes of meditation in and I should say that these Olympic athletes
they all live in Asia. We flew them from India, Nepal, and Bhutan to Madison, Wisconsin, where they spent a few days being tested. So we brought the people into the lab, we give them the tone, and among non meditators, their brains begin to activate immediately before the pain comes on.
All that has happened is they hear this babe, which indicates that in ten seconds they're going to get zapped, and the areas of the brain, which we call the pain matrix which respond to pain, become activated just to the sound, so it's as if the pain has started already. Then when the actual painful stimulus comes on, they continue to show our response. And then when it goes on off, they continue to show a response and have a very slow drop off.
So there's a sticky quality to the pain. It sticks around, it sticks around.
It's both during this anticipation period and also during the recovery period. Among the expert meditators, they come in, we present the tone, and there literally is no significant activation whatsoever in any area of the pain matrix. The only activation we see is activation in their auditory cortex registering the sound the beep. That's it. Their brains are completely
calm except for that. Then when the painful stimulus comes on, they show a big response and in fact in the sensory regions of the brain which are basically reflecting the sensory quality of the pain. Often people reported as prickly sensations that they feel during the pain, the tingling that area the brain. Among the meditators actually showed an even greater response than the controls. But then when the pain went off after the ten seconds, it came right back
down to baseline immediately. That is the neural signature of resilience. Wow, the capacity to rapidly come back to baseline after adversity and showing essentially no anticipatory anxiety. Yeah.
Yeah, so this, I mean, this is just absolutely remarkable this finding. And Richie, do we understand at all what the mechanisms might be at play here that are leading these Olympian meditators to have such a different response from the ones that you and I might have.
Yeah. One of the important contributors to this is the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex in humans is this big chunk of real estate in the front of our brain, and it is responsible for many of the things that we often think of as characteristically human. And one of the most important elements that's characteristically human is our ability
to do what psychologists call mental time travel. We can anticipate the future, and we can reminisce about the past, and we can do that in a way that's far more sophisticated than any other species. But we need to get it under control, so to speak. It can afford many advantages, but it also can get us into trouble.
And so if we can learn to regulate our prefrontal cortex, and this is something that we think occurs as a byproduct of meditation, then we can basically experience emotions that are context appropriate and then have the capacity to just let them go so that they come right back down to baseline. The quality of emotions lingering beyond the point where they're useful is what really gets us into trouble, except.
When they're positive ones. Though, so are these lifelong meditators able to kind of opportunistically use the skill when they would like the happy glow that comes after a nice wedding you've attended or a good movie.
Yeah, so that's a really interesting question. And you know, the first answer that I'll say is that I don't actually think we know, but there's certainly things that we can say, and that is that one of the conjectures in this tradition of meditation is that the human mind is fundamental positive. One way to think about this is we're born to flourish. We actually have all these capacities innately, just as we have language innately, but they need to
be nurtured in order for them to be realized. And if we can sort of let go of all the gunk that we have accumulated in the process of conditioning and social learning and really connect with our true basic nature, which is this quality of basic goodness that is a state of enduring well being. And so we don't need to preserve anything, we don't need to hold on to anything. It's simply resting in the natural state of being, which is positive. Yeah.
Yeah, that's such a hopeful message, you know for those of us who who don't end up this superhero Olympic meditators, or don't even strive to be that because for example, they know they're not capable of such things. Cough cough myself. What lessons do you think we can and should draw from these findings from these supermeditators.
Here's the amazing news. The amazing news is that it actually doesn't take much to get these systems in the mind, in the brain going, and just a few minutes a day can really be transformative. What we're talking about is something that we believe is really critical for our personal mental hygiene. And I think most people would agree that
their minds are even more important than their teeth. And the science shows that if we spend even as little time as we spend brushing our teeth nourishing our mind, this world would be a different place.
Look, I mean full confessional here, right. I don't meditate. I've tried so many times to implement a practice. You say five minutes, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's just five minutes. And I'm like, wait, five minut It's where I'm supposed to be seated alone with my thoughts. No, thank you, but I just.
Well let me give you. Let me say one other thing in response to that, and that.
Is, yeah, help me out here, richie, because like, look, I have all the intention of the world. I understand the neuroscience behind it. I don't have to be convinced of its value. I need to be convinced to do it.
Yes, And you know you are like millions and millions of other people. And here's the thing. You don't need to take any time out of your day. You can do this while you're engaged in other activities of daily living, like taking out the garbage or doing your dishes, or commuting or standing in a line whatever it is.
Okay, that is the most compelling pitch I've ever heard, So thank you, and it's true. I mean, you can do that compassion exercise that you just described. Absolutely you have that full experience totally. Okay, Wow, Okay, I think this might be a transformative moment for me. You know, I invite you on a slight change of plans that actual this is just a therapy session, Richie. So I appreciate your guidance. You know, Richie, we've talked a little bit about you know, we can do this for a
couple of minutes a day and see benefits. And I think I just have a broader question about meditation. So it does seem like in recent years in the Western world anyway, meditation is often marketed as this self help tool, right, something that can make you more productive, happier, less anxious,
what have you. And while it may be capable of doing those very things, helping you achieve some of those things, what I gleaned from your book is that traditionally meditation was aimed at something deeper, right, something that was more other focused. So by meditating, people could cultivate traits that would positively impact others, traits like compassion and selflessness and
equanimity and loving presence. And I wonder how you feel about this, and whether you think that as a society we should try and better align with the original intent of meditation, or whether we should just accept that this self help version is an offshoot. And you know, while it might not be quote the purest form, it can work for people. It can make their lives better.
I think this is really such a profoundly important question, Maya, and I'm so happy you're asking it. I strongly believe that we need to resist this commodification of meditation in our center. People often call it, Mike mindfulness well said, it is stripping the practice away from the ethical context really in which it was originally embedded.
Yes.
Yes, And it doesn't take much to bring it back, and it doesn't have to be religious. It could be ethical in a universal way. And so when I put my b on the cushion every morning before I formally meditate, I invoke the explicit intention that I'm meditating not only for myself, but recognizing that having a common mind and a more open heart is beneficial for those around me, and that I'm doing it as much for them as
I'm doing it for myself. And it turns out that that simple invocation of this altruistic motive can be so powerful and can change the nature of the practice. And I have the conviction this has never been studied, but I have the conviction that the biology of the practice, whether it's meditating or physical exercise, is going to be affected by the intention that we bring to it.
I completely share your intuition. I have no idea what the empirics will say. That's exactly the thought I had as I was thinking about our conversation, which is, would we actually find greater effectiveness of the whole thing if people's motives, if their intention around the practice was different, and you could so easily imagine that that's the case totally, and you know, aside from me just loving the more virtuous qualities around that original intention of meditation, right, which
is other minded kindness, compassion. When I think about someone like the Dalai Lama to the extent he can get pissed off, which he clearly can't because of the Dalai Lama, but let's say in this hypothetical world he could get
ticked off. I just feel like if you were to see some versions of Western practice, it would almost be offensive Ritchie to his sensibilities, like they've totally bastardized this thing so that they can be more productive at work and you know, have a slightly higher quality sleep cycle or whatever. The many many things were told in mainstream media meditation can help with Yeah.
Well, I think that's true. He has been told about some of this kind of direction of the work. And one of the things that he has been strongly advocating is for kind of secular ethics. And what he means by that is a kind of ethical framework which can be congenial to a person from any faith tradition or to someone who has no faith tradition, but really to be universal to really help to bring back this ethical framework.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, as a person who is not religious and not particularly spiritual, I would really appreciate having that kind of ethical framework to guide me because I think what you have, what I found in reading your book is that this original intention was elevating ourselves to the best version of human we can be with respect to one another. Absolutely, so we can all share that same goal irrespective of religious or spiritual beliefs.
Absolutely, And I think that the very future of humanity is really dependent on it. And I think the future of democracy is dependent on it as well, which is a whole other conversation.
You know, other thing, what do you see as the next frontier? And meditation science? So where would you like to see the field head Where do you think the most valuable use of researchers time lies?
I think they're one of the most important things is going to be micro practices, really short practices that can be done in the moment, sprinkled throughout a day. And you know, let's face it that the vast majority of people maya are very much like you, and so how can we bring these practices to you know, the Dalai Lama. Every time with him, he always is talking about seven billion people on the planet. Everyone has the right to flourish, yeah, and has the capacity. And so how do we bring
it to those people? They're not going to meditate, the vast majority of them are never going to meditate. So what could we do. Well, we can bring micro into ventionance. We can bring these thirty second practices that can be sprinkled throughout their day. And this is where the union of ancient wisdom and modern technology is really there to be harnessed.
Oh that's so nice. Yeah, I was wondering, Richie, you could close us out by actually guiding us through a short meditation.
Happy to do that. So for listeners, you can close your eyes if that feels comfortable, and if not, simply gaze softly. And let's begin by bringing our awareness into our bodies, simply sensing our feet on the floor if that's where they are, our sit bones in a chair, or where it might be. Let's see if we can all lean into this quality of simply being present, where all our senses are open, where we are awake, and
simply noticing whatever may arise in our bodies. And as we do this short period of practice, it's really helpful, as we discussed earlier, to reflect on why we might do such a practice in the first place. And let's see if we can find within ourselves this understanding that calming our mind and warming our heart is beneficial not only for ourselves, but also benefits all of the people
that we touch directly or indirectly. So let's spend a few moments leaning into this altruistic motivation if we can't. And these have been challenging times for so many of us, and one of the elements that's often helpful during times of adversity is to have someone that we connect with, someone who has been helpful to us in whatever way.
And let's now bring a person into our mind and our heart who has been helpful in some way over this past year, and allow this sense of appreciation to arise for whatever ways in which they might have been helpful, and even reflecting on how you may express your gratitude
to this person the next time you're with them. And as we end this very short period of practice and slowly open our eyes and re engage, let's see if we can take whatever insight, whatever benefit we may have gleaned from this time together and bring it out into the world in a way that could be of benefit to others. So thank you all, and thank you Dear Mayah for your wonderful questions, and may you all have a very happy remainder of your day.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Join me next week when I talk to psychologist Kristin Neth. She explains why it's important to treat ourselves with self compassion and how self compassion is actually more motivating than shame. And if you enjoyed this convert on Meditation, you might enjoy an episode I created with the team at Meditative Story. I reflect on a memorable walk I had with my dad decades ago. His wisdom helped me navigate a painful time.
The episode is filled with short meditations as well. It's called Maya's Slight Change in Perspective and we'll link to it in the show notes. See you next week. A slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Trisha Bobida, and our sound engineer Andrew Vestola. Luis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped
arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker.