Dharma Lab

We often think of gratitude as a response to something good happening. But it’s also a skill we can practice.

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Cortland Dahl and Richie Davidson explore how to notice and savor everyday moments of gratitude, and extend that appreciation to people we find difficult. They discuss research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues on why writing a gratitude letter can be especially powerful, and share small practices they use in their own lives.

Enjoy!

Sources:

Regan, A., Walsh, L. C., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2023). Are Some Ways of Expressing Gratitude More Beneficial Than Others? Results From a Randomized Controlled Experiment. Affective Science, 4(1), 72–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00160-3

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In This Episode:

00:00 — Gratitude Is a Skill: A Preview01:12 — Welcome: A Celebration of Richie03:16 — What It Feels Like to Receive Gratitude07:56 — How Gratitude Spreads10:10 — Making Space for Appreciation11:16 — The Science of Training Gratitude13:57 — Why Writing a Gratitude Letter Helps15:12 — How to Practice: Start Where It’s Easy18:09 — Everyday Gratitude: A Moment with a Stranger19:54 — Recognizing and Savoring Gratitude22:22 — What Happens in the Brain?24:40 — The Insula and Feeling Gratitude in the Body27:11 — Why Expressing Gratitude Benefits You, Too28:56 — Intentional Practice: What Science Has Yet to Establish30:56 — Extending Gratitude Beyond Your Inner Circle32:19 — Gratitude Toward Difficult People36:10 — Richie’s Practice: Appreciation, Emails, and Constructive Feedback40:03 — Cort’s Practice: Finding Appreciation in Ordinary Things41:53 — Three Things: A Gratitude Ritual Before Bed43:11 — Closing Gratitude

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 — Gratitude Is a Skill: A Preview

Richie: Her work really convincingly shows that gratitude can be trained, that you can improve this by engaging in various intentional exercises to cultivate gratitude. And when you do that, it improves well-being more generally.

Cort: The thing that I’ll always remember is an instruction I got from Mingyur Rinpoche. When he was teaching appreciation as a meditative practice, he was talking about these very mundane things. Like you can even start with yourself, just appreciate the fact that you brush your teeth, appreciate that you got out of bed in the morning. And I thought, “Rinpoche, come on.” It felt so mundane. I wanted some mind-blowing, transcendent experience or something.

Cort: But when I practiced it, I realized actually that is precisely the power of it, because then it is everywhere. If you just get used to noticing that, that is the profundity of it. It’s just that it’s all around you.

01:12 — Welcome: A Celebration of Richie

Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, your host, along with my co-host and dear friend and Dharma brother and world-renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Richie Davidson. Today we would talk about appreciation and gratitude, which is a very, very timely topic for us because we just came off a couple days where I would say in my entire life, actually, I’ve never had a few days that were so infused with gratitude. And the cause for that was Richie, actually. Some students of Richie from decades back made a plan actually years ago. I got an email actually two years ago, with a save the date for a celebration of Richie and his career and his life by some people who have been working with him for decades.

Cort: And this culminated in these few days where we really were just sharing both our own lives and our own experience, but especially the many, many ways that we have all had our lives transformed and been benefited by you, Richie. So I’m kind of putting you on the spot here because it was also quite unique for you. You basically had three days or a few days, two or three days of just endlessly receiving the gratitude of others. And it was amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like this. I can’t imagine what it was like for you, Richie. But it was the kind of thing that I think a few of us were talking after the fact.

Cort: Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing that oftentimes only happens when somebody’s passed away, strangely. We oftentimes don’t say the things until, it’s sort of too late. And this was just a beautiful example where we didn’t wait. We took that opportunity to share the gratitude we all feel for you. And so maybe Richie, I’ll just start with what it was like for you to be on the receiving end of that and what your experience of this was.

03:16 — What It Feels Like to Receive Gratitude

Richie: Yeah, I mean it was humbling and a bit overwhelming at times. There was on Friday a three-and-a-half-hour data blitz where 26 of my former trainees, either graduate students or postdocs or collaborators, each gave seven-minute talks and talked about how their current work was influenced by the time they were in our center or lab. And I was asked to give some remarks. At the end, and I got up there, and I certainly wasn’t planning on this, but I just burst out crying. And really it took a while for me to gain my composure, but I just felt a deep sense of gratitude toward them for all they’re doing and for carrying on.

Richie: This work and a kind of hopefully not an arrogant pride but a quiet pride in the work that they’re doing. I was really proud of them for all they’re doing and many of these people are doing cutting edge science that is really of great benefit to humanity. I have no doubt that the world is much better for their presence. It was so deeply moving to me people came from China, from Europe, from Mexico, from really all over the world I was just so incredibly touched You know, I think that there’s a community that was formed and I think all of us really felt that sense of community and one of the people who was there who was so close to me and I’ve known her for forty years was Roshi Joan Halifax.

Richie: And for those of you who know something about Roshi, you’ll know what I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t, Roshi is someone who brings her practice to the world, to everyday life. And really has a very, very palpable, deep ethical core that you feel. That she brings to the work she’s done with people who are dying, with people who are incarcerated with people who have been living in adversity, who’ve been unfortunate victims of natural disasters, and the list goes on. And she is an embodiment of that and it was so beautiful to share this with her and with so many others.

Richie : So yeah, I’m still feeling very much these ripples and people who weren’t there who couldn’t make it have been sending me videos. I just got one from Angela Duckworth like five minutes ago. Really beautiful. Recounting a very specific instance which I don’t remember honestly of an interaction between us and it was a beautiful interaction you know, from her description I can feel it. So I just truly feel very blessed and I’ll end here. I feel that all of this I think gave each of us a taste of the power of gratitude because we all felt that this was something that contributed to our collective flourishing.

Richie : And I think it’s fair to say that everyone who participated in these three days of events they just their heart was really open and we all were incredibly connected, even those who were meeting each other for the first time. So it was beautiful and, people who knew each other for 50 years were treating people who they just met really in the same way and one of the speakers at one of the events said this actually my program officer from a government funding agency of all people said that really we should name it and it’s love. There was love. And everyone felt it for everyone else.

07:56 — How Gratitude Spreads

Cort : Yeah, I was gonna comment on that. I mean, just being in the room for this, sometimes when you have things that are in the extreme, it helps you see things more clearly. And because this was just like this love fest, gratitude fest for a few days, it helped me see the power of gratitude so clearly. And it’s funny you know, you talked about a data blitz, you know, this is a thing in science where you have these like very short presentations and It sounds like the least loving thing, you know, it doesn’t sound like this would be something filled with gratitude, but it was amazing. Like all of that, because it was all about you, Richie, and just more broadly, it was it was people sharing, not only sharing their work, but sharing it as an expression, kind of saying, “I couldn’t have done this without you.” I think I would say is the message. Like, here’s what I’m doing, and this is because of you, because of the role you had in my life, how you inspired me, how you supported me. And so it really was infused with love from start to finish and from top to bottom.

Cort : And a few things that jumped out to me about this, one was the one of the mantras that you and I mention all the time, which is flourishing is contagious. And this was an incredible example of that. Because being in the room, and just being immersed in this atmosphere where there was so much gratitude and love just bouncing around the walls. I just found myself naturally expressing things to just random people, you know, like your assistant Richie, Jenny, who’s amazing. I just was walking out the door and I just like just went over to her and just kind of thanked her and I passed on a message from somebody else and I’m sure it was like an exponential effect of whatever was expressed in those presentations.

Cort : It probably got amplified with each person going out and doing that for five or ten people. And it really is contagious. It’s like a virus of flourishing that sort of spreads. And I could see that because it was, again, it was sort of an extreme case of that. So one was that, that it really does, you know, it just puts us in the space where you just spontaneously pass it on.

10:10 — Making Space for Appreciation

Cort : The other thing that struck me about this is the importance of intention. This didn’t happen by accident. This was years in the making. And of course, not everything needs to be on this grand scale. But just like it doesn’t always happen without clear intention. We need to make space for these things. We need to be intentional about them. We need to actually tell ourselves: like, I’m really gonna share how I feel, or tell this person how much I appreciate them, or just acknowledge all the ways I’ve been supported. It really takes that mental step of making time and space and being very clear and intentional about it.

Cort : And somehow those two things, it kind of can create a little magic in your life and your experience when you make an intention to sort of send that out into the world. So maybe we could turn our attention to the science, because this is one of the areas in the realm of positive psychology and research on well-being and human flourishing and all these related areas. Gratitude is perhaps one of the most well-studied areas. So does the science kind of back up what we clearly experienced?

11:16 — The Science of Training Gratitude

Richie : So one of the things that those of you who are regular viewers of Dharma Lab know that from the book that Cort and I wrote, Born to Flourish, there are three kind of slogans that we often talk about. One is, you’ve talked about it, Cort, that flourishing is contagious. The other two related slogans are one is that flourishing is a skill. It can be cultivated. And the second is that it’s easier than you think. The science really supports all three of these. And they’re worth digging into a little bit. One of the things that has been so interesting in some of our recent work that we’ve talked about on Dharma Lab is how benefits on hard-nosed measures can be seen from training in the pillars of flourishing with relatively modest amounts of training.

Richie: You know, you don’t have to sit in a special posture for a long time. You don’t have to sit for 45 minutes a day for years on end to see some benefit. Of course, if you do that and you find it’s really beneficial. That’s wonderful. But in order to get started, it’s not necessary. And the science really shows that. And in the area of gratitude, it’s one of the domains where this is really very powerfully demonstrated. And there is a psychologist by the name of Sonja Lyubomirsky. She’s at the University of California Riverside. And she’s a wonderful psychologist. I know her quite well. And she’s been a real champion of these brief interventions in the domain of quote positive psychology. And one of the domains in which she has particularly worked is gratitude. And her work and there’s work besides hers too, but I think hers is really the best in this genre. And her work really convincingly shows that gratitude can be trained, that you can improve this by engaging in various intentional exercises to cultivate gratitude. And when you do that, it improves well-being more generally.

13:57 — Why Writing a Gratitude Letter Helps

Richie : And one of the things that Sonja has specifically explored is whether there are differences among the specific ways of cultivating gratitude. So maybe reading some slogan about gratitude or maybe trying to say thank you more frequently during the day. And she’s explored all those things, but she’s found one thing to be clearly of greater benefit than others, which is kind of interesting. And the one thing that she’s found that’s particularly beneficial is a kind of journaling or writing exercise. And specifically if you are invited to write a letter to a person to express your gratitude for something or ways in which they may have been helpful, and you actually sit and write that letter, that is especially powerful in terms of the various kinds of outcome measures that she has assessed that largely are measures of well being and positive emotion.

15:12 — How to Practice: Start Where It’s Easy

Cort: When I think about Buddhist psychology and Buddhist meditation, actually there’s a ton to say, not only on this topic, but going back to our slogans, the point about this being a skill. We say flourishing is a skill, you could equally say gratitude is a skill. It’s something you can practice. And there’s a really simple formula coming out of the tradition of Buddhist psychology and Buddhist meditation for how to do this, which is you first learn how to evoke it. And here the key note is start where it’s easy. Find a person, a situation, some context, a little spark that’s easy. So it’s kind of you learn to spark it.

Cort : That’s the first step. And then the second is to extend. And maybe I’ll just unpack this a little bit. We might immediately jump to something that’s more challenging. And then of course we can immediately just get stuck because it’s sort of harder to access, you might say. So it’s much more intuitive just to kind of go where we feel it naturally. But there’s also a thing that can happen where we might easily learn to be very caring and grateful, appreciative to the people in our close circle, but there’s just the rest of the world outside of that.

Cort : And in that sense it’s like we haven’t tapped the full potential, both for our own flourishing and for what we’re putting out into the world. And of course, we know that the world is in dire need of a course correction these days with all the divisiveness in our politics and between cultures and countries and religions and you name it. So we need a huge course correction, and this is something that could play a huge role. So when you start, you know, it can be the littlest thing. It can just be you know, a grandparent, it can be your child, it could be your pet, just something you just naturally and spontaneously feel that warm energy of gratitude.

Cort : And you just learn, you just this is where intention comes in. The skill is just being intentional about it, just recalling it. Many times throughout your day. And if you have time, you can sit down and journal. As we can see from Sonja Lyubomirsky’s work, and from other people researching, So gratitude journaling is a great way to do this. But it also could just be a moment. Like even as you were speaking, I was practicing this. I had a moment of gratitude as you were saying that, just thinking everything you know, how generously you share this with others.

Cort: And then I was thinking of the people listening to this. And I was thinking they could be listening to anything. I mean, to you out there listening to this. I felt this moment of gratitude to you. Like this is wonderful. This is this is what energizes our work. You know, Richie and I our work together is because of you and the idea that you’re listening to this and hopefully benefiting from it. I just had this moment of gratitude. So that just took two seconds, five seconds. It doesn’t have to be some big thing. So I think that’s the first step. And maybe I’ll turn it over to you, Richie, and then we can bounce this back and forth a bit.

18:09 — Everyday Gratitude: A Moment with a Stranger

Richie: Yeah, I think that those everyday examples are so important and you know, I think that the intentionality that we’ve talked about is critical and also simply being truly aware of these small moments of everyday gratitude. So yesterday, for example, after all this celebration, I needed to just move my body and I went out on a bike ride with a dear friend of mine. We went out very late in the day. There was a place where we were crossing a road, and so the cars, needed to stop in order for the bikes to cross. And I had a very conscious experience of looking. And I was looking into the eyes of a driver who had stopped his car to allow these two bicycles to go, and I waved you know a kind of thank-you wave to him.

Richie: And he waved back. And it was I’ve you know a stranger. I’ve no idea who this person is. But I think it actually touched both of us. There was a moment of gratitude

Richie: That was incredibly simple and very everyday but simply being aware of it and allowing and savoring it. And when you reflect on it, the world works and is not totally chaotic, in large part because of this kind of interpersonal gratitude and respect. If people didn’t do that, things would really fall apart. And so there’s a lot of that goes on that we’re just not aware of. And simply being aware of it is incredibly beneficial.

19:54 — Recognizing and Savoring Gratitude

Cort: Yeah, you just mentioned two words that I think are the key ingredients of this first part as a skill, like you’re learning to spark gratitude. And the first is recognition, and the second is savoring. And in a way that’s what we’re learning to do and all that with intention. It’s almost as though recognizing it when it happens is an amplifier somehow. And I think that’s the key thing here is that actually there’s these little moments all the time. They’re just like little flickers of gratitude, but usually they’re you know, they just come and go and we don’t really even notice them.

Cort: It’s just like a little moment where somebody does something nice or we recognize that. But once you start tuning into it, it gets easier and those moments it’s as though they’re kind of growing. In a way, they’re just growing more in our conscious experience. A lot of time they’re actually happening. They’re just sort of beneath the surface of our conscious awareness. But then we learn to stay with them. It’s almost like we get a muscle memory. And it actually is a felt experience in the body, I’ve noticed as well. As you learn to savor this, you will feel it in your body.

Cort: You will literally feel almost like this wave of I don’t even know how to say it, like warmth to use a very technical scientific term, the warm fuzzies, will kind of sweep through your body. So it’s kind of amazing, but it is like that’s it. It’s just noticing it when it happens or sparking it, you know. And the world is just filled with opportunities for this. I mean, like right now I’m like there’s a microphone in right in front of me. Like all the little pieces of this microphone, people made that. I couldn’t do what I’m doing right now without people’s hard work and creativity and things being flown and shipped all over the world, all these things. It’s kind of amazing, right? Like we say, sometimes if you’re not in a constant state of awe, you’re not paying attention. And you could say that, if you’re not in a constant state of gratitude, it’s just because we’re not paying attention. I mean, I can look around my room and there’s a thousand things I could be grateful for that other that countless other people contributed to.

22:22 — What Happens in the Brain?

Cort : So I think that’s the key is exactly what you’re saying. Just recognize everything in your life that so many people have contributed to and then say and then learn to savor that. And I think the next step, which we can talk about next, is just sort of you then learn to extend that into more and more challenging areas. And then everything, even the challenging stuff, begins to spark this this feeling. It’s it’s quite extraordinary. So what is what what would you say? I’m I’m curious from a neuroscientific point of view. I mean, a lot of the research in this area is not neuroscientific research, but in the realm of social neuroscience, I’m guessing there’s some hints about what’s going on.

Cort: We’re basically shifting patterns of brain activity and even how our nervous system is activating or deactivating. But do we know much at this point about the biological side of things?

Richie : There’s been a little bit, but not a whole lot. You know, I think one of the challenges in this area is that gratitude may be an emotion that at the point at which it’s well defined as gratitude is relatively brief. It then may extend into other kinds of positive emotion and well being and it may influence our mood. But the kind of coherent state of gratitude, I think my conjecture is that it’s relatively brief. And so the work that’s been done in general has found that circuits in the brain that are associated with positive emotion, specifically the ventral striatum, which is an area rich in dopamine that is involved in both wanting and liking, that general brain region, is activated during periods of gratitude, but again they’re likely periods where there’s a mixture of gratitude and other kinds of positive emotions, so it’s not absolutely pure gratitude. I think there’s gonna be a lot more room for other kinds of research. This is an area where experience sampling to sort of capture moments of gratitude in the real world and look at least at autonomic physiological changes that might be easily captured with wearable sensors, that might be an area that would be interesting to pursue in the future.

24:40 — The Insula and Feeling Gratitude in the Body

Richie: It’s also the case that one of the other areas in the brain that has been found to be activated in some studies of gratitude is an area called the insula. And the insula is an area that has a viscerotopic map of the body. So it actually has representations of different visceral organs. In different parts of the insula. And the insula is a key site for mind-brain-body interaction. And in

Richie: Order to recognize gratitude in the way we were talking about earlier, it may be important. We don’t know yet, but it may be important that a person be able to perceive what is going on in their body.

Richie: And this is an area that we call interoception. And we actually this would be a good topic for another episode of Dharma Lab to have the whole topic focused on interoception. There’s a lot of interesting work in that area, but interoception is the perception of internal bodily cues. That’s what interoception is.

Cort: So when I mentioned the warm fuzzies, there’s one thing of having warm fuzzies and it’s yet another thing to be really aware of how that feels in your body.

Richie: Exactly. And it’s the awareness of how that feels in your body that is interoception. And it turns out that some people seem to be really good at this, and other people are more challenged. Just like some people

Richie: Find it’s very easy to generate visual imagery, other people find it more difficult to generate visual imagery. There are just differences among people in these kinds of abilities. And to some extent, That they can be cultivated and trained. But there are big individual differences, and that may play a role in aspects of gratitude. And for a person who may be less familiar with or less have a more difficult time feeling stuff in their body, there may be other ways of connecting to gratitude that are not directly bodily signals. But they may be other kinds of signals.

27:11 — Why Expressing Gratitude Benefits You, Too

Cort : So I can think of so many benefits of this. So one thing just to pick up on one thread you mentioned with the ventral striatum. So for those of you not familiar with kind of the neuroscience in this area, this is a part of the reward network, which as you kind of mentioned in passing, Richie, whenever you have a burst of Pleasure, for example, you really enjoy something, and that could be anything from a chocolate bar to a warm interaction with something, with another person. You can imagine watching a cat video, you know, online, like anything that just feels activating in a very positive sense.

Cort : It’s you know, this would be a part of that network, that wider reward network. Is that right? I mean, and that just shows that.

Richie : Yes, yes.

Cort : It just feels good. Like obviously it’s good. If I express appreciation or gratitude, obviously that’s nice to be on the receiving end, as you kind of shared earlier, but it feels good to the person as well. Like when you feel gratitude, it feels so nourishing. It feels so good. And the fact that you can train that is kind of amazing. You can learn to kind of switch that on, so to speak. Is that a fairer representation?

Richie: Absolutely and what you’re describing, Cort, is part I think of the mechanism through which the expression of gratitude is beneficial for the well being of the person who’s expressing it. That is it will contribute to a person’s well being to just be more grateful, not just to receive the gratitude, but the generation and expression of the gratitude itself is Well being promoting, no question.

Cort: Yeah, it’s such a win-win.

28:56 — Intentional Practice: What Science Has Yet to Establish

Cort : And the other thing that my guess is there’s no research directly on this, but there’s very related research. Actually our colleague and your former grad student, Helen Wang, who we both know well, did some research in this area, is the difference between a spontaneous moment of gratitude or appreciation, which of course happens, and then when you bring intentionality to it, as we’ve been talking about, when you treat it as a skill and you’re consciously practicing it, you’re consciously recognizing it, you’re Consciously nurturing it and nourishing it, you’re consciously extending it, that you’re also likely activating nodes in the central executive network when you do that.

Cort : And so then you have this other just superpower that you’re activating in the brain, which goes far beyond gratitude, even. You’re strengthening parts of your brain that are just gonna allow you to be more in the driver’s seat of your own thoughts, emotions, and impulses. So we’ve seen this with compassion, you know, work that you did and Helen did under your mentorship, Richie. But I would assume I’m guessing there’s no research specifically on gratitude. Maybe there is, but would that be fair to say as well that when you practice it you get this whole other benefit beyond the more uplifting side of it?

Richie: Yeah, in terms of prefrontal executive function I’m not sure. There may be some stuff we can actually check and report back at a later point in time. But it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if there are, you know, at least a few studies that have looked at that now, but there’s not a very robust literature, let’s put it that way. This is not an area in particular neuroscience that’s very well developed. But there’s one you brought up Helen Wang’s work on compassion, and there is one really important issue that relates to that work as it might apply to gratitude that to the best of my knowledge has not been investigated but just to call it out is something really important.

30:56 — Extending Gratitude Beyond Your Inner Circle

Richie : Many people find it easy to be grateful to those who are close to them. But being grateful to someone you don’t know a total stranger or someone who you know, may actually be a little irritating to you, but may have done something actually that is nice and beneficial, for which gratitude might normally be very appropriate. It may be more difficult for some people to express gratitude in those circumstances. And this is an area particularly where extending gratitude beyond one’s immediate circle may be really especially important. And I can tell You as someone who leads a diverse organization where there are, you know, I mean it’s not huge, but between our nonprofit HuMIN and the Center for Healthy Minds, there’s probably close to a hundred people.

Richie: There are times when someone may be a little irritating. And I’m very aware and I find it really helpful to reflect on being grateful to those people when they do something beneficial and really trying to make a point of doing that as part of widening the circle.

32:19 — Gratitude Toward Difficult People

Cort: And that’s a great segue and maybe we can end on this and maybe share a little bit of our own personal practices, things that we do in our lives. But the extend part of this is really where a lot of the training is, you know, when it comes to the meditative traditions in which you do these kinds of practices. And it’s both for our own well-being, because as you can see, like if it is so promoting of mental health, our ability to flourish and even I think as the science has shown in related areas, likely supporting other brain networks that help us just to function better in the world and manage our lives and emotions better.

Cort: All sorts of benefits to these things, some of which we’ve explored scientifically, some of which we have not. But in any case, the extending of that, if those benefits are there, imagine if you just extend that and extend that so that really everybody is kind of sparking that in you. So obviously, for your own personal point of view. That just means you’re gonna have those positive benefits much more because now it’s not just a few people who you love and care about. It’s, you know, the clerk at the grocery store and the person who picks up your trash and even as you said, even people who you find annoying or frustrating.

Cort: And I think this is where people get hung up, especially when you get to the difficult person side of the equation, because the traditional thing is you start with people you care about. Again, the people for whom it’s easy to feel appreciation and gratitude. And then you go to quote unquote neutral people. Of course they’re not neutral, they’re just neutral in terms of how we regard them, but people you just don’t have strong feelings about one way or another, which is 99.9% of humanity and 99.9% of all other forms of life as well. But then you go into difficult people, which again are not difficult inherently, although some people might seem like that, but we have difficulty with them.

Cort : And then people I think might understandably think, well, why would I do that? There might be people who are not just frustrating us or irritating, but genuinely doing harm in the world. There are people for whom we can say that somewhat objectively. But again, here you could say from your own point of view, us hating people or us being frustrated or us being upset all the time. That’s not good for us. We don’t feel good. So clearly it doesn’t have a good effect on us. But we can also think about does putting out more love in the world, and this doesn’t mean being a doormat, like being loving and caring and grateful and compassionate doesn’t mean you let people walk all over you or you don’t stand up to injustice when you see it.

Cort : But it does mean you can engage that with love, you know, as Gandhi did, as Mother Teresa did, as Martin Luther King Jr. Did. Like we can see these great examples. They were coming to the problems of the world with love. And wisdom, not hatred and irritation. And so you can look at it from both sides of how it affects us and how it affects the world, how it affects even the people we think might be perpetrating the difficult stuff in the world. And it’s just, I think, pretty obvious that putting more great gratitude into the world is going to help the difficult situations.

Cort : And putting more hatred into the world and anger into the world and irritation into the world is not helping these situations. It just puts us all into threat response. So This is the psychology that underlies the practice of extending. It’s a clear benefit to us, but it’s a cause for dealing with a lot of these problems we can face in the world or alleviating those problems. So, Richie, any final thoughts? And maybe we could also just share our personal practice in this area, because I know we both have a lot of things we do daily.

Richie: Yeah. No, I think maybe we should just share our personal little practices.

Cort: Yeah, so what do you do? What are your go-to practices that help with this?

36:10 — Richie’s Practice: Appreciation, Emails, and Constructive Feedback

Richie: Yeah, for gratitude, As many of you know who’ve listened to previous episodes of Dharma Lab, on work days I do a practice after I meditate every morning of looking at my calendar and looking at the people I’m going to see. And you know, it’s a combination of both appreciation and gratitude, appreciating people for just who they are and what they’ve done in the world. And often there’s also gratitude. For what they may have done for me gratitude for some of the work they’ve done. I also have an amazing staff who really allows me to do what I need to do that I really first of all I’m not good at certain administrative kinds of work they’re much better than I am and it would really weigh me down.

Richie: They do it skillfully and gracefully and I just have this daily reflection of gratitude for each of them and I write short emails to them. I did it this morning. It doesn’t have to be more than one sentence. Took me all of, you know, two minutes less than that. But it just first of all it felt good for me to write that and I assume that when they read it will feel good to them to receive it. And it really it takes so little effort to do that. And then there are other times, I’m very aware of this in the course of my everyday work, someone in the center, you know, trainee may have just finished a paper and just saying, you know, thank you for the really outstanding work you’re doing.

Richie: As scientists we’re trained to criticize, to really rip things apart, which is part of our practice of rigor. And I’m really a champion of rigor, but there are ways to be rigorous where we don’t need to be mean. You know, we can still really insist on absolutely the highest standards of rigor, and also say, thank you for all you’ve done. Thank you for the effort that you’ve put in. It’s not there yet, but it’s you’ve done a great job, and I’m confident you’re gonna keep doing a great job. And so you can deliver feedback in a way that is more constructive, and I think will motivate people rather than demoralize them. And in a competitive academic environment, I can’t emphasize enough how important these kinds of simple, everyday expressions of gratitude are.

Cort : Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think that you know, what you just shared about giving constructive feedback is such a good example because it’s easy to hear this stuff on gratitude or kindness and compassion and it kind of feels like, in this harsh world we live in, we’re just gonna be doormats. But actually, I think the key is that you’re infusing this with care. Sometimes in a relationship, you need to set a clear boundary if there’s not a healthy boundary. Sometimes you might need to deliver feedback that’s going to be difficult to hear, or stand up for yourself, or stand up for somebody else.

Cort: And that actually, you know, it can be that can be motivated by fear or anger or all sorts of things, but it can be equally motivated by care and even gratitude or appreciation. And I think that’s the key thing is that it’s the force that energizes what you say or how you interact with somebody is motivated by kindness and care, versus the power being like the reactivity or whatever else it may be.

40:03 — Cort’s Practice: Finding Appreciation in Ordinary Things

Cort: So in my life, yeah, I would say that probably the most powerful thing are these everyday things of just making a habit of just as we’ve talked about here, just recognizing and noticing. And the thing that I’ll always remember, and I think I may have mentioned this in a previous Dharma Lab episode. Is an instruction I got from Mingyur Rinpoche, where when he was teaching appreciation as a meditative practice, he was talking about these very mundane things. Like you can even start with yourself, like just appreciate the fact that you brush your teeth, appreciate, you know, that you know got out of bed in the morning.

Cort: And I thought, “Rinpoche, come on.” It felt so mundane. I wanted some like mind-blowing, transcendent experience or something. But when I practiced it, I realized actually that is precisely the power of it. Cause then it is everywhere. If you just get used to noticing that, you like that is the profundity of it. It’s just that it’s all around you. So there’s just nothing and nowhere and no one who can’t be a source of that feeling of gratitude. So that, and I think more and more, you know, not all the time, there’s sometimes where it’s a little over the top, but just expressing it in simple ways, like you said.

Cort: Like it can just be a quick text. And sometimes what I really love to do is just totally unexpected, like for no reason. It’s kind of my favorite thing. It’s not like in response to somebody did something, but just out of the blue, just telling somebody, you just came to mind and I just love how you brighten the room with your smile when you walk in the room. Or I just love how you always have the best ideas. And just like unprovoked. And I feel like it’s just it comes from such a good place. And I’m sure it feels good to the people who are receiving it. So those little everyday moments are really wonderful.

41:53 — Three Things: A Gratitude Ritual Before Bed

Cort: The other thing I would just mention that I do is my wife and I, at one point in the last few minutes of the day, we were kind of getting into venting about stressful work stuff that was coming up. At a certain point, we realized this is just not how we want to end our day. It’s just like you’re going to bed stressed out with our minds filled with negativity. And so we started doing this practice of Three things and we just pick a topic and then we find three things we’re grateful for or three things we appreciate. And we just find random things.

Cort: It’ll be like, you know, three places you’ve been, or three things you love about your grandma, or three things that we love about each other, or three foods. I mean, we just pick like random things and we just each go take turns, each sharing one at a time. That’s just amazing. Then you go to bed and your mind is just filled and your body is filled with this more positive energy. So that I think having daily rituals, like it doesn’t have to be that, but creating a little ritual that you can bring into your day, either for yourself or even in conversation, like I do with my wife, it’s just amazing.

Cort: It makes such a difference throughout the day. So many many things to pick up on here, but maybe we can call it here.

43:11 — Closing Gratitude

Cort: To end on a note of gratitude, I know I speak for you, Richie. We’re so grateful for you for listening to this and so many of you who’ve been following along and part of this community for so long, and so grateful for what you’re putting out into the world as evidenced by the fact that you’re taking time to spend to listen to things like this. So ending on a note of gratitude, a deep bow of gratitude from both of us for everything you do. We hope you stay tuned and we’ll see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab.

Richie: Yes, thank you all so much.

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What happens to our drive when we stop looking to the next achievement for fulfillment?

In our latest AMA, Cortland Dahl explores topics such as how to widen awareness when the mind feels contracted, why the motivation behind a practice matters, and how compassion can become the energy behind an engaged, creative life. Kim brought your questions, and Cort joined us for the hour while Richie was traveling.

What’s inside

* Three ways to widen the aperture of awareness: the body, the breath, and the mind

* Shamatha and loving-kindness: why the same technique can serve different purposes

* Meditation, autism, and ADHD: promising research, unanswered questions, and strengths worth recognizing

* Career ambition and the shift to a different source of motivation

* What we know—and still don’t know—about consciousness

* A 2-minute guided practice led by Cort

* Practicing with death, impermanence, and the moments before sleep

The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording for paid members.

Companion Flashcards At Bottom

You don’t have to turn ambition off

An anonymous listener asked how to balance “the false promise of desire” with career ambition. If Buddhism teaches being, are we supposed to stop progressing and find contentment in the job we already have?

Cort looked to the people who have gone deepest into the practice of being. The teachers he knows are productive, creative, and engaged. Learning to be has not left them sitting on the couch.

We are not losing the energy and drive in our life. What we’re doing is we’re changing the energy source.—Cortland Dahl

He described the familiar mixture that powers a career: some care and purpose, some competition, some hope that success or status will finally make us feel fulfilled. Practice can change that mixture. We still need to make a living, and we can still want to accomplish things. But caring for our family, our community, and the wider world can become the driving force.

There can be an awkward stretch in between. The old motivation has weakened before the new one feels fully available.

It’s almost as though they’ve unplugged from the old energy source, but they’re just beginning to find the light socket for the new one.—Cortland Dahl

Cort suggested learning about people who have navigated that transition. Their lives can help us recognize what a different motivation looks like in action. The energy may carry us further along our current path, or it may lead somewhere else.

The moment before you start meditating

Mary Beth asked what we are actually doing when we “widen the aperture,” and whether there are different ways to practice it.

Cort offered three entry points. With the eyes, let attention include the edges of the visual field. With the breath, notice the release that comes with an exhale. With the mind, sit as though you are about to meditate, but haven’t started yet.

You are a little more alert because you are getting ready. But you haven’t begun following the breath or running a technique. See whether you can remain in that small space of wakeful presence.

So if that feels like nothing’s happening, that’s perfect.—Cortland Dahl

Even the thought “Am I doing it?” can show up. The invitation is to become familiar with being, without turning it into another task to perform correctly.

Cort recommended short doses: five or ten seconds, then return to whatever you were doing. These little moments can happen during meditation or in the middle of the day. With repetition, the opening becomes more familiar.

2-MINUTE PRACTICE LED BY CORT

In the recording, 01:25–03:04

2-minute practice: Wherever you are, if you’re sitting still, let your eyes close or remain gently open. Take a few slow, deep breaths and feel the breath moving in and out of your body. Allow the mind and body to settle. Then bring a little kindness and compassion into the moment. In words or images that resonate with you, form an intention that whatever good comes from this time might ripple outward—benefiting your own life, the people around you, and the wider world. Rest with that motivation for a few breaths.

The full hour, mapped

Read the gist below, then drop into the recording at any timestamp.

01:25 — Begin with a compassionate motivation. Cort leads the opening micro-practice: settle with the breath, then imagine the good from this time rippling outward. He uses this pause before meetings and other activities throughout the day.

03:49 — Three ways to widen the aperture. Mary Beth’s question opens a practical exploration of expansive awareness. Cort offers entry points through peripheral vision, the release of an exhale, and the shift from doing to being.

09:15 — Before the doing starts. Imagine you are about to meditate, but haven’t begun. Notice the alertness already there. Nothing special needs to happen; try a few seconds, then return to your day.

12:07 — Shamatha and loving-kindness. Maya asks whether these practices cultivate different capacities. Cort explains how loving-kindness can support absorptive concentration in some traditions, while others emphasize bringing kindness into everyday life. The motivation and purpose matter alongside the technique.

19:08 — Meditation, autism, and ADHD. Brenda asks about different neurotypes and long-term practitioners. Cort describes the research as promising but preliminary, with short training periods and limited longer-term evidence.

21:06 — Compared with what? Why a waitlist and an active comparison group answer different research questions. Cort explains why an intervention’s failure to outperform another treatment should not automatically be read as “nothing happened.”

25:28 — Strengths deserve attention, too. Cort asks what research might discover by examining how practice supports neurodivergent strengths. After a listener flags his earlier language, he acknowledges the correction and returns to the strengths-focused spirit of his answer.

27:46 — Awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. Rachel asks how these capacities relate to nervous system practices. Cort suggests thinking of them as possible ingredients across approaches, while emphasizing that he would need to know the specific method to say more.

30:38 — Career ambition and a different energy source. Can we practice contentment and still want to progress? Cort explores the shift from pursuing fulfillment through success to working from compassion, care, and purpose—and the uncertain transition between them.

37:24 — Does explaining the brain explain the mind? Dave’s question, prompted by Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop, leads into competing views of mind and matter. Cort argues for humility and openness about unresolved questions of consciousness.

44:28 — How shall I live, knowing I will die? Gwen asks about daily practice with mortality. Cort pairs appreciation for the opportunity of being alive with the recognition that we do not know how long it will last. “Today is the day to be kind.”

49:42 — The in-between states. Cort introduces the Tibetan concept of bardos, then describes how observing the transition into sleep and practicing lucid dreaming fit into that tradition’s preparation for death.

55:32 — Can someone near death sense our care? Sherry’s question brings a careful answer: Cort says he does not know scientifically. He distinguishes possible awareness without communication from traditional beliefs and family anecdotes about offering love and reassurance.

59:19 — A community built through questions. Cort closes with gratitude for the dialogue, the people joining each month, and the generosity that makes these gatherings possible.

Upcoming Events:

* Quiet the Restless Mind — November: A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring how to meet everyday stress, distraction, and overwhelm with greater clarity and ease. Bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, the week features leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson.

Learn more / register

Episode Companion Flashcards:

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richie Davidson explore how exercising your body can also become a way to train your mind. We asked Richie why exercise supports neuroplasticity, and why a more changeable brain isn’t necessarily a happier one. We also discuss what makes a workout meditation, and share how we bring these practices into our own biking, walking, and yoga routines.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards:

Upcoming Events:

* From Doing to Being: Effortless Meditation & the Lost Art of Doing Less with Dr. Cortland Dahl and Kasumi Kato, October 9–11 at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. This is an independent Omega Institute program and is not affiliated with Dharma Lab. Learn more / register

* Quiet the Restless Mind — November: A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring how to meet everyday stress, distraction, and overwhelm with greater clarity and ease. Bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, the week features leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson.

Learn more / register

In This Episode:

00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation?01:15 Training body and mind together03:05 Is exercise really meditation?07:51 Why intention matters11:29 Flow versus meditation13:19 Exercise and neuroplasticity16:19 Should you meditate during or after exercise?20:25 Can movement make meditation easier?24:14 How Richie practices while cycling27:26 Cort’s practice: Yoga, jogging, and attention32:12 Interval training for the mind33:32 What the research tells us so far

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation?

Richie: What I often hear when I give public talks, people often raise their hand and say, my jog is my meditation, or my bicycle ride is my meditation. And my response to that is always, well, maybe, but not necessarily.

Cort: It’s not just that your mind was a little more clear or a little more peaceful while you were exercising. In fact, actually that I would say is not at all the deciding point about whether it would or would not be meditation, but rather it’s that you’re doing something very intentional with your mind. You’re training your mind very consciously and very intentionally. So the promise of this all is that you basically can train your mind at the exact same time you’re exercising your body. And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there’s at least the potential that there’s a synergistic benefit that’s greater than the sum of the parts.

01:15 Training body and mind together

Cort: Welcome everyone. I am Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend and Dharma brother, Dr. Richard Davidson, who of course we all call Richie, one of the most eminent and respected neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re going to discuss how we can train our minds in the same way that we train our bodies, and especially that we can do this at the same time. So there’s some really interesting science here, but before we get there, I just want to share my own personal experience, which is

I’ve been meditating for more than 30, well, more than well over three decades, probably about 35 years or so. And of course, sitting meditation is super important for me. But I noticed at a certain point that bringing meditation into my exercise routine actually has been incredibly powerful. And in some respects, I feel like some of the best meditations I have are when I’m jogging, for example. In the early days, I did yoga every day. I was

Kind of very diligently had a yoga routine up until my son was born, and that kind of fell by the wayside. But I was really doing, I was really meditating as part of my exercise routine. And it wasn’t necessarily a replacement for my formal practice, but it was really, really powerful. And I could tell in my own experience that there was some synergy between the physical movement and pairing that up with doing a very intentional training of the mind. So this is a very exciting area of science. I know we’re both passionate about this as one of the frontiers of kind of modern science in this area. But Richie, why don’t why don’t I just turn it over to you to share whether your your kind of opening thoughts or your own experience, and then we can kind of go back and forth both to share a little bit about the scientific promise of this, but also how we actually do it and how we personally do it in our own lives.

03:05 Is exercise really meditation?

Richie: Yeah. So thank you, Cort, and it’s great to be here together talking about this on this beautiful Sunday morning in Madison. so yeah and I’ve been meditating pretty much every single day for more than fifty years.

And I too have been really interested in exploring the relationship between meditation and physical exercise. and before we talk about the science, I think there’s a bunch of th other things to share, some of which just are personal and and

To begin with, I too have figured out ways of combining them for me that are really important and personally very meaningful. But before we get to that, I I wanna begin with what I often hear when I give public talks. Sometimes when we give public talks together, people often raise their hand and say, My jog is my meditation or my bicycle ride is my meditation. and my response to that is always, well, maybe, but not necessarily. and so I think it’s really important to make that very clear. And when we talk about meditation, we’re really talking about the intentional use of our mind in ways that promote human flourishing and if you go into exercise and your mind is all over the place and you’re not intentionally deploying your mind in that way then maybe it’s not so much that your exercise is your meditation and so i think that some people slip into that in a in a bit too cavalier a way. And so one of my aspirations is that in the next few minutes together we really can explore that and we can explore when your exercise might be reasonably thought of as your meditation and when it might not be. And so let me just share something personal that I do regularly. I’m a very avid bicycle rider, and particularly in the beautiful warm weather, I ride outside. And before I ride, I do something that I do before I meditate in the same kind of way, which is I and I do this, I really don’t take any extra time. So, you know, I ride a road bike and it requires you know putting on clothes and putting on special bicycle shoes. So there’s a lot of opportunity to reflect as I’m just engaging in the preparation activities for my bike ride. And during those periods I simply reflect on how riding my bike is beneficial to my health.

But it’s not just beneficial for me, but being healthy and having vitality is beneficial for all of those I interact with, for my work, for my for what I do in the world. and it takes on a a kind of

Sense of altruism or pro-sociality, that I’m doing it not just for myself. And what happens then is I mostly I ride alone. Maybe one day a week I ride with others, but the other times I ride alone. And particularly when I’m riding alone, I find that that reflection recycles spontaneously as I ride. And I come back to it many times.

And it just really energizes me, like I’m riding for humanity. I mean, it sounds a little corny, but you know, I do genuinely reflect on that as I’m riding And although I don’t have any evidence to suggest that it’s beneficial, it feels beneficial to me. and first of all, it motivates me to engage in these activities, which I think is.

good thing. know, I’m convinced that it does have other benefits as well, which we can explore later and may even change the biological effects of the exercise when it’s done in that kind of way. And so this is just one example of many of how these can be combined.

07:51 Why intention matters

Cort: Yeah, so so much to pick up on what you just said. we definitely, and maybe at the end of this, we can talk a little bit more about personally how we do this in our practice. So you gave one a great example of how you’ve linked these two. I should just say from the outset also that that Richie is kind of a legend in Madison for for his bike riding. I know people who ride with you, Richie, and pretty much everybody talk like can’t keep up with you. Like so so there’s a clearly

Whatever’s going on in your mind is you know, paired up with some very rigorous physical training. So it’s not as though you need to be I mean, you can do it while you’re in nice leisurely walk in the in the park, but you can do it with very, very intense exercise. In fact, I think for me as well, oftentimes it’s when it’s it’s most interesting actually, when you’re doing something quite vigorous and intense. But in any case, you can do it with any form of movement or exercise.

But one thing I wanted to pick up on goes back to this question that you raised and that we often get asked about this idea of exercise, you know, the the the person who says jogging is my meditation, or similarly people say, being out in nature is my meditation. And you and I, of course, have fielded this question so many times and responded so many times, as you said, together and and alone. But what you just said, I think l sheds some light on that, because in your case, you can see.

Perfectly that one of the key ingredients is intention. It’s not just that your mind was a little more clear or a little more peaceful while you were exercising. In fact, actually, that that I would say is not at all the deciding point about whether it would or would not be meditation, but rather it’s that you’re doing something very intentional with your mind, you’re training your mind.

very consciously and very intentionally. And in this respect, I would say it’s actually very similar to physical exercise. So for example, if I’m doing chores in my house, I’m going up and down my stairs, I’m, you know, moving around. You know, you could say that I’m doing a lot of the movements that are probably very good for my physical health, but I wouldn’t necessarily think of it that way. I wouldn’t, I mean, you’re certainly doing things that are beneficial for health, but

I wouldn’t in a normal day think, I did my exercise routine because I did chores for half an hour. In some respects, even though we rarely consciously think of it, exercise similarly needs intention. It’s something that we’re doing consciously, and we’re not just doing it for no reason, we’re doing it because we think it’s going to benefit our physical health. So it’s it’s really about flourishing and well-being, but in terms of our physical health. So again, it’s those two things. You’re doing it intentionally.

And you’re doing something with a clear outcome in mind related to your own well-being or physical health with meditation, it’s the same thing, except you’re just training your mind. And the outcome is mental well-being and emotional well-being and flourishing. And, you know, again, we might not think of this, but those two things together, it seems to me, are what creates, you know, a formal meditative practice versus you just felt better or you felt different while you’re doing it. So, anyways, you I felt like what you just shared.

just captures that perfectly. It was it was conscious and intentional and it’s very clearly linked to something that’s meaningful to you and that’s tied to your own vision for yourself and even of humanity of what it means to flourish. Would would you agree with that?

11:29 Flow versus meditation

Richie: Yeah, totally, totally. I think that yeah, and and when many people I think say that jogging is my meditation, you know, they have a flow experience during jogging, where they’re really merged with the activity in which they’re engaged, they’re totally present, but their mind is really not being deployed intentionally. it’s more of a passive kind of process and

You know, we’ve talked about this in another episode of Dharma Lab, but their flow can occur with or without meta awareness. and in a paper that

We wrote together number of years ago, we coined a term called experiential fusion, which is the kind of flow that occurs without meta-awareness, where you’re just you’re absorbed in an activity. and that is not necessarily meditation.

Cort: Yeah, absolutely. So we can get more into this, I think, especially with our own experience. Maybe we could talk a little bit about why you would want to do this. I mean, clearly we both have done this and have just naturally found it beneficial. But maybe we can tackle this from a a few different angles. I think there’s some interesting biological angles, even looking at things like neuroplasticity potentially, other biological capacities. But what do you think the potential benefits are?

relative to just doing one or the other independently, or just one or the other and not doing the other, like you just exercise and don’t meditate, or you just meditate and don’t exercise. What would you say? Do we

Richie: Mm-hmm.

Cort: is there a scientific case to be made for why you would do this?

13:19 Exercise and neuroplasticity

Richie: Yeah, so here the the science I think is really important. and

Exercise, physical exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, is probably the most empirically well-validated non-pharmacological strategy for increasing neuroplasticity. Having said that, neuroplasticity in and of itself is neutral with respect to our well-being. If we increase neuroplasticity and our minds are filled with toxic thoughts and beliefs or we’re in a a really toxic environment, it will actually make things worse because it will improve our learning of those toxic influences by increasing neuroplasticity. And sometimes I have this image, probably this is less the case today, but there was a time

When a lot of people in the US at least went to gyms and they were working out furiously on exercise machines and watching all this crap on television. And it was filling their minds, you know, with all this junk. And at the same time, they were increasing their neuroplasticity. And what a really concerning combination that is. It’s really a prescription for.

negativity. And so the opportunity to combine the exercise induced increase in neuroplasticity with something wholesome and positive and virtuous and intentional for our mind, that’s a winning combination. and I sure

Cort: Can I can I ask you, can I can I ask just to drill a little deeper on that before we move on? I’m curious with the so by increasing neuroplasticity, I think most people are probably familiar with that term, but essentially it’s just saying saying by exercising, it’s a strategy to make your brain more malleable. It’s gonna be more receptive to change, or it will change more easily. Is that a, you know, a simple way to say it?

Richie: Yes, it’ll it’ll change more easily. Th there are specific molecules. For example, a molecule that’s known as BDNF, it stands for brain derived neurotropic factor, and it’s a molecule that promotes increased neuroplasticity in the brain. And increased neuroplasticity is increased malleability of of the brain to form new connections as well as to grow new neurons and BDNF promotes both of those processes and exercise will increase BDNF in the brain.

16:19 Should you meditate during or after exercise?

Cort: So if you with the question I wanted to ask is there’s the the change, say like the capacity, the neuroplastic potential, I guess you could say. How much of that is happening in the session itself, like when you are actively exercising, versus it then is initiated and it’s for some period after, you know, it’s for a few hours or a few days or for for a few weeks. Like, does it carry out over, or is there some potency that’s actually in the session, like when you are actively exercising, that it’s even more enhanced. I I’ve always wondered that and haven’t heard anything.

Richie: I always wonder that too. the the I don’t think the answer is at all definitively known. and in part it’s due to the limitations in studies in humans. And yeah.

Cort: So how you would actually study that? I mean it would be hard to s you

Richie: Exactly how you would measure it. So there may be some things that change immediately, and other factors which are more prolonged over some period of time and what the right sort of combination is. So if you’re doing meditation and exercise, is it better to do them together? Is it better to do one before the other? If you do one before the other, what’s the optimal spacing between the two. We have no idea, absolutely no idea from a a scientific perspective. And, you know, I’ve often talked about the science of contemplative aerobics, but there I mean that’s an aspirational goal. It doesn’t yet exist, but these are the kinds of questions that I think need to be explored.

And we do have more tools today than we’ve ever had before to really begin a serious exploration of this.

Cort: The brain essentially becomes more malleable. You’re putting your own brain in a more receptive, malleable state through exercising, through these neuroplastic capacities that our brains possess. But it’s kind of like if you were taking steroids and then you just sat on your couch eating chips all day. You know, it’s like you’re you’re increasing some capacity for your physical, for physical changes to happen, but then you’re surrounding yourself with toxic influences, obviously.

those changes are not going to be good. and so I’m curious on the other side, is there any evidence that meditation or mental strategies also increase neuroplasticity? Is there any do we have any science on that side?

Richie: There’s a teeny bit.

I I would say a teeny bit. There’s there are a few studies that have found that meditation increases some of the molecules that promote plasticity, like BDNF. But that that really hasn’t been studied at on a large enough scale to be confident in the findings. also BDNF that we can measure in the blood, in the peripheral blood, does not necessarily reflect what’s going on in the brain.

and this is a limitation of human studies.

one of the ways this has been addressed is to look at changes directly in the brain to see if there are increases, for example, in the size of different structures that may be associated with neuroplastic changes. And this will be the subject of another Dharma Lab discussion. but those are also complicated and questionable in terms of what they’re really showing and they’re not immediate. You know, you have to put a person in an MRI scanner at and they’re they’re obviously not going to be exercising while they’re in the MRI scanner. So there are many limitations to existing methods and the work is really at an early stage now.

20:25 Can movement make meditation easier?

Cort: You know, one other thing, w you know, going back to the the benefits. So one of these benefits is clearly these neuroplastic changes and that you’re essentially imbuing or immersing your mind in more positive mental and emotional states when it’s in this more receptive biological capacity. So you’re kind of harnessing your brain’s power and you’re just ensuring that you’re kind of creating the right influences. So those changes that happen are going to be positive versus negative or neutral, which, you know, if you

Or just doom scrolling on your phone all the time, or as you said, watching, you know, news, you know, listening to a news podcast or something. Another thing that I noticed in just in many years, both when I first started meditating and even now, is there’s something about the fact that you’re doing physical activity. oftentimes there’s a change in your surroundings if you’re biking or you’re walking or you’re jogging.

Even if you’re sitting still, like I remember doing yoga, your your physical posture is changing all the time. There’s something about that that just makes sort of the mind kind of naturally is shifting and calming. And I just have found it in a way easier to drop into certain meditative practices compared to just sitting perfectly still for long periods of time. And I think there’s a benefit to sitting still. There’s other benefits that come from that. In some respects, it’s probably because it’s harder.

That some of the benefit comes. You’re just face

Richie: Yes.

Cort: to face with your own mind and there’s no escape hatch. And that that, although it’s hard, is actually probably very beneficial. But I just remember easing into a yoga pose or jogging, and sort of, you know, I’m guessing that the default mode network in my brain is probably also naturally deactivating a little bit. And so it’s almost like it’s just a little bit easier when you link up a meditative practice.

with something like that. I don’t know if there’s my guess is there’s not a lot of science to suggest that, but I’m curious what your thoughts are.

Richie: Yeah, I mean I think it’s interesting. and I certainly have experienced that at times. I also think it’s likely something that varies across individuals. I think there are people who have experiences like your describing, Cort, but I suspect it may be different for other people. I think this is a case where one size really is not likely to fit all.

and also we know, you know, just like there are many, many different kinds of meditation, there are many, many different kinds of sports or physical activity. and so that may be an important variable here as well.

Cort: So the promise of this all is that you basically can train your mind at the exact same time you’re exercising your body. And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there’s at least the potential that there’s a synergistic benefit that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Not to mention the fact that it’s just easier in the sense that you’re you’re already exercising or we want to exercise, and you’re just piggybacking, I think to use a term we often use. You’re piggybacking one wholesome positive activity on another.

Maybe we could round this out just by going back to some of the the how we practice. you mentioned motivation, and that’s something I do as well. It’s my guess is we’re gonna have a lot of similarities in the way we do this, but that idea of forming an altruistic inspiring motivation that’s that kind of makes you think of the greater good and then linking what you’re doing in a way that normally would not happen to what you’re doing. What do you do when you’re biking? Aside from r remembering that from time to time.

What what things come up? Do you do any practices like when you’re just there pedaling away and

24:14 How Richie practices while cycling

Richie: Yeah, it that’s it it’s really interesting. I’ve you know, reflected a lot about that. first it is the case that when I do this intention setting beforehand and set the motivation, it helps in having it naturally and spontaneously recycle as I’m riding The other thing though is that

I ride a road bike. I do like to ride fast and I never ride with with headphones in. You know, I’m I’m riding with my senses totally open. you know, in part it’s for safety. you know, I wanna be I wanna be able to listen if there’s a car coming or you know, I ride on the road a lot because I like to climb hills and and you don’t get that on bike paths. so you know I’m riding with it with my senses really open and

I actually find when I’m riding that I’m just really attentive to what’s going on. And I I don’t have a lot of spontaneous thought. I mean I have some, but I’m really attentive to what’s going on and

You know, my awareness is mostly pretty the aperture is pretty broad, and then it narrows when there are certain things happening. and I’m very aware of sort of the the opening and the constriction of that aperture. So, you know, when I’m when I’m riding on a on a road that is straight and you know in the two miles from my house I’m in beautiful farm country and it’s broad vistas and that’s conducive to this kind of panoramic awareness. but then you know there are times when I have to cross a very busy road and then you know I’m really focused on what’s going on. I my awareness is is contracted

I mean just yesterday I was bike riding and coming back from a a longish ride around 30 miles and I was riding through the University Arboretum on the way back to my house. this was around six o’clock at night, really beautiful time, and there were two deer in the road.

right in the road of the arboretum, a mom and a little baby, and I slow down and and just really took this in

And you know, just had this moment of appreciation that here, you know, are multiple species appreciating this beautiful place and cohabitating together. so all of those things are going on, but it’s really driven by sort of what’s happening right in front of me.

Cort: Hmm.

Richie: Yeah.

27:26 Cort’s practice: Yoga, jogging, and attention

Cort: Yeah,

I’ve I’ve had a very I would say that actually this has been a huge part of my personal practice and even my life as a whole. And it’s changed a lot actually over the years. So when I first started meditating back in the early 1990s, as I said, I was doing yoga. I I wanted to do some kind of physical training. And remember at the time I was debating between doing Aikido, which is a Japanese martial arts or yoga yoga. And yoga was just more convenient to me. There was a yoga place near.

Where I was living, which was in Minneapolis at the time. And at that time, the way I did this was very, very simple, but incredibly helpful and powerful, which is I viewed the physical movements really more as a meditative practice than anything else. I wasn’t really doing it as much for the physical exercise. And I would relax and do a pose. I would do yoga and and still do when I do yoga very, very slowly. I’m not one of these super, you know, flow.

Constantly moving, I would relax into poses. And then I would just rest my awareness on different parts of my body. And that was really it. So it was either just feeling the sensations that were going on. And of course, in yoga, you’re stretching and there’s a lot of strong sensations. I think the fact that they were strong made it easier to meditate because those strong sensations naturally grab attention rather than you’re putting it on something like the neutral, something neutral like the breath where, you know, your mind isn’t naturally going there.

Or in some cases, you’re trying to synchronize your breathing and the movement, in which case it felt like there was a natural, it just felt like very natural and easy to just rest awareness in my body. And that was all I was doing. But if I look at how much of the time of these sessions I was able to stay with that as a conscious practice versus my formal meditation, which were usually about

Mindful breathing, you know, just paying attention to my breath. I think I was much more present and aware during those yoga sessions. So that was kind of how I started out. And I think that was perfect for me at the time. I still do that. It’s still part of what I do. But now I would say actually it’s very different. And I do something very, very specific and intentional, especially when I’m walking or jogging. And I don’t even know where I developed this. but

What I do is I will pick something off in the distance and I’ll just note it. It’ll be, you know, an you know, a street sign or a big tree. It could really could be anything, just something that’s very visible and that’s a suitable level off in the distance. Usually something that would take me a minute or two to get to. And and then I will say, for until I get there, I will do something very specific with my mind. So sometimes

It’s just resting in open, effortless awareness. And I’m just in this very expansive state. And I’ll just jog. And it’s hard to even describe this, but when you do that, I’m sure you have it with biking. It’s like you’re jogging in space or something. I mean, it’s like you just have this very open, expansive view. Sometimes I’ll then, you know, I get to that tree and then I’ll reboot and I’ll pick another thing off in the distance. And then I’ll say, okay, now I’m in my body and I’ll just feel my feet hitting the ground or you know, the feeling of my breath. So I’ll actually cycle in no really predetermined way through all sorts of different practices. But the one thing that I always do is it’s shifting from some kind of light focus, where it’s on my body or the sounds around me or what I’m seeing, to something that’s very effortless and more open and expansive. And I’ll kind of sort of go in and out of that.

And then at a certain point, sometimes my mind just feels like it’s in this flow. And then sometimes I might just drop that for a while and it’s I’m just doing my thing. But I find that intentionality and kind of rebooting it versus I’m just gonna practice for an hour or half an hour or however long I’m exercising. The rebooting of it and shifting shifting of it actually for me I found really helpful. And it’s just interesting. It keeps it kind of like a light, playful thing. So, anyways, that’s how I.

currently practice in addition to the motivation piece that I also do of setting that that intention and coming back to that throughout.

Richie: Yeah, I mean it’s very similar to my experience ‘cause it for me the shifting of the aperture is something that I you know, I I play with and it’s it varies over you know, over time. so within if I’m riding my bike for, you know, an hour and a half, I’ll do that a lot over the course of

The hour and a half period.

32:12 Interval training for the mind

Cort: Actually, a great strategy I’ve found for many activities. I do it driving, for example. I mean, right now, as you know, Richie, I’m I’m up in the boundary waters of northern Minnesota. So I drive seven hours to get here. You can do it with driving. Like I’ll pick a street, like a sign way off in the distance, and then do the same thing. I’ve also found even if you’re watching a movie or TV, I do it sometimes with the edits. Like you have a scene where they they they will have a cut and just like, I’ll

So though usually we don’t notice those edits, but they’re actually a great little reboot for the mind. So I do it that way. even reading, you know, reading like a page or you know, a certain amount. So, anyways, those like little transitions I found are like great little entry points where it’s just like a reminder to come back to whatever. And then everything becomes practice as we talk about everywhere all the time. Anything anything can work. Exactly. I mean it is. Actually, I’ve I’ve had that thought.

Richie: Right. It’s like interval training for the mind. Yeah. Yeah.

Cort: So many times. I bet you anything, if you had an interval training paradigm for meditation, I bet you anything that would be more effective than like a just sit down for 20 minutes and try to be mindful of your breath. I’ve I’ve that has been in my mind forever. In fact, we should let’s note that. Let’s let’s do that study. That would be so cool.

Richie: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. I agree. Okay.

33:32 What the research tells us so far

Cort: So we’re I think maybe we can close it out here. We didn’t really talk about any of the actual research that has happened. And there is an emerging field of research specifically on this. Anything you want to say about that, just as a one of the frontiers of this whole field that we’re involved with?

Richie: Yeah,

I mean first it’s important to note that there is a little bit of research, but it really is quite little. there are a few studies that have explored the potential synergistic effect of exercise plus meditation, in producing beneficial outcomes. And the you know, the general finding is that there is some added benefit. So that if you look at both together, it’s better than either alone. But the the the research is pretty skimpy and it uses very small sample sizes and as we know

This has been a big problem in meditation research in general. And so I think the jury is still out. And as we discussed earlier, there are many fundamental questions that have yet to be seriously tackled in this kind of research. So I think, you know, one of the great things is that there are many more people paying attention to this, and over the next few years, I’m confident there’ll be more.

serious evidence in the scientific literature.

Cort: Yeah, it’s very exciting. And and for I think many of you listening have probably used the Healthy Minds app. And so you’ll know that all the the many practices you can do as an active practice as well as a sitting meditation. And this is yet another Dharma lab episode that we need to do, but there’s a lot of emerging research that those active practices are just as beneficial as at least at the early stages as formal sitting meditation. So this is clearly one one powerful way that you can do that. So

I have a feeling, Richie, we are gonna talk about this again. It’s something we’re both interested in and obviously things we do ourselves. so thank you everyone for tuning in and thank you, Richie, again for another wonderful discussion. So we’ll see you all in the next episode of Dharma Lab.

Richie: Thank you.

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In this episode of Dharma Lab, Cortland Dahl and Richard Davidson unpack the difference between experiential fusion, being so absorbed in an experience that awareness narrows, and meta-awareness, the capacity to know what your mind is doing while you’re doing it. They explore why activities like movies, video games, rock climbing, Sudoku, and even doomscrolling can feel good in the moment, how they temporarily suppress the brain’s default mode, and why that does not necessarily translate into lasting change. They also discuss whether meta-awareness actually adds something to positive experiences, how it may increase cognitive and emotional flexibility, and a few simple ways to practice it in everyday life. Enjoy!

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In This Episode:

00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost?01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness02:29 What Is Experiential Fusion?04:55 What Is Meta-Awareness?06:45 Why Being “Lost” Can Feel Good09:09 The Default Mode Network and Temporary Relief11:34 What Meta-Awareness Adds13:21 Flexibility, Attention, and the Ability to Disengage14:17 Responding Instead of Reacting16:53 Can Startle Reveal Meta-Awareness?19:39 Ancient Meditation Instructions for Meta-Awareness21:11 How to Practice Meta-Awareness in Daily Life

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost?

Cort: We don’t like to ruminate. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience. But isn’t it good to be lost? What’s the problem with being absorbed in a good book or a movie? And would it be better if we had meta-awareness? Does that add anything in a moment like that?

Richie: My view of this is that it feels transiently good. In the movie theater or doing Sudoku, when it ends, we go back to our neurotic self and the default mode of the brain comes roaring back. And so it’s a transient state. Meta-awareness is very helpful, I think, in disengaging our attention and enabling us to be flexible.

01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness

Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with eminent neuroscientist, And we wanted to talk today about a really important question that you and no one else has ever asked, which is what is the difference between meta awareness and experiential fusion? And I guarantee that although you have not asked that question and probably nobody has ever asked that question, it is one of the most important questions you could ask because it has massive implications for mental health, for emotional well-being, and even for physical health. So these are two terms that we use a lot in our research. We publish papers that are defining these and have been exploring ways to measure them, but they’re just very central to a lot of the work that we do on human flourishing. So why don’t we just start off with, I think, the one that most of us are more familiar with, Richie, and maybe you can... Give some practical examples and share your own insights on this, but that would be experiential fusion. This is, I think, where a lot of us live our lives. So what is this and why should people care? Why is this so important?

02:29 What Is Experiential Fusion?

Richie: Yeah, so experiential fusion is a term that we came up with in a paper we wrote a number of years ago together, and it’s a term that’s used to convey the idea that we can get totally absorbed in an activity that we lose awareness We often call this a flow experience, but we are so completely immersed in the experience that we are no longer aware of our context. So one example of this would be going to a movie and being so engrossed in the movie that you no longer aware that you’re in a movie theater. And in many cases, you’re no longer aware that you’re actually watching a movie. You’re so engrossed in the plot that you’re just in the middle of this plot. That’s experiential fusion.

Cort: And it’s an interesting thing because it can be absorbed in an activity like movie theater example is perfect, a perfect example. You know, reading a really good novel or playing video games can be very absorbing. I think a very common one these days is doom scrolling. You’re just kind of totally caught up in this activity. So experiential fusion can be lost in thoughts, right? It can also be rumination where you’re just lost in your own thoughts. But the interesting thing about these examples, the movie theater example, doom scrolling, playing a video game, actually you’re attentive. It’s not as though you You’re distracted in that moment. In fact, you might be very, very focused on what you’re doing, but it’s as though the light of awareness dims a bit. It’s almost your attention is narrowed into whatever you’re doing and you’re absorbed in it and there’s a feeling of being lost in it. And I think the contrast is when there’s this feeling of almost like you’ve woken up from that. And it does almost feel like you’re waking up when you shift out of that state of absorption. So maybe we could just give the contrast now. So this is experiential fusion, which again, can be everything from you’re daydreaming, you’re ruminating, you’re lost in thoughts, or you’re absorbed in some engrossing activities. We gave these examples, but what’s the alternative? And then we can maybe compare and contrast the two.

04:55 What Is Meta-Awareness?

Richie: Yeah, so the alternative is meta-awareness, and meta-awareness refers to the capacity to know what our minds are doing. And to go back to the movie theater example, how would meta-awareness show up in a movie theater? Well, you might be totally attentive to the movie, completely undistracted, but you’re aware that you’re sitting in a theater, you’re kind of aware in the background. You can think of it as the Penumbra of awareness, the sort of edges of awareness. But you’re aware that you’re sitting in a movie theater, you’re aware that you’re watching a movie, but you’re also completely attentive. There’s no distraction. And that would be an example of meta-awareness. And so as it would apply to everyday life, you can be in a conversation with someone you know well, Be totally in the groove with them, be deep in conversation, but not be lost in the conversation. You can be aware that you’re sitting here, you may have just had breakfast together, and it’s Tuesday, and we’re having this conversation. So that That background is really supplied, if you will, by meta-awareness. Meta-awareness is this faculty of knowing what our minds are doing. And we think, for many different reasons, that meta-awareness is really key to being able to transform your mind. And one of the things I often say is that it’s very difficult to transform our mind if we’re not aware of what’s happening in our mind.

06:45 Why Being “Lost” Can Feel Good

Cort: So when it comes to experiential fusion, as we said, there’s a spectrum there, right? It can be being engrossed in a good book or a movie, or it could even be a conversation with a friend. You’re just totally absorbed in the moment. To the point that you kind of lose touch with everything else other than, you know, the narrow band of what you’re doing. And then on the other end of the spectrum is rumination, being lost in thoughts. I think most people would say obviously rumination is no fun. We don’t like to ruminate. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience. But isn’t it good to be lost? What’s the problem with being absorbed in a good book or a movie? And would it be better if we had meta-awareness? Does that add anything in a moment like that? When we’re reactive or ruminating, clearly we want some meta-awareness, but why would we want it in these other moments? Yeah.

Richie: So those are great questions. And I should just also add that You know, I think we need to ask ourselves the question, why is it that activities that produce this kind of experiential fusion, like going to the movie theater or, you know, some more extreme examples are where flow has been studied. For example, with rock climbers where they’re putting themselves in situations where if there is a lapse in attention, it could potentially be lethal. And they’re doing this voluntarily. And so why do people do these things voluntarily to put themselves in these situations where You know, at least we think most of the time, most people are in this state of experiential fusion. And so my view of this is that it feels transiently good to be in these states of experiential fusion. There are other kinds of states of experiential fusion That are very common as well. So for example, doing crossword puzzles, doing Sudoku, where you’re totally absorbed in an activity that is kind of neutral, is very popular. And so again, I think we need to ask the question, why is that attractive? Why do people voluntarily do that sort of thing?

09:09 The Default Mode Network and Temporary Relief

Richie: The reason is, I think, is because it transiently suppresses the default mode. So what does this mean? Well, we know that the default mode is active when our minds are wandering and when we’re ruminating. And just to be clear, the default mode is a network in the brain. This is like a constellation of brain regions, if you haven’t heard that phrase. Yeah, thank you, Cort. So this kind of activity is really effective in just transiently putting the brakes on this. And so for the time that we’re engaged in the activity, we’re not ruminating. And these kinds of thoughts are blocked, if you will, for the most part. But the thing is, when we stop whatever it is that activity might be, whether we’re rock climbing, In the movie theater or doing Sudoku, when it ends, we go back to our neurotic self and the default mode of the brain comes roaring back. And so it’s a transient state which does not lead to an altered trait to the best of our knowledge. But that’s why it’s experienced as pleasurable.

Cort: So that highlights one of the reasons why even though watching a movie, rock climbing, certain activities are pleasurable and pleasant in part because they’re deactivating the ruminating mind. It’s the part of ourselves that we don’t like to sit with. If you just sit alone in a room doing nothing, if you’re like most people, you’re just going to start thinking. And oftentimes the thoughts that are moving through our minds are not particularly pleasant. So if you can deactivate that, then it feels better than the alternative. But the point you’re making here, Richie, is that although that’s true, and it is a little vacation for

11:34 What Meta-Awareness Adds

Cort: You haven’t developed the ability to manage that yourself. You’ve basically put yourself in a context that is managing it for you. And I think this points to the other side of the question, which is, what does meta-awareness add to these moments? So even if you’re watching the movie and you might say... It feels good to be absorbed. I enjoy that. Why would you want to cultivate meta-awareness, generally speaking? I think it’s for this exact reason. It does two things. One, in my experience, it doesn’t inhibit the pleasant aspects of whatever you’re doing, if you are in one of those positive circumstances. So actually, you enjoy the movie more. It’s not like you enjoy it less. In fact, it’s like you’re aware of a wider spectrum of So if it’s something beautiful, it’s almost like you can appreciate the beauty even more in my experience. So it doesn’t inhibit the enjoyable features, but it brings on the capacity that you are in the driver’s seat of this experience. It’s not just the environment and the context that’s doing it for you. You consciously can do it. You intentionally can do it. And so to me, it’s like a win-win. It both feels good. It helps in a negative situation or a challenging situation. It enhances positive or even neutral situations. And it just puts you in the driver’s seat of your own mind. Is that safe to say? Is that your experience?

Richie: Yeah, I mean, that certainly consists with my experience. But the question you’re asking is a great question. And I don’t really think that we have the adequate scientific evidence to sort of definitively And so I think there’s still work to be done to explore what is the added value of meta-awareness in these situations.

13:21 Flexibility, Attention, and the Ability to Disengage

Richie: I think primarily the added value really is in And, you know, meta-awareness also is very helpful, I think, in disengaging our attention and enabling us to be flexible. And flexibility, both emotionally and cognitively, is an important marker of our skills at cultivating meta-awareness, I think. And so it’s often the case that when we get sort of really intensely focused on an activity, it’s sometimes hard to disengage if we need to do something else. Meta-awareness, I think, will provide the underlying foundation for being able to flexibly shift among various alternatives in our behavior.

14:17 Responding Instead of Reacting

Cort: And, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed just as an example of that, I mean, meta-awareness by definition, as you said earlier, Richie, is you just know what’s happening in the present moment. You know what’s happening in your mind. You know what’s happening in your body even. You’re more attuned to what’s going on in your environment. And I remember an example of this that I’ll never forget just because the circumstances were so strange. You might have been in the room too when this happened, Richie. I was leading a guided meditation at a retreat that Mingyu Rinpoche was leading. I was kind of doing the guided meditation sessions and it was in Madison. And I was leading this meditation and Jon Kabat-Zinn was there, who’s a friend of ours, a very old friend of yours, Richie, and he was in the front row. And I’ll always remember this just because I was leading a guided meditation to Jon Kabat-Zinn, which is just, it was just like an odd experience. He’s like the godfather of mindfulness and I’ve listened to his meditations a million times. So it was just kind of strange and ironic to be leading a guided meditation. But what happened was behind me, there was like this huge kind of What do you even call it? Like a banner type thing. It was right behind me and it fell down in the middle of the guided meditation and it was literally right behind me and it came like crashing down. And it just so happens that in this guided meditation, I think we were, it was something like I, when that happened, I had this I remember just not flinching because I was totally aware like the moment the sound started happening and then my body and normally, you know, you jump up or something. And it was just very interesting to see just to see the very different reaction in my mind and body just from being in this very meta aware state. Like it gave me some capacity. Of course, if it had something I needed to run out of the room or, you know, there was some real danger, I could have done that. But it was clear that just something had fallen. And I didn’t even know what it was at the time. It wasn’t until later when I looked back and was like, oh, that was that big thing. But it was just interesting to me, just the circumstances because of that. I think I’ll never forget that. But it just shows it just gives you a capacity to notice your own reactions and to respond rather than react when you need to. And when you need to react like that, you can. But a lot of times we don’t need to react like that. And a more thoughtful response is much healthier.

16:53 Can Startle Reveal Meta-Awareness?

Richie: You know, it’s a great example. And, you know, I also think you’re pointing toward a way to potentially differentiate between experiential fusion and meta-awareness, because I would expect that in experiential fusion, you would show a startle response. Well, for sure, you would show a stronger startle response. Yeah.

Cort: And maybe just explain, because this is a scientific measurement that, you know, is used commonly. Could you just explain, like, how you measure that? Like, what is a scientific measurement tool?

Richie: Yeah, so, I mean, startle is something that we show in response to an event that, you know, is often loud or intense in whatever domain it’s in. In the auditory domain, it’s a sound that has a very fast rise time, you know, so it doesn’t slowly ramp up, but it ramps up immediately. And that rise time is really what Triggers the startle and you know we can show startle in even just limited parts of our bodies so one of the ways it’s measured in experimental research is just with the eye blink and so if I did that you know many viewers might just blink their eyes or just show a little bit of something and we can harness that as a measurement tool and actually measure the strength of the eye blink with It measures the muscle around the eye called the orbicularis oculi muscle. And so it turns out that it provides a really useful readout of systems that are important in this regard. And so, you know, in the case of experiential fusion, because it’s more difficult to disengage attention and there’s less flexibility, if there were this loud sound made by the banner falling, it would much more likely elicit a startle response. Whereas if your awareness is really, if the aperture is really big, it would include Whatever is happening in your sensory domains. And so, you know, if there’s a loud sound, there’s a loud sound, but you’re not going to show the same kind of startle because you’re not disengaging your attention from something and allocating to something else. Your attention is already engaged.

Cort: That was it. My attention was wide enough that all that stuff, I was hyper aware of everything that happened. Right. But it wasn’t, you know, locked in here. And then it suddenly had to shift to, you know, to something else. Yeah, it was very interesting.

19:39 Ancient Meditation Instructions for Meta-Awareness

Cort: So it just reminds me, maybe as a final thought on this, some of the most classic teachings from the Buddhist tradition, if you go back to the Buddhist sutras, which are the actual recordings of what the Buddha is said to have taught, there are these lines that are basically meditation instructions. They’re the most boring thing you could ever read. But as meditation instructions, they’re very powerful. And they’re basically meta awareness instructions. So it’ll say things like breathing in a long breath. I know that I am breathing in a long breath. And you just go through all these long lists of all the conceivable things that could be happening in your body and mind. And it’s just, and I know that that’s happening as it happens. And I know that that’s happening. And this is basically him essentially guiding people in meditation. Just know what’s happening in your mind as it’s happening. Know what’s happening in your body as it’s happening. And that’s meta-awareness. And he basically was teaching them meta-awareness as one of the most foundational skills for the entire meditative path. I mean, this goes back thousands of years. It’s really quite interesting.

21:11 How to Practice Meta-Awareness in Daily Life

Cort: Well, that’s great. So any, you wanna close with maybe a final tip, like things you do, maybe we could each just share a way we put this into practice in our own lives. Is there anything that you do that you find helpful to connect with meta-awareness and shift out of experiential fusion?

Richie: Yeah, sure. I mean, for me, I go back to this very frequently, many times a day, just in the course of my everyday life, taking it off the cushion, so to speak. And so, you know, one opportunity to do that is whenever you’re waiting on a line for something, you know, often our attention gets constricted, you know, we’ll Dr. Davidson, Can smile at them, do a little loving kindness for them, just open it up. And, you know, I find myself doing that many times a day in situations just really explicitly widening it as a way to sort of touch in with meta awareness.

Cort: That’s so helpful. Yeah, I do a lot of that as well. Another thing that I do, I’ve mentioned this on other Dharma Lab episodes, I think probably because it was one of my starting practices, it’s still one of my go-to practices. And I think for me, one of the best triggers for meta-awareness is Which is really to feel what’s going on in my body. And sometimes it’ll be very simple. I’ll start with something very obvious, like the feeling of my feet on the ground and just feel that for a few moments. And sometimes from there, a little awareness through my body. Usually I’ll notice, you know, sometimes I’ll notice a little bit of tension in my shoulders and they’ll relax a bit or some tension in my jaws. I just naturally feel like my body just opens and relaxes a little bit. Which is always interesting to me after more than 30 years of doing this, that the body is just holding a lot of tension all the time. And awareness itself has this relaxing quality. So just the fuel, what I’m feeling in my body for me is just a very simple kind of anytime, anywhere, everywhere, all the time kind of practice. So that’s one of my go-to practices. So Both of those are great experimentation points. Those of you listening, if you haven’t tried these, I’m sure you have yours as well. If you have your own practices that spark meta-awareness for you, we’d love to hear about it. So maybe you could mention in the comments or share the practices and insights you’ve had. But in any case, great conversation, Richie. Thank you not only for sharing your insights, but for all the research you’ve done on this. You’ve been the pioneering researcher in this area. And I imagine we’re going to have many, many more conversations about meta-awareness and experiential fusion. So stay tuned to future episodes of Dharma Lab if you found this helpful. So take care.

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How much of what we experience comes from the world itself, and how much comes from our expectations about it? In our latest AMA, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl explore how the brain constructs perception, why the gap between reality and expectation can amplify suffering, and what changes when we begin to notice that process as it happens. We had a few moments of technical issues with frozen screens or background noise, but they don’t last long.

What’s inside

* Why your brain constructs reality the way it builds a dream

* Why controlling the mind backfires

* TMS: is it cheating?

* Why open awareness loosens pain

* The neuroscience of grief and regret

* A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Cort)

* A preview of our upcoming November summit

* The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording for paid members

Companion Flashcards At Bottom

Your brain builds reality like a dream

A listener named Linda asked about acceptance, and about the idea, drawn from Anil Seth and Lisa Feldman Barrett, that reality is a construction of the mind. Cort answered first, and reframed where suffering actually comes from.

It’s actually the gap between reality and our expectations of what should be happening. However big that gap is, that’s like the size of suffering in that moment.

—Cortland Dahl

Cort was clear it is not erasing expectations. It is seeing that they are there and that they are out of step with what is happening, bringing them into the light of conscious experience rather than letting them run under the hood.

Then Richie discussed how the brain networks that build our beliefs and expectations are the very networks through which we perceive. He used the dream as proof.

Just as in a dream, we can feel those emotions in our body, and there are documented changes in our heart rate and breathing, and yet there’s nothing out there. It’s all in our mind. It turns out that’s actually the way it works with the real world. That’s how our brains construct reality.

—Richard Davidson

His image for the practice came from Mingyur Rinpoche: caught in the middle of a river, you are swept along by the turbulent flow. Become aware of the thoughts and expectations driving your perception, and it is more like sitting on the bank, watching the water move without being pulled in. Cort added a pointer for anyone who wants the science firsthand, calling Anil Seth’s TED talk one of the best he has seen.

The picnic and the four police officers

Victoria asked why open awareness loosens physical pain. Richie described what his lab calls “stickiness,” the attachment or aversion that makes an emotion reverberate long after the thing that caused it is gone. In open awareness, the reverberation drops away.

In some of our own research, the response in sensory regions is actually larger when you’re doing open awareness. It’s not diminished. But there’s no reverberation. It happens and comes back to baseline. We’re not creating emotional zombies.—Richard Davidson

That fast return to baseline, he said, is a neural signature of resilience. Cort then told a story from the Tibetan tradition that ties to this. Imagine you drive to a park for a picnic, thrilled to be there. Then four police officers walk up and tell you that you are ordered to stay in this park all day, that they will block you if you try to leave.

Even though you wanted to go there in the first place, suddenly everybody’s trying to think how they can get out. Life does not like to be constrained and controlled in any way.—Cortland Dahl

The mind works the same way. The harder we clamp down on a feeling, the more it strains to escape. Open awareness runs the other direction. Cort called it a practice of trust, close to the opposite of control.

FREE · 2-MINUTE PRACTICE LED BY CORT

2-minute practice:

Wherever you are, settle into a comfortable posture. Let your eyes stay gently open or close them. Take a few moments to simply feel the breath moving in and out of the body. Notice the sounds around you, or the silence. Then open the heart a little by bringing to mind the many challenges in the world right now, the suffering so many are carrying, and form a quiet intention: that whatever good comes from your practice might ripple outward and ease the suffering of others. Rest there for a few breaths, then carry that motivation into whatever comes next.

The full hour, mapped

Read the gist below, then drop into the recording at any timestamp.

03:46 — “Grandpa!” and the end of the sitting.

Twelve minutes into an early-morning practice, Richie’s two-and-a-half-year-old grandson opened the door. He let the formal session go and kept practicing as grandpa. Anywhere, anytime meditation; everywhere, all the time.

08:32 — Active practice is as powerful as the cushion.

The Healthy Minds research finds the benefit of active practices comparable to formal sitting. Cort put his son down for nearly every nap for three years and came to see those as the real practice.

09:59 — Acceptance and the gap.

Suffering tracks the gap between reality and our expectations. The shift is not dropping expectations but seeing them clearly.

13:54 — Your brain constructs reality like a dream.

Anil Seth, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and the river metaphor. Perception is built by the same networks that build belief.

17:40 — So how do we share a reality at all?

Rob from Toronto asks about controlled hallucination and shared social realities. Richie on entrainment, cooperation, and why it remains “a shared illusion of a sort”.”

20:18 — Why open awareness loosens pain.

Stickiness, reverberation, and the larger-but-faster response that marks resilience. We are not creating emotional zombies.

27:00 — The picnic and the four police officers.

Why control backfires in a park, in a relationship, and in the mind. Open awareness as trust.

29:40 — TMS and the urge to hack the mind.

TMS stands for “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, and Richie explains that TMS belongs to a broader family of methods designed to modulate brain function relatively non-invasively. There is growing interest in whether these tools could affect meditation, but he emphasizes that we do not yet know whether they meaningfully support practice. The Center for Healthy Minds has also been exploring neuromodulation and meditation more broadly. Cort shares about neuromodulation as one more entry point into an interdependent system.

37:37 — Where does awareness live in the brain?

Edith’s question. Visual cortex, anterior cingulate, and the honest answer: no single location, no single switch

40:24 — The unresponsive who were actually aware.

Melanie Boly’s work: patients thought to be vegetative held more awareness than we credited, unable to communicate it. A communication problem, not an awareness problem.

45:18 — The neuroscience of grief that doesn’t fade.

Amygdala and hippocampus jammed together, and reconsolidation: a memory is a reconstruction that changes each time it is recalled, not a photograph.

51:20 — When grief opened into gratitude.Cort on his father’s sudden death four years ago, holding the feeling fully in the body, and the sadness opening, unbidden, into gratitude.

57:38 — A free November summit.A free online gathering through ServiceSpace this November, with Sharon Salzberg, Jud Brewer, Robert Sapolsky, Martin Picard, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Laurie Santos.

November 2026 Free Online Summit with Legends of Neuroscience and Practice

Dharma Lab’s First Guided Meditation Hour

In Dharma Lab’s first guided practice hour, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson took us from talking about wellbeing to actually practicing it. Drawing on the Healthy Minds framework of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, shaped through years of research and practice connected with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Humin (formerly Healthy Minds Innovations), they led participants through four short practices designed to make each capacity directly experiential. The session explored a central idea running through their work: meditation is less about fixing ourselves than learning to recognize and cultivate qualities of wellbeing that are already present.

Keep Practicing — Upcoming Events

If you’d like to continue exploring these practices, the free Healthy Minds Program App offers guided practices and learning across awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, with Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson, and other teachers.

Our next “Ask Me Anything”with Richie and Cort is live on Tuesday, August 25th, 8pm ET. Please send us questions in advance by replying to this email or dropping a comment.

We have an exciting lineup of guest speakers for a free online summit in November to explore the restless mind. More details to come, but check out initial info at the bottom of this email and registration details here. Please share widely!

Thank you for your support and we hope to see you at these future events.

—The Dharma Lab Team

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dharmalab.co/subscribe

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson explore why attention feels harder to control than it used to, how modern technology exploits basic mechanisms in the brain, and what we can do to regain more choice over where our attention goes. They discuss why we may be more distracted than we were 50 years ago, how novelty and emotion capture attention, and why simple acts of intentionality can function like reps for the brain. Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Wed Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here!

Companion Flashcards

In This Episode:

00:00 Taking Back Control of Attention

01:21 Why Focus Feels So Hard

02:51 Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?

05:15 Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction

09:03 How Our Attention Gets Hijacked

13:20 Why Surprise Captures the Brain

16:35 The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling

17:44 How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control

21:24 Rebuilding Control Over Attention

25:53 Attention as a Practice of Intention

29:46 Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 — Taking Back Control of Attention

Richie: Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us, and it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from. There are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression.

Cort: I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I noticed the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to You know, turn and look to see what was happening over there, like actually just making a choice. Like you were saying, the reps, you can do a thousand of those a day easily.

01:21 — Why Focus Feels So Hard

Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, one of the co-hosts here, and of course I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson. Richie, to all of us who know him well, one of the preeminent neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re gonna discuss one of the most common problems that probably every human faces, which is how incredibly hard it is just to stay focused. Now, I must admit, maybe this is an embarrassing admission, given that I’m supposedly one of the experts who’s talking about this stuff. But there’s a lot of days where I’m sitting, getting stuff done, answering emails or focused on some project. And it’s just really hard to not get pulled in to other things. You know, I’m answering emails and suddenly I’m shopping online or I’m working on a report and then I’m checking my emails. It’s just it feels like There are so many things in our life that are just pulling us in a million different directions. And I thought today we could just answer two very simple questions. One, why is it so incredibly hard to stay focused? And two, what can we do about it given this chaotic world we’re living in? So maybe we can just I can just turn this over to you, Richie, and you can kick this off however you want to. But I’d love to hear specifically from a neuroscientific point of view at some point. But yeah, what does this spark for you?

Richie: Yeah, well, first it sparks familiarity.

02:51 — Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?

Richie: So, you know, I think that it’s true. I often say we’re all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And that’s, of course, referring to the exposure that we all have to this extraordinary amount of information through Our online activities through social media, all of that. And that’s a huge source of distraction. And so, you know, I think that one, I certainly think that it’s inevitably true that one major reason why people experience more distraction perhaps today than they did And there are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression, but inevitably I think it’s at least in part true that it’s because of our exposure to this information that is so readily available. So we’re clearly not going to change that. We don’t have the power To influence the tech companies to do the kind of regulation that might be needed. So, you know, we’re left, I think, with the inevitable conclusion that really the only thing we can change is our own minds. And so that, I think, is an important opportunity. And so here’s another case where the kind of, quote, And us being so distracted can also be the opening for real change and transformation. And in the language that you and I have used, Cort, in our book, Born to Flourish, and at other times in Dharma Lab, we can think of distraction itself as an affordance, distraction itself as a moment of awakening, if you will, because the moment we recognize we’re distracted, That’s a moment of awakening and can really be helpful in the process of changing your mind.

05:15 — Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction

Cort: I’m curious about the neural mechanisms for why we are so easily distracted. I think the experience is, it’s like our attention is like a restless puppy that just gets excited and is rushing off after any bright, shiny object. It sees a squirrel on a tree outside and it’s banging itself against the window and then hears something in the kitchen and goes racing off. And it feels like that sometimes. I mean, it feels like that, you know, even for me having 35 years of meditation under my belt and done all these long retreats where I’m very specifically training my attention. And I feel like in some respects have, you know, have developed A strong attentional skill set, so to speak. And yet I still feel that when I’m in a meeting like this, I could be talking to you and then I see a notification on my computer or something happens in my environment. It seems like the mind and brain are just... Really wired actually for that to happen. I mean, it clearly, you know, happened spontaneously and effortlessly countless times every single hour. So what’s going on in the brain? I mean, is it as it seems that this is sort of how we’re wired? I imagine there’s evolutionary reasons why this is this is likely to be the case.

Richie: I think it is in part how we’re wired. We are wired to detect surprise, to detect discrepancies, to detect rare events, because those often are events that have more salience. For example, our Sensitivity to danger and to cues that may signal danger. Those are the kinds of things that are relatively rare, but they’re super important. So we want to be primed, if you will, to notice those. And the problem is that that machinery that evolution has provided us with can be harnessed or hijacked by all these other things around us. But I think I can pretty much guarantee based on everything we know that if you receive the identical information, say something surprised you that drew your attention, if that thing were repeated 10 times, by the 10th time, you’re no longer going to pay attention to it. And that process habituation is something we know very well. And so the masters of technology have very much figured out how to capture our attention. By providing us with, in many cases, more and more extreme examples of things that are of interest to us. And the increased extremity has all kinds of, I think, really unfortunate consequences. But one of them is that it will capture our attention. But it can also serve to further reinforce and reify certain kinds of extreme beliefs that we might have, which can of course be a key driver of divisiveness.

09:03 — How Our Attention Gets Hijacked

Cort: I wonder if we translate this into a very practical tool. I could see this understanding of the way the brain works, and especially the things that tend to capture our attention, the things that can be easily hijacked, as you said, for people who want to... If the objective is to keep people in your app as long as possible, if you imagine a lot of social media platforms these days, that’s what they want. The product is actually not what we’re doing. Actually, we are the product. It’s our attention that’s being sold. And so in a way, what they want, you know, they’re harvesting our attention in a way is what’s going on. And so they’re designing for that. And it’s an interesting question, you know, in the, you know, the way you’re framing it, because it’s sort of the question is, What loopholes in our brains are they exploiting so they can get more of our attention? And for me, having studied this and explored this myself, I can see understanding that actually is very empowering because now I know the game. I can see what they’re doing. You know, for example, if I’m on social media, I can actually see the way the algorithms work like, oh, if I watch that video a little longer, and I swipe past this other one, I know in a few in a moment or two, two or three videos later, I’m going to see something So maybe we could just zero in on that for a moment because it is, as I said, quite empowering. What are some of the things that are exploited? If you could give a little mini class, what would you look for so you can be conscious of it versus unconsciously, unwittingly pulled in by it? What would you look for, like the things that are going to capture your attention?

Richie: Yeah, so you’re asking what would we look for in the brain itself? Yeah,

Cort: what are the brain mechanisms that are being hijacked and how might we be conscious of what’s happening versus it just happening to us and we’re unconscious of it?

Richie: Yeah, that’s super important. So the hijacking of attention can happen in a number of different ways. One of the most fundamental ways in which it happens Is that there’s an interaction between the brainstem and specifically a part of the brainstem that is rich in norepinephrine and it’s called the locus cerulein. And it has projections that are very widespread to many different regions of the cortex. And basically what happens is that when something captures our attention, as opposed to us directing our attention to it voluntarily, but being captured unwillingly, if you will, or unintentionally. It just grabs our attention whether we like it or not. Right. What’s happening is that there is a transient increase in activation the locus coeruleus, which is this site rich in norepinephrine. And then there are these very widespread projections to the entire cortex. And so there’s a transient increase in cortical arousal that’s pretty broad, even if the The event that occurred, the stimulus was, say, just the sound. It would be broader than just the auditory part of the brain, just broader than just the auditory cortex. It would really be all over the brain. And this is the kind of thing that would capture our attention. But if it’s repeated, if the identical event is repeated a few times, It would show what we call habituation, where you would not respond to that. And so, you know, that’s one of the most basic mechanisms for attention capture is this kind of rare or surprising event.

13:20 — Why Surprise Captures the Brain

Cort: And so is sorry, just to to pause for a second there. If I’m uh building some new product and I want to harvest people’s attention and I come to you as one of the world’s leading experts in this area and I just say okay richie I want I want to hijack this exact neural loop that you just talked about like what are the best strategies like what could I design like what could I build into this new app or this new product whatever it is what would be the most effective ways to hijack this system surprise you kind of mentioned one is surprise something that’s Shocking or surprising or unexpected.

Richie: That sounds like that’s one of the... Yeah, and so to create that kind of unexpected burst, if you will, the most effective way of doing it is presenting a set of events which are all repetitive and very similar and then follow it by something totally novel and surprising. It’s the oddball. Yeah. And so there’s a very famous experimental paradigm in neuroscience and psychology called the mismatch negativity, which is a version of this. And basically what a mismatch negativity is, is if I present a series of tones of a certain pitch, and then it’s followed by a tone of a different pitch. So if we do something like this, Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, boop, beep, beep. Your response to the boop would be totally, your brain would just automatically... Um, detect that and it would be, uh, and there’s a very well characterized signal in the brain that displays that. Um, and it’s, it’s very difficult, even I should say in long-term meditators, um, Although we do have some evidence to suggest that there are some alterations, but at least in moderate term meditators, this is so basic, it’s very hard to override. So it doesn’t change.

Cort: We still, no matter how much you’ve meditated, your mind still gets... Yeah, although there are,

Richie: you know, if I did it instead of with simple tones, if I did it with words, for example, where I presented words of a certain category like zebra, tiger, monkey, elephant, flower, rabbit. Where the discrepancy is semantic in that case and not the auditory features themselves, that’s much more likely to be something that can be overridden, if you will.

16:35 — The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling

Cort: So it seems like one of the takeaways, this is super interesting, and actually I can already see this in the endless swiping of social media, that if you’re advising, you would say, okay, what you don’t want to do is have too much repetition. You don’t want For example, if I watch a cat video and I watch the whole thing and the algorithm is like, okay, this guy clearly likes these cute cat videos. You don’t want to just show me 10 cat videos at that point because you’re just going to get habituation. What you want, and I think this is exactly what it does, is you want at random intervals, like maybe you have to swipe through five things to get a cat video and then you don’t see one for 10 videos and then it’s after two. It’s sort of unexpected and you get it, but you never know when you’re going to get it. Is that right? Like if you’re advising like that... I think this is actually how it is. If you pay attention, you’ll actually start seeing these patterns, especially in social media.

Richie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in the psychological literature, that’s called the variable interval reinforcement schedule. And, you know, that’s extremely addicting in terms of its attentional capture.

17:44 — How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control

Cort: And what about emotion? I mean, you talked about surprise, obviously. Another very interesting thing, again, I’m sort of fixating on social media here, but I think you could look at other forms of distraction as well. But it’s very interesting to look at What’s pulling attention in relationship to the emotions it provokes and the strength, both the kind of emotion and the valence, whether it feels more uplifting or a fear or more negative. What would you say about that? Again, if you’re our key neuroscientific wizard architecting how to distract us.

Richie: Yeah, I mean, certainly emotion and different kinds of emotion are going to be absolutely key in producing distraction. We know that emotion can disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is a key zone for the central executive network, for the network that is guiding behavior.

Cort: So it’s the opposite of the hijacked. It’s the part that’s saying, here’s where I want to go and I’m going there.

Richie: Right, self-control. And emotions will disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so there’s a continuous dance between the emotional centers of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. And there’s bi-directional communication. So there is communication about emotion from subcortical regions up to the prefrontal cortex. There’s also... Top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex to these subcortical emotional regions that can help regulate them. But this is actually the role of the prefrontal cortex and all this is super important because, and this is speculative, but in our evolutionary past where we had many fewer Episodic, phasic influences on our behavior like we do today. The prefrontal cortex can put into operation a plan which then gets executed over some long period of time. Where there were many fewer at least external distractors. And I think that it’s, and here’s the speculative part. I think that the conditions of modern life today are such that we’re starting from a much lower baseline in terms of our prefrontal skills. In our evolutionary past with many fewer distractors Sort of external stimuli that were bombarding us. We relied on the prefrontal cortex more to guide our behavior. Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us. And it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from.

21:24 — Rebuilding Control Over Attention

Cort: That’s a good segue. Maybe we could have our concluding part of this discussion to put our actual hats on. I guess we’ve been playing a role that we would never normally play because, of course, we want to do the opposite of hijacking attention. We want to do what you’re talking about now, which is how can we re-energize and build up the skill set with the prefrontal cortex. And our ability to manage and consciously be in the driver’s seat with our attention versus it being hijacked. So let’s kind of shift gears and now share some of the strategies that put us back in the driver’s seat. So what would you say there? We certainly can talk about our Experiences meditators, but from a brain and from a neuroscientific point of view, anything that you think is some key insights about the brain that would guide how we should view this and how we can do it in daily life?

Richie: Yeah, I mean, I think that some of this is both from knowledge of the brain, but also from kind of practical everyday experience. And that is that I think that just as we do physical exercise and benefit from reps, so to speak, we can benefit from reps with our mental health. And neural capacities. And so, you know, one way to do this is, and we’ve talked about this at various points in the past in different ways on Dharma Lab, but every time you feel an urge to take out your phone, instead of immediately taking out your phone and looking at it, simply be aware of the urge. And make a decision about whether this is actually a time when you need the phone and you should take it out, or whether it’s a time to simply acknowledge the urge and let it rise and fall away like the clouds in the sky. And so there actually is a choice that we can make at that point. But we need to be aware to begin with. That really is a necessary condition for this. If you’re not aware of the urge in the first place, it will immediately hijack your behavior and you’ll just automatically pull out your phone. That’s what we do most of the time. And the invitation in this path that we are talking about and promoting here on Dharma Lab is that there is another way to operate in the world And it’s a way that is infused with this gift of awareness that we all have. And so this is really a way to strengthen the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to self-regulate. Really simple. And we know from some really fantastic longitudinal research that learning to self-regulate early in life is a huge predictor of later adult life outcomes that are beneficial. And kids who have a hard time with self-control early on end up, if there’s no intervention, end up worse off than kids who are better at self-control.

Cort: And there’s, you know, that particular research is super interesting. And it’s also, there’s a whole body of research, which of course, Richie, you’re well aware, just to paint out kind of the other side of the picture, which is that if you’re the kind of person who—I would have been a kid for sure, you know, if we had had the marshmallow test, which is one of these classical tests, like, you know, you imagine putting a marshmallow in front of a kid and say, don’t eat it. For me, I would have, you know, two seconds, that marshmallow would have been down the hatch. I would have for sure been one of those kids. And yet, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing that skill. And so there’s a lot of hope, even if even if we’re the kind of person who might be starting out more on the deficit side of things.

25:53 — Attention as a Practice of Intention

Cort: So I wonder if maybe we could talk about some of the practical things, because I when I think about my life and things I do, I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. And it was funny because actually, as you were explaining this, I had a practical example of this. I’m, I’m actually sitting in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota in an Incredibly remote location and there’s a lake very within, you know, basically I could throw a rock into the lake from where I am right now, but it’s very remote and there’s very few boats. There’s not many people. And a boat went by actually as we were, as you were speaking, Richie, and as I was listening to you and you were actively talking about, you know, like how attention gets pulled away and noticing that. And it was, that was like literally happening to me there. I could feel the pull to look at the boat. And it’s a rare occurrence and, you know, and there’s not many people, so I might know those people. But and then I was consciously aware of that, just like you were talking about the cell phone, like you’re aware of it before you follow the impulse. And so I could actually feel the impulse literally as you were talking about this and just choose exercise the intention muscle and just say, I’m going to resist that impulse or just stay with my focus here on what Richie is saying. Noticing the pull of distraction and releasing attention. We could have a whole episode just on releasing attention. That’s kind of its own thing. But just the directing of attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I’m going to choose to bring my attention to my email inbox or I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I notice the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to, you know, turn and look to see what was happening over there? Like actually just making a choice. Just that intentionality to me is kind of the heart of the practice. And you can just do that, like you were saying, the reps. You can do a thousand of those a day easily.

Richie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, you know, to our viewers, this is something that would be, I think, interesting and fun to tinker with in your own life. And one of the things that I often do is I have an Apple Watch. And so when I get certain kinds of messages, it will give me a haptic signal. And I’m very aware that in certain kinds of meetings, like if it happened right now, I would notice the haptic signal and I would not look at my watch. I would be focused on our conversation here. And there are many times in meetings where I will do the same thing. I feel the haptic signal, but I’m making a conscious choice to Keep my attention focused on the meeting. There are other times if I’m in something that’s not in a meeting or something really casual where it would be okay if I looked at it for some reason, if I was expecting something, I might look at it. But there is the distinct opportunity to see it as an opportunity to make a choice.

29:46 — Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus

Cort: And that, and to me, it seems like the intention, intentional aspect, and these are great example of the kinds of things that pull our attention away so many times. One of the areas I would say, which is just a very rich area to practice because it’s happening all the time is like what happens when the distractor is happening, like the haptic signal happens or the sound happens, or in my case, you see something unexpected, it’s happening. And then there’s kind of what you do in that space and being intentional. In some cases, you can choose to go with it. Or in many cases, it’s just noticing that your mind is pulled elsewhere and you just choose to stay with whatever you’re doing, which I think is in most cases that kind of the healthier thing to do. But I think there’s another realm of intentionality, which is actually preemptive. And you can be intentional about what’s going on in your environment so less of those things are happening. I mean, to some degree you can’t control these things, but sometimes you can. I mean, we all have phones, or almost everybody does. I, for example, have just deleted apps from my phone. There’s certain apps that I just felt like these are just not I don’t ever feel good coming away from using this app. And I just remove the app. In some cases, I actually change the settings. So I have no notifications like my phone. As much as it annoys all my family members and anybody tries to contact me, my phone is always muted. My phone is almost never on. And so I check my messages and I have the notifications off on almost every single app. So I go check the things when I want to check them, not because it grabbed my attention. So in that case, it’s almost preemptive. Like I know the things that can and have in the past pulled my attention. And I’m almost architecting my life. So I’m just not going to be, you know, as exposed to those. So it seems like we could almost we can both when it happens, what do we do, but also preemptively, you know, build your life to the degree that you can so that you’re not just constantly exposed to these things, which which just simply can be overwhelming at times.

Richie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that all fits in a category that I would call digital hygiene. And I’ve been an advocate for creating a curriculum for digital hygiene that would include contemplative practices to help us actually regulate our attention and have that curriculum start with kids. I think it’s really important.

Cort: Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, this has been a great conversation, Richie. I think we would love to hear, for those of you watching this in the comments, we’d love to hear what you do. What are the things that you find distracting? What are the strategies and the methods you found that help you find a little more balance? And maybe we can have a little dialogue offline as you reflect on your own life. But in any case, thank you, Richie, for sharing your insights as always and for you for listening. We hope to see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.

Richie: Thank you so much.

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(The full AMA recording plays in the video pane above, for Dharma Lab members.)

In our 11th AMA, Kim read your questions while Cort made his way back from a retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche. Richie spoke to a study where strangers could tell who the meditators were, from a photo alone.

What’s inside

* Full recording and transcript for paid members

* The photo study: what strangers saw in the faces of long-term meditators

* You are not your beliefs: a simple two-step practice to see them clearly

* A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Dr. Richie Davidson)

* The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording

Strangers could tell who the meditators were

This came up during a question about moods. Richie’s point was that one consequence of long-term practice is that people generally end up in a more positive mood. To show it, he described a study his lab published.

Whenever they studied long-term meditators, they routinely took a picture of everyone, both the meditators and age- and gender-matched controls, without telling them what it was for. Then they gave all the pictures to random people who had no idea where they came from, and asked them to rate each face: how friendly the person is, how much you trust them, how happy they are.

The long-term meditators were judged, in Richie’s words, “whoppingly more positively” than the controls. The raters had no idea where the pictures came from. He called it a powerful, unobtrusive measure that there is something about an enduring mood that gets expressed on the face and that people pick up on.

The study: Goldberg, Hirshberg, Tello, Weng, Flook, Davidson (2019), “Still facial photographs of long-term meditators are perceived by naïve observers as less neurotic, more conscientious and more mindful.”

You are not your beliefs

Another listener asked about the difference between a belief and an ordinary thought. Cort put it this way: thoughts are the words and images moving through the mind, the inner commentary, and they are an expression of deeper beliefs about the world that are often not conscious.

Richie added the distinction he and Cort work with: when we hold beliefs, especially about ourselves, we misconstrue them as a description of who we actually are. He calls it experiential fusion. Most of the time we are not even aware we hold the belief; it just feels like the narrative of our self. Meta-awareness, or metacognition, is having an awareness that we have these beliefs, which lets us recognize we are not necessarily the same as them.

Cort framed the aim in the Tibetan approach he practices: we are not trying to fix ourselves, but to get in touch with the parts that were never broken. Then he gave a two-step practice. First, simply observe your thoughts, like watching a wild animal in its natural habitat, from behind a tree, just watching what it does. Then pause and ask what assumptions, beliefs, and expectations underlie the thought. The point is not to change anything, just to bring the unconscious up to the conscious level.

“We’re not trying to fix ourselves. We’re really trying to get in touch with the parts that were never broken.” — Cortland Dahl

Try this 2-minute practice from the AMA (free, led by Richie)

Prefer to read it? Bring awareness into your body. Then bring to mind one person who first introduced you to practice, who opened this door and shined a light where you had not looked before. Hold them in your heart and let appreciation, gratitude, even love bubble up. Carry that glow into whatever comes next.

The full hour AMA, mapped

Read the gist, then drop into the recording.

04:39 — Is it only meditation that slows brain aging? Compared to athletes or chess players, we don’t yet know. But Richie’s informed conjecture: an altruistic motivation may add a biological benefit over and above the activity itself.

09:12 — What childhood trauma does to the brain. The well-replicated finding of reduced hippocampal volume, and the honest unknown of how far practice can reverse it. Cort on memory reconsolidation.

13:55 — Can practice move your brain’s asymmetry? Functional asymmetry can shift (the first randomized trial of MBSR, 2003), but temperament tends to persist. The masters keep their color; they are not emotional zombies.

20:27 — Belief vs. thought, and how to loosen a harmful one. Experiential fusion vs. meta-awareness, Mingyur Rinpoche’s burnt-rope image, and the two-step practice of watching thoughts and inquiring into the belief beneath.

30:59 — Moods, and the photo study. Why moods differ from emotions, why long-term practitioners carry a positive baseline, and the study where strangers read it off their faces.

38:33 — A stroke, and the beauty in the pauses. For a listener living with brain injury and stroke: being over doing, the sky that stays when the clouds go, and Ram Dass, whose long word-finding pauses Richie found beautiful.

47:28 — After an awakening, why the crash? The four families of retreat experience (body and energy, emotional upheaval, perception, sensing energy), and why to treat them all as passing clouds, not permanent, not the point.

56:16 — What happens in the brain at death. The flatline, why biology is analog and not digital, and the early reports of gamma oscillations near death, the same signature seen in long-term meditators. Plus how the traditions prepare.

Upcoming Events

Save the date: a free practice and meditation hour with Richie and Cort on August 19th at 7pm Central. Register free.

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Episode Companion Flashcards:

For years, headlines claimed that meditation could actually grow parts of the brain. But what if that’s not the most interesting question?

As the science has evolved, researchers have shifted their focus. What changes in the brain? Which changes matter most? And why might some structural changes grow, then recede, as expertise develops?

In this conversation, Richie and Cort explore what decades of neuroscience have taught us, what scientists have gotten right, what they’ve gotten wrong, and where the research is heading.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here!

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In This Episode:

00:00 Does Meditation Really Change the Brain?

03:16 Brain Function vs. Brain Structure

05:41 The Gray Matter Studies That Started It All

11:45 Why the Gray Matter Evidence Changed

15:20 White Matter and Brain Connectivity

18:01 What the Research Actually Means

21:40 Brain Health, Neuroplasticity, and Human Potential

Transcript for those who prefer to read:

Richie Davidson:

There’s no question that meditation changes the brain.

We’re talking here about both the function and the structure of the brain. There’s no question that meditation changes the brain, and there is overwhelming evidence for that.

Structural changes, like increases in gray matter in specific regions of the brain after short amounts of meditation, however, are a different story. The evidence for those findings has really not held up.

Even more interesting, some of the effects that have been reported are actually the opposite of what we might expect.

Cortland Dahl:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with Richie Davidson, one of the pioneering neuroscientists who has helped us understand the relationship between the mind, the brain, emotions, and how we can train ourselves to flourish.

Today we’re diving into one of the biggest scientific questions in meditation research: does meditation actually change the brain?

When I think about my own life, I can point to experiences that feel like a clear before and after.

When I started meditating more than thirty years ago, I had a genuine phobia of public speaking. It wasn’t just that I got nervous. I had a severe fear of speaking in front of people.

Years later, not only do I no longer get anxious, I actually enjoy it.

I’ve even measured my physiology with devices like my Oura Ring. My heart rate and other biometrics actually shift into a deeply relaxed state when I’m speaking in front of a crowd, something that would have been unimaginable twenty or thirty years ago.

Whether or not my brain changed, it seems difficult to imagine that such a profound transformation could happen without the brain changing in some way.

At the same time, we often see confusing headlines.

One day the headline says, “Meditation changes your brain.”

The next day another study appears suggesting the opposite.

Even the phrase “changes your brain” can mean different things. Are we talking about how the brain functions? Are we talking about the physical wiring of the brain? Are we talking about changes in structure?

Richie, you’ve done some of the most important work in this area, and I think this is one of those topics where the headlines often miss the nuance.

How should we think about it?

Richie Davidson:

You set this up beautifully by distinguishing between functional changes in the brain and structural changes.

Functional changes refer to differences in how the brain is operating. We can measure those by looking at patterns of activity in different brain regions.

Structural changes are different. They refer to the physical characteristics of the brain itself.

That includes gray matter, which consists of the cell bodies of neurons, and white matter, which consists of the axons that connect one region of the brain to another.

It’s entirely possible for the brain to change functionally without changing structurally.

If structural changes occur, they almost always imply changes in function as well.

One of the reasons this field became so exciting was that, about twenty years ago, several early studies suggested that people who completed an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course showed increases in gray matter in regions such as the prefrontal cortex.

Those findings generated enormous excitement and headlines claiming that meditation could literally grow your prefrontal cortex.

Cortland Dahl:

Before we go further, why would someone even want a larger prefrontal cortex?

Richie Davidson:

The prefrontal cortex is central to what we call the executive network.

It’s involved in planning, goal-directed behavior, regulating attention, forming healthy habits, and inhibiting behaviors we want to change.

If you’re making a grocery list, planning your route to the store, or intentionally directing your attention toward something important, the prefrontal cortex plays a major role.

It also allows us to think about the future and reflect on the past.

That’s incredibly useful, but it’s also one of the reasons humans worry so much.

As Robert Sapolsky famously described in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, zebras don’t spend time worrying about tomorrow. Humans do, largely because we have this remarkable prefrontal cortex.

So it’s an extraordinary gift, but it can also contribute to suffering.

Returning to the research, those early studies suggested that relatively short periods of meditation increased gray matter in regions like the prefrontal cortex.

Many additional studies followed.

Then, in 2023, a meta-analysis concluded that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction produced structural brain changes.

However, the story didn’t end there.

The journal later retracted that meta-analysis because important data had been omitted. When those missing data were included, the reported effects disappeared.

Around the same time, our own research published in Science Advances found no structural gray matter differences between people who completed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and carefully designed control groups.

So when it comes to gray matter increases after relatively short periods of meditation, the evidence has simply not held up.

There’s another finding that’s particularly intriguing.

Some studies have examined whether people with more meditation experience show greater structural changes.

Interestingly, the relationship appears to go in the opposite direction.

The more meditation people have practiced, the smaller the structural differences often become.

When you think about expertise, that actually makes sense.

If gray matter simply kept increasing forever, eventually we’d have bumps sticking out of our heads.

That’s obviously not how biology works.

Instead, expertise in many domains appears to involve temporary structural changes that later become more efficient as skills mature.

There may be a period where gray matter increases, but as expertise develops, those changes may naturally recede.

Cortland Dahl:

So the story is much more nuanced than simply saying meditation makes your brain bigger.

Richie Davidson:

Exactly.

And that’s where white matter becomes especially interesting.

White matter reflects the connections between different regions of the brain.

Across many different kinds of learning, white matter appears to be much more responsive to experience than gray matter.

For example, beginning jugglers can show measurable white matter changes after only about an hour and a half of training.

Those changes are dynamic.

If you stop practicing, they may recede.

We’ve found similar results with meditation.

In the same study where we found no gray matter changes, we did observe white matter changes in pathways related to self-regulation after roughly twenty to thirty hours of meditation practice.

We also have new research, not yet published, suggesting that about five minutes of daily practice for a month is associated with white matter changes.

These findings suggest that changes in brain connectivity may occur very early in meditation training and may be especially important.

Cortland Dahl:

One thing I’m hearing is that we often oversimplify what it means for the brain to change.

We hear phrases like “meditation grows your brain,” but perhaps that’s not even the right way to think about it.

If we compare meditation to physical exercise, we might expect some increase in muscle mass when someone first begins training.

But muscles don’t simply continue getting larger forever.

Nor would we necessarily want them to.

Much of what matters is how efficiently the body functions.

It sounds like the brain may be similar.

The important changes may involve relationships between different brain regions, increased efficiency, and improved coordination rather than simply greater volume.

Richie Davidson:

That’s a very good way of putting it.

There’s another aspect of brain health that’s becoming increasingly important, and that’s inflammation.

We know that many forms of meditation reduce inflammation throughout the body.

Evidence is beginning to suggest that meditation may also reduce inflammation within the brain itself.

That’s especially important because neuroinflammation appears to contribute to neurodegeneration and forms of dementia.

Researchers are only beginning to develop reliable ways to measure neuroinflammation using MRI, so this is likely to become an exciting area of research over the next several years.

Stepping back, though, the most important point remains simple.

There’s no question that meditation changes the brain.

Whether those changes are functional, structural, or both is still being actively explored, but the overall conclusion is remarkably clear.

Many years ago, the Dalai Lama told me that he sometimes reflects during meditation on the fact that his own brain is changing because of his practice.

I think that’s a beautiful reflection.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that our brains can change through intentional mental training.

That means we have tremendous potential for transformation.

In fact, humans may have a greater capacity to intentionally reshape the brain than any other species.

That’s an extraordinary gift.

The invitation is to use that gift wisely.

Cortland Dahl:

What a hopeful message.

For many years, people thought the brain was essentially fixed.

Now we understand that change and transformation are built into our biology.

As the science continues to evolve, we’ll undoubtedly return to this topic with new discoveries.

Richie, thank you for another fascinating conversation, and thank you for all the pioneering research you’ve contributed to this field.

And thank you to everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time on Dharma Lab.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dharmalab.co/subscribe

Sharon Salzberg joins Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl for a conversation about loving-kindness, connection, and the quiet ways our lives are supported by others.

At a time when many people feel lonely, cut off, or pulled into habits of criticism and competition, Sharon offers a simple experiment: pause, notice who makes your life possible, and see what happens when appreciation becomes part of daily life.

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has written fifteen books, including Lovingkindness and Real Happiness. Her upcoming workbook, Living Lovingkindness, is available for pre-order and will be released in January 2027.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards

The full conversation is below, lightly edited for readability.

Chapter List

* (00:00) A true icon, and a first story

* (03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches

* (09:35) What actually trips people up

* (13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”

* (18:30) A guided reflection

* (21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person

* (28:10) Attention, and what the science shows

* (36:26) The obstacles, and where to start

* (46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice

* (52:00) Parting thoughts

Try this 2-minute Micro-Practice from Sharon Now

(00:00) A true icon, and a first story

Cort Dahl

Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m very honored and excited to be here with our two guests. Of course, I’m here with Richie Davidson, who many of you already know, one of the most well-known neuroscientists on the planet. And we’re here with a true icon of the world’s meditative tradition, Sharon Salzberg, who’s also a dear friend, and truly one of those people who, when the history books are written about the manifestation of these meditative traditions in the modern world, played an incredibly important role.

Just before this started, we were all chatting, and Sharon, you were mentioning that this is the 50th anniversary of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS, as it’s commonly referred to, is certainly one of the first and one of the most important centers for Buddhist practice and meditation in the modern world. Sharon is one of the co-founders of IMS, back in the 1970s. It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years.

She has written some of the most well-known books in the meditation world. Loving-Kindness — she literally wrote the book on loving-kindness, and has been the main proponent of it as one of the main forms of meditation coming out of the Buddhist tradition, traditionally known as metta. She also has a podcast, Metta Hour, which both Richie and I have been on. And she’s written many other books, including her first children’s book, Kind Carl.

Richie Davidson

I read it to my six-year-old granddaughter, who loved it, absolutely loved it, and wanted more copies to give to all her friends.

Cort Dahl

And many, many other books — Real Life, Real Love, Real Happiness, a whole series. Loving-Kindness, the book I mentioned first, is really a modern classic. It was one of the first books I read back in the nineties when I was starting to meditate. So, Sharon, you’ve been an inspiration to so many of us — through your writing, through co-founding IMS, through your endless teaching all over the world. It’s an honor to have you.

I thought we could start with a story I’ve heard a few times and always found moving: His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting the United States for the first time, and your interactions with him. Let’s start there, and see where the conversation goes.

(03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches

Sharon Salzberg

Sure. And I’m so happy and honored to be with the two of you, truly. We co-founded the retreat center — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and I — in 1976. It’s in Barre, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes from Amherst. In 1979 we heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Amherst, so, being young and bold, we wrote a letter to his private office and said, maybe you’d like to visit us too. And to our amazement, we got a letter back saying, yes, he’ll come.

It was an incredibly zooey day. We had sheriffs and people patrolling the roof with guns, the street blockaded. A very intense day. And I’d been in a car accident a few weeks before — I had a broken bone in my foot and was using crutches, which I was not very skilled with. So I was standing way at the back of about a hundred people. His car pulled up, he got out, and he did something I’ve seen him do many times since, but it was the first time. It’s almost like he has a kind of radar for who in a crowd is suffering the most, and that was me. He cut through a hundred people, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, what happened?

Standing there in the back, I’d been thinking, I’m so stuck back here, this is terrible — I helped start this place, and here I am at the back. But if I go up front I’ll fall on my face, because I’m so bad with the crutches, so I’d better stay in the back. And he just dissolved that with that one gesture. It sort of redefined compassion for me, because he certainly couldn’t have made the injury not happen, or made me any better with the crutches. But that horrible feeling of being so alone, so unseen, so stuck in the back — it just dissolved.

There’s another story from that visit, and there are many. We had a retreat going, about two weeks in, and the Dalai Lama asked to go into the meditation hall and give a talk. Then he asked for questions. A young man raised his hand and said, I’ve been meditating for about two weeks and I realize it’s not going to work for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the capacity to grow or learn or get more loving or more mindful. I just can’t do it. And the Dalai Lama looked at him and said, well, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong.

He went on to talk about buddha nature — one’s capacity, which it’s believed is never ever destroyed. A capacity for growth and understanding and change. It may be covered over, it may be hard to find, but it’s never ever destroyed. And the funny thing is, after the talk, all these people came up to me and said, the Dalai Lama shouldn’t have said that. That’s bad pedagogy. You should never tell anyone they’re wrong. But you know who got a huge amount out of it? The young man, for whom it was such an important message. You should have a little more faith in yourself, and in the possibility of change.

Cort Dahl

That’s so beautiful. The image of the Dalai Lama cutting through all those people — at a moment where most of us would be on autopilot, this is what you do in this situation, you shake hands and wave. And he didn’t. He was just utterly human, and could see beyond the dynamics. I’ve always found that story so beautiful.

Richie Davidson

I love that story too. I have this image of our detectors, our antenna, for suffering, that can actually be developed. And the Dalai Lama is such an extraordinary exemplar of that. Wherever suffering is occurring, he makes a beeline for it.

Cort Dahl

And the human element is something I really think about with you as a teacher. I was just having lunch with my wife, Kasumi. We’ve been together thirteen, fourteen years now. When we first met, she was about to go on a retreat with you — you were visiting Madison — one of her first retreats. You’ve been a huge influence in her life. Over lunch I said, I’m going to be talking to Sharon, what would you ask? And she said something that’s so true, something I’ve heard from many people and know from my own experience: you talk so candidly about your own experience, and the human experience, in a way that’s quite uncommon. Just being fully human and sharing your experience. Because it’s so easy to see someone at the front of the room teaching meditation and imagine, wow, they’ve got it all figured out, this perfect life — and here I am, a distracted, anxious mess.

I think that’s one of the reasons your teachings resonate so deeply. With all these decades of working directly with people, hearing from thousands of them, what are the things that either trip us up — the common stumbling blocks early on — or the things that inspire and unlock us when we hear the right thing at the right time?

(09:35) What actually trips people up

Sharon Salzberg

Well, I think we — including myself — bring some of our greatest patterns into the meditative process. Especially a kind of harsh self-criticism, which I’ve seen over and over. Even people in really difficult situations, really hard diagnoses, something hard to bear. Sometimes I listen and think, give yourself a break — this is hard, look what you’re going through. That’s one of the reasons I found loving-kindness practice, and the understanding that we can grow in other ways rather than punishing ourselves for our mistakes. We can move on. We can learn to begin again. There’s resilience there. I’ve found that a huge help for a lot of people.

Somebody asked me the other day whether I wanted to teach Buddhism or better mental health. And I said, mental health is not that high right now. So many people feel broken and lonely and estranged and confused. Of course we always do to some degree, but it feels so exaggerated now, so emphasized. For people to have a sense of not being so alone, and caring about themselves and about one another, having a greater sense of community — that seems to be what we can offer these days.

Cort Dahl

That’s so helpful. Richie, any thoughts from you, having explored the same territory yourself, both personally and in your work?

Richie Davidson

In terms of the situation today, it really is true. I often say we’re all part of a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. It’s a challenging time, and a lot of it is simply outside of our control. The one thing we have at least the possibility of exerting a little more control over is our own mind. So that’s a great place to start.

One of the things I love about your work, Sharon, and would love to hear more about, is that — at least I’ve found, being with different kinds of public audiences — giving them a simple taste of very ordinary but really nourishing connection, like a little hit of appreciation. Bring someone into your mind and your heart who’s been helpful to you, and just observe what happens. Being able to taste that little hit is really an elixir for the soul. And it’s very accessible. We don’t have to go to any special place or be in any special posture. We can do it anywhere, anytime — a phrase Mingyur Rinpoche uses for one of his programs. I’ve renamed it, everywhere, all the time, why not. I’d love to hear your reflections.

(13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”

Sharon Salzberg

There are many layers I want to respond to. One is that I’ve so appreciated your work and your use of the word connection. I’ve been struggling to translate metta, the Pali word for loving-kindness, because loving-kindness is such an odd term. You wouldn’t necessarily be in a coffee shop and hear the people at the next table talking about loving-kindness, except maybe in a hyper-religious context. My concern is that it makes the quality seem somewhat arcane and removed from day-to-day life, precious in the negative sense.

Translators and scholars have said to me, stop being so cutesy, just say love — that’s what you mean. And that of course is a complicated term. What do we mean when we say love? How often is it a medium of exchange, or, I’ll love myself as long as I never make a mistake — something so fragile and breakable. My favorite translation is connection. There’s a classical translation as friendship, but my concern with friendship is that the development of qualities like loving-kindness or compassion doesn’t mandate a certain kind of action. When I think of friendship, I think, let’s go to the movies, let’s spend time together. And it may be that your heart is genuinely full of loving-kindness or compassion for someone, and discernment, wisdom, understanding is saying, don’t go there — it’s not safe, or it’s not appropriate. There’s such a great fear that if I develop more metta, more loving-kindness, I’ll have to say yes, I have to smile, I have to give in. And we don’t have to do anything. So I really prefer the word connection to any other word.

I love the idea of appreciation, just for a moment. It’s part of what I like to teach if I’m going into a company or an organization. There are two reflections. One is, can you express appreciation to somebody, anybody? Because we’re also culturally tuned to feel we’ll feel better about ourselves if we can put other people down — a kind of culture of degradation.

Richie Davidson

And that’s particularly true in the university, by the way.

Sharon Salzberg

That’s scary and sad. People get into that, and there’s a lot of loneliness right there — hyper-competitive, constantly putting other people down. So I see all of Dharma practice as an experiment. Are you willing to step out of those familiar ruts — go into work and express some appreciation for somebody? The other reflection is interconnection. My favorite question in a group of people who work together: how many other people have to do their job well for you to do your job well? Sometimes that doesn’t resonate, so I say, do you commute? Do you ever think about the bus driver, the engineer, the car mechanic? And if you don’t commute, there’s certainly some technology involved. And if that doesn’t resonate — have you eaten today? You don’t grow all your own food. Just think about that: our lives, truly, realistically, are part of a network. We can feel so alone and cut off, but the truth is we’re connected. So let’s make an experiment, do these reflections, and see what happens.

Cort Dahl

I realize I skipped a step that Richie and I do every single time. Usually before we hit record, we do a little practice to set our motivation — to be of benefit, wanting whatever comes of the work to help people. Richie talked about having a little taste. Sharon, would you be willing to lead a little practice, just to give us an experiential taste of what we’re talking about, and then we can keep going?

(18:30) A guided reflection

Sharon Salzberg

Sure. I’ll do a reflection based on what I just said. You can sit comfortably, close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. We’re just going to spend a few moments bringing to mind anyone who has somehow had a role in your being here right now. Somebody told you about their meditation practice, or the science, or this podcast. Somebody read you a poem or played you a piece of music. There was some opening somewhere. Maybe you’ve never met these people who come to mind. Maybe you were inspired from afar. Just see who comes up.

Every time I do this reflection, I think about the Board of Regents of the State of New York, which gave me a scholarship, which was how I was able to go to college, which is how I ended up in India as an independent study project, which is a big reason I’m here now.

Sometimes I do this reflection and think about those people whose actions have really hurt me — not the ones I just found annoying, but the times I felt I was at an edge and had to find a different way to live or think. Because they’re part of why I’m here right now too.

Just who comes to mind.

And you can extend a sense of recognition to all of these different beings, because this moment in time is a confluence of connection, relationship, influence, interaction. However alone we sometimes feel or cut off, this is the truth of our experience.

And you can open your eyes, or lift your gaze, and we can end that reflection.

(21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person

Cort Dahl

So beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. When I first started these practices, I’d been doing mindfulness for probably seven or eight years. Then I encountered some teachers, and for me the first practice more in this heart-connection space was sending and taking, often referred to as tonglen, very much in the space of loving-kindness and compassion. It was very interesting what it did. One of the first things I noticed was that it brought up an intense feeling of vulnerability. The way it manifested was, I’d be having a conversation with somebody, and out of the blue I’d start blushing. And I come from a long line of Olympic-level blushers — Scandinavian complexion, maybe. It’s very visible, there’s no hiding. This went on for months. Almost every interaction, for no reason at all, I’d feel this naked vulnerability. And it was just connecting with people, actually. I didn’t see it at all until that moment. But when I started these practices, I started to see how guarded I was a lot of the time — a weird protective mechanism I hadn’t even been aware of. That feeling of vulnerability, which weirdly manifested as blushing, was just genuine connection with people, but in a raw way I wasn’t used to. It was actually hard. Not easy for me. Inspiring, and I was seeing things about myself I hadn’t seen before, but challenging territory, and totally unexpected. So I’m wondering if you could talk about vulnerability, and the power of working with it in practice despite the discomfort.

Sharon Salzberg

It’s a really fascinating thing to explore — the components. I don’t know that this was your experience at all, but it’s common for people to feel somehow responsible for fixing a situation if someone else is expressing pain. Not only do we feel it with the kind of sensitivity you’re describing, but it enters us in some strange way, things get distorted, and we get this hyper-sense of responsibility — I’ve got to fix it. We’d call that a real imbalance. Maybe there’s a lot more compassion for someone else than there is for us, or maybe there’s not enough wisdom for correct boundaries or discernment. The combination of the sensitivity with the wisdom, we’d call equanimity. It’s a kind of balance.

We are conditioned, by and large, to look the other way in terms of other people’s situations. And my favorite part of loving-kindness practice, actually, is loving-kindness for a neutral person — someone we don’t especially like or dislike, someone we feel kind of neutral toward. Usually people pick somebody like the checkout person at the grocery store, someone they see but have no real sense of connection to. I love it, because over time, here’s someone we usually objectify, overlook, look through instead of look at — and as we do the practice, offering them attention, may you be happy, may you be peaceful, something actually grows inside us. People come back with incredible stories. Like, I fell in love with my dry cleaner. I said to this woman — well, I didn’t say it, she could see it on my face — I thought they were dating. And she said, no, no, not romantically. He’s my neutral person in my practice. Every day I call him to mind and wish him well. And now I go into the store and it’s like we’re on the same team. So you’re also confronting all that conditioning of, look the other way, they’re not really people, they’re just utilities — not to mention bias or prejudice, which fits in there too, the other who doesn’t count. The more we tune into people and realize they do count, that we’re part of this whole, we’ll have the effect of that. But that effect needs to be balanced.

Richie Davidson

The piece about neutral people is so powerful. One of the greatest teachings for me has been being with the Dalai Lama at major formal events, where there are, quote, lots of important people around. And then he’ll go out through a side entrance, and he’ll stop and greet all the custodians, all the kitchen people, the security people, and he treats them exactly the same as the important people. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. When you see that in practice — when you see him stopping and holding them and asking how they’re doing — it’s such a powerful reminder that this really is accessible, and it can totally change our life. Our everyday life becomes all of these really nourishing moments of connection.

(28:10) Attention, and what the science shows

Sharon Salzberg

You’re reminding me that so many times we can understand connection, or loving-kindness, or compassion, as an emergent property of paying attention. If we’re more present and listening, that’s where the connection is born — which is a nicer way of realizing it, rather than thinking I’ve got to drum up some feeling I don’t really have, and manufacture it.

Cort Dahl

That’s what stands out to me about the story of you on the crutches — it wasn’t as though he’d memorized some rulebook of elevated compassion. He was totally tuned in to what was going on in the moment, and who was in front of him. And conversely, the vulnerability I felt was seeing how many of my interactions are governed by a script — this is what I say or do in this situation — rather than being fully there, authentic and spontaneous. There was something in that Dalai Lama story that felt like that spontaneity of really being there and seeing what’s actually happening. You don’t have to have some feeling or thought or impulse; it’s just a natural response, because you’re fully tuned in. It’s so beautiful. But getting there, from where a lot of us live, is kind of awkward, honestly. We’re relearning how to be human and connected without that rawness where we feel threatened or awkward.

Sharon Salzberg

That’s another reason it’s reassuring to have a sense of community. You’re not the only one making this experiment. And I’m curious — do you still blush, or is that over?

Cort Dahl

Occasionally I do. One of the few times I blush these days is actually when I tell that story. But it was a great practice, because it went on for months and was so inescapable. It was very clear: I could either go lock myself in my room and isolate, which clearly wasn’t healthy, or I was going to have to apply the practice I was learning. It was two things. One was to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, and, as you said, go easy on myself — I’d had a lot of social anxiety and thought I was past it, and then here it was again. So, not beating myself up, and really just feeling it fully. And then staying in that space of connection where the vulnerability was almost a practice of staying in the rawness of it — being human, being my messy self, and not having to fix anything. That was the practice, rather than, I will transcend this and no longer feel it. It was, no, okay, maybe this is the rest of my life, I’m just going to have this. So it was less about whether I blush anymore and more a comfort with the whole cascade — okay, I can let this play out, and it’s fine. But that took practice. The universe gave me a lot of opportunities.

I wonder if we could shift gears a little. You wrote Loving-Kindness and started teaching this back in the nineties, when mindfulness wasn’t even a thing yet — it became the big thing decades later. This was a pretty new practice coming into the more secular meditation world, and even in Buddhist circles it wasn’t nearly as well known as it is now. For a lot of traditions, it feels like there’s a sequence — you start with awareness or mindfulness practices, then move on to these. Richie, maybe you could tee this up, since it’s also a scientific question.

Richie Davidson

Sure, and thank you for teeing it up, Cort. Some of this emerged in the context of the book Danny Goleman and I wrote, Altered Traits, published in 2017. When we wrote it, we reviewed the scientific literature on meditation. There were, and still are, many more studies on mindfulness-type practices than on loving-kindness and compassion practices, but a scientific literature was beginning — and Sharon, I know you yourself have contributed to that, in work you’ve done with various scientists. One of the things we observed was that there was evidence of benefits measured with very short periods of practice. And it seemed then, and I believe it’s still the case, that on a variety of standardized measures — some of which you might think of as objective measures, meaning they don’t depend on a person’s own self-report — benefits emerge with loving-kindness and compassion practices pretty quickly. At least there’s some evidence for that.

In the work Cort and I have been doing, in developing our Healthy Minds Program, which includes practices of awareness as well as connection and others, one of the things we notice is that some people prefer to start with connection. In the standard sequence, as Cort mentioned, we typically invite people to do awareness or mindfulness practices first. And the last piece — then I’ll stop and love to hear your thoughts — is just to acknowledge that one size does not fit all. There are many different paths, and it’s probably a bit of hubris to think there’s a single path that’s best for everyone. So I wonder what your thoughts are, given the range of your teaching experience — if there are essential insights you can share.

(36:26) The obstacles, and where to start

Sharon Salzberg

I often think one of the greatest obstacles to practicing loving-kindness — and I teach it in a pretty classical way, repeating phrases, making that offering to yourself and to others — is even believing it’s not stupid. Having some sense that it’s a powerful way of being, rather than the doormat endlessly smiling at nothing. That’s a particularly Western problem, I’ve found — people think it’s a gift: you’ve either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’re out of luck. Whereas in the East it certainly can be trained, because it’s an emergent property of how we pay attention, and we know attention can be trained. That’s exactly what meditation practice does. If people don’t get stuck on those issues, many find it an easier practice to begin with. It’s meaningful, it’s opening, and it’s often easier to concentrate — the breath can be a bit of a soporific and then you’re asleep, but here you’re making an offering, there’s imagery, something very alive about that sense of connection. People may come from a faith tradition that has the principles, if not the practices, embedded in it, so it feels like coming home to something precious. And they say the Buddha taught it as the antidote to fear. As a remedy for anxiety, it’s the exact parallel for our time, which is a pretty anxious time. So I’ve found many people do find it easier, if they can only trust it.

Cort Dahl

Do you have a sense of the easiest entry point? These days there’s a lot of talk about self-compassion, and it’s even, I wouldn’t say controversial, but in more traditional formulations sometimes it’s not a thing at all. In the Tibetan tradition you go to a loved one, a neutral person, difficult people, all beings — and you sort of bypass the self. And these days so many of us have so much self-hatred or fear toward ourselves. In all your years teaching, what have you found to be the easiest entry point for people just getting going, if this is new territory?

Sharon Salzberg

Funny that you say that about neutral people. I’ve always wondered about the social etiquette of telling somebody after a retreat, you were my neutral person — I found you totally neutral, really kind of indifferent to you. Anyway. Some of it is a sense of — which is hard if you’re teaching via an app, reaching a large number of people — sensing the person, and also receiving feedback. I was once doing a program with Barbara Fredrickson, who had done research into loving-kindness meditation. We were on stage, and she said she felt it was very important for people within a couple of weeks to have some sense of the effect of the practice, or they’d get too discouraged and stop. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself — which, in the Burmese or Theravada tradition, you do; you start with the offering of loving-kindness to yourself, then move on to someone who’s helped you. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself, and that’s so hard for so many people. So I said, why don’t you change the order? Just change the order. And she said she felt at the time — though I know she’s changed her mind since — that she couldn’t, because of scientific research needs for things to be in the same sequence. I realized at that point we had two different goals. I’d change the order in ten seconds if someone was in front of me and it was too much of a struggle. You do start classically with yourself, offering loving-kindness to yourself, but you don’t have to.

I find there are problems all along the way, truly. It takes a sense of investigation and experimentation, and not feeling so alone in your practice. People have said to me, I don’t have any benefactors — that’s the classical term for those who’ve helped us — I don’t have anybody. Somebody said, I had an unprotected childhood, I’ve never had people on my side. And you think, well, that’s a problem too. Even though we say, just move to the benefactor, it’ll be all shiny and you’ll feel there’s love in the universe — not always. So it’s a process of figuring out where that entry point is. As a growth experiment, it takes time and repetition. And the openings, which are genuine and real and liberating, may not be evidenced in your formal meditation practice. They’re shown in your life, which is where it counts — because that’s where we actually need it, but we don’t always think to look there. People think, I still don’t have these great waves of loving feeling. And it really doesn’t matter, because when we’re interacting with a stranger, or we’ve made a mistake and see how we speak to ourselves, we start to see the shadings of difference. That takes great patience too. How do you know if it’s working? It depends on where you look to see the effect.

It’s a practice that isn’t formulaic, even though you’re repeating phrases. It’s very creative. The principle I was taught when I did it intensively in Burma was that it needs to be done in the easiest way possible. And that’s hard. If it’s too hard to offer loving-kindness to yourself, move on to someone else. There’s another category in the sequence, over time — a difficult person. And it’s said to best be a mildly difficult person, not the person at first, not the one who’s harmed us horrifically or behaved so terribly on the world stage — that’s nearly impossible. Start with someone who’s just a little bit of unease, and over time move on. But I’ve found this is often a place — it certainly was in me — where people don’t like it. They say, don’t you think I can do the real thing? Why, do you think I’m a coward? What about this horrible person? That tendency to do something in the hardest way possible doesn’t really fit this approach. So that’s a whole concept of learning as well.

Cort Dahl

I love the playful experimentation. That’s the challenge — you read a book or hear a teaching, it’s presented in some way, and there’s a sense of, I should fit myself into that progression. What you’re saying, which I can see — not necessarily in the way the Tibetan approach is presented, but you can intuit how it evolved — is that they found something that worked for them culturally. In Tibet, the way it’s often presented, they start with a loved one, and specifically your mother. In Tibet, mothers are like deities, revered like no other culture I’ve seen. So it makes perfect sense to start there — there’s a natural sense of gratitude and connection and nurturing. And of course, whatever you want to say about other cultures, certainly here in the US we have some complexity in our experiences with our parents. I think that’s the first thing the Tibetans learned — that people aren’t responding in that intuitive way. But what you’re saying is, you look for the in, the connection point. Where is it easy? Where is it natural? And you nurture that. Where can you get the spark? If it’s not happening, you don’t just keep doing something that’s clearly not working. Once you have the spark, you keep it alive and extend it to something gradually more challenging. Most of us hear a teaching and think, that’s the right way, now I need to do it that way, and if it’s not working, somehow it’s my fault. It’s not easy. Richie, do you remember your early experiences with these practices, and what resonated with you?

(46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice

Richie Davidson

First, I think this last bit of conversation is so important — this theme of not fighting with your mind, approaching it with curiosity and openness, and exploring what might be the natural opening, the natural door you can go through. It’s not going to be the same for each person, and that’s fine. That’s the nature of being human. We’re different. I really love that, and it resonates deeply with the approach we often take.

For me, when I first discovered these practices of loving-kindness and compassion — I’m just naturally a touchy-feely guy, and I needed this. I needed my heart to be nourished.

Cort Dahl

For the record, that is an understatement. In the best possible way.

Richie Davidson

So it was really important to me. One of the things that’s been such a blessing is developing little rituals I bring to my everyday life, where these practices are so much a part of what I do every day. From making tea in the morning for my wife, to — when we had cats; our kitty recently passed away, so it’s no longer a ritual — but I used to scoop the cat litter every night and do it as a practice. It’s just a little shift of mindset, and what might ordinarily be a yucky chore became something I actually looked forward to. It was beautiful — done as an offering, an appreciation.

You alluded to this earlier, Sharon. One of the things we humans do pretty much every day is eat. And it doesn’t take much reflection to recognize how unbelievably interdependent we are. To get food on our plate requires this extraordinary village. That sense of appreciation for interdependence — we talk about this in our book; there’s a chapter on developing daily habits by piggybacking them onto activities of daily living, like eating. To use a bit of psychological jargon that conveys something important — the term is affordance. Eating is an affordance for the expression of appreciation and the recognition of interdependence. The very moment you’re sitting down to eat, it automatically arises. And being able to do this in your everyday life, a few times a day, every day — it changes you. It’s why we’ve come to the view, and we actually have evidence now to support this, that it’s easier than you think. It doesn’t take much to get these circuits of the mind going, or circuits of the heart, because this is who we are. This is our nature. We’re just recognizing it.

Sharon Salzberg

It’s beautiful. One of my students, to my eternal amusement, coined the phrase micro-dosing loving-kindness — for exactly that. You sit down to a meal and spend a few moments. Or I have a friend who looks at all the little faces in the boxes of a Zoom meeting and thinks, may you be happy. You have to be silent in a lot of those circumstances, but you make that offering, and then you start the meeting.

(52:00) Parting thoughts

Cort Dahl

I can’t believe we’re already at the end of our time. It feels like we could go for a few more hours. Maybe to end — if you have any parting thoughts. To state the obvious, we’re in an era pervaded by a feeling of division and a lack of connection. We might have connection with our close circle, but so much division outside of that. Any parting thoughts, individually or collectively, on how we can bring more of this into our lives, wherever we are on the path?

Sharon Salzberg

I love what Richie was just saying. We can do it, and we don’t have to think of it as this monumental task. It’s just, okay, this meal, this moment. It really makes a difference.

Cort Dahl

On that note, we’ll end with a note of gratitude to you, Sharon, for all the incredible work, the tireless effort to share these practices and ideas with so many people. I know it’s made a huge impact on our lives, even our scientific work, and on so many others. It’s been an honor to have you on for this conversation. I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done and continue to do.

Sharon Salzberg

Well, thank you so much.

Richie Davidson

Deep bows, deep bows. One of the things we didn’t mention is that Sharon taught the very first meditation retreat for scientists at IMS, sponsored by Mind and Life. That was a pivotal moment for sharing these practices with the scientific community. I’m just so grateful for your dedication, and your indefatigable effort to bring the Dharma to the West. So thank you.

Sharon Salzberg

Thank you. Thank you both.

Cortland Dahl

To be continued. We hope to have you on again sometime. Thank you, Sharon.

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