Science-Based Meditation Tools to Improve Your Brain & Health | Dr. Richard Davidson

We actually have really good data on this that at least for beginning meditators, if you do it for 30 days and you do it just five minutes a day, you will see a significant reduction in symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, and symptoms of stress. We've shown that repeatedly in randomized control trials. You'll see an increase on measures of well-being or flourishing, and we can talk about what those actually mean. You can even see just with this amount of practice a reduction in IL6. IL6 is a pro-inflammatory cytoine. Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Richie Davidson. Dr. Dr. Richie Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He is a pioneer in the study of how meditation impacts the brain both during meditations but also how it changes your brain over time, what we refer to as neuroplasticity. Today we discuss the incredible health and neuroplasticity benefits that come from regular meditation, including very brief meditations of just 5 minutes per day. Dr. Davidson also dispels many common myths about meditation. For example, contrary to what most people believe, the point of meditation is not to clear your mind or to feel inner peace during the meditation, but rather to observe your thoughts and any stress you might experience during the meditation. And in doing so, it's kind of like the final hard repetitions of resistance exercise or the burn you might feel during cardio, which comes from lactate. In that sense, the stress you feel during meditation and your ability to observe it acts as a sort of lactate of the mind that in turn makes you adapt. It makes you more stress resilient, focused, and peaceful outside of the meditation. Dr. Davidson also explains how your brain changes during different types of meditation such as open monitoring meditation or eyes open meditation, walking versus seated, and standing meditations, and more. I've been doing meditation over many years, but this conversation with Dr. Richie Davidson changed my daily routine. Afterwards, I immediately started implementing a 5-minute perday meditation of the sort that Dr. Davidson describes specifically for stress resilience. And I have to say it's had a profound impact on my levels of mental clarity, focus, and sleep and stress, just as he explains. In fact, it's proved to be one of the most beneficial practices I've taken on, especially on days when I wake up with tons to do, a little bit stressed or a lot stressed, and if I didn't sleep quite as well as I would have liked. So today you're going to hear about the incredible science of meditation, the brain and bodily changes that occur, but also how you can rewire your brain using meditation. Dr. Richie Davidson is a true pioneer in this field, being one of the first to bring brain imaging and studies of mindfulness and meditation to the west. He has of course authored some of the most impactful research papers on these topics, but also popular books, including a new book coming out later this month entitled Born to Flourish: How to Thrive in a Challenging World, which I myself look forward to reading. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Richie Davidson. Dr. Richie Davidson, welcome. Thank you, Andrew. I'm honored to be here. Well, it's an honor to have you here. I am a longtime fan of your research, of what you've built at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, uh the books you've written. We'll talk about your new book. I didn't even know you had a new book. This wasn't a book tour invite. I had se uh seen you give a seminar at Stanford and I said great, here's my opportunity to finally get you on the podcast. But you really transformed the way that I think about not just meditation but all states of mind and how that relates to our individual traits and how those can change over time. Today we'll talk about concept and protocols, but I'm curious how you think about states of mind generally. I think it's really important that we frame the discussion with this because we all know what sleep is. Most people have heard that sleep has different components, REM sleep, etc. We know what it is to be awake, stressed versus calm. But how should we think about states of mind? And then once you tell us how you think about that, perhaps then we can better place this thing we call meditation into a particular bin. So thank you first for having me, Andrew. And I've just want to say I've been a long-term fan of yours. So, uh, uh, I'm really happy to be here. Uh, in terms of states of mind, I think that at the outset, it's really important that we, uh, also remind listeners that there is a thing called traits, too. And so, we can't talk about states without also talking about traits. And we'll get to traits in a moment. But I think with regard to states, we can think of them as organized patterns of activity in the brain that have corresponding uh uh organized mental coralates, if you will, or subjective coralates. And there are certain states that occur with regularity that are part of our biological rhythms. And so um most human beings will have states of wakefulness of deep sleep and of REM sleep every day and that is regulated by well-known kinds of biological rhythms. And then there are other kinds of states that uh are sometimes described that are states during what we normally think of as waking. Although I think honestly the concept of state is often used loosely without um rigorous uh boundary criteria for what constitutes a state and how it might be distinguished from another state. There are certain states which if they occur with regularity will lead to a trait. They'll lead to a shift in the baseline for the next state. Mhm. There was a paper I wrote many many years ago with my dear friend and colleague um Daniel Gleman who I wrote the book Altered Traits with. Uh and the origin of altered traits is really in a sentence that we wrote in a paper 20 years earlier where we said the after is the before for the next during. The after is the before. For the next during. Let's drill into that for a second. Yeah. So what we mean by that is that the how you are after a state say you you do a little meditation practice and it leads to a state change. uh that state change may persist in some way and that becomes the next before for the next during. The during is the state is the say the meditation state and so it's a description of how a state can lead to a trait in the domain of emotion. You might think that frequent bouts of anger which you can think of as a state can lead to the trait of irritability which is sort of chronically having a low threshold. You can think of a trait in certain cases as altering the threshold for the elicitation of a state. So a trait of irritability would be uh a trait where you have a lowered threshold for the elicitation of anger. for example. Mhm. Yeah. I love that example because I know that many people will resonate with it because so much of what we see online nowadays is designed to capture our attention by engaging negative affect mild anger, frustration or even outrage. There's other content online too of course and this podcast is online after all um and many other uh sources of what I consider benevolent educational information. But it is so true that you know what we experience in one portion of our day impacts how we are in the rest of our day. And perhaps the simplest correlate for all of it for me anyway is sleep. You know if I sleep really well for three or four nights in a row I wake up in a certain state that certainly makes my day go differently. And the inverse is also true if I don't sleep well. I feel like we have such great nomenclature and understanding of brain activity um and how that impacts emotionality for sleep. We know that REM sleepbased dreams are very vivid. Uh slowwave sleepbased dreams are less vivid perhaps. We know the electrical activities associated with those different states of sleep. I'm aware of a lot less information about brain activities and and clear definitions of waking states of mind. Do you mind if we talk about this for a little bit? Sure. It's been a few years since I've heard about and I don't think we've ever really talked on this podcast about, you know, alpha waves, beta waves, theta waves. Maybe you just educate us a bit on some of the waking brain states that we've all experienced perhaps are in right now, but we just don't hear about that much anymore. So yeah, we can talk about those um oscillations of brain electrical activity and there are broad suggestions for what kind of state they may reflect. Um uh and you know I'll go through that but it's also important to recognize that you can be showing alpha activity in one part of the brain and beta activity in another part of the brain simultaneously. And so it's a bit coarse to talk about these as general characteristics. But there could be times when we see predominantly one oscillation or another. And so talking about generalized states in that context may be more reasonable. So with that as a caveat, let me say that in um in humans we see uh a broad range of frequencies that go from approximately one hertz, one cycle per second to approximately 40 hertz. And from roughly 1 to four hertz is delta activity that is typically not seen during waking. Uh it's predominant during deep sleep. And there is data that suggests that the density of uh delta activity or slowwave activity during deep sleep is actually diagnostic of how restorative that sleep is which is a whole separate set of issues and super cool. And there are actually some really interesting um highly novel strategies now using neuro stimulation to actually boost slowwave activity during deep sleep which may actually help to potentiate some of the skill acquisition that we do during the day including meditation. And we're doing some of that work now and which is actually you had asked earlier before we started about some novel new work um that we're doing and that's also one of the really cool new things um uh so we can dive into that. I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors David. David makes protein bars unlike any other. Their newest bar, the Bronze Bar, has 20 gram of protein, only 150 calories, and zero gram of sugar. I have to say these are the best tasting protein bars I've ever had and I've tried a lot of protein bars over the years. These new David bars have a marshmallow base and they're covered in chocolate coating and they're absolutely incredible. I of course eat regular whole foods. 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Again, to get the fifth carton for free, go to Today's episode is also brought to us by EightLe. 8LE makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3°. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about 1 to 3°. Eight automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an eightle mattress cover for nearly 5 years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. The latest EightLe model is the Pod 5. This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely love it. It has so many incredible features. For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called autopilot, which is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. If you'd like to try eight, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5. Eightlee ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eight.com/huberman to save up to $350. I saw a paper recently that described a, and forgive me if this was one of your papers, um, I don't think it was, it described a pre-sleep meditation that one could do to significantly increase the amount of growth hormone that's released once one gets to sleep. And I thought that wasn't and I thought this can't and then I I realized this makes total sense, right? I mean, it's it has to do with I forget the the sentence he wrote, but that how we exit one state impacts how we encounter the next one. Yeah. And perhaps even our trait within uh uh that next event of life. Um so we'll definitely get back to this when we talk about protocols because I think that people vastly underestimate the extent to which um different uh let's call them meditations for lack of a better word uh right now how that can impact how we show up to work how we show up to relating how we show up even to sleep. Absolutely. And it's not just about being calm so you can fall asleep. Turns out this meditation that was described um boosts growth hormone in a you know incredible way um without altering some of the other features of sleep. I saw that paper too. Okay. It wasn't ours. Yeah. Uh but yeah, super interesting. I I agree. Yeah. So, just to continue with the brain oscillations, I talked about delta. The next brain the next faster brain rhythm is theta activity which is roughly between five and seven hertz. Um theta activity is often seen uh during transition from wakefulness to sleep. Uh and it's associated with these um uh as you were saying earlier these liinal states. It's also been associated with certain kinds of meditation. Alpha activity is roughly between 8 and 13 cycles per second or hertz. And uh it's often characterized as quote relaxed wakefulness. Beta activity is uh typically defined as roughly 13 to roughly 20 hertz and uh it's associated with uh activation. uh if there is a cognitive task that a person is engaged in uh you will typically see increases in beta activity um particularly in the cortical regions that are engaged in those cognitive tasks. And then finally there's gamma activity. Gamma activity is especially interesting. We see that in meditators uh long-term meditators. Gamma activity has as its um peak frequency roughly 40 hertz. It is seen in a number of contexts. One of them is during what some have called insight. Uh and insight is where uh I think most viewers have had the experience of um working on a problem and all of a sudden they they just have an aha moment. Uh and things sort of gel. They congeal. Uh they come together. And there have been some clever experimental designs where investigators have created tasks that increase the likelihood of aha moments. They're sort of trivial uh in the experimental context or simple cognitive tasks where all of a sudden you just recognize the answer. It might be something like a cross word puzzle and um you know you're trying to get something a word to fit and suddenly you get the word it comes in a moment and it's kind of an instantaneous recognition and you typically would see a burst of gamma oscillations that is very short it the average duration would be around 250 milliseconds really short what we see in these long-term meditators is the prevalence of high amplitude gamma activity that goes on for seconds and minutes. When we first saw that, by the way, and there's a lot of interesting history here, but we first reported this in 2004 with very long-term meditators where the average lifetime practice of this group was 34,000 hours. Um, listeners can do go do the arithmetic later, but 34,000 hours is a big number. And in these practitioners, we saw these really high amplitude gamma oscillations that actually were visible to the naked eye, which is unusual for this kind of measurement. Uh, and in the original paper, which was published in PNAS in 2004, we actually had a figure of the raw EEG from one practitioner just to illustrate how prominent it is that you can see it with the naked eye. And we've subsequently replicated that. It's been replicated by others. We've also seen that this gamma activity is um found during slowwave sleep. It's actually superimposed on delta oscillations. Is there any evidence that meditation can actually replace sleep or that it can offset some of the negative effects of sleep depriv mild sleep deprivation? This is a great question. I think about it a lot. I don't think that the evidence is is clear on this at all. Um, and I'll give several examples. First, the Daly Lama, who probably meditates more than anybody I know, he has a practice of literally doing approximately 4 hours of meditation every day. And he's been doing that for more than 60 years. I'm reassured by that. If you told me the Daly Lama meditates for, you know, 40 minutes a week, I'd actually be concerned about the role of Don Daly Lama. So the title, you know, so and he very proudly says, "I sleep 9 hours a night." Wow. Okay. Nine hours a night. And he gets nine hours of sleep. That's his regular sleep. Uh and he gets it all the time. And you know, I don't know whether he would say he needs it, but he gets nine hours a night. And he's very proud of that. Uh okay, that's one counter example. You know, myself, I have done a bunch of um sleep science with collaborating with some sleep researchers, and many years ago, one of these people said to me, Richie, you really should give up an alarm clock. Just don't use an alarm clock anymore. Uh and I was getting at that time between 5 and a half and 6 hours a night of sleep. And I gave up the alarm clock and my average length of sleep increased by about 30 to 45 minutes. And I feel much better. Oh, sure. Especially since the extra sleep tends to be toward morning, you're getting more REM sleep. But the difference for me between 5 and a half and, you know, six or six and a half is in terms of just subjective well-being and focus, etc. is uh tremendous. Slightly related question. If one were going to choose to meditate and had the option to do it at a sort of liinal state between let's say uh being awake and going to sleep at night or between sleep um and what shortly after one wakes up and starting the day versus in the middle of the day or in the middle of the morning. Is there any advantage to placing meditation in one of these what I'm calling liinal states or transition states between sleeping and awake in either direction? I would say probably for most people yes is the answer but I think there's a lot of individual variability. In general I would say it's useful to meditate when you're feeling most awake uh and uh less sleepy. Sleepiness is uh an important obstacle in meditation and there's a lot to say about that. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear that. I expected you to say that one should meditate at a time when the brain is closest to sleep because you want to be in a a state of mind that's less about controlling your thoughts. But then again, I could also see an argument for how meditation it involves a redirect of attention. Um, so let's actually drill into this a bit. What is the meditative state that that one is seeking for quote unquote effective meditation? Yeah. So, first let me um say that just like there are hundreds of different kinds of sports, there are hundreds of different different kinds of meditation. They don't all do the same thing. They have different effects on the brain and the body. And so I think it's really important that we not lump all of meditation together. Uh uh so that's one really important thing. Can we divide it up? So for instance, if we were going to draw the parallel with exercise, and maybe we'll do that several times today, we can broadly lump exercise into cardiovascular and resistance training. There's also mobility work, and then and then there's a bunch of other stuff with meditation. Can we create some broad bins? Yes. And what are those broad bins? And then we can go into specific practices. Yeah. So yes, we can create some broad bins. So, and we've done that. We've published some papers uh that uh offer typologies for classifying different meditation states. So um one kind of meditation we call focused attention meditation and focused attention meditation is um where you are narrowing your uh aperture of awareness to a specific uh object. It could be an external object. It could also be an internal. It could be for example your respiration. uh it could be a sound and there is a narrowing of the aperture and this is all broadly within the category of practices that we would say uh are uh cultivating aspects of awareness. So another awareness practice is what we call open monitoring meditation and open monitoring is where there is no specific focus. Um but rather the aperture is broadened and there is no specific intention to focus on any one thing or another. The invitation is to simply be aware of whatever is arising as it arises. One of the aspirations there or the invitations is not to um try to get rid of thoughts because our minds and our brains are built to generate thoughts. So there's no um goal if you will to get rid of thoughts but rather to if thoughts arise that's another object that you can be aware of. You know we talked about sleep and and sleepiness and and that earlier you can even you know you can do you can be aware of being sleepy. You can be aware of being distracted. The goal, if you will, is not to change or to fix anything, if you will. The the invitation is to shift from a mode of doing to a mode of simply being. I want to talk about this thing about doing to being. um because the language can sound a bit mystical and vague to people, but as a longtime practitioner of yoga nidra, um I've talked a lot about on this podcast, there's this instruction inside of yoga nidra to shift from thinking and doing to being and feeling. Exactly. Which is beautiful language, poetic, etc. But also as neuroscientists and for the general public, I think it might be useful for us to just maybe just double click on that for one second. As a neuroscientist, I think of thinking and doing as okay, doing is action. Um, so that would the opposite of that would be stop moving the body. Um, thinking uh well there's a whole discussion to be had about what is thinking in neuroscience. Um, but certainly you wouldn't want to plan. You wouldn't want to be ruminating on the past. Presumably, you would want to be more in a state of sensation and perceiving what's happening right now. So, is that an appropriate breakdown or is it um is it wrong? Is it insufficient? I'm not trying to score an A with the professor here. I'm just trying to I'm trying to figure out when we hear move from thinking and doing to being and feeling, what does that mean in terms of actionable steps that people can take? Yeah. So I think that the way you describe it is basically accurate with a little bit of um perhaps uh tweak. Uh so if if when uh if one is invited to do this and one finds oneself ruminating or planning for example which is supposedly an activity you're quote not supposed to be doing you know rather than trying to stop it um it's simply to be aware of it. Wow I'm now planning or I'm now ruminating about something that happened in the past. What really is most important is the invitation not to change it, not to actively try to shift it, but to simply be aware. Um, and one of the, I think, conjectures in all of this is that there's so much going on under the hood that we're typically not aware of. You know our lives are moving at such a pace that the information that is transpiring uh is um is occurring at such a rapid rate that we are typically aware of only a small fraction of that. And this is a practice that's inviting you to simply um be aware of that. And uh uh and and you know, not doing is a helpful kind of thing because if we're if we're acting in the world, we obviously need to navigate and there are things we we obviously need to do to be safe and to protect ourselves and so forth. And so that will engage other mechanisms. I'm interested in um the possibility or maybe you've seen this in the data that there are at least two different types of people. People who for instance go through life feeling, doing, being, thinking, and projecting things out into the world. Or maybe they're quiet people and they don't project much out into the world, but they're just doing their thing. And they're not thinking about their thinking. They're not thinking about their doing. They're just doing. We know people like this. Then there are people who are always multitracking like uh you know they're self-conscious they're very self-aware and I'm wondering whether or not a form of meditation where somebody arrives at the meditation very self-aware like oh there's my thought about that again there's my thought about that again and working perhaps on not judging it could be beneficial but perhaps what that person quote unquote needs or would benefit from was just being in a state of of a freedom from their selfmonitoring whereas the other person perhaps could uh you know things clinician here could afford to be a little more self-aware and realize oh you know I'm in this mode where and see their thinking a little bit totally and and you're naming something super important uh and you know I think that the way you characterize the the second person who is more self-aware uh it's um there's more than just self-awareeness awareness in your description. There's a kind of holding back. Uh there uh it's not just monitoring, but there's a kind of suppression almost. It's a lot of work. And it's kind and it could be stifling for their creativity. Absolutely. We had my friend David Cho on the podcast. Now we're friends. That was actually the first time we had met, but we become good friends. And he's a brilliant artist. Brilliant artist. and he talks about how the best art comes from just forgetting what anyone thinks or wants. Um, you know, Rick Rubin talks about this, just getting the audience out of your mind and just letting it flow through you. And I think great artists do that and it's what we pay money to see. We want to see that form of expression. We don't want to see the self-monitoring artist. Yeah, that's great. Um, and I I totally resonate with that. And there is a um a phrase in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition um uh that is called undistracted non-meditation. Undistracted non-meditation. And that's said to be the highest form of meditation where you just drop all the crap, you know, all the the you know, all the techniques, all the control, all the tightness. This is my goal in life. Watch out folks if this ever happens. But you're totally awake. You're you're fully aware. Yeah. Uh but there's no artifice. There's no um uh it's just complete freedom. Uh and and there are, you know, I think there I I've had the um uh the honor of just hanging out with some people who I think are really in that as a trait. Um that that's who they are. Rick Rubin's like that. He's a close friend and I can tell you I've spent a lot of time with Rick and how he appears to people and his kind of mythical status. I think a lot of people his magneticism is because that's real. He can be in very very close proximity to things online, in person. He can see all of it. He's in real touch with it, but he's still him. somehow it doesn't invade him in a way that changes the way he shows up. He, you know, like if if we were to paint little uh beams of energy, now we're really sounding woo coming out of there's stuff coming out, there's stuff going in and they're interacting but they're not contaminating one another where they interact. It just makes both things better. Yeah. And that's a very very rare trait. Yeah, I agree. You know, there's a term that I often use which, you know, I can talk about how we can define this more technically, but for lack of a better word, I call stickiness. And it's kind of a an affective hysteresis, if you will. It's um it's kind of where, you know, you're hanging on to emotions that um that may not be useful. you're carrying stuff from a previous experience into a current experience and it muddles things. Uh, and you know the the our emotional lives are so infused with this kind of stickiness. But with like like with Rick Rubin uh or with other people who are showing this they're there there's no stickiness. Uh there's no stickiness. uh and you know that's a kind of um uh of freedom that uh I think is very much what we're talking about as the um trait manifestation of um these kinds of practices. Yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of people mistakenly use drugs to try and access that state. And I also think that we have a real um as a species, as a culture, but also as a species, we have a real affinity to people who can um embody this uh freedom that you're talking about. Great comedians. Like when Richard Prior was on, you're just like I mean you maybe he had a a subscript in there. Maybe he was devoting like 2% of his prefrontal cortex to monitoring, but it just seemed like we call it flow, but we're in their flow, they're in ours, whatever it is. There's a there's a powerful interaction there that there seems to be very little self-monitoring. Um, then there are a few other I mean I we see it in athletics. Yeah, totally. We we just see it. We can feel it and it's super powerful. And that's from the perspective of, you know, performing arts or comedic arts. But for people who want to approach meditation, would it do you think it's useful at all to ask themselves um before they go into the meditation, you know, are they in a are they in a mode of self-monitoring or are they in a kind of or are they more feeling more free, more present to just whatever they're it is they're experiencing it experiencing, not questioning it. Yeah. and asking them for do you think it's useful in order to get the most out of a meditation practice? I guess what I'm getting at indirectly here is most meditation practices involve shifting from doing one thing to maybe you're walking, maybe you're you're open eyes, but typically I think people either sit or lie down, close eyes and start focusing on their breathing and try and quote unquote get present. Is there anything? Well, the kind of practice that I most often do is actually with eyes open, but really Yeah. Oh, well then just tell us about that. What what would be a good um uh let's use the parallel to cardio again. I I would say if somebody is really out of shape and wants to get in shape, I would say the first thing is take two 20-minute walks a day and then we could talk about getting on a exercise bike and then maybe doing some resistance. You'd start layering things in, right? But what would be the equivalent of the two 20-minute walks a day for meditation? So this is the protocol question. I guess it's you know I would say it's really important to start modestly and we often will ask a person what's the minimum amount of meditation that you think you can commit to every single day and do it for 30 days consistently five minutes perfect whatever that number is perfect start with that and uh and then the next question is are you comfortable doing it formally as a seated practice ractice or would you prefer to do it while you're walking or while you're doing another non-cognitively demanding activity? It could be commuting. Uh it could be washing the dishes. Um there are lots of those kind of activities that we often do on a daily basis that uh you can actually intentionally use your mind in this way while you're also doing those activities. And by the way, we've shown, we actually have really good data on this, that at least for beginning meditators, it doesn't matter if you're doing it as a formal meditation practice or as an active practice, the benefits are absolutely comparable. And what are those benefits? So if you do it for 30 days and you do it just five minutes a day, you will see a significant reduction in symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, and symptoms of stress. We've shown that repeatedly in randomized control trials, you'll see an increase on measures of well-being or flourishing, and we can talk about what those actually mean. You can even see just with this amount of practice a reduction in IL6. IL6 is a pro-inflammatory cytoine. Uh that is important in uh systemic inflammation. Uh and with just this minimal amount of practice, you see a significant reduction in IL is 6 over the course of 28 days, 5 minutes a day. We've actually seen changes in the microbiome uh and we've seen changes in the brain. uh with just this minimal amount of practice. But the the important point is that you're doing it every day. When people ask me what's the best form of meditation that they should do if they're just beginning, I say the best form of meditation that you can possibly do is the form of meditation that you actually do. So figure out what that form of meditation is and then stick to it. Do it every single day. I love this. I I actually am going to challenge our podcast audience to five minutes a day for 30 days. I'll put something out on social media. Rob, please remind me. Um to put something out on social media to do uh 5 minutes a day for 30 days because what you describe are significant health effects. And and as you describe them, it made me remember this um set of experiments from neuroplasticity. Do you mind if I share these because I have a this is a theoretical practical question as we move into these protocols. But before we do that, what what should we call this protocol? It's the Richie Davidson uh five minutes a day. Five minutes a day. Richie's five. It's the Richie Five uh meditation. I'm going to start that. Um later I'll share what I've been doing, but it's not even that. I've been doing 10 breaths upon waking. 10 breaths before I get out of bed. I'm like, if I can just do 10 breaths of focused meditation before I get out of bed, the whole day will go better. And it and it tends to. Um, there's this wild set of findings in the neuroplasticity uh research that most people don't talk about because it's very inconvenient for neuroscientists. We're all familiar with the enriched environment thing where you give rats a bunch of toys or mice a bunch of toys or monkey monkeys a bunch of toys. And the idea would be if you give kids a bunch of toys or listening to Mozart that their brains will develop more. You see more physical connections, you see improved cognition, etc., etc. A really smart guy down at University of California, Irvine, Ron Frostig, did an experiment where he said, "Maybe this is all backwards. Maybe the normal cages they live in without all these toys are just deprived environments." And it turns out that's probably the case. Yeah. So all this enriched environment stuff, it's not that it's BS. It's just that the experimental conditions were so deprived that what you had was most animals just deprived in a certain way. Then you give them what they needed naturally and all of a sudden you saw more connections, etc. If we applied that to meditation, something that we think of as kind of an enriched mental environment, okay, I'm going to now do this exercise. I'm going to do five minutes a day or 10 or 20. We think of it as kind of adding exercise, but riding a treadmill, doing resistance training, I mean, we used to just farm and go get water and do things. So, in some sense, all of that is a replacement for a quote unquote deprived environment. Exactly. So, is it possible that what you're describing is not something that people developed over time, um, but rather something that was core to our experience as humans and that the brain needed, but that with the advent of technologies and busyiness or whatever, we've gotten away from. And so when you talk about doing five or 10 or 20 minutes of meditation a day and seeing all these health effects, what we're doing is we're actually just putting back what needed to be there in the first place, this is like the equivalent of you getting your 30 minutes more sleep because alarm clocks weren't really a thing 2,000 years ago. Does that make sense? It makes sense, but um you know and I think that there's an element of truth to it, but I also think that there's uh some additional um discussion that we should have about it and and and dialogue. So um first of all uh uh these practices have been around for you know 2500 years or more. Um it's not like they've been invented in the modern era to deal with the uh uh the separation that has occurred between humans and the natural world that is a distinctly modern uh kind of invention. So that's one thing. The second thing is that yes, I agree with you that the characteristics that we're talking about as um traits that are outcomes of these practices, there are many ways to get there and there are probably natural ways to get there that don't require meditation. In fact, you know, when we in our early days, we interviewed these practitioners around Dharmala, India, who were um practitioners that the Daly Lama referred us to who are spending 30 years in retreat um in they're called hermit monks and you know they're you you have to hike for three hours to find their cave. Uh and we interviewed these these people. you know, they they told us, well, you know, I need to meditate, but many others are just born or they're just naturally um uh have these qualities. They don't need to meditate as much as me. I'm just a simple, you know, um poor monk who really needs to do this because I'm inferior to those people, if you will. Um and it's kind of modesty, but also, you know, there may be some truth to that. uh uh and so I think that that is is real but I also think that the qualities like for example kindness I believe and this is the subject of this new book that I wrote with my colleague Kland Doll born to flourish qualities like kindness are innate um they are part of our innate repertoire but in order for them to be expressed they require nurturing and it's very similar to the way scientists talk about language Language is innate. I think most scientists would agree with that. But we know that there have been case studies, for example, of feral children who are raised in the wild and they don't develop normal language. So in order for the language to develop normally, it requires nurturing of some kind. Uh and kindness is the same thing. It requires nurturing. in order for it to be expressed. And similarly for other qualities that we're cultivating when we meditate, I think those qualities are innate, but they require nurturing. And um uh and in certain cases, I think that in order for those qualities to really be expressed at high levels, if you will, intentional nurturing may be required for at least the vast majority of people. There may be, you know, statistically very rare people who emerge who are like this from the start for whatever reason, but for most of us, I think uh this kind of nurturing is important. As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly 15 years now. I discovered it way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. 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Again, that's drink AG1 with the numeral one.com/huberman to get six free travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your subscription. Why do you think it is that so many people find it challenging to maintain a meditation practice? I mean, 5 minutes a day is nothing. 10 minutes a day is barely anything even for the very busiest of person. And the positive effects that you describe and we could also layer in reduced stress, anxiety, lower resting heart rate, increased uh you know um uh feelings of well-being and on and on. I mean there there are just so many great studies now including like you said you know double blind trials. I mean it's it's incredible. Um, so why do you think it's so hard for people to maintain this practice of just saying, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to just go into this atypical state. It's it's not being stimulated by anything in my environment. I have to do this internally. There there aren't gyms to go to for this." Although I mean there are things there are breath work classes and things like that, but people don't tend to stick to it. That's the challenge. So I do have a theory about it which I'll share. But before I do that, let me just say that um I often use the analogy of brushing our teeth. When when humans first evolved on this planet, none of us were brushing our teeth. And somehow a a very large swath of humanity has learned to brush their teeth every day. It's not part of our genome. I think most people brush their teeth so that their breath isn't bad. I think they like the idea that their teeth look cleaner and they get less um gum disease, etc. But all the scary stuff is actually very um ineffective public health messaging. I mean that that's my guess. Yeah. So actually that's quite interesting um that that view. But getting back to your question, why do people find it so hard? So there was a study published in science not too long ago by a group of social psychologists. Um and uh it was a study of quote boredom. Um, and what they did essentially in this study, the core of it was they took people into the lab and they said, um, we had a little problem and we're gonna you guys are going to have to wait for like 15 or 20 minutes before the experiment starts while we fix some piece of equipment. And they were in a waiting room. there were uh magazines and books around and they also said that they're they're um you know social psychologists are really good at creating these um scenarios. Uh and so uh another experimentter came in and said, you know, they're from another research group and they understand that they have to wait a little while and we have another experiment that you can do in the meantime and it involves um receiving electric shocks. Um and of course it's completely voluntary. You are free to participate or not. And the bottom line is that this is particularly male undergraduates in the United States prefer to shock themselves than to sit alone and not do anything. It's a robust finding. People could not sit without doing something is the bottom line. And the reason I think is that once we actually begin to inspect our own minds, most people are frightened at the chaos that they see. One of the things we found when we look at a very in a very granular way is that when people start to meditate, we see a statistically reliable increase in anxiety in the first week. interesting. And that's often when people say, "I can't do this. It's making me crazy." Um, and you know what we tell them is that's exactly you're doing exactly the right thing. You're, you know, you're noticing the chaos in your own mind. This is the soreness that comes from a new exercise program. Yeah. Exactly. But people know to associate the soreness with, okay, the exercise was effective. It's going to lead to an adaptation. And we haven't changed the the narrative yet about this, but what we're trying to where we say it this is great that you're feeling anxious. It's exactly what you should be feeling. Forgive me, I'm I'm doing all this in real time, so if I if I'm slow, um there's a reason. The analogy to exercise feels ever more important now because thankfully the narrative has been embedded in people's minds that you lift objects or you cycle or run or row or swim etc to stimulate an adaptation. I think that the exercise scientists, the fields of health and wellness, whatever it is, has been very effective in getting the message out that the the burn in your muscles is the thing that's going to lead to an easier run the next time, to more fitness, more longevity, more well-being, etc. But it's discomfort in the moment. For a long while now, I've been trying to convince people, because it's true, that the agitation that one feels trying to solve a problem or read a hard uh page or passage in a book, the one that you have to return to three times that you can't wrap your head around, that that agitation is the stimulus for neuroplasticity. If you could just breeze right through it, the brain has no reason to change. It's not stimulated to change. It can, after all, just do the thing you're trying to do. So it becomes sort of a duh when you compare when you look at exercise or you look at um cognitive development but somehow when it comes to meditation maybe we can accomplish this today I think you're doing this for us just knowing for me just knowing that in the first week anxiety is going to go up but that's the equivalent of lactate accumulating in the muscles of of um it's the lactate of the mind the burn it's the lactate of the mind thank you yes thank Thank you. Um, perfect. I believe that languaging and messaging is so critical to get people to adopt practices that require this discomfort adaptation loop that needs to be repeated over time. I love that. I kn I knew we'd get someplace in that in that one. Thanks to you. So glad you're here. So, week one, five minutes a day, expect and embrace the anxiety. Is it the thing that's going to produce the adaptation? I think it's contributing to it. Yes. Uh and and you know, it's also being aware of the anxiety without being hijacked by the anxiety, without being lost in the anxiety. So being able to see the anxiety um as it's arising. Uh and that's um you know this is training in meta awareness. uh meta awareness is super important. I actually think metawareness is a necessary prerequisite for any kind of human transformation, mental transformation. Um could you define it for us? Tell us a bit more about it. I'm very curious. Yeah. So I would say metawareness is the faculty of knowing what our minds are doing. And to some listeners that may sound a little strange, but how many of you have had the experience of reading a book where you might be reading each word on a page and you read one page, a second page, and after a few minutes you have no idea what you've just read. Your mind is lost. It's somewhere else. But then you wake up. The moment you wake up is a moment of metawareness. And it turns out that that's a trainable skill. And that is one of the really important prerequisites um for all other forms of training of mental training. Do we know where this meta awareness resides in the brain? Is it preffrontal cortex? You know, it's a network of uh prefrontal cortex, anterior singulate, um insula. uh uh I think those are all structures that are participating in meta awareness. It's interesting because I feel like as we were discussing earlier, people crave forgetting about themselves and just being in experience. It's just such a powerfully and I think positive seductive thing. I often think about, you know, like at a party dancing like it like people who can just dance and enjoy themselves versus people who are self-conscious about how they're dancing. Even people who are good at dancing, you can be metaware without being awkwardly self-conscious, if you will. So, um, you know, you talked earlier about flow. Uh, I didn't jump in then, but flow can occur with or without meta awareness. Really? Yes. A lot of flow I think occurs without metawareness. So you know Chickix Mahai who first studied flow he studied rock climbers and like a rock climber who is I mean think about this why do people do stuff like rock climbing. I think that the reason why people do stuff like that is to produce this state of flow where um most of those kinds of states of flow I think are states of flow without metawareness where you're completely absorbed in the activity and for a rock climber if there's even a momentary lapse in attention it could be potentially lethal. uh and so by arranging one's physical environment in that way you are um basically forcing uh the default mode to be suppressed. Uh and the default mode is a mode that we know is associated with a lot of self-reerential thought and self-reerential thought often is anxietyprovoking. uh and so this is a way to transiently suppress the default mode but flow can also occur with meta awareness uh and so and it doesn't diminish the quality of the flow and one analogy that we can use is in a movie theater I mean viewers have had the experience of being in a movie theater and I'm sure people have had the experience of being in a movie theater where you're so engrossed in the movie that you may actually you're not aware that you're in a theater and you may not be even aware that you're watching a movie. You're so you are totally absorbed in the plot and we've actually come up with a term to define that and we call it experiential fusion where you're fused with the experience and that is a kind of the the analogous to flow without metawareness. But imagine being in the movie theater where your your attention is riveted and there's absolutely no lapse in attention but in the kind of penumbra of awareness. You are aware you're in a movie theater. You're aware that you're watching a movie but that doesn't diminish the quality of your attention. I want to um ask about this thing about chaos. Noticing the chaos of one's mind because you said that sits at the seat of the anxiety that people will feel when they first start to meditate. Now everyone knows in the Richie meditation to push through the first week, expect the the lactate of the mind, push through it. I love that so much. Thank you. The idea that the mind is chaotic and getting comfortable with that and not reacting to it, not feeling like we have to get away from it. Um, we've heard this before, but I think it's somewhat of a novel concept to me to think that a goal of meditation is to be able to see that and sit with it, not necessarily eradicate it. You know, I think you said, you know, the Daly Lama. I think for most of us, we see the Daly Lama and other monks in robes and you say he sleeps 9 hours per night and he's meditating four hours per day and we think, oh, he looks very blissed out and that's great for them. Do you think he has chaos in his mind? is the idea that extreme meditators or even you know well practitioned meditators are free of the chaos or that they're just comfortable with the chaos. I would say that um it's a developmental process that changes longitudinally. So initially there's a lot of chaos and I think it gradually subsides. I don't think it it's like a step function. And I think it really occurs gradually over time and the chaos just sort of naturally diminishes. Um, but that's a long-term process. Uh, and I think for most of us, uh, there's always going to be some chaos. Uh, but part of the chaos also is, I think, a source of creativity. And you know when we talk about metaare meta awareness and awareness of all that's going on in our mind you know I often give my students the the permission to I even if they're not meditators to just spend a couple hours a week inspecting your mind. Just inspect your mind. Pay attention to what's going on in your mind. Don't do stuff outside. But a and if you come up with some interesting thought, write a little note to yourself as you're doing this, you know, not a lot of words, but just a note to remind you when you're finished with this session. Um, and I have the conviction that there's a lot of creative work that humans do on a regular basis that's kind of like dreams. Most people don't remember their dreams, but they occur reliably. And I think that there's a lot of creative thought that occurs on a regular basis, but we just don't pay attention to it and we we forget it just like we forget our dreams. But if we have the invitation to really inspect our mind in that way, I think um this chaos actually uh often contains the seat of real creative insight that potentially could be valuable. I do too. I I mean I wake up every morning with at least one idea from the transition from sleep to waking. Sometimes it's from a dream. I often will record my dreams as voice memos. Mhm. After I die if somebody ever finds these voice me they're so crazy. Every once in a while I'll try and listen to one. I'm like this is crazy. But I don't want to forget things and sometimes I don't want to wake up and turn the lights on and I'll go back to sleep and so I'll just record something in the voice memo. Sometimes write it down. Um, I think there's so much learning to be had from what's coming up from the uh the unconscious mind in dreams, but also just having a mode of capture during the day. Some way to just capture the things that spring to mind. The great Joe Strummer from the Clash, he said this. He said, you know, if you are walking along and an idea comes to mind, you have to write it down because you think you'll remember it later, but you you will remember it in a form that is not nearly as potent. Yeah. Said something like that. um that this is the mind throwing you ideas that and you got you have to capture them. I love that. I think it's it's wise advice. Friends of mine who are songwriters, poets, they they do this all the time. They're constantly writing things down that they may not develop something from, but they understand that there's information being like thrown up to the surface for them. If you don't write it down or capture it in some other way, it's it it goes it's eancent. I actually have um I mean this may seem contrary to um views of how meditation is done but when I meditate every morning I actually have a a little notepad by my cushion and occasionally I don't do this every session but maybe twice a week um I'll actually write down something during the meditation one or two words just to remind me because something comes up in my practice u maybe an idea And I I want to remember it. I know also that I'm I won't remember it after uh in in the same richness. And so I'll just jot jot it down and then go back to my practice. Is meditation something that kids can do and benefit from? Has that been studied in a formal way? Yes, it's been studied. Um we actually developed a um what we've called a um a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum for preschool kids. preschool preschool and we've actually published a randomized control trial in a public school system of this curriculum and the curriculum is available freely on our website in both English and Spanish. So if any teachers are out there or you know teachers and want to use it, please please feel free to to download it and and see how it is. But yeah, so it looks very different. So, for example, what we do with a three-year-old, one of the exercises that they love is we ring a bell in a classroom and we have them listen tell them listen to the sound and as soon as you no longer hear sound, raise your hand. And it's it's amazing to see this because you can get 25 three and four year olds sitting perfectly still for around 10 seconds, but you know they could taste it. There's a palpable, you know, sense of of quiet in that 10 seconds and then they all raise their hand excitedly, but they can really taste it. And so I I do think it's possible. The other thing is um and this is something really important. There's something we've discovered empirically recently which is that flourishing is infectious. It's contagious. Flourishing is contagious. Can you explain what that means and how you study that? Yeah. So um uh in the example of you asked about meditating in kids and the reason I'm bringing up in this context is one of the best things I can think a parent can do for a kid is not to have the kid meditate but meditate yourself and just be with the child and be fully present be connected and really show up in that way and you will osmotically transmit through your demeanor uh and your um your interaction you will transmit these qualities to the child in a completely implicit way and that's what we mean when we say flourishing is contagious but how we studied it. So let me actually share one of the this is a finding that we're super excited about and it's not yet published but it's um the paper is just under review. So one of the things we're deeply interested in these days is how can we scale human flourishing. So, we're doing this kind of sector by sector. And one sector that we're doing a lot of work with is educators. And educators around the world and particularly in the US, but we've done this in in Mexico, too. So, it's not just US-based, but they're super stressed. They're not well paid and all of that. Um uh so, we did a study with public school educators in Louisville, Kentucky. And there are many reasons why we went to Louisville, but Louisville is a complicated school system. It's diverse. There are a lot of problems in it. And um it's a big urban school district, the Jefferson County Public School District in Louisville. And we did a randomized control trial with 832 educators in Louisville. And we had them use our healthy minds program which is uh uh a um a digital offering which is freely available as the healthy minds program uh where we had them cultivate four key pillars of well-being awareness connection insight and purpose. We can take a deeper dive into each of those after. But they practiced for around five minutes a day. The average was a little less than five minutes a day. over the course of 28 days. And we measured standard outcomes like depression and anxiety and stress and and measures of flourishing. And we find what we found in other studies, which is that depression and anxiety and stress went down and measures of well-being and flourishing went up. But the real kicker is that we by prior agreement had access to the um student level data in the school system. So we were able to look at the performance of the students who are taught by teachers randomly assigned to the well-being training and we compared them to students who are taught by teachers randomly assigned to a control group. the the students had no idea that there was any research going on. And what we found is that on standardized tests, this is in middle school children and the sample size for the students was around 13,000. Uh and what we found is that the math standardized math scores of the students who were taught by teachers randomly assigned to the well-being training was significantly greater than the scores of the students who are the control group. Same curriculum, identical. So what do you think is being transmitted there? Is it that the teachers are calmer, therefore the students are calmer? Is it that the teachers are calmer, therefore they're clearer, so the students I mean there are a lot of variables and we don't need to isolate them. I mean this isn't uh we're not trying to do uh you know pharmarmacology here. Um but what do you think could be going on? Yeah, I think everything you said is likely to be going on. I think the students are the teachers are are likely calmer. They're more connected. Uh the and what we know is that you know it was interesting because we looked at reading scores and the the data for the standardized reading measure was in the same direction but it wasn't as robust. The the biggest signal was in math scores and we know that math performance is degraded by stress more than reading performance uh uh in this age group. And so it, you know, could be is something as simple as the kids who were taught by teachers that went through the well-being training are simply calmer and less stressed when they take the exam. Uh and so their true competence is more likely to be reflected in the test uh uh and not have it degraded by this kind of added stress and anxiety. So uh so this is you know an illustration that flourishing is contagious in this way. I would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors JWVE. JWVE makes medical grade red light therapy devices. 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Personally, I use the JWV whole body panel about 3 to four times a week, usually for about 10 to 20 minutes per session. And I use the JWV handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try JW, they're offering up to $400 off select products for listeners of this podcast. To learn more, visit juv spelled jovv.com/huberman. Again, that's jovv.com/huberman. It's so interesting and again that I can think of so many different variables that could be at play. Um, we did an episode, one of our most popular episodes of ever, um, with a guy named James Hollis. Are you familiar with James Hollis? No, he's a probably by now 85year-old Yungian analyst. Brilliant guy. He wrote he's written a number of books. The Eden Project, which is about uh relationships and relating um uh under Saturn Shadow on the uh about trauma and healing. Just just an incredible soul, an incredible human and just an incredible educator and um I'm not alone in in believing that. Just spectacular. And I said, you know, he's a Yungian analyst. So I said, you know, what's the key to a really good life? Like, but can we talk protocols? And he said something really interesting that I think will resonate uh with what you're saying and perhaps shed some light on what happened with these students and flourishing in general. He said, "It's so important that we wake up each day and we suit up and we show up and we work in school, in relationships, in life," he said. But it's also just as important that we take a short amount of time every day and get out of stimulus and response. Because by getting out of stimulus and response, and I'm not being nearly as eloquent as Hollis, we come to know ourselves in a certain way that lets ourselves show up so much more effectively for everything else. And so maybe, just maybe, what these teachers achieve is by sitting in this anxiety, because now I'm thinking about the lactate of the mind, they're doing a practice which lets them experience the anxiety, not respond to it. They're getting out of stimulus and response. And perhaps in the classroom, they're able to teach more, teach more effectively because they're not paying attention to the things that don't matter. Mhm. Mhm. Or maybe it's because they're also paying attention to the things that do matter. Their signal to noise is higher. So to speak. Anyway, I couldn't help but reference the Hollis thing because to not do that would would would be remiss. But also, you know, here's a guy who's saying you got to go to work each day. This is essential to building a good life and you have to do all these things and and he's also saying but getting out of stimulus response is what makes you effective in everything and of course improves your self-standing. And I think what you're saying, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I think you're saying when you talk about meditation is that it's a it's a way of Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great analogy. Yeah. Well, he deserves all the credit for all of that. um you deserve all the credit for running all these experiments because I feel like what's been so frustrating over the years has been to hear how powerful meditation is but that for people in the west um the word meditation brings up ideas of mysticism and um ancient things and people think well that's not for me. Mhm. Mhm. That's not going to benefit me now in this world. But I would argue we need it even more so now. I I agree. I think that um and I think that the divisiveness and polarization that is just eating away at our society is um uh underscores the the critical importance of this. I I think it's needed now more than ever before in human history. And I think that it will, you know, with just modest amounts of practice and and one of the other um, you know, kind of slogans that we think is really important is that it's easier than you think. It really is. It it five minutes a day has a measurable impact. And so I think that if we really take this to heart, um, you know, if everyone practiced for five minutes a day, I have the strong conviction that this world would really be a different place. Oh, absolutely. I think I think the challenge is convincing people and and that's, you know, you're doing it. We're we're trying to do that little by little. I mean, for a zerocost tool, it's it's just outsized positive effects. I think most people come to the table because it will lower their blood pressure. They hear that it will reduce their stress, maybe make them more effective, make them smarter, sleep better. But there are also the higher order effects um that people talk about being gaining some understanding of consciousness and what it may or may not be. When do those effects tend to arrive? Um if they ever do, right? Is it true that by meditating, by getting out of the stimulus and response and just watching one's thoughts and not responding to them and just non-judgment that we can actually gain some fundamental insight into how our minds work? I do think that that's possible and I think that it does occur and um you know I think that uh if we're really good scientists um there there is an important element of humility uh as we approach this uh that underscores really how little we know. Uh, and I think that these kinds of practices help us tap into something that I think is part of what it means to be a human being. Um, and and part of it is honestly um, you know, we can use the words um, spiritual in some way. Uh, and uh, you know, or transcendent and by that I mean something connected to something larger than oneself. And I I know that this is getting into a little bit of woowoo territory uh and uh uh but people do have a taste of this and it helps to give their life more meaning and and to infuse it with a kind of purpose that um I think is really beneficial. I wonder and I'd love your thoughts on this whether by doing meditation and seeing that the mind is chaotic and that it's difficult to control and that perhaps the best thing we can do is just observe and not respond to it but not try and control it that inevitably in one's meditation practice that the reality surfaces that we're all going to die and I think for a lot of people the fear of death is terrifying. I It's inevitable and it's terrifying. And I do sometimes feel that a lot of the the stuff in the world that we're offered, whether or not it's drugs or alcohol or excessive work or whatever, that just all the stuff is um that a deeper layer of that offering is that it it distracts us from that reality. Mhm. Um because it's terrifying, right? I I don't most any healthy person doesn't want to die, although I don't think it's terrifying for all people. And I think that it's this is actually one of the dimensions that is shifted by long-term meditation practice unquestionably. Is it shifted because people come to some understanding of energy and the fact that they will likely become part of something else? Or do you think it's that they can just accept the reality that we're here than we're not here? I think it's more the latter. And also um imagine that this is the last day we're living right now. Friday the 13th of all days. Of all days. It happens to be Friday the 13th. Uh and you know, are we um are we showing up in a way that feels right for us? uh and making the most of our lives and not squandering the opportunity that we have. And if we can live every day in that way, uh it really will change, I think, how we approach our mortality. And I know for me personally, I mean, we I'm not well, it it I feel very differently about dying today than I did like 15 years ago. It's that that's one dimension where there's been a dramatic shift. Would you mind elaborating on that? How how so? How did you feel about it 15 20 years ago? Yeah, I was terrified. you know, in the same way I, you know, had a family. I have two kids that I have all these, you know, responsibilities and um I reflect on this. I really do. And um you know, if I died today, I would feel like I've lived a very fulfilling life. Um and uh uh and I'm fine with that. That's a great thing to be able to say. I don't think most people would probably be able to say the same wholeheartedly. Yeah. And you attribute some of that sense to meditation. Definitely. But it's been gradual. You know, I've been at this my my very first meditation retreat was in 1974. Uh and I've been practicing daily ever since. Every single day. Well, I may have missed you one or two days a year when I had a 6 a.m. flight, but other than that, yes. And what is your practice um your most consistent practice been? You know, my practice has changed many times over these the course of these years and very different traditions in which I've practiced. Um so, what about time of day? Is it typically morning? It's always been morning for me. You get up, use the bathroom, have a drink of water, and start or you go right into it? No, I get up uh uh and I make myself uh these days a cup of strong black tea uh and I drink the tea which takes maybe 15 minutes uh and then I meditate. Got it. Do you set a timer or a chime? Yeah, I do set a timer and you know I meditate at various lengths but I my modal time sitting is about 45 minutes a day. Um sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's shorter but uh usually around 45 minutes a day and maybe three or four days a week I do a really short practice at night, maybe five minutes before I go to sleep. Since everyone that takes on the five minute a day 30-day meditation challenge will do it uh once they reach 30 days would does it make sense to update that to a longer meditation or would you just suggest that people stay with that as long as possible? What I would suggest is check in with yourself uh and see how you're feeling about it and um how it's resonating with you and uh uh and if you feel like you can't really do much more just stick with five minutes a day and keep doing that. The important thing is to stick with a daily practice. And one of the things that um we talk about in this new book, Born to Flourish, is a lot of people have a really difficult time coming up with a with really being able to do this daily. Uh and one of the things that we talk about based on our finding that it doesn't matter at least in the early stages whether you're meditating uh as a formal practice or doing it while doing other activities of daily living that are not demanding like walking or commuting. You tie this to regular activities that you do every day whatever those activities are. We we talk about this idea of social zeitgeabers. A zeitgeab as you know is an environmental event, a signal um that is that marks a um in the classical literature a biological rhythm like um light is a zeitgeab um to set our biological rhythms. But we in the modern world we have social zeitgeabers that are human created zeitgeab. So eating for example as a zeitge um we eat typically at roughly similar times every day at least most people and that's an opportunity uh you do that every day you can pair a little practice with that um and you know one of the practices that you can do which I do every time I eat virtually unless I'm meeting with someone and it's awkward um but I do it at home is do a little appreciation practice spend just a um 30 to to 90 seconds reflecting on all the people it took to have food on your plate. Um and it also gives you a sense of interdependence. And when I sit down, you know, and have my breakfast, uh it's a cue for me. It's a social zeitgeaber. I do my appreciation practice every single time. Um and then you there's crazy things you can do like I have a cat at home. Um, I'm the one who scoops the litter every night. I actually do that as a practice. Um, uh, and it it literally takes no extra time. I do it while I'm doing the the scooping of the litter, but I I honestly do this in in a very authentic, genuine way. I reflect on, you know, the cat really appreciates this. My wife appreciates this. Um, and people who go into the room with the cat litter appreciate that it's clean and scooped on a regular basis. And you know, I just reflect on that intentionally. Uh, it doesn't take much. It's easier than you think. Yeah. It's so interesting. I mean, I I don't want to um contort the message you're you're offering because it's a powerful one about a bringing awareness to the things that we have to do anyway and allowing that to make us more effective and happier and more present. But there's also this idea around disciplines and the word discipline gets is kind of heavy. No, nobody really likes it um because we got disciplined or something. But uh I used to pride myself on working longer hours than everyone and and as the years have gone on, I pride myself in just I can um consistency is my superpower. I may not show up with the most intensity every time, although sometimes, but intensity uh kind of waxes and waines, but there's something about just showing up anyway and just doing it anyway that is so powerful. And I I sometimes wonder whether or not the mind is just it's our foe until we embrace that piece. It's kind of a little bit of what you're saying. Yeah. And I love the consistency uh theme and also the discipline. And yes, I think you're naming something real and important. And there's a delicate calculus uh that ranges between kind of um letting go and discipline and each person I think falls at a different point in this continuum. Uh and what works for one person may not work for for another. You know with with regard to meditation I always say that what's best for one person isn't necessarily what's best for others. And we have to discover what works for us. Um, you know, what we do know is that in in terms of meditation that consistency is really important. You know, I was never a particularly good athlete or bad athlete, but I've just been really consistent at exercise and I mean, I play fewer sports these days than than I did. But just that just continuing to show up um allows you to be the person among your peers. Not that it's competitive where you go, everyone else seems to have quit and they're talking about how much this hurts and that hurts and you're like and all that you really had to do is just kind of keep keep going. And I I sometimes think that the people that are max intensity and they you know it's like gold medal or bust, they're always the ones are often the ones that we don't hear from anymore. They're like gone burn out. Yeah. So I I love the examples of the Dollaly Lama and you know the the Michael Jordans of every domain, but I don't know. I mean, I I'm more interested in um being the person that at 50 60 I mean, you're in your mid70s. You look incredible. You're super vital, cognitively sharp, you're in shape, you're excited about life, you're not afraid of death. Clearly, you're on to something, you know? So, and I doubt it's just the black tea. I'm guessing it's to some extent, I mean, there you have all the other aspects of your life, but this consistency of meditation practice. Yeah. No, I think it's been super important. I do think that the discipline that you're talking about is really important and it is part of it. uh um but again I think we need to find the right balance for each person and initially it's really important to um have people uh invite them to taste this with the lowest possible friction so that they can can really um experience the benefit and then it can gradually progress and and they can you know um uh harness some discip discipline which eventually will be important. I'd like to talk about online culture and social media just briefly because I don't want to demonize it. I teach on social media. This will be aired on various online platforms and clips of it will appear on social media. But I have this um sneaking suspicion that by going online um the mind starts to believe this thing that's not true that if we're not online either posting or looking at what people post or both that somehow will disappear. And it gets to this idea of the anxiety that one feels when you just go into your own mind and it's chaos in there for so many people. It's like it's chaos in here and then just learning to sit with that. I think a lot of people go into the world because the chaos of the world can occupy their attention and then it's not about the chaos that's in them. Again, I don't want to demonize online platforms because I use them, I educate on them, I learn from them and I'm and I gain entertainment from them, too. But I wonder whether or not the net effect of social media and the internet over the last, let's say, 10 to 15 years has been to trick the mind at an unconscious level into thinking that if we're not on there, we're going to miss out. But it's not FOMO of not like we're not going to be included, but that I actually think it may run much deeper than that. That it's that we that we don't exist. that life is there and if we're not aware of it, we don't exist. Because I see parents looking at their phones while their kids are running around them. So, you can't say, "Oh, well, this is only, you know, well, we have kids and you're tending to your kids." And some parents are great parents, but uh I see a lot of kids that are clearly being, you know, babysat by devices and the parents will say, "Listen, it's the only thing that quiets them down and gets them to settle down while I can tend to things." So I can relate. But yeah, what do you think about the idea that the internet while powerful and can be used for great good may have convinced billions of human minds that they don't exist if they're not observing or engaging on there.…

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