Show Notes
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dharmalab.co
How much of what we experience comes from the world itself, and how much comes from our expectations about it? In our latest AMA, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl explore how the brain constructs perception, why the gap between reality and expectation can amplify suffering, and what changes when we begin to notice that process as it happens. We had a few moments of technical issues with frozen screens or background noise, but they don’t last long. What’s inside * Why your brain constructs reality the way it builds a dream * Why controlling the mind backfires * TMS: is it cheating? * Why open awareness loosens pain * The neuroscience of grief and regret * A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Cort) * A preview of our upcoming November summit * The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording for paid members Companion Flashcards At Bottom Your brain builds reality like a dream A listener named Linda asked about acceptance, and about the idea, drawn from Anil Seth and Lisa Feldman Barrett, that reality is a construction of the mind. Cort answered first, and reframed where suffering actually comes from. It’s actually the gap between reality and our expectations of what should be happening. However big that gap is, that’s like the size of suffering in that moment. —Cortland Dahl
Cort was clear it is not erasing expectations. It is seeing that they are there and that they are out of step with what is happening, bringing them into the light of conscious experience rather than letting them run under the hood. Then Richie discussed how the brain networks that build our beliefs and expectations are the very networks through which we perceive. He used the dream as proof. Just as in a dream, we can feel those emotions in our body, and there are documented changes in our heart rate and breathing, and yet there’s nothing out there. It’s all in our mind. It turns out that’s actually the way it works with the real world. That’s how our brains construct reality. —Richard Davidson
His image for the practice came from Mingyur Rinpoche: caught in the middle of a river, you are swept along by the turbulent flow. Become aware of the thoughts and expectations driving your perception, and it is more like sitting on the bank, watching the water move without being pulled in. Cort added a pointer for anyone who wants the science firsthand, calling Anil Seth’s TED talk one of the best he has seen. The picnic and the four police officers Victoria asked why open awareness loosens physical pain. Richie described what his lab calls “stickiness,” the attachment or aversion that makes an emotion reverberate long after the thing that caused it is gone. In open awareness, the reverberation drops away. In some of our own research, the response in sensory regions is actually larger when you’re doing open awareness. It’s not diminished. But there’s no reverberation. It happens and comes back to baseline. We’re not creating emotional zombies.—Richard Davidson
That fast return to baseline, he said, is a neural signature of resilience. Cort then told a story from the Tibetan tradition that ties to this. Imagine you drive to a park for a picnic, thrilled to be there. Then four police officers walk up and tell you that you are ordered to stay in this park all day, that they will block you if you try to leave. Even though you wanted to go there in the first place, suddenly everybody’s trying to think how they can get out. Life does not like to be constrained and controlled in any way.—Cortland Dahl
The mind works the same way. The harder we clamp down on a feeling, the more it strains to escape. Open awareness runs the other direction. Cort called it a practice of trust, close to the opposite of control. FREE · 2-MINUTE PRACTICE LED BY CORT 2-minute practice: Wherever you are, settle into a comfortable posture. Let your eyes stay gently open or close them. Take a fe
More from Dharma Lab
We often think of gratitude as a response to something good happening. But it’s also a skill we can practice. In this episode of Dharma Lab, Cortland Dahl and Richie Davidson explore how to notice and savor everyday moments of gratitude, and extend that appreciation to people we find difficult. They discuss research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues on why writing a gratitude letter can be especially powerful, and share small practices they use in their own lives. Enjoy! Sources: Regan, A., Walsh, L. C., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2023). Are Some Ways of Expressing Gratitude More Beneficial Than Others? Results From a Randomized Controlled Experiment. Affective Science, 4(1), 72–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00160-3 Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Episode Companion Flashcards: Upcoming Events: * The Restless Mind — November: A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring how to meet everyday stress, distraction, and overwhelm with greater clarity and ease. Bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, the week features leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson. Learn more / register In This Episode: 00:00 — Gratitude Is a Skill: A Preview01:12 — Welcome: A Celebration of Richie03:16 — What It Feels Like to Receive Gratitude07:56 — How Gratitude Spreads10:10 — Making Space for Appreciation11:16 — The Science of Training Gratitude13:57 — Why Writing a Gratitude Letter Helps15:12 — How to Practice: Start Where It’s Easy18:09 — Everyday Gratitude: A Moment with a Stranger19:54 — Recognizing and Savoring Gratitude22:22 — What Happens in the Brain?24:40 — The Insula and Feeling Gratitude in the Body27:11 — Why Expressing Gratitude Benefits You, Too28:56 — Intentional Practice: What Science Has Yet to Establish30:56 — Extending Gratitude Beyond Your Inner Circle32:19 — Gratitude Toward Difficult People36:10 — Richie’s Practice: Appreciation, Emails, and Constructive Feedback40:03 — Cort’s Practice: Finding Appreciation in Ordinary Things41:53 — Three Things: A Gratitude Ritual Before Bed43:11 — Closing Gratitude Written transcript for those who prefer to read: 00:00 — Gratitude Is a Skill: A Preview Richie: Her work really convincingly shows that gratitude can be trained, that you can improve this by engaging in various intentional exercises to cultivate gratitude. And when you do that, it improves well-being more generally. Cort: The thing that I’ll always remember is an instruction I got from Mingyur Rinpoche. When he was teaching appreciation as a meditative practice, he was talking about these very mundane things. Like you can even start with yourself, just appreciate the fact that you brush your teeth, appreciate that you got out of bed in the morning. And I thought, “Rinpoche, come on.” It felt so mundane. I wanted some mind-blowing, transcendent experience or something. Cort: But when I practiced it, I realized actually that is precisely the power of it, because then it is everywhere. If you just get used to noticing that, that is the profundity of it. It’s just that it’s all around you. 01:12 — Welcome: A Celebration of Richie Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, your host, along with my co-host and dear friend and Dharma brother and world-renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Richie Davidson. Today we would talk about appreciation and gratitude, which is a very, very timely topic for us because we just came off a couple days where I would say in my entire life, actually, I’ve never had a few days that were so infused with gratitude. And the cause for that was Richie, actually. Some students of Richie from decades back made a plan actually years ago. I got an email actually two years a
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dharmalab.co
In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richie Davidson explore how exercising your body can also become a way to train your mind. We asked Richie why exercise supports neuroplasticity, and why a more changeable brain isn’t necessarily a happier one. We also discuss what makes a workout meditation, and share how we bring these practices into our own biking, walking, and yoga routines. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Episode Companion Flashcards: Upcoming Events: * From Doing to Being: Effortless Meditation & the Lost Art of Doing Less with Dr. Cortland Dahl and Kasumi Kato, October 9–11 at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. This is an independent Omega Institute program and is not affiliated with Dharma Lab. Learn more / register * Quiet the Restless Mind — November: A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring how to meet everyday stress, distraction, and overwhelm with greater clarity and ease. Bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, the week features leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson. Learn more / register In This Episode: 00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation?01:15 Training body and mind together03:05 Is exercise really meditation?07:51 Why intention matters11:29 Flow versus meditation13:19 Exercise and neuroplasticity16:19 Should you meditate during or after exercise?20:25 Can movement make meditation easier?24:14 How Richie practices while cycling27:26 Cort’s practice: Yoga, jogging, and attention32:12 Interval training for the mind33:32 What the research tells us so far Written transcript for those who prefer to read: 00:00 Intro - Is your workout really meditation? Richie: What I often hear when I give public talks, people often raise their hand and say, my jog is my meditation, or my bicycle ride is my meditation. And my response to that is always, well, maybe, but not necessarily. Cort: It’s not just that your mind was a little more clear or a little more peaceful while you were exercising. In fact, actually that I would say is not at all the deciding point about whether it would or would not be meditation, but rather it’s that you’re doing something very intentional with your mind. You’re training your mind very consciously and very intentionally. So the promise of this all is that you basically can train your mind at the exact same time you’re exercising your body. And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there’s at least the potential that there’s a synergistic benefit that’s greater than the sum of the parts. 01:15 Training body and mind together Cort: Welcome everyone. I am Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend and Dharma brother, Dr. Richard Davidson, who of course we all call Richie, one of the most eminent and respected neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re going to discuss how we can train our minds in the same way that we train our bodies, and especially that we can do this at the same time. So there’s some really interesting science here, but before we get there, I just want to share my own personal experience, which is I’ve been meditating for more than 30, well, more than well over three decades, probably about 35 years or so. And of course, sitting meditation is super important for me. But I noticed at a certain point that bringing meditation into my exercise routine actually has been incredibly powerful. And in some respects, I feel like some of the best meditations I have are when I’m jogging, for example. In the early days, I did yoga every day. I was Kind of very diligently had a yoga routine up until my son was born, and that kind of fell by the wayside. But I was really doing, I was really meditating as part of my
In this episode of Dharma Lab, Cortland Dahl and Richard Davidson unpack the difference between experiential fusion, being so absorbed in an experience that awareness narrows, and meta-awareness, the capacity to know what your mind is doing while you’re doing it. They explore why activities like movies, video games, rock climbing, Sudoku, and even doomscrolling can feel good in the moment, how they temporarily suppress the brain’s default mode, and why that does not necessarily translate into lasting change. They also discuss whether meta-awareness actually adds something to positive experiences, how it may increase cognitive and emotional flexibility, and a few simple ways to practice it in everyday life. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Episode Companion Flashcards Upcoming Events: * From Doing to Being: Effortless Meditation & the Lost Art of Doing Less with Dr. Cortland Dahl and Kasumi Kato, October 9–11 at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. This is an independent Omega Institute program and is not affiliated with Dharma Lab. Learn more / register * Quiet the Restless Mind — A gifted online week from Dharma Lab and ServiceSpace, November 15–21, exploring chronic stress and human flourishing through ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience, with leading contemplatives and researchers including Robert Sapolsky, Laurie Santos, Mingyur Rinpoche, Judson Brewer, Sharon Salzberg, Martin Picard, Cortland Dahl, and Richard Davidson. Learn more / register In This Episode: 00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost?01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness02:29 What Is Experiential Fusion?04:55 What Is Meta-Awareness?06:45 Why Being “Lost” Can Feel Good09:09 The Default Mode Network and Temporary Relief11:34 What Meta-Awareness Adds13:21 Flexibility, Attention, and the Ability to Disengage14:17 Responding Instead of Reacting16:53 Can Startle Reveal Meta-Awareness?19:39 Ancient Meditation Instructions for Meta-Awareness21:11 How to Practice Meta-Awareness in Daily Life Written transcript for those who prefer to read: 00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost? Cort: We don’t like to ruminate. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience. But isn’t it good to be lost? What’s the problem with being absorbed in a good book or a movie? And would it be better if we had meta-awareness? Does that add anything in a moment like that? Richie: My view of this is that it feels transiently good. In the movie theater or doing Sudoku, when it ends, we go back to our neurotic self and the default mode of the brain comes roaring back. And so it’s a transient state. Meta-awareness is very helpful, I think, in disengaging our attention and enabling us to be flexible. 01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with eminent neuroscientist, And we wanted to talk today about a really important question that you and no one else has ever asked, which is what is the difference between meta awareness and experiential fusion? And I guarantee that although you have not asked that question and probably nobody has ever asked that question, it is one of the most important questions you could ask because it has massive implications for mental health, for emotional well-being, and even for physical health. So these are two terms that we use a lot in our research. We publish papers that are defining these and have been exploring ways to measure them, but they’re just very central to a lot of the work that we do on human flourishing. So why don’t we just start off with, I think, the one that most of us are more familiar with, Richie, and maybe you can... Give some practical examples and share your own insights on this, but that would be experiential fusion. This is, I think, where a lot of us live our lives. So what is this and why should people care? Why is this so important? 02:29 What Is Expe
Dharma Lab’s First Guided Meditation Hour In Dharma Lab’s first guided practice hour, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson took us from talking about wellbeing to actually practicing it. Drawing on the Healthy Minds framework of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, shaped through years of research and practice connected with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Humin (formerly Healthy Minds Innovations), they led participants through four short practices designed to make each capacity directly experiential. The session explored a central idea running through their work: meditation is less about fixing ourselves than learning to recognize and cultivate qualities of wellbeing that are already present. Keep Practicing — Upcoming Events If you’d like to continue exploring these practices, the free Healthy Minds Program App offers guided practices and learning across awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, with Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson, and other teachers. Our next “Ask Me Anything”with Richie and Cort is live on Tuesday, August 25th, 8pm ET. Please send us questions in advance by replying to this email or dropping a comment. We have an exciting lineup of guest speakers for a free online summit in November to explore the restless mind. More details to come, but check out initial info at the bottom of this email and registration details here. Please share widely! Thank you for your support and we hope to see you at these future events. —The Dharma Lab Team