#114 How Meditation Rewires Your Brain, Gut, & Immune System | Dr. Richard Davidson

Welcome and guest background

0:00Welcome back to the podcast. Physical activity supports learning, mood, memory, and neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to adapt in response to experience and change. If exercise opens a window for change, the real question is whether we can use that window intentionally. Today's guest, Dr. Richard Davidson, thinks the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Dr. Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry and the founder and the director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For more than four decades, his research has

0:34examined emotion, attention, contemplative practice, and the neural systems that support human flourishing. His central proposition is that well-being is not simply a disposition that some people possess and others do not. It includes skills that can be trained. He organizes those skills around four pillars, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. And importantly, they do not have to be practiced only while sitting quietly with your eyes closed. This was a big one for me.

1:05We begin with a question I have asked myself many times. If you have limited time, why meditate when you could exercise? His answer is that you do not have to choose. He calls the combination contemplative aerobics. It's using a period of physical activity to practice awareness, compassion, gratitude, or purpose while the brain is in a state that supports learning and adaptation. That idea leads to a broader conversation about how patterns of attention and emotion can reach the

1:37body and how the body can shape the mind in return. In this episode, Richie and I discuss why neuroplasticity is a capacity for change rather than a guarantee of positive change. How the four pillars of flourishing and six emotional styles shape attention, resilience, and recovery from adversity. Whether manageable challenge can build resilience and when pushing too far becomes counterproductive. How the insula, automatic nervous system, immune signaling, and the gut-brain access

2:09participate in a two-way communication between the mind and the body. What asthma research can teach us about stress-sensitive brain circuits and inflammation. How just five minutes of daily practice can alter inflammation in the gut microbiome. And how active meditation can be folded into exercise, commuting, meals, chores, and parenting without requiring another appointment on the calendar. This is a big one. So by the end of this conversation, I think you'll have a practical framework for treating flourishing as a set of repeatable skills along with low friction ways

2:44to pair mental training with habits that already exist. Before we jump into this episode, I have a couple of announcements. First, we have prepared detailed show notes and a full transcript for this episode at foundmyfitness.com forward slash episodes. You can click on the one that says Richard Davidson. This includes links to papers. It includes links to the free Healthy Minds program app and also Richie's new book, Born to Flourish. Also, I want to mention two ways that you can stay connected and support foundmyfitness. First, if you're not already subscribed to my free weekly

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5:01member at foundmyfitness.com forward slash premium. Again, that's foundmyfitness.com forward slash premium, P-R-E-M-I-U-M. Thank you so much for supporting the show, for becoming a member. And now I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Richard Davidson. I'm going to start off with a question that I am personally

Combining exercise and meditation

5:26interested in and have asked myself many times before, and I haven't convinced myself, and so perhaps you can convince me, but the question is, if you only have so much time in the day, and you're wanting to partake in, you know, habits that are going to benefit your mind, why would I spend time doing something like meditation when I could do that same amount of time, spend that same amount of time doing exercise, where I know that particularly vigorous exercise is going to be beneficial for my brain, it's going to increase

6:01things like neuroplasticity, which we'll talk about, but also positive effect. So that's the question. Okay, great question, and thank you so much for asking it, and I particularly like the way you post it. My answer simply would be that you don't have to choose. You can do both together, and it won't take any extra time. And so exercise, physical exercise, particularly vigorous aerobic exercise of the sort that you're describing, is indeed, as you are hinting, the most empirically

6:37well-validated strategy for increasing neuroplasticity. And we can talk more about neuroplasticity in a few moments. But neuroplasticity is neutral with respect to its impact on our mind and on our well-being. If you increase neuroplasticity, and you're thinking a lot of unwholesome thoughts, toxic thoughts, if you're in an environment which is stressful, you will increase the likelihood of

7:09being stressed and of being challenged. Because the increase in neuroplasticity is increasing the extent to which those negative thoughts are being encoded. And so simply increasing neuroplasticity in and of itself is neutral with respect to our mind. What the real challenge is, is being able to increase neuroplasticity increase our wholesome or virtuous mind state, if you will. And we can

7:42actually do both together. So let me give you a very simple kind of invitation. Next time you do physical exercise, spend a few moments as you are ramping up to do the exercise. It may be putting on your sneakers, getting yourself ready, or it can even be during the exercise itself. Reflect on how doing this physical exercise is beneficial not only for yourself, but it's beneficial for all of those

8:13that you touch directly or indirectly. That is, it's a radical act of generosity for you to be improving your health. It's not just something good for you, but it's something good for the entire social network that you interact with, which in your case is really large. And so in invoking that kind of mind state, or we call it a mindset, which is a mindset of generosity and altruism, is filling your mind

8:50with this virtuous, wholesome motivation while you're doing something that will increase your neuroplasticity. That is the ideal combination. This is something we've called contemplative aerobics. So just, I do think about positive things about myself when I am preparing for exercise. In fact, that's almost solely what I'm thinking about, how this is going to benefit me, how I'm going to be in a better mood, how I'm going to focus better, how it's good for my cardiovascular health, my brain aging.

9:21The idea of how it's good for everyone else, how me improving myself is also going to affect the way I interact with people, that is a very new concept to me. And why is that so beneficial for well-being? Because it connects you with others, which is one of the core pillars of well-being. In 2023, the then U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued the first health advisory ever issued by a public health

9:59officer in the United States on loneliness and social isolation. One of the things he called out in that report is that loneliness is a greater risk factor for premature mortality than is smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness gets under the skin and affects our biology. And the reverse of that social connection also gets under our skin and affects our biology. We know that connecting with others is anti-inflammatory.

10:31Practices which help us connect to others actually change our biology in very meaningful ways that are really important for our mental and physical health. Does the act of just, I guess, this contemplative aerobics and what sounds to me like also, you know, you said altruistic behavior, compassion, I mean, thinking about how you're improving your health and how that's going to improve the health of others, does that somehow just thinking about

11:04that help you become more social or connected to others? Or how does that work? Yes. If it's done on a regular basis, systematically as a practice with intentional focusing of the mind on those topics, the answer is unequivocally yes. We've conducted randomized controlled trials where we have actually randomly assigned people to strategies that engage in these practices compared to those who

11:39are doing another kind of strategy. And we've looked at hard-nosed measures of altruistic behavior. We've also looked at the brain using direct measures of brain function and structure using MRI. And we've shown in hard-nosed randomized controlled trials that it doesn't take much to actually change one's behavior and one's biology, but you need to do it on a regular basis. It's not, and just like physical exercise, you know that you can't work out for a couple of weeks and then think that the

12:16improvements that you may have gleaned from that are going to last forever if you stop working out. It's a practice that you continue to do for hopefully the remainder of your life. And similarly with this, these are practices that we envision people doing for the rest of their life. And I liken it to brushing our teeth. When humans first evolved, none of us were brushing our teeth. And yet most people, I'm sure every listener of this podcast spends at least a few minutes a day brushing their teeth.

12:50It's not part of our genome. We've learned to do that. And the data show that if we spend even as short a time as we spend brushing our teeth, nourishing our mind and our heart, this world would be a different place. That's interesting. The few minutes a day and also the study that you called out that you did, how these individuals just spending a small amount of time could increase their altruistic behavior. Are you familiar with some of the really early work from Molly Crockett? Sure. When she was doing some research on depleting serotonin. And everyone thinks about serotonin,

13:27they think about mood regulation and depression, or they don't really think about pro-social behavior. And I was so fascinated with some of this work because one, I know exercise increases serotonin, particularly aerobic exercise. That's something that happens. There's many studies, human studies on that as well. So in her work, she depleted serotonin and it seemed as though pro-social behavior went down and they were not altruistic and all that sort of stuff. So do you think the timing, so you mentioned, I liked how you mentioned while you're getting

13:57ready, anticipating your exercise routine, whatever it is you're getting your sneakers on, whatever, there is a period of time, a few minutes, that you are sort of preparing for the exercise. And then you do the exercise and you're getting this rush of serotonin. Do you think the timing of having those positive thoughts immediately followed by this neurotransmitter, or this hormone, is beneficial, like synergistic? Yeah, it's a great question. And the most honest answer is that we do not know at this point in time

14:29what the optimal timing is for the combination of contemplative practice and aerobic exercise. It's really crying out to be studied in a systematic, programmatic way hasn't been done yet. And it may vary with different kinds of people. One of the insights that we learn from a lot of this work over the last 10 years is that one size does not fit all, one prescription does not fit all. And it's like

15:04physical exercise. Different people have different physical exercise routines that are going to be best for themselves. So similarly, I think in this case, it's likely that the optimal timing will be different across different people, and we just don't know. Yeah. I mean, hopefully someone looks into it. It makes sense, right? It could. Perhaps it doesn't matter. But I also like this idea of removing the friction from, you know, particularly at a person

15:37like me, where I've, you know, I've just, I'm always thinking, if I only have so much time, I'm going to, I'm going to do physical activity, because there's so many benefits that I know about. And I do know that it also affects my emotional regulation, and it affects, you know, my brain in a positive way. So this idea of being able to do it while I'm just preparing for exercise is awesome. And you can do it while you're doing the exercise, too. There's no, and so, you know, I'm a bicycle rider, and I, you know, I take physical exercise very seriously, too. And I always do, as I'm getting

16:14ready and start riding the first few minutes of my ride, I do this very intentional practice. And it's enormously helpful to me. And I come back to it spontaneously as I ride. Does this practice of thinking about, like, how what you're doing is benefiting, am I saying this right, benefiting, you know, others? Yes. Does this also help improve, you know, a person who has this, and we're going to get

16:46into this emotional styles, but this mindset of, like, you kind of are more likely to see the negative, maybe you see negative, and you kind of, you know, maybe you're a little more pessimistic, and you, when you meet a person, you kind of are suspicious of them, you don't necessarily see the best in them, you think maybe they're, does that help with that sort of mindset as well? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It helps in seeing what's right with people. And, you know, this new book that I have that just came out with Cortland Dahl called Born to Flourish is really about that. It's about

17:19innate qualities that every human being has that are keys to flourishing. And the invitation is that we simply need to cultivate or nourish these qualities. They're there from the start, but they need to be nourished in order for them to be fully expressed. And it doesn't take much for them to be nourished. That's, that's the key. And it's because they're, they're part of who we are. So that when we actually cultivate these qualities, we're not introducing something

17:49new, we're actually discovering our basic true nature.

The four pillars of flourishing

17:54What, what qualities, I mean, I, I did skim the book, but what, what qualities are we talking about for flourishing? So there are four qualities. One we call awareness and awareness is about being present. It includes mindfulness. It includes our capacity for self-awareness. And it also includes a capacity that we scientists call meta-awareness. What is meta-awareness? Meta-awareness is knowing what our minds are doing. And to some listeners, that may sound a little strange. Don't you always

18:27know what your mind is doing, but how many of you have ever had the experience of reading a book where you might be reading each word on a page and after a few minutes and a few pages, you realize you have no idea what you've just read. But the moment you recognize that it's a moment of meta-awareness. It's a moment of awakening and that can be trained. And in order for us to transform our mind, we need meta-awareness. We need to know what our minds are doing in order to transform our minds. So it's very important.

18:58How do you train your mind to become more meta-aware? It's really simple. And it's basically intentionally bringing into awareness or using, I'll say it a little differently, it's intentionally adopting some support for your awareness. So if you're doing physical exercise, for example, if you're running, you can bring awareness to the sensations in your body as you're running. Or you can bring awareness to what's going on

19:32right around you, rather than having your mind get lost in the past or the future. It's really being focused on whatever is happening in the present moment. And so that's how you train meta-awareness. It's really simple. Right now, as we're talking, I'm intentionally cultivating meta-awareness. I'm aware of my posture. I'm aware of the sensations in my sit bones as I'm sitting here. And there's a

20:06penumbra of awareness, which can easily be cultivated. And it can be done anywhere, anytime, or as I often say, everywhere, all the time. So that's awareness. That's the first pillar. Second pillar is connection. Connection is about qualities that are important for healthy social relationships. Qualities like appreciation, and gratitude, and kindness, and compassion. And we know that those are essential

20:37for our flourishing. And they can be cultivated. And it's not about how many people you are in the presence of. It's really about the quality of connection. So that's pillar number two. Pillar number three, we call insight. And insight is about insight into the narrative that we all have in our mind about who we are. We create this narrative about me. And we filter the world through the

21:10narrative. So we each have a set of beliefs and a set of expectations about ourselves. And we see the world through those beliefs and expectations. And we know there are some people that have very negative beliefs and low expectations of themselves. And of course, that's a prescription for depression. But what's really important for well-being is not so much changing the narrative, but it's changing our relationship to the narrative. So that we can see this narrative for what it is, which is a

21:42constellation of thoughts. And finally, the last pillar of well-being is purpose. And purpose is about identifying our direction in life, clarifying our values. And it's not about finding something more grand to do with your life. But how can we find meaning and purpose in even the most pedestrian activities of our daily living? Can taking out the garbage be really meaningful and connected to your

22:12sense of purpose? And of course it can be. It just requires a little bit of mindset shift, a little bit of reframing. And all of these skills are trainable. They all are instantiated in neural circuits that we know exhibit plasticity. And they're key to flourishing.

The six emotional styles

22:32We're going to get into these in detail because I have a lot of questions about that. So I think let's start with almost this. I feel like the emotional styles in some way are also connected to the insight in a way. Because if you have these – so I guess I'll start by saying, you know, obviously people are different. We all have these different personality types. There's some genetic underpinnings there. But there's other things going on as well. And, you know, you have famously kind of

23:02popularized this through your research and your previous book, these emotional styles. And there's six of them. And it has to do with, you know, how we respond to adversity, how we experience positive emotion, how we're paying attention, how we are connected socially, all those things. And some people may have a narrative in their mind of how I know I do. As I was doing background research, I'm like, oh, this is who I am. This is me. And I'm going through these emotional styles and I'm painting this narrative. And it is kind of like – it is like this filter you kind of – this

23:33internal monologue you have of who you are and everything kind of filters through that. And as you were talking about that, I was seeing that. So I kind of want to talk a little bit about that because you can change these emotional styles. And that's really, I think, what your research has famously shown. So I guess the first question I want to ask you is, you know, how related are these emotional styles to – what are they? And how are they related to well-being, our well-being?

24:04Yes. So thank you for asking all that. The emotional styles were described in a book that was published in 2012, I believe, called The Emotional Life of Your Brain, which I wrote. And that came from decades of neuroscientific research looking at differences among people in how they respond to life's slings and arrows, basically. And gleaning from those decades-long research,

24:38we pulled out these six emotional styles that describe the broad range of responses that people show. So I'll describe each of these emotional styles. The first we call resilience. And resilience is about how quickly you recover from adversity. People who recover more quickly are more resilient, basically. The second style is outlook. And outlook is kind of the flip side of resilience. Outlook is

25:12the extent to which positive emotion is persistent or is savored. And so imagine you have a warm-hearted conversation with your spouse or your child early in the morning. To what extent does that color your day? And having a positive outlook, to what extent do you see people through – we were talking about this earlier – through a positive lens, where you're looking at what's right with people rather than

25:47what's wrong with people. That's positive. That's outlook. And that would be positive outlook, specifically. Third style is self-awareness. Self-awareness is the extent to which you are aware of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations. There is a term that we use in neuroscience called introception. And introception refers to how accurate you are in monitoring signals from your own

26:23body. And this turns out to be super important in providing us with information about our mood, about our internal state. And people vary in how accurate they are. And this is something that can be measured. So that's self-awareness. Another style we call social intuition. And social intuition is the extent to which we are sensitive to the nonverbal behavior of others. And we know a lot of the work

27:00that helps us understand social intuition came from studies that we and others have done with autistic individuals, people on the autism spectrum, who often have a challenging time inferring social cues from others and using those social cues to help guide their behavior. And the ability to monitor these social cues, particularly in interpersonal settings, is really important in navigating our social lives.

27:32So there are two other styles. The next one is sensitivity to context, which is a bit unusual. People often don't think about this particular one a lot. But our emotional behavior is very importantly influenced by the context in which we reside. And there are certain kinds of problems that emerge that people have. And the most significant one that's related to this style is post-traumatic

28:08stress disorder. And so people who show PTSD are often showing emotions that would be appropriate in certain contexts, but they're showing them in inappropriate contexts. And so it would be adaptive to show certain kinds of extreme emotions in a traumatic situation. For example, a soldier subjected to something occurring in a war zone. But when that soldier becomes a veteran and is back at home

28:45and hears a siren from an ambulance, for example, that there's often flashbacks that occur in response to that. And that would be a failure to modulate one's emotional behavior in a context-appropriate way. So knowing that the person is home in a safe context, the ambulance is something that these sirens occur, and there's nothing to freak out about. That's when you do have these flashbacks and show these extreme

29:24reactions, that's a failure to modulate one's emotions in a context-appropriate way. And finally, the last, the sixth emotional style is attention. And it's really about our ability to focus our attention. distraction. And distraction is, you know, a huge challenge for our well-being, particularly in this modern era. I often say that every one of us is part of a grand experiment for which none of us have

29:55provided our informed consent. And that has to do with the exposure to the internet, to social media, and it is eroding our capacity to focus our attention. And that's a huge issue for our well-being. And these are all really important for our well-being in general, because?

30:17Yeah, these are all important for our well-being, because they affect how we respond to emotionally significant events in various ways. And each of them, every one of these styles, plays some role in modulating our well-being. And it's not, for all these styles, it's not so much that we, that well-being is defined by being extreme on one end of the continuum or another. It really has to do

30:47more with the balance among these that is particularly important. Does it, does it also have to do with, they affect stress in some level if they're kind of dysregulated, if they're not being balanced? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And being super high on some of these can actually, is not necessarily the healthiest. So for example, there are some individuals on the autism spectrum who actually

31:18are hyper-focused on small nonverbal behavior. And that can actually be deleterious when it plays a kind of outsized role in their awareness and dominates social interaction. I was going to ask you about that. You know, there are some people that I know also who they have a really hard time with connecting with people, particularly in settings where you have to also engage in some small talk. Because it's like, they also just get like hyper-focused on,

31:53you know, bodily gestures and it's hard for them. Yes, absolutely. And so, yeah. Well, I want to start with resilience because that is, that's a really important one, particularly, I mean, we're obviously like, things are thrown at us all the time, right? I mean, you might have a loved one who comes down with a severe illness. Maybe you have to take care of them. Maybe there's a death or you lose a job. There's so many things that you can't control. They're out of your control that can really be stressful on a person. And so this, you know,

32:26resilience, this, the way you defined it as being able to recover quickly from the stress. I think about children. I mean, I think about my kid and I mean, there's, they seem to really bounce back quite easily in most situations. And, you know, does some of that resilience have to do

Neuroplasticity and resilience

32:46with the plasticity of their brain? So neuroplasticity, when I think of it, and you please define this as a neuroscientist, when I think of neuroplasticity, this is what I think of, your ability of your brain to adapt and respond to a changing environment. Right. Is that something that plays a role, a big role in resilience? And did I get that correct in terms of what neuroplasticity is? Yeah. I mean, certainly neuroplasticity includes your ability to adapt and change in response to the environment. It, you know, it's more than that too. It includes basic mechanisms of neurogenesis.

33:24Neurogenesis, for example, neurogenesis is the growth of new brain cells. And every one of us grows new brain cells every day, which turn out to be super important. And actually, aerobic exercise likely plays an important role in that. And these brain cells are really important for learning and memory.

33:46And, you know, also, it's one of the things I often say is that neuroplasticity happens wittingly or unwittingly. Neuroplasticity is going on all the time. Our brains are constantly being shaped by experience. Most of the time, though, neuroplasticity is happening unwittingly. Most of the time, we're even barely aware, if aware at all, of forces around us that are actually affecting our brain. And all of this that we're talking about today is an invitation to take more responsibility for our own

34:23brains, and to shape our brains in a more intentional way. So we can actually have neuroplasticity that's happening wittingly. But we can get back to your specific question regarding, and maybe ask it again. Yeah. I mean, so, well, I think you answered the question, but I now have another question, which is a couple of questions. If you are engaging in things that are perhaps increasing

34:59neurogenesis more like aerobic exercise, things that are known to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which, you know, affects neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, is that helping you wittingly engage in neuroplasticity because of the neurogenesis and the ability that you have these new neurons that can make new connections, and you can sort of shape them in this beneficial way by training your brain in a, you know, by doing things like thinking about compassionate things, like how healthy, you know, you're, yeah.

35:30I mean, again, combining those would be optimal. I sometimes cringe when I think of, at least in the old days, the American, the typical American gym, where you see people, you know, working out, doing aerobic exercise, and watching gunk on television, you know, just terrible stuff. And that's a prescription for disaster. You know, they're increasing neuroplasticity, and they're filling their minds with crap. And that will make things worse.

36:02Really? Yes. Even though the exercise is, like, beneficial and has positive effects? Absolutely. Because it's increasing neuroplasticity. There's no question about that. And it's facilitating the encoding of all this negative emotional stuff that they're getting on television. So if you're watching, like, the news or something that has a lot of negative, or social media, which has a lot of negative experiences. Exactly. That is a prescription for disaster. And it's part of the reason why we're in the mess we're in right now.

36:33So I wanted to ask you also, you know, the act of engaging in something hard. So I have always been an aerobic endurance junkie. Like, easy. I love running. I love biking. I love anything aerobic. You know, I mean, it's not easy, but I'm more drawn to it. I enjoy it more than strength training, like lifting heavy weights, which is something I do now, you know, for bone density, for muscle mass, very important. But what was so surprising to me is that when I started habitually, you know, engaging in strength training, and I do have a coach that I work with, you know, I'm doing hard

37:06things. I'm taking barbells, and I'm cleaning them up, and I'm squatting. And it's extremely hard for me mentally, probably mentally more than physically. And I do it first thing in the morning. And what I noticed is that the rest of my day was so much easier in terms of dealing with stress. Like, it was like, I got this hard thing done. You know, you have to recover. So I'm doing it, and then I'm doing sets, and I'm recovering from it. Is engaging in hard things, and exercise is hard, does that just in and of itself help you improve your resilience because you are recovering from

37:43this hard thing? Yeah, I think that that's a great question. And there's a little bit of scientific evidence that bears on it. Basically, what we can say is that exposure to some moderate levels of adversity, particularly early in life, but likely throughout life, is advantageous in cultivating resilience. If we were buffered from adversity completely, it would be deleterious

38:15because we wouldn't have the opportunity to learn to recover more quickly. So I think that the key insight that you're describing is true, that having some level of challenge, some level of difficulty is really helpful in learning to recover and strengthening our resilience muscle, no question. And there are some beautiful studies, some of which have actually been done in monkeys where this kind of thing can be experimentally manipulated in a more rigorous way. But there's a famous series of

38:54studies from a group at Stanford that has done this in squirrel monkeys, showing that exposure to moderate levels of adversity early in life was really the most important early experience in developing later life resilience. Yeah, moderate, I guess, is key, particularly early in life. Yes. And with something like exercise, there's other things that I also engage in, deliberate cold exposure, which I don't really like. But there's a mental toughness when you're doing this hard thing

39:28in a moderately safe environment, right? I mean, and you're kind of doing this thing you don't want to do, you're doing it, and then you recover. And you know, it's kind of like building this mental toughness. And that was something also in graduate school, for me, was very challenging. I mean, failed experiments constantly, lots of pressure from advisors, tests, exams, I was in a, you know, different state, different culture, you know, I'm from Southern California, and I was in like the Midwest, the Mid-South, you know, so a lot of things that were very stressful in my life, I was very, very stressed out. And then I started using the sauna every morning before I would go

40:00into the lab. And you know, you get hot, and it's hard, and it's uncomfortable. And what do you know, all of a sudden, my, my, I was able to handle stress a lot better. Yeah. And that was kind of the first, for me, sign that, hey, if I engage in this hard activity, it's helping me deal with stress. Yes, yes. And I think there's, there's a lot of truth to that. And there's another issue that I want to come back to that you brought up earlier, which I didn't answer. And, and it has to do with kids. And you mentioned that kids were sort of more naturally resilient, and they bounce back more

40:32quickly. And why is that? And is it because they have more neuroplasticity? There are two things that are really important there. One may be that they have increased plasticity. But it's likely that that's not the key. The key is that they don't have as large and as mature a prefrontal cortex as adults do. So we have this chunk of real estate in the front of our brain called the prefrontal

41:04cortex. And in humans, it's larger in relation to the rest of the brain mass than in any other species. And it confers a lot of characteristics that are very characteristically human. And one of those key characteristics is our ability to engage in what psychologists call mental time travel. We can anticipate the future, and we can reflect on the past. And that obviously confers a lot of advantages to us. But it also is what gets us into trouble. Because we worry about the future,

41:41and we ruminate about the past. Adults do that much more than kids. And adults do that much more than kids, because they have a more mature and functioning prefrontal cortex. And kids have the benefit of being in the present moment more, because they're not thinking about, you know, what's going to happen two weeks from now? They don't live in the future in the same way or ruminate about the past. And that actually is advantageous. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's a very good point.

42:14Okay, well, getting back to resilience, I mean, I feel like I've put my beliefs into, you know, what builds resilience for me and helps with resilience for me. What are some other practices perhaps someone could do even in combination with doing something like exercise that could help them build their resilience? Are there other mind training things they could do? And I loved your example of while you're getting ready for exercise, do this sort of, you know, compassion type of exercise. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the keys to cultivating resilience is simple awareness practices.

42:50And those are like really simple. They can be done anywhere, anytime. And it's rather than allowing our mind to be pulled and pushed willy nilly by thoughts and stimuli in our environment, we can direct our mind in a more intentional way. And so physical exercise is really a wonderful opportunity. Because, you know, one of the things that happens when we work out is there's a lot of sensations that are going on in the body. It's a very prominent signal, so to speak. And we can

43:25actually be simply aware of the signal. We can be aware of what's going on in our bodies and take that as an invitation for anchoring our awareness, rather than letting our mind separate from our body and thinking about what our to-do list is, for example. That's bad. You know, that's combining toxic worry with increases in neuroplasticity. It's the very thing that will make things worse.

43:56So it's, in many ways, directing our mind when we're doing physical exercise is especially important because physical exercise, we know, does increase neuroplasticity. But as I said, neuroplasticity is neutral with respect to our minds. It's so interesting. As you're sitting here explaining this awareness as you're exercising, I just realized when I'm resistance training, when I'm strength training, I am the most aware

44:29of my body. I'm burning my quads. I'm, like, aware of my breath, like, more than when I'm going for a run. Uh-huh. Yeah. And I'm, like, almost very aware of it. In fact, I'm entirely focused on my body sensations and the pain I'm feeling and my breathing when I'm doing heavy lifting. Yeah. So I guess I'm already— And your mind is nowhere else. My mind is nowhere else. Yeah. It can't be because it's a little, you know, it's scary. It's dangerous. Like, I am, like, lifting a heavy weight. Like, it's—I don't want to get injured. Right. Whereas when I'm running, I'm, you know, it's kind of— More automatic. Yeah,

45:02automatic. Or sometimes I'm with a friend or my husband and we're chit-chatting and, you know, it's, like, a nice, you know, hangout. Right. Right. But when I am doing resistance training and strength training in particular, it is hard. It is hard. Yeah. And I am focused on my body entirely. Yeah. So I didn't realize that that in itself was a type of—the focusing on my body was a type of resilience training. So thank you. Yeah. And I'm sure many people are relating to this as well that are listening. The MAP study, the Mind and Physical Activity Study, also, I mean, it feels like

45:34this is very related, right? It is. So this is work that was—that was done by a group at Rutgers in New Jersey. And Tracy Shores, I believe, is the lead investigator. It's—there's been a little bit of work, and it's combining physical exercise and meditation. And it's—it's what I've been talking

46:06about. It's—it's very limited work. So it's—I mean, it's great. It's a start. But it's—there have only been a couple of studies, and nothing has been resolved. And as I said earlier, one of the major questions is, what's the most optimal timing between physical exercise and mental exercise? Should one be done before the other? If so, which one? Or should they be done together? Those are all really important questions that are crying out to be answered. There's actually a group

46:41in our center, some from the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that are really interested in this and what the optimal combination of physical and mental exercise is for the cultivation of well-being. And so that's something that we're starting to do in a serious, programmatic way. Yeah. That's great to hear. I mean, I like this—this—the practical tips you already gave,

47:11I think, are so doable. I mean, you know, just if you're going to combine the two, you're already someone that exercises, and you can—you can do the, you know, the compassion type of training while you're getting ready for exercise. Totally. And while you're exercising, you focus on your bodily sensations. Right. And it doesn't take—you can literally not take an extra minute. Yeah. And that has to—and that also is improving the self-awareness, as you mentioned. Absolutely. And what about attention? Does focusing on your bodily— Yes, it totally improves attention. It definitely—and there's really good evidence to show

47:44that simply focusing on the sensations in your body will actually help on other unrelated kind of attention tasks that require you to focus your attention and resist distraction. Mm-hmm. I am—after I do my training is the best work that I have. I mean, I'm focused. Exactly. I'm not looking at any social media, or I don't really look at social media, but like, you know, sometimes I'll check around things, and I don't have this much impulse to do that either. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

48:14So, okay. Well, I wanted to ask you a question also about mindset because, you know, again,

Mindset training and biological change

48:21I'm just relating this to myself because it's easier. I feel like I'm resilient. I mean, I believe it. I think that all my exercise is helping me. I have this mindset that I am a resilient person. How much of resilience and some of—I guess some of these other emotional steps, but in particular resilience—has to do with your mindset? Mindset. Mindset is really important and actually can change our biology. There is absolutely no question. I'm sure that there are important limits to how much we can change with mindset alone,

48:54but it is really important. I'll give you, you know, one or two very specific data points. We, in a large randomized controlled trial that we're currently involved with, we've finished the data collection. We actually have written it up. It's just being submitted for publication, but it uses the Healthy Minds program that we've developed. We have an affiliated nonprofit that is associated with our university center. The nonprofit is called Human, H-U-M-I-N.

49:28It's formerly called Healthy Minds Innovations. And we produce an app called the Healthy Minds Program, which is totally freely available. And it teaches the four skills of well-being that I mentioned earlier—awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. And we did a large randomized controlled trial using the app with the four pillars of well-being, and we wanted to create a very rigorous rigorous control group. And one of the ways to create a rigorous control group is we created a

50:02version of the app that was mindset training only with zero meditation. So there was no meditation whatsoever. It was just instructions about these different pillars, and it was designed to change mindset, but it had no practice, zero. And, you know, we were able to get back-end data from the app where we can monitor exactly what people were doing. So we had very rigorous measures of everything.

50:34And this was a study that included both behavioral measures and some biological measures. And to make a long story short, we found that the full version, meditation plus the mindset, was the best. But the mindset alone was significantly, very significantly better than an untreated control group. And so there are huge benefits from just the mindset training alone. Can you explain, like, what kind of mindset training are we talking about? Like, how do you improve your mindset?

51:10You improve your mindset, for example, by teaching people that qualities like kindness are innate. We're born to be kind. And when we interact with people, we can look for the good in them. These are things we that we talked about earlier. It's also part of having a positive outlook. And just exposure to that kind of

51:42information itself was sufficient to produce many positive changes. And again, it wasn't the full range of changes that we see with when you include meditation as well, but it's quite substantial. And it also underscores how easy it is as long as you're doing it consistently, that the key is consistency. And so this was training that involved approximately five minutes per day for 28 days. So, but that's all it was.

52:22Very doable. Yeah. Five minutes per day for 28 days. And the effects persisted at a six-month follow-up. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. So just doing that for like a month had lasting effects. Well, the people continue to do it on their own after the formal trial ended at 28 days. I see. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the mindset is so powerful. We know obviously the placebo effect is real. The nocebo effect is real as well, where people will think that something negative is happening to them and they can

52:55change their physiology and experience pain and inflammation. Will people that are more prone to this type of nocebo effect that engage in this kind of mindset training, you know, just thinking in a more positive way and for five minutes a day and consistently, does that also, you think, would have a beneficial effect on those individuals that are more prone to that? Could be. That's a great question. And it's something, you know, that we don't know at this point in time. But, you know, when you do large randomized controlled trials with, you know,

53:29a couple of thousand people, one of the things you see is that there's variability. Some people respond very robustly. Other people respond more modestly. Some people don't respond at all. And that's true of any intervention. It could be physical exercise. It could be mental exercise. It could be even a pharmaceutical trial. There's a lot of variability. And one of the things that is going to be important in the future where a lot of this work is directed is kind of precision intervention. Precision being defined as more individualized, personalized training that's based

54:07on knowing characteristics of an individual. Yeah. I think that even with the help of AI, we're going to have digital copies of ourselves, genomic, but also personality, everything. And it's going to be so much easier to have an actual personalized, you know, intervention. Exactly. Yes. I agree. So you mentioned meditation. And, you know, I've seen some of your research as well showing that people that are engaging, and I would guess a more, not five minutes, but it's a little more of a intense type of meditation. I don't remember the exact amount, if it's 30 minutes or what, but

54:39they were able to change their biology, their immune system. So people were more having a better immune response to like vaccines, for example, epigenetic changes that are, you know, that you show your research has identified to occur with meditation. How is that mind able to change the body like physiologically like that? I mean, it's very interesting.

The gut-brain axis and inflammation

55:00Yeah, it is. And, you know, we're beginning to learn about the very specific mechanistic pathways through which the mind and the brain interact with the body. And the first thing to say is that it's bi-directional. And so it's not just the mind influencing the body, it's also the body influencing the mind. We know, for example, there are 200 million neurons in the gut. They've got to be doing something important. And they are feeding information to the brain continuously. And so there are bi-directional

55:40pathways that are going on all the time. These pathways are really important because they begin to provide some mechanistic cues for why it is that well-being and physical health are correlated. And so in large epidemiological studies, and the best example of this is there are a series of studies that have come from looking at British civil servants. These are known as the Whitehall

56:13studies in the UK with tens of thousands of people. And in that work, there is a very clear association between levels of well-being and metrics related to physical health. Now, that's just a correlation. And so we don't know causally what's causing what. And it could be that people who are physically healthier have higher levels of well-being. It could be the reverse. And it likely is both and

56:46complicated. But what we do know is that if you train the mind using meditation, you do see, and you do it in a rigorous randomized controlled type of trial where you can draw causal inferences, we can see that training the mind produces changes in the body. We've seen that in the study that you alluded to with responses to a flu vaccine. People who meditate actually show a healthier,

57:20a more robust response to the flu vaccine that we can measure with antibody titers. We also see, and I should say, you mentioned earlier that maybe this requires a little bit more meditation, you know, like 30 minutes a day. Actually, it doesn't. There is new data that we have showing, again, five minutes a day for 28 days. This prescription is sufficient to produce a significant decrease in IL-6, which is a pro-inflammatory cytokine, which is really an

57:54important marker of inflammation in the body. And we've shown in a large randomized controlled trial that on average, five minutes a day, if you do it for 28 days, is sufficient to produce a significant decrease in IL-6. And that measure of IL-6 is three months after the formal trial ends compared to a group that was untreated. And so this is very encouraging, and it suggests that we can

58:26make these changes quite readily. Does the type of meditation matter? Can it be as simple as what we've been discussing, like awareness on your body or, you know, this compassion? I'm calling it compassion, please. Yeah, no, it is compassion. So in our app, the Healthy Minds Program, we teach people each of the four pillars of well-being, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. We have them devote a week to each. And it's this 28-day program where we've seen these changes. It's likely

59:01that for different kinds of people, it may be that one or another pillar may resonate more strongly with them. And you may see changes with just one or two pillars. And so it's quite possible that you can see changes, you know, really easily with just these one or two pillars. We don't know that at this point in time. But what we do know is that it doesn't take much to produce these changes if you do

59:31this consistently. That's amazing. And I want to get back into the gut microbiome again, because there's so much... And we've also seen microbiome changes with just five minutes a day. Oh, with just five minutes. Yeah. But again, five minutes a day for... For consistency is the key. Consistency, yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I guess since we're talking about the gut, we might as well just, we can talk about it and then I'll go back to some other things I wanted to talk about. But what... The gut stuff is interesting. And I like how you tied that into the immune question,

1:00:02because, you know, I know that there are certain types of bacteria in the gut that will ferment our, you know, prebiotic fibers, and they'll make these certain short chain fatty acids like acetate, butyrate, propionate. And those act, they get into circulation and act as signaling molecules to our immune system. I know one thing they're very important to doing is increasing the number of T regulatory cells, helping with autoimmune responses. You're not having a hyper autoimmune response. But, I mean, clearly the gut is related to the immune system. Very intimately and connected.

1:00:38So with respect to the microbiome, so earlier research, I had seen you guys, your lab had, or you were involved in this research where meditation was shown to directly impact certain species of the gut microbiome directly. Do you know what species those were? And were they like these probiotic beneficial type of bacteria? Yeah. So what we, in very recent work, and we're working with a major leader in understanding the microbiome, who is at the University of Wisconsin,

1:01:14a scientist by the name of Joe Handelsman, what we see is changes in the butyrate pathway. And these species are particularly important in sealing the gut lining. And so we see widespread changes in the butyrate pathway. And again, it's in this randomized controlled trial with, on average, five minutes a day of meditation. And this is a trial involving roughly 1,200

1:01:48moderately depressed people that were recruited from every state in the United States, literally all 50 states, a sample of approximately 1,200 people. And all of them provided stool samples before and then three months after the intervention so that we can look within person at pre versus post changes in the microbiome. And over the course of this three-month period, we see these changes with

1:02:22this really moderate dose of meditation. That's incredible. Five minutes. I mean, I know exercise has been shown to also increase butyrate-producing bacteria. And you mentioned it's very important for sealing the gut. I mean, it does play a very big role in helping prevent gut permeability, which is huge. I mean, there are studies like huge for depression, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, I mean, everything. Yes. It's a whole range. Exactly. It's a whole range. I mean, it's everything you can... Alzheimer's disease. I mean, it just keeps

1:02:54going and going. So, that's really interesting that, you know, like 10 years ago, I guess, when a lot of this microbiome research was exploding, I was super into it. And a lot of it was coming out of these like rodent studies, you know, and the studies that were so fascinating to me was that you could take these like anxious mice and take the microbiome out of them and put them in non-anxious mice and make them anxious. Yeah, or vice versa. And then this new study that came out in January, I don't know if you saw that one, they took microbiome from young mice and transplanted old mice and it helped rejuvenate. And I'm just

1:03:28like, this is crazy. You know, I mean, the connection here, and you mentioned how many enteric neurons are there? 200 million. 200. I had no idea there were that many. I mean, the interaction between the bacteria and the neurons in our gut and like how that's affecting the brain and there's the vagus nerve connection. Yes. Do you have any insights?

The insula and asthma research

1:03:50Well, you know, you asked earlier when we didn't get to this question, what are the mechanisms that allow the mind and the body to interact in this way? There, you know, clearly there are many mechanisms. The vagus is, which is the 10th cranial nerve is one mechanism, but there are many, many mechanisms. You know, there's a part of the brain, neuroscientists have, you know, different parts of the brain that are their favorite. One of my favorite parts of the brain is the insula. The insula is the only part of the brain that we know of that has a viscerotopic map.

1:04:27So what that means is they're literally in different geographic locations within the insula. There are mapped different autonomic organs in the body. And this is one of the key pathways through which the brain and the autonomic nervous system interact. Uh, and, uh, uh, and this kind of retina topic, um, or, um, it's viscerotopic mapping, uh, is really, uh, significant in enabling

1:05:02the brain to have very specific effects on different parts of the body. Uh, and one of the, um, uh, many years ago, we wanted to study this in a, in, in a human context with a real human disease that was of great social significance. And, um, we wanted to come up with a, um, a disease that was a major public health issue, uh, that showed a socioeconomic gradient in, uh, the prevalence of the illness

1:05:34where there was clear unequivocal evidence that psychosocial factors, um, modulated the severity of symptom expression. Now, of course, there are many diseases which can meet those criteria for a variety of reasons. We chose asthma. Um, and asthma is a huge public health issue. Uh, and you can measure the end points of asthma really precisely looking at measures of lung inflammation. And, um, you know, we know that the severity of asthma symptomatology, uh, is increased

1:06:10by psychosocial stress. And so, you know, 15 years ago, I, there's a, there's a very famous asthma research group at the University of Wisconsin. I went over to those guys and I said, did you know that the brain was involved in asthma? And they looked at me like I was from Mars. Uh, and they said, you know, it's a lung disease. And I said, it's also a brain disease. Um, and they, I said, if psychosocial stress can influence the symptoms of asthma, it, unless you believe in magic, um,

1:06:41it's got to involve the brain. And, you know, they looked at me like I was crazy initially, but then we started doing some research and we actually found that this region in the insula, um, this region of the brain, the insula was very importantly involved in modulating the inflammatory response in the lung, uh, in asthmatics. And it was very responsive to psychosocial influences. And so we began to map out the neural pathways through which the inflammatory response in

1:07:15the lung is produced. And more recently, one of the really amazing, exciting, and frightening findings that we've obtained is that, um, the prevalence of premature dementia and Alzheimer's disease is much higher in asthmatics than it is in the general population. And when there is an inflammatory response in the lung, it's likely that there's also an inflammatory response in the brain. And that neuroinflammation is exacerbating premature dementia and increased neurodegeneration.

1:07:54And we now have evidence of increased and premature neurodegeneration in asthmatics. Uh, and so this has led us into this whole new understanding, which, um, uh, we didn't have, you know, 10 years ago, and it's kind of remarkable. I, I feel like it's not just limited asthma. No. It has to be like every, absolutely. Asthma is just an example. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And then, and then what role does mindset meditation? So we've, we've now studied that. So we, so if, if stress can exacerbate

1:08:33the inflammatory response, mental strategies that are, um, that are resilience promoting should do the reverse. Uh, and so we've now started mapping the neural changes that occur with simple forms of, uh, of mindfulness or awareness meditation and how those are changing these specific parameters of brain function and influencing the inflammatory response in the lung in a positive direction.

1:09:04And, um, and this is so important, particularly in light of the neuro, um, inflammation, uh, and neurodegenerative changes that we see in this and likely other similar groups that are associated with higher levels of inflammation. So, you know, it sounds like just even buffering the, the stress response with meditation. And I mean, that, that's huge. And I remember some studies, I think Liz

1:09:35Blackburn and, um, Alyssa Eppel were doing some studies with these caretakers. Yes. That were extremely stressed out. Yes. And, um, showing premature shortening of telomeres and they were able to, I mean, literally stop the shortening, the acceleration of the shortening of their telomeres. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Phenomenal. I mean, changing, I think telomerase or some of those enzymes were increased. Yes. Yes. So, um, it also, you know, we, we, we, we all, this is a stress, as you mentioned, this is a stressful world we live in. We have so much information now, you know, now I'm a parent right

1:10:09now and I'm, I, I often contrast it to life when I was a kid, you know, when I was a kid, I would be roaming the neighborhood streets on my bike and it was dark and my parents had no idea where I was and I was making up games with my friends and it was, it was all okay. Everything was fine. We're all safe. Completely different world we live in now. I mean, now everything has to be a structured play date. Kids aren't, I mean, we're scared, we're scared to let our kids, you know, if we can't see them, they're walking ahead of us. And a part of that has to do with this information we have,

1:10:39and it's not necessarily true that they're not safer. We just have all this awareness of stuff and it's making us anxious. And my point is that we're, you know, it's a stressed world we live in. And then on top of that, you have other things that are thrown at you, as we mentioned, you know, financial stress, emotional relationship, you know, whatever it is. And so we need to deal with this stress in a better way. We need to exercise. We need to train our brains through this, you know, mental training and meditation, which I've always had a hard time with because I don't think

1:11:13I've quite understood what it is, is the real problem. You know, I remember doing this.

Active meditation in daily life

1:11:18Yeah, and it's important for viewers to know, meditation is not about sitting in any special posture. It's not about going off to some quiet, you know, mountaintop. It really can be done anywhere, anytime. And it doesn't require anything other than using your mind in an intentional way. And so, I mean, particularly given your interests, doing it while you're doing physical exercise is an amazing opportunity. You know, the one time it's challenging to do meditation is when you're

1:11:54doing something very cognitively demanding. But most exercise is not cognitively demanding, most physical exercise. And so it's a perfect opportunity where you can combine them. It is. And it sounds like there's a lot of types of meditation, and that is also really important. It's not just this one thing that we have in our mind where you sit. And I remember trying the Headspace app years ago, and I was like, I can't do this. And I was going out and sitting and trying to be quiet and like, you know, listening to my thoughts. I don't know. I was like observing my thoughts as

1:12:25they come in and out. And it just didn't work for me. Yeah. One of the things we do in our app is we give people the opportunity to meditate when they're engaged in activities of daily living or doing it as a formal meditation. So if they're involved in activities of daily living, they might be commuting, they might be walking, doing physical exercise, they might be doing their laundry, washing the dishes. Any of those are fine. And we actually have data now showing that when people elect to do these practices as active practices, where they're doing

1:13:01it along with activities in the world, the benefits are identical. There's no statistical difference in the benefit that is produced when you do these as active practices or as formal meditation. That's great. What about prayer? Like, is that a form? Like if you're having gratitude, gratitude, you think being thankful? It shares a lot of the same things. And if you do it, the key is regularity and consistency. So if you do it on a regular basis for, you know, a few minutes

1:13:34every day, yes, then I think it shares many of the same characteristics. I'm thinking about like before a meal and being thankful, you know, for the meal that was put in front of you. And that is a daily thing, right? Absolutely. And actually, there's, you've anticipated something in my new book. There's a chapter in the new book on developing daily habits and conscious habits. And one of the, and creating like little rituals. And one of the things we talk about is doing this around eating. You know, humans eat. We all have to eat a few times a day. We do this,

1:14:10you know, usually almost every day. And it's a wonderful opportunity to do like a little gratitude or appreciation practice. If you simply sit and reflect on how many people it took to have food on your plate and just offer thanks in some way, it gives you a sense, first of all, of interdependence, that you're not this isolated island, but you depend on all these other people. Uh, and you can allow this natural sense of appreciation and it really kind of warms the

1:14:42heart. And it, that is really beneficial. And probably really great to start early with kids so that they can be grateful. Absolutely. You know, and, and that's a big one. Absolutely. And if they're grateful as young, they'll grow up to be grateful and, you know, then we're going to have a better world. Yes. Um, when it comes to, I want to, I want to kind of circle back to, you know, we talked a little bit about buffering some of the, the stress. There's lots of daily stresses that we have and how meditation can play a role of that. But I want to kind of go back to some of

1:15:13those emotional styles and like how they relate to longevity. So, um, attention is one that we kind of touched on. And I think we've talked about a mindfulness, you know, attention is something I would say that is a big problem now. And you already mentioned this, we do have a lot of distractions and I don't know, I think technology is great and there's a lot of benefits from it, but there's also, we have to deal with new problems. And one of those new problems is, you know, I mean, we're hyper stimulated, you know, with these electronics and, um, it's, I find myself even

1:15:47like, I used to just be able to stand around and be fine with it. But then I often find myself wanting to pull my phone out. Like just when I'm standing in line or, you know, it's like, can I just be bored? Why can't I be bored? It's hard to be bored. Honestly, it really is. Well, actually there, there are good data to show that most, um, Americans or at least young Americans have a really challenging time. Uh, and actually, um, male college students would prefer to receive electric shocks than they would be to just sit and do nothing. Um, uh,

1:16:18that's how difficult it is for them to just be bored. Um, and there, there's a famous experiment that was published in a very high profile journal just a few years ago showing that. Um, uh, and so it just underscores how challenging it is these days to sit with one's own mind. Um, and in part because our minds have become so chaotic that when we start to actually pay attention to our mind, it actually gets us anxious. And one of the things we find is when people start to meditate and do our

1:16:53healthy minds program after the first week, they actually become significantly more anxious. And we, it, when they do, we say, that's exactly what should happen. You're doing it right. Um, because when you start to pay attention to your own mind, you notice how chaotic it is. And that freaks a lot of people out. Uh, and it's perfectly normative. And how long does that attention, uh, anxiousness last? About a week. Oh, that's not bad. Then it begins to go down. Does it go down below baseline?

1:17:23Yes, it does. So if you can engage in five minutes a day in some sort of mindfulness technique that can lower anxiety, improve attention, attention, I mean, that sounds very beneficial. What about in children? You know, children in general, like also very prone to, um, attention problems, particularly younger boys. Are, are there types of practices that are they the same that you would do for adults? Yeah. So we've done that. Um, there are a lot of things to say about that. And it's a wonderful question. I have two kids and four grandkids now. Um, so I'm, uh, super interested in this personally

1:17:59and professionally. Um, so the first thing to say is that I honestly believe, and this is both from my, my putting on my scientist hat, as well as my parent and grandparent hat, um, that the most important thing that we adults can do for our kids is to do these practices ourself. Um, and to be an embodied exemplar for our children of what calm, resilient, um, persons could be. Uh, and if we are calm

1:18:35and resilient and just radiate with love, um, that's the best thing that we could possibly do for our kids and not be anxious in their presence and not keep checking our phone in their presence and really be fully present with them. Um, that is the most important thing we can do. So rather than thinking that we need to go out and teach them, you know, mindfulness or teach them this or that, simply be loving with them. That's it. Because they're observing us. And they, they, they osmotically

1:19:10absorb. It's, it's more than observing. Um, they're, they're, they're, we are neuroplastically influencing their brain through our distraction, through our stress. Uh, they are encoding this at a very deep cellular level. That's very important to think about and reflect on. Exactly. If you're a parent. Totally. Yeah. Totally. So, so that's the most important thing that we could do. Um, you know, once they reach a certain age, we can gingerly introduce these kinds of practices.

1:19:47And we've done some, I mean, we, we've done it. Um, you know, we have a, a curriculum that we've developed called the kindness curriculum for preschool children, um, where we teach simple, uh, mindfulness and kindness practices starting in, uh, at age four. Uh, and actually that kindness curriculum is freely available on our website in both English and Spanish. And, um, it's being used in about 35,000 schools all over the world now, um, in, in various ways. Uh, um, and we've published

1:20:20a randomized control trial showing the benefits of this kindness curriculum. And there are really simple things that you can do, um, with, um, with mindfulness and kindness. Um, uh, so, you know, for example, a very, very simple mindfulness practice in kids is to ring a bell and you instruct the child to please listen carefully to the sound. And as soon as you no longer hear the sound, raise your hand and you can do this in a classroom of preschool kids. And you can, for the like 10 seconds

1:20:56that the sound is audible, you can palpably feel stillness. Kids really quiet down and then they jump up and they love this practice and they can taste the value of being quiet and simply being with full awareness. That's a way to just introduce them, to give them a taste. Uh, and with kindness, you know, we do all kinds of simple little things like, um, having them grow their own plants is a way to,

1:21:32you know, treat the earth with kindness and actually see the fruits of what they do. Um, uh, uh, and those little things can be helpful, but I think the most important thing is for the parent to, to, to do this themselves. And this underscores one of the key points of this new book, Born to Flourish, which is there, and there are three points, I should say, really simple points in this book. The first is that flourishing is a skill. The second is that it's easier than you think.

1:22:05Those are two points that we've talked about already. The third point is that flourishing is contagious. It's really contagious. And, um, just like stress is contagious. Uh, and so that if we are flourishing in the presence of our kids, that's going to be the most powerful way of instilling these qualities in our children. I love that. That's awesome. Um, let's talk about one of your

Social connection and longevity

1:22:34flourishing that you, that you mentioned earlier, which is the, uh, social connection, very important one as well. And I mean, I also like to relate this back to longevity because a lot of listeners are very interested in their, you know, health and, and increasing their, their health span as well. And I remember reading this study. Um, I mean, it's been years, but I think it was out of Brigham Young, perhaps showing that social connection, you know, people with more social connection. And I want to dive deeper on this because you already mentioned, it's not just the number of connections, it's

1:23:09the deepness of it, but that they, if they had more social connection that they were like 50% less likely to die than people that didn't have as much social connection. And that's like very profound number. Um, and you were talking about loneliness and 15 cigarettes a day. I mean, those are things that people can relate to. I mean, everyone knows smoking is bad. Obesity is bad. I mean, and actually these data in the surgeon general's report, um, loneliness was more than twofold a risk factor compared to obesity in producing premature mortality. Let me ask you a skeptic question.

1:23:43The skeptics out there will say, well, people that are unhealthy are inside their, they're in their beds. They can't get out and socialize. How do we know that's not a reverse causation? Just showing, you know, this, that basically the healthy people are the ones that are able to go out and interact socially. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think that that's a legitimate concern and, um, uh, and it, it's definitely bi-directional. So, um, you know, no one is really arguing that it doesn't

1:24:17also go in the other direction, but there are randomized control trials, uh, where people who've never done these connection practices to cultivate social connection are randomized into a group to learn, uh, um, practices to increase appreciation and, and compassion. And there are biological changes that are observed, that are health promoting, where those kinds of biological changes, if they

1:24:49accumulate over time would be expected to be the kind of changes that would lead to increased longevity. Uh, and so, uh, in my view, um, there's enough evidence out there to suggest that, that the causal arrow can go from the cultivation of social connection to increased longevity, but it's also, you know, true. And we need to say this, you know, uh, immediately that the, the, the other, um, causal arrow is likely also true. Um, so it's, it's not that one is, you know, the truth and the

1:25:26other is not, they're both true. It's not mutually exclusive. Yeah. When it comes to social connections, and I, I think of, you know, the blue zones and some of these like different things that have been identified to be common denominators amongst like the people that are living the longest and, and social connections seem, was one that you, that was one of those common denominators. And then you have the Seventh Day Adventist, you know, they're very, they've got their, their community. What is it about social connection? I'm sure it's not just one thing, but you know, is, is it about having a network? Is it

1:25:59about being happy? What is it about social connections that is so important for, for long-term health? Is there brain changes going on? Yeah. So, um, you know, of course we don't know all the details yet, but I think one important piece is that, um, one of the most, um, significant causes of psychological suffering and of its associated biological deleterious effects is excessive focus

1:26:29on the self. Um, uh, you know, me, my, I, it goes along with, um, you know, a lot of self-centered kind of behavior and, um, uh, narcissism, greed, all of that is, um, uh, bad for our mental well-being and also it's, has, uh, an eroding effect on our physical health. Things that work in the reverse

1:27:00direction are going to be beneficial. And one of the things about social connection is that it takes the focus away from the self and brings it to, um, to the community or to others. Uh, and, um, and, and this is why, you know, these simple little practices that we talked about earlier. So for example, with physical exercise, reflecting on how this is good, not only for myself, it's good for myself, but it's also, if I'm healthier and I have more vitality, it's going to be good for my family.

1:27:33It's going to be good for my children. And, you know, I think most people would agree with that. Um, uh, and so taking the, shifting away from just the self-focus and broadening it so that it becomes, um, uh, more altruistic is really beneficial. And again, it doesn't take much and we're, we're predisposed to, to do that anyway. Uh, we just need to kind of remind ourselves. It feels so good to be altruistic. It feels so good to help people. I mean, I don't know,

1:28:08I guess there's a outlier, there's outliers out there that may not, uh, feel that, but I know I do. Yeah. There are a series of famous studies that have been done with, um, with, uh, with folks where people come, I mean, they're crazy studies. People come into the lab in the morning and they're given a large chunk of cash, like a few hundred dollars. And they say, um, you know, we know a lot of people, and these are, you know, middle-class people, they're not super wealthy. Um, but they say, we know a lot of people have things that they've always wanted to buy for themselves, but they consider

1:28:42it, you know, kind of frivolous. Here's $200. Go buy whatever you want for yourself. The only constraint is you can only buy stuff for yourself and then come back at the end of the day. And then another group is given the same pile of cash. Uh, and they said, um, we want you to take this money and simply buy gifts for other people. The only constraint is you can't spend any of this money on yourself. Uh, and, uh, and then they come back at the end of the day and guess which group is

1:29:12way more happier. Of course, the one that buys stuff for other people. Yes. But let me ask you a question. What if those people had to earn that money? It wasn't given to them. Do you think that there would be, do you think they would feel any different? Like, oh, I spent this money that I spent my time working for this money and, and then I didn't get anything for my, myself or my family. Well, I mean, I think if people are- Maybe the family counts as others, but- Yeah. I mean, I think if the people are resource constrained, it's a different story. Um, so it,

1:29:43you know, it's very complicated and there are many factors here, but I think, and there's just a lot of research that suggests that, um, being generous to others in, in multiple ways is, um, the most powerful way of activating centers in the brain that are associated with positive emotion much more strongly than doing something for ourselves. Is it changing pathways in our brain? Like, I mean-

1:30:15It's altering reward pathways in our brain. Yeah. That's good. I mean, um, that kind of brings me to this sense of purpose as well. I mean,

Transcendent purpose and daily habits

1:30:25cause I feel like if you, there, that's also tied to purpose, right? If you're, if you're helping other people, altruism, I mean, that's, you feel like you have a purpose and that's a big, you know, component in your, in your flourishing, your new book on Born to Flourish and flourishing is having that purpose and meaning. And I know a lot of people hear that and they think like, it's gotta be this big grand, you know, thing where I have this purpose in life and, you know, what does it mean to have a purpose?

1:30:55Yeah. So it, that's a hugely important question and it doesn't mean having something grand. Um, it could be the simplest little things that you do, um, uh, for your family, for your community, uh, um, for, uh, a cause that you believe in, uh, whatever it might be, but something, what we, what we, the term that psychologists use is a transcendent purpose. And by that meaning

1:31:26something beyond yourself. Uh, so anything beyond oneself is a transcendent purpose and having, um, a connection between what we're doing and a transcendent purpose can be enormously beneficial, even for the most pedestrian activities of daily living. And so, I mean, this sounds really strange, but, um, you know, we have a cat at home. We've had a cat, cats for a long time. And, um, when I'm home,

1:31:57I'm the one that scoops the cat litter every night. Uh, and you know, it's just something that needs to be done on a daily basis and I've turned it into a little ritual and I don't take a single extra second. I do it while I'm, as I'm, um, I'm crouching down to the litter, you know, I invoke the aspiration that may this, um, the clean litter for the cat be beneficial, not only to the cat, but this is helpful to my wife. So she doesn't have to do it. It's beneficial for anyone who walks

1:32:29into the room and doesn't have to smell the cat litter. Uh, and you know, it's just a, a little simple thing that I do every day when I scooped the cat litter and it literally takes zero extra time. And I actually look forward to doing the cat litter every day. I really honestly look forward to it. And it's, um, you know, this is like a task that most people would think of as like, you know, not so nice task that just has to be done, but you can turn it into a little ritual, uh, and have it

1:32:59imbued with some purpose. Uh, and you can do that with virtually anything. That's really great. I, I, I love, I mean, it's, it's just also changing your mindset. It's, it would be so easy to like take the opposite of you. Like, Oh, this is so gross. Why am I, why isn't my wife help? Like, it's a completely just different outlook and like, you can just train yourself. Exactly. Like, even if you hate cat litter and you hate the smell, I mean, just by like focusing on that positive aspect, you obviously love your wife. You want her to be happy and like focus on that. That's so awesome. Exactly. That's

1:33:31all it takes. And, and it's so accessible. And once you start doing it, it becomes very automatic. And so, and one of the cool things about purpose, uh, because I know your listeners are particularly interested in longevity, uh, among people who are 70 years and older, having a strong sense of purpose in life is probably the single most important psychological predictor of longevity. Wow. So even little, like we, we can, we can train ourself to have a purpose in anything that we do.

1:34:07Yes. Preparing our food. Exactly. I mean, it sounds like, you know, everything that you're doing, if you, do you think that also really plays a role? So like even just a little, maybe not life purpose, but like a little purposes. Totally. That's awesome. That's really awesome. So it's really accessible to, to anyone. Yeah. And it's just a matter of changing your mindset deliberately. Exactly. And, and, and a habit, right? Exactly. Yeah. And in the early stages, we need reminders because what everyone I think would agree that this would be great,

1:34:37but when they're actually in the real world and doing it, they forget, they just forget. Um, but if they had something to remind them, uh, that would be helpful. And this is where, you know, the app that we designed is, you know, intended to be helpful to just remind people that this is a great opportunity to do this. Does this also, I feel like I wanted to ask you about the, the positive outlook as well. Um, is, I feel like it's almost related in a way. I mean, we're not talking about purpose so much, but like, you are really taking this deliberate mindset and

1:35:12like, you can just do it by like focusing and thinking about it, like the benefits of what you're doing. How does someone who really does have a little, I call it more of a pessimistic, you know, outlook, maybe they, you know, even when good things happen to them or someone says, Hey, there's this, this great thing that's going on. And then rather than seeing the great, you think of the problems, you're like, Oh, but it's not good enough. Or like, you'll see the problems. Like how can someone sort of get out of that mindset and focus more on the positive? Because that's really important as well. It is really important. And so, you know,

1:35:43I think the, first of all, it's important to consider this to be a gradual process. It's not going to be instantaneous. It's not going to all change at once. And, um, uh, a person who adopts a kind of pessimistic view, uh, can be, they can work with their mind using these simple strategies. So for example, if, uh, they are pessimistic about themselves, um, uh, it might be pessimistic about

1:36:17their ability to do something or pessimistic that they, um, uh, are going to, um, feel a certain way. Uh, you can begin to, uh, use, uh, one of our pillars in particular, which is insight, um, to help investigate with curiosity about this and really adopt a framework of curiosity. And so one of the ways to do this is, um, uh, if someone is showing this pessimism, we can, they can ask themselves,

1:36:49is it really all of me that's pessimistic? Is every part, every morsel in my mind and my body, pessimistic, is there any part of me that's not pessimistic? Can I find some place, um, that may be just a smidgen, uh, less pessimistic and let's try to connect with that. Um, uh, and it's like, uh, you know, we use these sentences, uh, about ourselves. And so we often will say, you know, I'm anxious or I'm in pain or I'm sad. When we use a sentence like that, really, is it all of me

1:37:26that's anxious? Is there any part of me that's not anxious? Uh, can I find any part? Uh, and when you really start to do this just gently, you recognize that, yeah, it's a lot more permeable than you previously thought. You know, we have, and this is part of this narrative that, that is so powerful and, you know, everyone has a narrative. Most people don't even recognize that they have a narrative. Uh, yet it's powerfully determining how we perceive the world. And so if we can approach it with

1:38:01curiosity, it really helps to open it and to have it be a little more porous and spacious. And for the pessimist, um, it really, I think can be life-changing. I, it also sounds like awareness is important. Yes. It's awareness and insight worked hand in hand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I have a couple of like, well, is there anything else you want to cover before I get to some closing questions? Yeah. I think all the issues related to longevity I've talked about.

1:38:33I mean, just flourishing and why flourishing is important for longevity. And it sounds like, you know, pretty, pretty loud and clear that we can all flourish. And, um, it's really not that hard and it just requires a little bit of effort and awareness and focusing your attention and doing these practices and habits that are daily. Exactly. Um, and I think you've given some really great examples. I loved, you know, the, the, the easy ones, you know, those are the removing the friction is really what's important. There are some people out there that they're, they're all in on

1:39:05meditation and, um, that's great, but like a lot of us aren't, you know? Yeah. And, you know, I think if people like me are honest about the world, you know, the vast majority of people will never meditate. Uh, and I think that's fine. And, and one of the things that's important is the cultivating the skills of flourishing does not require formal meditation. You can do this anywhere, anytime. Uh, uh, it just requires using your mind more intentionally. That's really the key, using your mind more intentionally. And I really never really thought

1:39:38about it in that way in terms of training your mind and meditation. It really is. I mean, it's just simple as like intentionally, you know, using your mind. And it's really not that hard to do because you can do that while you're doing other things for sure. Yes. Um, not everything, but certain things you can. Yeah. So I'm going to try to incorporate some of those practices and also within my family and also thinking about being an example to my family as well. How, how old are your kids? Um, I only have one. He's eight and perfect age, perfect age. And

1:40:12you know, he's, he's a great boy, but, um, there's always room for improvement and, um, there are times when I get stressed and lose it and, you know, and it's just not necessary. Yeah. You know? When I, when I sit down and think about it and I'll often reflect after, I'm like, why am I freaking out of this thing? Yeah. Well, parenting is the, you know, talk about, um, uh, adversity as a driver of resilience. I think that having children is really so juicy and important in cultivating our resilience. Oh, for sure. And children have this way of challenging us as parents

1:40:48like nothing else. They're also the best thing ever. Exactly. The best thing ever. I totally agree. Yeah. Um, okay. So a couple of closing questions I want to ask you, if you were to sum

Advice for a healthy life

1:40:59up your advice for achieving a long and healthy life based on your research, what would the core practices be that you would emphasize? I think we've answered that, but we'll sum it up. Yeah. Um, the core practices to living a, um, a flourishing and healthy life, uh, include regular physical and mental exercise, I would say. Uh, and the physical exercises we've talked about is really important in increasing neuroplasticity, but neuroplasticity is neutral with respect to flourishing. And so

1:41:33the ideal combination is combining physical and mental exercise, uh, in a way that harnesses the power of neuroplasticity to cultivate, uh, wholesome, uh, and virtuous qualities of our mind, which really will benefit our, uh, our wellbeing. It will benefit all of those around us and it will help to promote our flourishing and the flourishing of others. That's the, probably the biggest lesson that I

1:42:04learned, um, today from you is, is that I didn't know that. And I am someone that, that I exercise. Yes. I know of all the longevity benefits, but I exercise for my, my mental health and my brain. I absolutely have to exercise to be a good person, to be a good wife, to be a good mother. Um, and, and, and now I feel like I have a little bit of a, uh, uh, something that I can improve even more. Yeah. I mean, so I'm kind of excited to, to, to try this because I, I can use it, you know,

1:42:39there, there, there are parts, there are parts of me and I'm probably more of that pessimistic person to some degree. I mean, not necessarily pessimistic, but I do often focus on things that I can, I can find problems, you know, and, and that isn't not necessarily good. It can help be helpful in some situations, but it's not always helpful. So, um, well, I look forward to checking in with you in another six months or so. Yeah. Um, I think, I think the last question you've already answered, which is essentially taking away the friction on, on meditation. So thank you so much

1:43:10for, um, just giving us really practical advice and particularly me. And I know the listeners as well, because I do feel like, you know, the, the, the gratitude around, you know, the dinner table, not everyone prays before a meal. Some people already do that, but even extending that beyond, you know, you know, thinking a higher power, God, but also like all the people that were involved in getting the meal, the farmers that grew the food and people, perhaps if you're out to dinner who prepared it. And so there's a lot, there's a lot to be grateful for. Even the, even the plates and the table that you're sitting at. I mean, just the, the range of, uh,

1:43:45humanity required for you to be doing what you're doing is extraordinary. It's, and it's nice to focus on that and to think about it sometimes. Yes, absolutely. So you have this book, Born to Flourish. It's available now. People can, can go and get that. Where's the best place? Amazon. Wherever you buy books. And this is written by myself and my dear friend and colleague, Cortland Dahl. Uh, yeah, Born to Flourish. You can get it anywhere you get books. Uh, and it's available in a hardcover,

1:44:18in audio, uh, in digital form. Audio makes it easy for some people on their commutes. That's great. Yeah. And we, Cort and I read the book ourselves. So, uh. Oh, nice. Yeah. So we can hear your nice voice. Um, and there's other places that you were, you mentioned your, your app that people can go and try out for these, you know, the four different. Yes. So this app is called the Healthy Minds Program. You can download it from wherever you get apps. It's totally free. There's absolutely no paywall. Uh, and it's produced by a non-profit

1:44:52that I founded in 2014, uh, uh, which is now called Human, H-U-M-I-N. And, uh, the goal of the non-profit is to take insights from our research and turn them into tools that can be used to measure and cultivate wellbeing, particularly at scale. And there's also, um, what I, what I gathered from talking to you today that we can find ways to meditate, you know, five minutes a day and work on each of these pillars as well. Is that?

1:45:22Yes. And you can do it with the app and you can do it again as you're commuting, as you're doing physical exercise, as you are doing your laundry, whatever you're doing. And there are, uh, there are options in the app so that you can do these practices while you're engaged in these other activities of daily living. And so it is, it is really the truth that you can be doing this and not taking any extra minute out of your day at all. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to sit on this couch right here and download the app

1:45:52as soon as we're done. I mean, that's exactly what I wanted to hear. So thank you very much for your research, um, for your, your, your, you know, contributions to communicating, you know, all this to the public. I mean, this is very important and, um, I look forward to following more of your research and hearing about, you know, some of the new stuff that you're going to find out to help us improve our happiness, our ability to flourish and to live long, healthy lives. And thank you so much for all you're doing to spread all this useful information to a wide

1:46:24audience. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Rhonda. Thank you, Richie.

1:46:29I want to thank you, Dr. Richard Davidson for joining me today and for making the science of flourishing feel both rigorous, but also practical. The idea that stayed with me most is that we do not have to choose between training the body and training the mind during a warmup or my walk or run or a controlled lifting session. We can actually return our attention to the body. We can notice the story we are telling ourselves about discomfort, or we can reflect on how improving our own health may benefit the people around us, like our family and our friends.

1:47:01The same skills can be rehearsed while commuting, making dinner, folding laundry, or even just sitting with your child during a very difficult moment. I also appreciated Richie's emphasis that the mind-body relationship runs in both directions. The meditation findings involving inflammatory signaling, the microbiome, and asthma are all really scientifically exciting. If you want to explore Richie's work further, his book, Born to Flourish, written with Cortland Dahl, is now available. The Healthy Minds Program app is also free, has no paywall, and includes short practices

1:47:32organized around awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, including options designed for use during everyday activities. Also, a friendly reminder, you can find the full transcript to this episode, detailed show notes, links to the resources that we mentioned in this episode, including studies at foundmyfitness.com forward slash episodes. Click on the Richard Davidson episode. And I also want to take a moment to thank you for supporting the show. Found My Fitness is entirely ad-free. We do not accept

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