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Speaker 1: Cory Jackson, Welcome mgean pod.

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Speaker 2: It's still great to be here.

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Speaker 1: Thanks.

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Speaker 3: Yes, not that you have been on before for our listeners,

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Speaker 3: but we've had a couple of a couple of goals

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Speaker 3: that this one was a bit of a technical issue

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Speaker 3: with internet, and then the second one was because I

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Speaker 3: didn't bloody well press record. But thankfully we were only

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Speaker 3: sort of five or ten minutes. And you know I

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Speaker 3: once did an entire podcast and didn't press record. Thankfully

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Speaker 3: it was well, thankfully that it was with my wife.

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Speaker 3: I say thankfully because it was with another guest, but

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Speaker 3: I got in probably more trouble than I would have

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Speaker 3: done if it was it was an independent guest. So

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Speaker 3: mat you were we were talking let's rehash this right,

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Speaker 3: let's go down the PhD pathway.

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Speaker 1: So the reason that you're.

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Speaker 3: On the podcast, you'd heard me interviewing Megan Fleemer. We

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Speaker 3: were talking all about mindfulness and she had said something.

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Speaker 3: You thought, Oh, that's kind of right up my street

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Speaker 3: because of your PhD and you, I reckon, are probably

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Speaker 3: three months ahead of me because you have finally submitted

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Speaker 3: all of your stuff.

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Speaker 2: Uh huh?

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Speaker 1: Did you?

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Speaker 3: Did you manage to get it in within four years

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Speaker 3: or did you are you doing here?

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Speaker 1: Is part time?

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Speaker 2: Or I had to go part time? Yeah? I had

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Speaker 2: to work yeah yeah, yeah, almost five, I think all

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Speaker 2: up and COVID interrupted because we were running interventions face

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Speaker 2: to face and we couldn't do it. So yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: it was a bit of a There was some some

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Speaker 2: obstacles that weren't only me, like I created plenty of

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Speaker 2: my own obstacles, but there were others as well.

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Speaker 3: You know, PhD is bloody hard enough and there's enough

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Speaker 3: moving parts with our bloody COVID coming in in the

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Speaker 3: middle of it when you're doing face to face intervention.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, I feel Europe and I really do. This

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Speaker 3: is actually my second crack at a PhD. Just an

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Speaker 3: unfortunate incidence. My first PhD was at University of Tasmania.

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Speaker 3: My PhD supervision got Breen cancer and a relationship with them.

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Speaker 1: Anyway, I ended up going and started a game. But

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Speaker 1: I reckon. I'm three weeks from submitting.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, good luck.

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Speaker 3: As Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager used to say,

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Speaker 3: it is squeaky bottom time.

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Speaker 2: Right Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you yep.

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Speaker 3: So talk to our listeners about your PhD. What were

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Speaker 3: you looking at in that?

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Speaker 2: We were firstly broadly, we're looking at mechanisms of mindfulness,

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Speaker 2: so like why why is it? Why does mindfulness or

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Speaker 2: sometimes drive down anxiety and depression symptoms? This is what

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Speaker 2: we were interested in. And to do that we used

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Speaker 2: a combination of Buddhist sort of psychological models and some

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Speaker 2: models taken straight out of psychology of course, and the

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Speaker 2: it gets really complicated, So I don't want to get

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Speaker 2: I want to stay broad brushstrokes here, you know. But

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Speaker 2: essentially what we were there's a really interesting model in

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Speaker 2: this transdiagnostic sort of movement of psychology, of the meta

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Speaker 2: cognitive model. It's technically called the SRIF model. It's the

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Speaker 2: self regulatory executive function model. But what it boils down

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Speaker 2: to is, in fact, maybe if I explain it like

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Speaker 2: this is if you think about symptoms like anxiety and depression,

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Speaker 2: for examples, my area's symptoms. For a long time in

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Speaker 2: the beginning of psychology, we were throwing things that those

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Speaker 2: symptoms to see what we could do, you know, and

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Speaker 2: had limited success. Then there's this sort of cognitive behavioral movement,

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Speaker 2: you know, and so cognitive behavioral therapy came out of that,

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Speaker 2: and so a lot of people said, you know what,

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Speaker 2: you can put the symptoms aside and look at some

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Speaker 2: of these cognitions, some of the types of thinking that's

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Speaker 2: driving the symptoms, and they had a lot more success,

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Speaker 2: you know. So there's quite clever, very very impressive, there is,

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Speaker 2: actually and it hasn't got anywhere near the sort of

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Speaker 2: airplay that I think it should have. And I didn't.

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Speaker 2: I stumbled across this after I didn't go looking for this.

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Speaker 2: I found this sort of along the way of the PhD.

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Speaker 2: There's a thing called this metacognitive model, and what they're

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Speaker 2: kind of saying is as a step further that rather

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Speaker 2: than focus and try to adjust the cognitions and the

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Speaker 2: thinking that's driving these symptoms, it's your beliefs about that thinking.

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Speaker 2: So it's called metacognitive beliefs. So you target the beliefs

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Speaker 2: and then the rest of the system starts to this

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Speaker 2: pathway that they've discovered from your beliefs about thinking to

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Speaker 2: the thinking itself into the symptomology, that sort of part

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Speaker 2: where it starts to break down when you were just

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Speaker 2: these metacognitive beliefs. And there's a few reviews comparing CBT

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Speaker 2: cognitive behavior therapy and MCT metacognitive therapy, and across the board.

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Speaker 2: Metacognitive therapy does actually does better, and it's not symptoms specific,

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Speaker 2: so you don't have to have MCT for anxiety and

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Speaker 2: MCT for depression and so on. It's sort of this

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Speaker 2: transdiagnostic approach. So when I found that, that's the model

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Speaker 2: that I used for the mindfulness training.

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Speaker 3: And I was taught who the hell was that I

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Speaker 3: just interviewed very recently. Oh god, my bloody brilliant is

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Speaker 3: full of PhD stuff, and he was talking about that

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Speaker 3: transdiagnostic model. Oh it was it was Tom Nemi, tom

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Speaker 3: Nemy who actually just got the podcast just got released,

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Speaker 3: and he said that when he was doing this PhD,

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Speaker 3: the trans diagnostic model kind of came out and it

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Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, this is a severe and

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Speaker 3: because it's kind of like depression and anxiety and all

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Speaker 3: of these dsam issues or are things that they are

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Speaker 3: not independent things like diabetes is independent from obesity and

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Speaker 3: that sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: There is there's this cross.

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Speaker 3: Pollination and it's because the puman brain is bloody complicated, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an impressive kind of step. There's some resistance

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Speaker 2: to it, of course, but it is kind of exciting

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Speaker 2: when you look at what's going on, and it comes

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Speaker 2: from the sense if you think about like physical ailments,

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Speaker 2: and this is oversimplification. I'm sure there's people who know

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Speaker 2: more about this listening than I do. But you know,

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Speaker 2: if you have a I don't know, something like AIDS

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Speaker 2: is a good example. Like back in the eighties, these

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Speaker 2: people were getting sick with these like symptom clusters, you know,

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Speaker 2: and they didn't know what it was like, Oh, so

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Speaker 2: autoimmune deficiency syndrome and you have so you have a

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Speaker 2: syndrome because you don't know the cause. We have clusters

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Speaker 2: of symptoms, you have disorders or syndromes. Once you find

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Speaker 2: the cause, so HIV virus, now you have a disease.

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Speaker 2: So it flips from being a syndrome to a disease

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Speaker 2: and then you can develop treatments because you know the cause.

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Speaker 2: Right before that, you're addressing symptoms. Well, the DSM, for example,

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Speaker 2: there isn't a single psychological disease right because it isn't

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Speaker 2: a single identified cause for any single not one mental disorder.

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Speaker 2: So so yeah, so this is why the trains diagnostic

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Speaker 2: thing gets exciting because it's kind of a bit of

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Speaker 2: an acceptance of that and saying, well, maybe there are

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Speaker 2: deeper causes and underlying causes that we should look into.

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Speaker 2: And this metacognitive model, which I was kind of forced

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Speaker 2: to examine through an internal review of my PhD. But

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Speaker 2: I loved it. I can't when I really got it.

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Speaker 2: When he sent it to me, I say, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: actually I need to rework my whole what I'm doing

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Speaker 2: and check does mindfulness training reduce these metacognitive beliefs? This

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Speaker 2: is sort of the next question, right, and if so,

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Speaker 2: then is one of is that an important mechanism that's

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Speaker 2: reducing anxiety and depression and is it doing it to both?

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Speaker 2: You know, there's lots of questions here and along the way.

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Speaker 2: So there's some issues like, for example, the interventions are

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Speaker 2: used use traditional Buddhist training techniques, which is very unusual

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Speaker 2: in psychology. Almost no research uses the pedagogy as it

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Speaker 2: existed in tradition, in the contemplative tradition. And we broke

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Speaker 2: down this model. So actually, and this comes to the

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Speaker 2: crux of what we'll get to eventually, we broke the

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Speaker 2: model down. So in this model, we have metacognitive beliefs

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Speaker 2: they lead on too rumination and worry or two. But

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Speaker 2: in fact there's two types of rumination. So when you

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Speaker 2: start digging into this literature, it gets really interesting. We

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Speaker 2: talk about a brooding type of rumination, which is what

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Speaker 2: we usually mean, and a reflective type, which is more

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Speaker 2: adaptive and so interesting, as I dug around in the beginning,

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Speaker 2: and because I did like four lip reviews, you know,

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Speaker 2: in different topics to figure out what I was going

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Speaker 2: to do, and the it's the true. Same is true

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Speaker 2: for mind wondering. So when you look into mind wondering,

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Speaker 2: there's what we call a deliberate I don't like these

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Speaker 2: terms so much, but this is what we stuck with,

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Speaker 2: deliberate and spontaneous, and the spontaneous type is more linked

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Speaker 2: with symptoms than the deliberate. So you've got it maps

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Speaker 2: onto the rumination and then you got this further question

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Speaker 2: people are saying, well, is rumination a type of mind wondering?

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Speaker 2: There are all these other questions start when you read

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Speaker 2: into this, start coming out. So we addressed all of these,

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Speaker 2: where a lot of them as we because they just

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Speaker 2: kept the questions kept coming up, and like you know,

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Speaker 2: we're already doing it, so we can just we can

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Speaker 2: check and see, you know. So it's my work ended

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Speaker 2: up having a lot of moving parts I didn't expect.

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Speaker 2: But overall, what we're what it's this idea that now, yeah,

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Speaker 2: you know these there's reasons why these traditional pedagogies and

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Speaker 2: definitions of mindfoots and so on actually might work at

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Speaker 2: least as well as the common modern ones we're using,

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Speaker 2: like NBSR and this sort of stuff. There's some important differences.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's super interesting. Let's go back and just talk

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Speaker 3: about that brooding rumination versus reflective rumination. So you're kind

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Speaker 3: of hinting that one is adaptive one is maladaptive.

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Speaker 1: So would that be, for example, I.

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Speaker 3: All of a sudden just starts thinking about stuff that's

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Speaker 3: happened in the past, and it's dragging me down a hole.

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Speaker 1: Or of vortex of negativity.

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Speaker 3: That's a brooding rumination versus me thinking about stuff that's

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Speaker 3: happening in order for me to do something more effective

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Speaker 3: or better than next time.

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Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you mean?

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Speaker 2: In fact, one of the most important differences between the

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Speaker 2: two is the problem solving elements. So you actually kind

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Speaker 2: of hit on it's one of them, you know, and

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Speaker 2: the reflective rumination shouldn't instigate emotional reactions so much too,

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Speaker 2: so you can remember an event but not have the

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Speaker 2: emotional reaction necessarily, which gives you this space to develop

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Speaker 2: some maybe problem solving. What would I do next time?

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Speaker 2: Could I use my experience to help others in a

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Speaker 2: similar situation. There's all sorts of things you can do

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Speaker 2: with that that you don't have the space for in

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Speaker 2: the brooding rumination because you're just reliving to a degree

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Speaker 2: at the event of the past.

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Speaker 3: Look, this gets to a crux of my view, which

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Speaker 3: is just been formed over a number of years of

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Speaker 3: different types of psychotherapy. And look, I'm not an expert.

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Speaker 3: I'm not a clinical psychologist. I'm doing a PhD in it.

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Speaker 3: But I've read enough about this to have an opinion

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Speaker 3: that talk therapies that don't have action associated with them,

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Speaker 3: I think are just can be a waste of time

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Speaker 3: at best and can make things worse because people just

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Speaker 3: continue to talk about their issues and investigate what it's around,

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Speaker 3: and it can create more of that brooding thing, whereas

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Speaker 3: a much bigger fun of stuff like acceptance commitment therapy,

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Speaker 3: where there is an action associated with it.

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Speaker 1: It's like there's so what are we going to do

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Speaker 1: with this now?

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Speaker 3: And and I can't kind of think there's there's similarities

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Speaker 3: there with that brooding and that reflexive rumination, because you know,

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Speaker 3: we all do ruminate it, but sometimes it's adaptive, sometimes

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Speaker 3: it's small adaptive, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. The question arises, you know what's

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Speaker 2: doing that? Which is so you keep digging you see?

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Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and that's where maybe if you turn back

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Speaker 4: to two and a half thousand years of sort of

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Speaker 4: peer reviewed Buddhist practice, there's some answers.

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Speaker 2: Actually, well, at least there's impossibilse to uncover that. You know,

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Speaker 2: I'm by no means the first to research it. John

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Speaker 2: Dunn and Cliff Saren, there's a few others in the

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Speaker 2: US have done some really awesome work on this, and

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Speaker 2: so that yeah, it's like, yes, there are these times

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Speaker 2: where if you're going to it's not you don't want

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Speaker 2: to sit around and just hope that my ruminations, even

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Speaker 2: all the talk, it's like, I hope by talking, my

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Speaker 2: rumination will be less more adaptive, if you like, you know,

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Speaker 2: less brooding, what would you do?

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Speaker 1: Well?

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Speaker 2: Actually, again, contemplative traditions have a lot to say about this,

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Speaker 2: because if you understand, coming back to this idea of

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Speaker 2: mental diseases a little bit, there is if there is

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Speaker 2: a route kind of cause, or if there's a fundamental

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Speaker 2: driver that decides whether it's brooding or not, why wouldn't

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Speaker 2: we focus on that and try to cultivate that, learn

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Speaker 2: that put that into action so that when I have

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Speaker 2: a room and even if I have a brooding rumination happen,

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Speaker 2: I can notice it and flip it over into a

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Speaker 2: reflective problem solving situation like this. Yeah, and so this is,

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Speaker 2: like I said, this is traditionally, this is around a

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Speaker 2: lot in Asian traditions, probably others. I really only know

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Speaker 2: abou Buddhism.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's not let's talk about some of the

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Speaker 3: differences between traditional, popularized Western mindfulness and the more traditional

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Speaker 3: contemplative therapies.

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Speaker 1: And I like the way you use that. I mean, I.

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Speaker 3: Remember reading a lot and watching some stuff around the

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Speaker 3: I think it's called the Mind and Life Conference.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that Dalai Lama and I think it was.

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Speaker 1: Richard E.

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Speaker 3: Davidson was the original neuroscientist who got together looking at

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Speaker 3: those contemplative therapies, particularly Tibetan Buddhism and the links to

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Speaker 3: the neuroscience research, and you know that's been going on

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Speaker 3: for many, many years and as you say, then brought

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Speaker 3: a level of science to to Buddhism and particularly Tibetan Buddhism.

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Speaker 3: So give our listeners a bit of an overview, and look,

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Speaker 3: we can go deep on this one, right, but just

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Speaker 3: some of the differences between our our Western mindfulness in

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Speaker 3: brackets and those contemplative therapies, because anybody will know that

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Speaker 3: yoga in the West is very different to yoga, traditional

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Speaker 3: yoga that's practiced in India, right, we get a very.

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Speaker 1: Tailored, sanitized version of that. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a good example the yoga, the yoga sort

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Speaker 2: of what's happened as it's come to the West. Plenty

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Speaker 2: of benefit, you know, like there's not a lot to

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Speaker 2: not really a lot to criticize, but also you do

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Speaker 2: wonder what's been left behind. And so it's if you like,

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Speaker 2: at some point in the past and you know, some

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Speaker 2: some scientists somehow stumbled across contemplateds, you know, meditators, h

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Speaker 2: and what what what essentially has happened, then they're just

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Speaker 2: getting my opinion here, I can delve into some more

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Speaker 2: objective facts later. But you know, well, when I look

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Speaker 2: back at the history, I think, well, you know, there's

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Speaker 2: these people. They said, wow, you seem to have your

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Speaker 2: act together. You're really interesting people. What are you doing?

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Speaker 2: And so maybe they say I'm following the sensations of

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Speaker 2: my breath. They're like, well, I can replicate that, you know,

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Speaker 2: in a lab, and I've got measures, and off they went,

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Speaker 2: and they risked their careers to do it, you know,

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Speaker 2: like it's very impressive. But what didn't necessarily come with

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Speaker 2: them is thousands of years of discoveries of these people,

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Speaker 2: Like they haven't just been sitting there following their breath.

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Speaker 2: They've been investigating how the mind works, what causes suffering,

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Speaker 2: what causes happiness? What what? What's the interaction between me

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Speaker 2: and the rest of the world, what's the interaction with

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Speaker 2: the self itself?

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Speaker 1: Like what yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a rabbit all right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And that whole massive body of work

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Speaker 2: didn't come right across to the scientific They're like getting

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Speaker 2: people to follow their breath because that's what they saw

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Speaker 2: these people doing, so which is still like I say,

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Speaker 2: I don't want to come across the bidder because it's impressive,

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Speaker 2: and they risked their careers again and again because nobody

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Speaker 2: wanted them researching this stuff. John cabot Zin people like this. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 2: so got to start there. But then, you know, I

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Speaker 2: think now we're doubling, we're circling back now because there's

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Speaker 2: what's been missing, is some of this this knowledge and

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Speaker 2: what has been lacking. So a few times, I'm sure

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Speaker 2: you've thought about it. When I consider it sort of

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Speaker 2: just throwing the PhD in and doing something else. You know,

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Speaker 2: I've come across some really heavyweight scholars in this mind

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Speaker 2: and life field, and others like we'll like be Alan

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Speaker 2: Wallace for examples.

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Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, yes, yes, yes, I remember listening to him.

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Speaker 1: She's thirty years ago.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's still going strong in the field, you know.

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Speaker 2: So I mean Alan Wallace, Robert Thurman, John Dunn, these

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Speaker 2: sorts of people saying, you know, we need contemplatively contemplative

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Speaker 2: trained people getting involved in science.

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Speaker 3: You know, I'm actually sorry, can I just jump in,

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Speaker 3: Corey anybody who really wants to dig into contemplative therapy?

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Speaker 1: So I think any books by Alan Wallace.

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Speaker 3: You know, he really addresses this whenever I was reading

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Speaker 3: his stuff like like nobody had at the time, right,

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Speaker 3: I'm sure there no, But because he was a proper

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Speaker 3: contemplative practitioner, wasn't.

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Speaker 2: He months and months and months alone in in like

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Speaker 2: up in the Humalayas in little Cabins, meditating with expert

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Speaker 2: advice from other yogis and this sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, plus a science background. He is all this work

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Speaker 2: in physics and stuff at at university and yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: so definitely. I mean it's, like I say, one of

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Speaker 2: my teach main teachers and absolutely inspiration in the field.

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Speaker 2: The Yeah. So this idea then that you bring, you

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Speaker 2: can bring there's some knowledge here that we could bring over.

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Speaker 2: But it's not just the knowledge in bringing the pedagogies itself.

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Speaker 2: So the training methods themselves, they've been changed, you know,

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Speaker 2: like unequivocally.

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Speaker 1: And diluted for us, Right.

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Speaker 2: I don't kind of but I don't. I don't like

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Speaker 2: to call it diluted necessarily. So for the games are

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Speaker 2: absolutely but you know, if like you think about John

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Speaker 2: cabots In, he's got stressed out people, executives and so on,

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Speaker 2: he's got people with pain management. He got started with

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Speaker 2: this mindfulness training he's got people in front of him

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Speaker 2: and he thinks he's got a way to help them,

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Speaker 2: and he delivered it in a way that he thought

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Speaker 2: they'd accepted. And it's genius, you know, like it's brilliant.

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Speaker 2: But in doing so, there are some things that got

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Speaker 2: changed that aren't necessarily in certainly not the Indo Tibetan tradition.

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Speaker 2: And so this is going to shock some people who

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Speaker 2: have background in mindfulness. But traditionally in this in this tradition,

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Speaker 2: non judgmental is not in the definition of mindfulness. There

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Speaker 2: never has been. This is a new you think that

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Speaker 2: entered in the West because in actual fact, and if

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Speaker 2: you go back to some classic uh, there's a there's

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Speaker 2: a really classic text called The Suture King. Melinda by

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Speaker 2: Nagasena is this Indian scholar, and he says, you know,

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Speaker 2: the dull point of mindful and it's actually it's a

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Speaker 2: paraphrase him. He says, it's exercising good judgment. It's like

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Speaker 2: having impulse arise and knowing not to engage with it

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Speaker 2: or to engage with it. This is what it is for.

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Speaker 2: It's about exercising good judgment. The whole thing.

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Speaker 3: She such that you know, what The parallels with stoicism

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Speaker 3: are believable, right, yeah, there are. That is the fundamental

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Speaker 3: approach of stoicism, is it. It's not what happens, but

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Speaker 3: it's about our judgments that matters, and it's really about

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Speaker 3: analyzing your judgments and changing your judgments of situations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well this is sort of that's right. It's like, well,

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Speaker 2: this is a good thing to do, and that relies

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Speaker 2: on some some other things, you know, like what goals?

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Speaker 2: Are you after?

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Speaker 1: What?

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Speaker 2: There's also of other things going on here, you know,

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Speaker 2: are you and are you trying to be a better

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Speaker 2: I don't know, husband, father, wife, sister? Are you trying

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Speaker 2: to be a better executive or a boss or whatever,

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Speaker 2: or are you, you know, trying to achieve enlightenment or liberation?

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Speaker 2: Like this makes a big difference, but the practices are

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Speaker 2: the same. It's like, whatever that goal is, you know

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Speaker 2: what if you trace it backwards, well, what are the

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Speaker 2: decisions I need to make as I go through? And

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Speaker 2: how many? Of course, you can talk about it either way.

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Speaker 2: You can flip to a site sort of perspective and

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Speaker 2: say how much of my automated responses, you know, so

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Speaker 2: emotional responses for example, Yes, but how much of my

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Speaker 2: automated responses actually serve this long term goal and how

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Speaker 2: many of them actually get in the way and serve

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Speaker 2: a short term goal that popped up because I was emotional,

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Speaker 2: and you know, I leave you to decide for yourselves. You know,

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Speaker 2: I could say you from my perspective is a lot.

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Speaker 2: And so it's being able to put these long make

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Speaker 2: decisions even when you're under stress, that are in the

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Speaker 2: service of these longer term goals that gets important. So

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Speaker 2: the in actual fats and you can look, there's a

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Speaker 2: great paper by George Drefus, who's like a brilliant Buddhist scholar,

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Speaker 2: you know, and it's and he sort of says, it's

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Speaker 2: not the evaluative aspect of cognition isn't the issue. It

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Speaker 2: never has been. It's your reaction to it. And so

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Speaker 2: of course in the West, when you say reactivity, people

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Speaker 2: think physical reactivity or maybe verbal reactivity. But in Buddhism

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Speaker 2: we have three types. Right, there's cognitive reactivity, and so

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Speaker 2: physical reactivity is the easiest to restrain or inhibit. Verbal

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Speaker 2: activity is a bit harder, you know, like I could

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Speaker 2: be angry and I could not throw something at someone,

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Speaker 2: but I could probably still say something mean, you know,

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Speaker 2: it's a bit harder, right, And then of course there's

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Speaker 2: the mental is now I noticed that I'm angry. Can

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Speaker 2: I transform? That is way harder. And that's what they're

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Speaker 2: all included when you're trying to dial down reactivity from

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Speaker 2: this contemplative perspective. Yeah, you can do the physical. It's

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Speaker 2: helpful and you should do it. Yeah, the verbal definitely

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Speaker 2: really important, but the mentals where it comes from in

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Speaker 2: the first place.

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Speaker 3: So magic is right, And so to come back about

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Speaker 3: just the judgments thing, and and I just wanted to

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Speaker 3: ask because in Stoicism and one of the key things

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Speaker 3: are the key virtue of the story step four cardinal

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Speaker 3: virtues and and and their their primal one was about wisdom,

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Speaker 3: which was about knowing how to act in a given situation, right,

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Speaker 3: because you can have other virtues. So for instance, you

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Speaker 3: know that there's the topic I think it was Donald

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Speaker 3: Robertson talked about a suicide bomber, right, who is basically

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Speaker 3: for his God, whatever God that might be, whether it's

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Speaker 3: Christian or Muslim or or whatever. Hate that person actually

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Speaker 3: thinks they're doing good, right, I think they're doing a

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Speaker 3: good thing.

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Speaker 1: For their religion, for.

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Speaker 3: Their God, and the Stoics would say, what they don't

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Speaker 3: have is they don't have wisdom.

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Speaker 1: They didn't know who to listen to.

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Speaker 3: So what does that actually come into it when you're

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Speaker 3: looking at judgments and good judgments because you mentioned earlier

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Speaker 3: on about good judgments or is it more goal orientated

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Speaker 3: around is this judgment helping me towards a.

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Speaker 1: Particular goal of being a particular person.

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Speaker 2: So it can be both. So yeah, there's a big

433
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 2: in especially in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, which is the

434
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 2: Indo Tibetan tradition. There's a lot of talk of compassion

435
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 2: for example, you know, but there's and in terms of

436
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,160
Speaker 2: and if you accept your longer term goals as being

437
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 2: liberation and enlightenment, these Buddhist goals, then you know that

438
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 2: you need to develop high levels of compassion and what

439
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 2: we call wisdom or understanding, and you need them both.

440
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 2: Because there's Lama Yeshi, who's one of the original Lamas

441
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:56,639
Speaker 2: who Tibetans who came to the West and set up

442
00:24:56,680 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 2: a lot of these Buddhist centers all over Australia and

443
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 2: the world. Used to call it idiot compassion sort of

444
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. It's like, you know, it's like

445
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 2: I'm trying to help people, but really dumb about it,

446
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 2: you know. So there's some virtue there probably you know

447
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 2: it's okay, but no, it's you need these two wings

448
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 2: of a bird sort of an analogy, you know, to

449
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 2: get to where you're going. So there's this kind of both.

450
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 2: There is very much buddhism't surprisingly goal oriented.

451
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: You know.

452
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, you don't know that as you get involved, right,

453
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 2: it's like, no, no, look, you're trying to achieve this

454
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,119
Speaker 2: and there are little way stations, you know, along the path,

455
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 2: but that's what you're pushing for. And the reason there's

456
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 2: it's not about the journey, none of this. Oh, it's

457
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 2: all about the no, no, no no. The reason there's

458
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 2: a path is to get you there as fast as possible.

459
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 2: So they want you to understand where if, and you

460
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 2: have to accept and decide whether or not you believe

461
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 2: that destination is possible. And so this is where it

462
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 2: comes back again. Well, if you're going to bring these

463
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 2: practices to the West from Buddhism, you don't necessarily need

464
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,639
Speaker 2: to change the practices, right, you just change change what

465
00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 2: they're aimed at and see where you go from there.

466
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 2: But that's not what happened. They came to the West

467
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:05,400
Speaker 2: and people, oh, I need to secularize it, which.

468
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: Means change that. Yeah.

469
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was that whole thing of because particularly when

470
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 3: it first came into the West, there was a lot

471
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 3: of resistance from Christians who said, this is a different religion.

472
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they.

473
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,920
Speaker 3: Tried to address that, as you said, bi secularizing it,

474
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:25,640
Speaker 3: which then you lose lose a chunk of it, right, yeah, you.

475
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:28,199
Speaker 2: Do, and you change, you even change the methodology. Now

476
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 2: we have people John cabots In who who came up

477
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 2: with this that the modern definition of mindfulness that most psychology,

478
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 2: most people will hear about in the West will be

479
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 2: something like non judgmental moment to moment awareness. This is

480
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 2: what it'll be, something like this, which he considered an

481
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 2: operational definition. He never meant it to be definitive. And

482
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 2: I also had him on record cited in my thesis.

483
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 2: And you know that it's not even non judgmental awareness

484
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 2: probably isn't possible, right, but it's what's happened, is it

485
00:26:58,240 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 2: has taken in the West, is.

486
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worthwhile pausing on that, right, because something happens,

487
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 3: something bad happens, to have a non.

488
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: Judgment about it, like no judgment whatsoever.

489
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:16,479
Speaker 3: Freaking hard to do because you're going to have an

490
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:22,120
Speaker 3: emotional response, right, we have these automatic, non conscious emotional

491
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:25,959
Speaker 3: responses which then drive thoughts and feelings in the brain.

492
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 3: And to not have a judgment about it.

493
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: Is really frigging hard.

494
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 3: I mean again, this is the thing that I really

495
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 3: struggle with with stoicism, is that just the judgments in

496
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 3: changing your judgments or you know, it can be frigging

497
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 3: hard when you're faced with a shit storm, right.

498
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 2: Of course, of course. Yeah, And well that's sort of

499
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:57,680
Speaker 2: what if you look at a lot of the Buddhist

500
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 2: approach in general. The a better way to think about meditation,

501
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 2: certainly in the Indo Tibetan tradition maybe in the modern

502
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 2: world to think about it is types of technology.

503
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: Right.

504
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,880
Speaker 2: So it's like the first and mindfulness is a part

505
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 2: of the technology, but it's by no means the end.

506
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 2: There's in Buddhism, it's not the be all and end,

507
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,959
Speaker 2: or you don't just mindful is a tool that you use. Actually,

508
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 2: and so then a good analogy is it's a microscope

509
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 2: or a telescope is maybe easier, like if you have

510
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 2: if you're on a look and observe your own mind,

511
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 2: it's very hard. The second I look at my mind

512
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,440
Speaker 2: and there's a memory, then I'm carried off into brooding,

513
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 2: rumination or worry, you know. So you need to be

514
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 2: able to develop a level of objectivity to be able

515
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,040
Speaker 2: to examine what's going on in there. And that's what

516
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 2: mindfulness is for. It's like a telescope, you know, to

517
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 2: try to get through this atmospheric distortion, you know, to

518
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 2: actually try to be able to see through it and

519
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 2: then more clearly see things without all this distortion that

520
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 2: you get. And so from there that's where you develop

521
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 2: this idea of wisdom, is this sense of now I

522
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 2: get it actually why I'm reacting like this, and you

523
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 2: want to undo the healthy ones and cultivate the healthy ones.

524
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 2: This is sort of in a nutshell how it works.

525
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: Interesting.

526
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like that exercise from acceptance commitment

527
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 3: therapy of leaves on a stream that you kind of

528
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 3: you observe your thoughts, but they're just leaves on a

529
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 3: stream that are passing, or they're like clouds that are passing,

530
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 3: and you don't get hooked by those thoughts, right, that's

531
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 3: that I think there's with the judgment part comes in,

532
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 3: or maybe with the non judgmental stuff. Is there that

533
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 3: and actually talk about getting hooked and getting unhooked from

534
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 3: thoughts that when they hook you, then you're in emotion

535
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 3: having a judgment about it, and then you get into

536
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 3: that whole brooding thing. So it's that observing going oh,

537
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 3: there's that thought again, isn't that interesting?

538
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: And then just kind of letting it go. Yes, how

539
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: is that? How is that.

540
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 3: Different to the traditional Tibetan Buddhist view.

541
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 2: This just happened yesterday. I met a friend for coffee

542
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 2: who's also PhD in a different feel and he was

543
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 2: giving the same example. You know, he leaves in a stream.

544
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: So yeah, in this approach, and there's different Buddhist approach.

545
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 2: There's lots of different Buddhist approach, but in this approach,

546
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 2: and I haven't quite fleshed this analogy out because we

547
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 2: just had a strong coffee and we're talking. You know,

548
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 2: but rather than sitting on the bank watching the leaves

549
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 2: go by in the stream, it's more like you're Moses

550
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 2: in the middle of the stream, parting the whole thing,

551
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 2: like in the midst of the whole thing, and unaffected

552
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 2: by it. And this is a lot more powerful. And

553
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,479
Speaker 2: it comes back again to well, what's the mechanism Why

554
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 2: if I delve into my own thoughts and minds, what's

555
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 2: the mechanism by which sometimes I'm just pulled away like

556
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,479
Speaker 2: non lucidly. I don't understand. I don't even know what's happening,

557
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 2: or why might I be able to just sit here

558
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 2: and observe them all unaffected coming at me? Is there

559
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 2: is there a fundamental mechanism that drives this? This is

560
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 2: the question in Buddhism, you know, we always go to sources,

561
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 2: so well, is there something driving this? And can I

562
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 2: do anything about it? So yes, that leaves on the

563
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 2: streams a classic traditional lot of you know, I trained

564
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 2: in this when I first got into Buddhism, of course too,

565
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 2: and it's totally worthwhile. It gives you the objectivity and distance,

566
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 2: but there is you can keep going from here, you know,

567
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 2: you can really dive into this, and there's no reason

568
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 2: we shouldn't be examining this in psychology, and in fact, slowly,

569
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 2: slowly we are.

570
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 3: M I want to talk about attention and attentional control

571
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 3: because the more I kind of dig into that, I'm

572
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 3: my wife as well, who she has a background in

573
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 3: Japanese psychology and acceptance and commitment therapy and counseling, and

574
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 3: so we have lots of conversations around attention. And as

575
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 3: part of my PhD, I was involved in a Delphi

576
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 3: study around cognitive fitness. Were my PhD supervisor. He basically

577
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 3: put this study together and got a whole host of

578
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 3: world experts around sports psychology, military psychology, business psychology. I

579
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 3: kind of squeezed in there because I was his PhD student,

580
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 3: as did It made a man Craig Harper, who was

581
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 3: a PSD student of a colleague. But what we had

582
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 3: to do was really interesting is that they had identified

583
00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 3: through neuroscience a number of trainable cognitive primaries in the

584
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 3: brain that are important for performance under pressure. Right, so

585
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 3: this is you know, it's the whole military figued about

586
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 3: how do we have sustained performance under extreme pressure?

587
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: And we had to read these cognitive.

588
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 3: Such as performance monitoring, risal control, attentional control, and across

589
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 3: all domains business, sport, military, and the number one thing

590
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: voted on by everybody was.

591
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: Attention and attention control.

592
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 3: And then in Japanese psychology, I'm sure there's a similar

593
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 3: line of thinking in Buddhism. Is they say that your

594
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 3: life is based on your attention and ares a neuroscientist,

595
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 3: I love that because whatever you pay attention to your

596
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 3: briand commits sales to it. Right, the particular activating system

597
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 3: in the Brian is off and you are committing sales

598
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 3: to whatever that is.

599
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: So how how's prevalent or strong is attention in Tibetan Buddhism?

600
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 3: And is it is it called by attention or is

601
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 3: it awareness or you know, does it does it even

602
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 3: play a role at all?

603
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, it plays It plays a fundamental role. And even

604
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety, you know William James sort of father,

605
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 2: one of the fathers of psychology.

606
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: You know, I could say, by the way, like some

607
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: of his ship is just amazing. Does everybody should William James?

608
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: That guy was just light years ahead of his time.

609
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 2: And it's and it's like poetry, you know, yes, it's

610
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 2: just well, well he said in eighteen ninety he said, oh,

611
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 2: there's he's a little preamble, but he says, for the moment,

612
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 2: what we attend to is reality. So if you don't

613
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 2: attend to something, it doesn't exist for you, right, yeah, yeah,

614
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 2: and so and then unfortunately the behaviors came along and

615
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 2: just buggered psychology up for decades. But that's true, you know,

616
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 2: Skinner and all these crazies. Yes, we've still got the

617
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 2: poison in the veins from that stuff, you know. But

618
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 2: you know, it's such a shame because you know, over

619
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:30,720
Speaker 2: one hundred and like thirty something years ago we were this,

620
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: this was picking up, you know. So yeah, it's not

621
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 2: like a crazy it's not a crazy idea in the

622
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 2: there's more to it's not just the only sort of

623
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 2: bone I pick with that is, it's not just what

624
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 2: you pay attention to.

625
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: But how ah yeah, yeah, good cop.

626
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 2: And so this is again, you know, Buddhism. In the

627
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 2: Tibetan system, there's a thing called well sem jung is

628
00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 2: the is the it's a study sort of unit, and

629
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 2: it's called mind and mental factors, you know, and and

630
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,920
Speaker 2: it runs through this like how your awareness works. And

631
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 2: it's not so important perhaps for our for our purposes,

632
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,800
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's it's when you are if I am,

633
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 2: for example, I give you maybe a sort of if

634
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,840
Speaker 2: I have a person who's regularly kind of angry, and

635
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 2: you know, and I deal with them a lot, I think,

636
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 2: you know, because yeah, I meet someone I know this

637
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 2: is how emotions work. Is part of my research too,

638
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 2: you know. Angry people are an anger trigger. So I

639
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 2: so I meet an angry person, how I get angry to?

640
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 2: You know, I'm in the grip of an anger episode too.

641
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 2: So what can I do about this? Well, I can

642
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 2: try to suppress the anger. It won't work, It'll make

643
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 2: it worse. We know this, you know. I can be

644
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 2: and try to be in control and what I say

645
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 2: and do. Yeah, yeah, okay. But can I cognitively mentally

646
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 2: reframe it? And you can? So you have to think

647
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 2: what it is the person in front of me. Do

648
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 2: they look like they're enjoying themselves, you know, or do

649
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 2: they look like maybe they're in some kind of distress

650
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 2: so they're angry? Are they happy? And so will rather

651
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 2: than so I'm sure I'm presented with it with this person,

652
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 2: and I interpret them as an angry person. But what

653
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 2: if I just reinterpret them as a distressed person. It's

654
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 2: totally it's not delusional. It's actually probably better. And then

655
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 2: what that does now is it brings forth all the

656
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 2: way I attend to this person changes.

657
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 3: Now because I'm starting to have compassion exactly, rather than

658
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 3: being pissed off.

659
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 2: You'll at least have empathy maybe a bit of compassion.

660
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 2: But the compassion can be trained. So that's right, And

661
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:27,239
Speaker 2: then you start and it might you might turn out

662
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 2: that the most compassionate thing you can do is just

663
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:30,960
Speaker 2: shut up for a bit, you know, so out of

664
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 2: actual presented with an angry person, just completely motivated by compassion,

665
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 2: I can just stay quiet for a bit, you know,

666
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:39,280
Speaker 2: and then come in and try to say something smart,

667
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 2: skillful as we go. But yeah, so there's these things

668
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 2: start to play. And if you pull this apart, and

669
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 2: that's what I was talking about before, the mindfulness training

670
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 2: will give you the it'll dial down the reactivity. As

671
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 2: I mentioned, you know, is paper from that's the reactivity

672
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 2: is the issue. So if I can do the mindfulness

673
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:59,320
Speaker 2: training that dials down the reactivity, then when I'm presented

674
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 2: with these difficult situations, I can sidestep the automated responses, right,

675
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 2: and then I can pull up these other ones that

676
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 2: I think are more helpful, and over time, the more

677
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 2: my percentage goes up the constructive responses become the automated

678
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 2: responses because it only happens through repetition anyway. And so

679
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:18,279
Speaker 2: I can do that in real life, and I can

680
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 2: support it by practice, I do, you know, on the

681
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 2: cushion or something too, like gym work, you know, to

682
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 2: make sure I can bring that out into the rest

683
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 2: of my life.

684
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: Interestingly, anger thing.

685
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about a kind of a meta

686
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 3: cognitive approach to it from the Stoics and and and

687
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 3: again it was I think it was a podcast I

688
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,280
Speaker 3: was doing with Donald Robertson and he said the Stoic

689
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:47,760
Speaker 3: philosophers their approach to anger. I think I can't remember

690
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 3: whether it was Seneca or a dictators or who it was,

691
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:55,760
Speaker 3: but but called it temporary insanity. Yeah, and that really

692
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,720
Speaker 3: clicked with me. And there was there was an incident.

693
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 3: I just think it was maybe a year ago. So

694
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 3: I have an eighteen year old daughter and we are

695
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,840
Speaker 3: very very similar, right, So we clash for we have

696
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 3: this love and it's not a here, but we have

697
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 3: a love clash relationship, always have done. It does my

698
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 3: wife's heading, but she's very skilled at pushing my buttons

699
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:22,759
Speaker 3: when she wants to be right and there was fun

700
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,320
Speaker 3: day we were in the kitchen and she was pushing

701
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:30,240
Speaker 3: my buttons and I just I felt the red mist

702
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 3: descending and I was just about to have a verbal

703
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 3: outburst at her, and this little voice in my head

704
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 3: just come up and went, you're about to go temporarily

705
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 3: and seeing, And it.

706
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: Actually made me stop and think.

707
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:46,879
Speaker 3: And I actually said to her, because we talked about it,

708
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 3: I'm about to go temporarily and seeing.

709
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: And it made us both laugh and disfuse the situation.

710
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 3: Right, But there had to be that that metacognitive or

711
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 3: that self awareness of the emotion, and then the judgment

712
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:07,840
Speaker 3: of the emotion came from that little oh, it's actually

713
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 3: temporary insanity, which which kind of changed the emotional response

714
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 3: that I was actually having.

715
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:16,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you like Paul Ekman, who's

716
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 2: so a lot.

717
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:19,839
Speaker 1: Of ah, Paul, Yeah, brilliant, so great.

718
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 2: So I run an intervention. In fact, the intervention we

719
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:25,320
Speaker 2: used use some of his work. He's got an intervention

720
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 2: called Cultivating Emotional Balance that he designed with Alan Wallace

721
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 2: as a result of the Mind and Life Project, so

722
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 2: that I'm quite heavily involved in that, and it's we

723
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 2: used part of that from my research too, and so

724
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 2: he's he really objects to the idea of negative and

725
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 2: positive emotions. He says, there's no such thing. I really

726
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 2: like this. There's no negative emotions, right. There is negative affect,

727
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:50,279
Speaker 2: of course, there's unpleasant you know, negative sensation, but the

728
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 2: emotion itself isn't negative. So if it were like if

729
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 2: the if anger was negative, then we should get rid

730
00:39:57,400 --> 00:39:59,799
Speaker 2: of the emotion, right, Like, there's no argument to this.

731
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 2: If it's negative, you get rid of it. So then,

732
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 2: you know, how do you end social injustice? How do

733
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:06,439
Speaker 2: you fix the climate prices? How do you get women

734
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 2: the vote or end slavery? People got to get angry,

735
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,879
Speaker 2: but they have to do something smart. The same with fear.

736
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 2: You know, fear will save your life again and again

737
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 2: every time.

738
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 3: There's a reason for these emotions, right, that's right.

739
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:19,280
Speaker 1: Sorry.

740
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 3: Ekman was the first to show that emotions are cross cultural.

741
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:25,720
Speaker 1: Right. He did all this research.

742
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 3: He went to I think it was Pappi in New

743
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:30,280
Speaker 3: Guinea and went into the tribes and Pappi New Guinea

744
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 3: who had never seen white people, and they were having

745
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 3: this They had the same emotions that we have.

746
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:37,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, he took photos of their faces and took them

747
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 2: back to San Francisco and had his students identify six emotions. Anyway,

748
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 2: there are more, you know, he's not saying there aren't

749
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:47,359
Speaker 2: more emotions, but there was six or seven you could

750
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 2: consistently recognize. And so yeah, oh it's fascinating research. There's

751
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 2: no one's not. Everyone's on board with all of it.

752
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,399
Speaker 2: Of course, because we're our really individualistic society. We all

753
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 2: like to think, No, I'm special in my emotion different.

754
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 2: But I don't really like this. I think it's pretty solid.

755
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 2: There's a lot of evidence for what for that position.

756
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 2: But I like this idea of what he says, that

757
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 2: the function of emotions is to let you know that

758
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 2: something you think important is happening. It's a sign post, right,

759
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 2: and so like yeah, yeah or not right. So like

760
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:23,800
Speaker 2: in this case, it's like, oh, something important is happening,

761
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 2: and I want to do this, but you have the

762
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:27,600
Speaker 2: wherewithal of go. But it's better that I don't do that,

763
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:31,360
Speaker 2: I do nothing or or something else, you know. And

764
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 2: so that's this idea. If he rather than get caught

765
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 2: up in your negative emotions because or positive emotions for

766
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 2: that matter, if there's no negative emotions, there's no positive emotions.

767
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 2: Either what you've got is sign posts telling you that

768
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 2: something you think important is happening, and then you can

769
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 2: have a whole series of like questioning and checking in

770
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:53,880
Speaker 2: to see is it important, and all these sorts of

771
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 2: things that you can train to do within like you know,

772
00:41:56,520 --> 00:42:00,040
Speaker 2: half a second, you know, to check on how you

773
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 2: going to react or reframe or something like this. So

774
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 2: your example is a good one because it's like, yeah,

775
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:08,359
Speaker 2: there's all this stuff going on and you're like wait,

776
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of like am is this beneficial?

777
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 2: Is just further in collaboration, we sometimes say in emotions research,

778
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 2: is it or not? You know, and when it's not,

779
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 2: then you can diffuse it, and if you have tools

780
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 2: to defusing it, then that's really good. One that I

781
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:26,919
Speaker 2: know one of the people I worked with for a while,

782
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 2: couple having arguments and they decided that they when they argued,

783
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 2: they would argue in the bathroom and so completely completely

784
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 2: agree anyway, so they told me that. So it's all

785
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 2: blowing up and they're about to go in like off right,

786
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 2: and they go into the bathroom. They look at each

787
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 2: other and start of laughing, you know, because that's go

788
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:50,359
Speaker 2: isn't brilliant, and it's just like completely derailed the whole

789
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 2: thing because you get set up all these we're just

790
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 2: so amazing as human beings. It's not only it's the

791
00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 2: person who's in front of me, and so what they're saying,

792
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 2: and it's how I'm responding. It's all so the location

793
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 2: is happening in if you argue in the same place,

794
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 2: we know this, how you get set up to argue

795
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 2: this all. There's so much going on beyond our conscious awareness,

796
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 2: right that psychology. This is why I love this combination

797
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 2: of psychology and Buddhism, because psychologists got a lot to

798
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 2: say and a lot to help Buddhists with their everyday

799
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 2: life if there was look up for a moment. But

800
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 2: actually there's all these deeper wisdom too that maybe psychology

801
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 2: should pay some attention to. And there's a lot of

802
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 2: scopia for overlap that could push us a long way

803
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 2: to discovering maybe causes, but certainly fundamental drivers of mental

804
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 2: illness and this kind of and happiness for that matter.

805
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 3: You know, I just was thinking as you were talking there,

806
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 3: just about emotions, and you know that we know that

807
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 3: there are non conscious I did some stuff with Evan

808
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 3: Gordon from the Brillant Resources Institute a guide doctor Royce Sugarman,

809
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 3: and they had this integrate model in the briand and

810
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 3: said that emotions arise in response to significant situations around

811
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 3: you within so already to fifty million seconds in the

812
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:05,879
Speaker 3: brain way before thinking and feeling. And it just kind

813
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 3: of struck me that maybe emotions are nature's way of

814
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 3: grabbing your attention because there's something important around that's happening.

815
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 2: So let's have a look because one of the and

816
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 2: so I'll have one of the things you can be

817
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 2: almost certain of if you're in an emotional If I'm

818
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 2: in an emotional episode, we say, you know, if I'm

819
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,720
Speaker 2: in the grip of an emotion, almost certainly my attention

820
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 2: has been captured. So, if you want to break it down,

821
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 2: is that oversimplification, but it works for our purposes. Two

822
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 2: types of attention controlled and captured, right, so we know,

823
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 2: and they're different neurological systems, exogenous and endogenous systems in

824
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 2: the brain, you know. And so even flipping from an

825
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:57,320
Speaker 2: endogenous controlled attention to captured, whether it's in the auditory

826
00:44:57,320 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 2: domain or the visual because there's different sensory input, you

827
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 2: know that it really sets up these HPA access so

828
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,399
Speaker 2: you get cause al adrenaline released, you know, just from

829
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 2: the attention switch, right, which makes sense. If you're a

830
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 2: hunter gatherer and you're doing your thing and there's a

831
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,320
Speaker 2: rustle in the grass, you know, I mean apologies and

832
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 2: he rustles listening. But if there's a sort of a

833
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 2: rustle in the grass and your attentions pulled away, this

834
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 2: arousal happens, and it's a saber tooth tiger or it's

835
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 2: the wind, you know, and either way you're prepared. There's

836
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 2: no there's no net loss really, so that that attentional.

837
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: And that's a captured attention.

838
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 3: Can you just see it go into a little bit

839
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 3: of detail or I think I get what you're saying,

840
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 3: but just explore for us the controlled and captured attention.

841
00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 1: So is controlled attention thevo litional stuff.

842
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,720
Speaker 3: Where it's captured is you've been grabbed by your emotion

843
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 3: and your articular activating system is just diverted.

844
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so and that's the key of a

845
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 2: of an emotional reaction is your attention is captured and

846
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 2: you want what under attentional capture tends to be. You know,

847
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:05,960
Speaker 2: we talk about these as if they're they're more like

848
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 2: ends of the spectrum, right, They're not like it's easy

849
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 2: to talk about them as a WILB. But the the

850
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 2: captured attention is non lucid. It's it's easy to have

851
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 2: your attention pulled away for extended periods of time and

852
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:19,959
Speaker 2: not know that it's happened. And if you've ever tried

853
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 2: to meditate your.

854
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,240
Speaker 1: Boom scrolling, doom scrolling, doom.

855
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 2: Frolling, of course, I mean that's and that's really up

856
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 2: against it because people with post grad degrees have designed

857
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 2: that to make sure your attention.

858
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

859
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:33,800
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But if ever you've tried just meditating, you know,

860
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 2: just spend two minutes and try to sort of follow

861
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 2: the sensations of your breath NonStop, see what happens. You know,

862
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 2: probably find at some point you can start writing a

863
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 2: shopping list or you know, planning a revenge on your

864
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:48,360
Speaker 2: neighbor or something without really knowing, you know, and so

865
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 2: so the it's quite a long time before you know.

866
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 2: And so the parallels here are really critical because if

867
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 2: you think about a mindfulness training session, certainly you know

868
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 2: in the system that I use and TEA that's essentially

869
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:04,720
Speaker 2: in the beginning is what you're doing. You're sitting, you're resting,

870
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 2: You pick a focal object, let's say it's sensations in

871
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 2: the body. You know, you pick that and you try

872
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 2: to attend to it, and at some point you've got

873
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:15,280
Speaker 2: to notice that you're distracted. And when you notice, so, actually,

874
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 2: what you're really doing is getting a sense of the

875
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 2: difference between the experience, that this qualitative difference between captured

876
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 2: and controlled the tension.

877
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, gotcha, okay.

878
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 2: And over time you'll find with experienced meditator, like at

879
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 2: the moment they all overlap and you sort of don't

880
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:33,440
Speaker 2: keep getting pulled away and you don't know, but experienced

881
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 2: meditators know. They're really obvious and so that and part

882
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 2: of that is to do with the lucidity of your

883
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 2: own thinking. So I'm there and I'm aware of the

884
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,320
Speaker 2: thoughts and things that are going on, and so whereas

885
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 2: once the tensions captured, are not necessarily so aware. This

886
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 2: is a direct transition straight up into an emotion. If

887
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 2: you think the anatomy of a distraction I often call

888
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 2: it is the same as the anatomy of an emotion,

889
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 2: is that your attention's pulled away. You'll losecidity decreases, your

890
00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:05,359
Speaker 2: automaticity increases. Right, And just as you can sit here

891
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 2: and sort of in a meditation session be thinking of

892
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 2: all these things and not know it, now you can

893
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 2: be saying and doing things and you don't really know

894
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 2: because the emotions are it's a very coarse version of

895
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 2: a distraction. So you can start to see. Now if

896
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 2: you train, and if you use a training pedagogy that's

897
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 2: designed to interrupt this, which is what the buddhistuff is for,

898
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:27,359
Speaker 2: then you do this on the cushion fifteen twenty minutes

899
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:29,480
Speaker 2: a day, even it doesn't have to be radical. You'll

900
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 2: get these interruptions of emotional reactions for free. And this

901
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 2: is where you start to come back. You're saying this

902
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 2: project cultivating emotional balance. You know that that's what we're

903
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,840
Speaker 2: trying to do. You first get your attention under your control,

904
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 2: like notice, when it's captured, so you can bring it back.

905
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 2: Then we can do the psycho education component where we

906
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 2: teach how emotions work and what they're for, and different

907
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:54,239
Speaker 2: types of emotions and all these things the physiology, so

908
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 2: you recognize them sooner and you can start to get

909
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 2: people in these feedback loops where even emotional reactions happen

910
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 2: and you get pulled away, and because of the meditation training,

911
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 2: you notice and you relax and you bring it back.

912
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 2: That emotionality actually helps you with your attention, like you

913
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 2: can if you leave it alone. It's a feedback, it's

914
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 2: a downward spiral. My attention keeps getting pulled away and captured.

915
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:19,759
Speaker 2: It actually makes me more emotionally reactive, which degrades my

916
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 2: attention capacity and so on. If but the reverse is true,

917
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 2: if you keep interrupting the attentional capture and interrupting the emotionality,

918
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 2: you get less emotional reactivity, more controlled attention, which dials

919
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 2: down your reactivity which increases, and you can set up

920
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 2: a feedback. Your attention increases as the emotional reactivity decreases.

921
00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:42,319
Speaker 2: And this is when you're in a sweet spot now,

922
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 2: because you really in control of what you say and

923
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 2: do when you're emotional, which is sort of the to

924
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:50,239
Speaker 2: me when I work with people, it's like, this is

925
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 2: the first step we're look working on. Imagine being in

926
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:55,879
Speaker 2: control of everything you say and do, no matter how

927
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 2: emotional you are. And this is only the first step.

928
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 2: This isn't even this isn't even advanced you know, and

929
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 2: that only requires attention and some what we call emotional skills,

930
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 2: which is what my research was. We only taught. We

931
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 2: only gave emotion skills training and mindfulness training. We didn't

932
00:50:11,120 --> 00:50:13,200
Speaker 2: do any of the compassion training or insight all this

933
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 2: other stuff, just straight up and in doing so, then

934
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 2: we're trying to dig down and see what happens, you know,

935
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:23,720
Speaker 2: in terms of what sort of mechanisms are at play

936
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 2: when people are becoming emotional and when those emotions turn

937
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 2: into symptomology, which is basically what happens. You know, what

938
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 2: mechanisms are driving it, and why does mindfulness training seem

939
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 2: to dampen it? This is sort of our real our area.

940
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 3: Bloody interesting, any specific brillant changes or differences.

941
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,279
Speaker 1: So I know that generally.

942
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 3: Meditators have reduced activity in the paraet's a lobe.

943
00:50:54,840 --> 00:51:00,320
Speaker 1: They tend to have a more suppressed or less active.

944
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 3: Normal sort of what's the what's the word that I'm

945
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 3: looking for?

946
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 1: The Oh Jesus, it's just slipped out of my brilliant editor.

947
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 3: When when the neuroscientist told the diala lama about it,

948
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:18,280
Speaker 3: he said, ah, you mean monkey mind yabah yaha, yaba,

949
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 3: the default mode network, right, which is the resting brillin state,

950
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 3: which is higher in anxious people. Any specific that either

951
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 3: in your research or looking at research differences in brillant

952
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:40,400
Speaker 3: activity patterns between experienced meditators and non experienced people.

953
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 2: So there are it's not my feel, you know, like

954
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 2: the neurosciences, I'm so going to the subjective responses, but

955
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,439
Speaker 2: of course I come across it. You know, the most

956
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 2: interesting one is probably the thicker grade matter and connectivity

957
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 2: between prefrontal cortex and the amiga.

958
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 3: You know, yes, and that is all about their emotional regulation.

959
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:08,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, because that sets off the limbic system,

960
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:11,840
Speaker 2: which is sort of the emotional kind of driver. I

961
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 2: really want neuroscience to keep going full speed ahead, but

962
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 2: I'm also not sure it's not. I don't know always

963
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:23,560
Speaker 2: the benefit for somebody trying to get their anger under control,

964
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:26,760
Speaker 2: telling them you can't tell them dial down. You're amigndal.

965
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 2: It means nothing, you know, and you only know that

966
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:32,560
Speaker 2: it's active. You can infer that it might be active

967
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 2: based on your subjective experience. So I'm still I'm interested

968
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 2: in people's subjective experience a bit more. I don't want

969
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:40,879
Speaker 2: to get in the way of the neuroscientists because they're

970
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:44,240
Speaker 2: going to hit gold at some point. But in the meantime,

971
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 2: knowing that that's happening isn't having a really big effect

972
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:49,399
Speaker 2: on treatment so much as yet.

973
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's not.

974
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 2: Really my field. One field person to look into is

975
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 2: anihi Jar, who's also done work with military post deployment

976
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 2: in terms of stress and brilliant research.

977
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:03,640
Speaker 1: What's what's what's your name?

978
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 2: Amishi A M I S H I J J h A.

979
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:16,480
Speaker 3: Okay, this has been bloody fascinating. What can people go

980
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:19,720
Speaker 3: to find more about you? And what sort of things

981
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 3: do you do for people?

982
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 1: Right?

983
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:22,919
Speaker 3: Haven't done a pH d in this area? I'm sure

984
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 3: you just haven't left it and off you go. So

985
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 3: what sort of things do you do? Do you work

986
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,320
Speaker 3: one on ones with people, to work on groups?

987
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 1: Tell us more people can find out more.

988
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure I I At the moment, I run an

989
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 2: online community space this is and so we meet once

990
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:42,280
Speaker 2: a week and meditate together. And I have an online

991
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 2: course in there a few online courses, so that's kind

992
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:49,319
Speaker 2: of the primary place to connect with me at the moment. Yes,

993
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 2: I do work one on one I'm building that more

994
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 2: and more now that the PhD is over and I

995
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:57,880
Speaker 2: have several things coming up in person, this Cultivating Emotional

996
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:00,439
Speaker 2: Balance project that I'm so excited about with a full

997
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,439
Speaker 2: course here in Brisbane starting in May.

998
00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: Oh cool.

999
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 2: But yeah, the best place is just to get in

1000
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:10,760
Speaker 2: touch and see if maybe there's I have some content

1001
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 2: online that helped you, or we can talk and and

1002
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 2: so on. I've like, I've only really just looked up

1003
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:18,240
Speaker 2: for my PhD to think about what to do next.

1004
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I get you, I get you and people.

1005
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 3: Is it your website Corey Jackson dot com, dot you.

1006
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, it's so old, I haven't updated it,

1007
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 2: but that's the that's the place to go and get

1008
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 2: the contact that you can get to me through Facebook

1009
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 2: Linkedins as well, you know.

1010
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:39,120
Speaker 1: And what are we signed here? Where we find your

1011
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: online programs?

1012
00:54:40,920 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 2: They're in this space, so that is I'll put the link,

1013
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 2: I'll send the link through. But it's it's members dot

1014
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:47,919
Speaker 2: Corey Jackson dot com, dot you and that yeah cool

1015
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:50,080
Speaker 2: has free and paid stuff so you can have a.

1016
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,240
Speaker 1: Little all right, brilliant man, excellent.

1017
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 3: What a freakin fascinating conversation from a random email from

1018
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:00,879
Speaker 3: saying that somebody randomly said on the podcast, I love

1019
00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 3: this stuff and I love the the organic nature of

1020
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 3: the of the conversation.

1021
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: Right, it was just like, let's just see what happens

1022
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: when we started talking. Pretty cool stuff, mate.

1023
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 3: I'll tell you about that cultivating emotional balance. You need

1024
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 3: to create a version of that for schools. The gear

1025
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 3: that shut up.

1026
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 2: The initial study that was a really comprehensive study with

1027
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 2: Paul Ekman and Alan Wallace and these other Richard Davidson

1028
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 2: and so on did it all together, you know, and

1029
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 2: they did it on school teachers, which was interesting. And

1030
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 2: the next the next generation of mindfulness research needs to

1031
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 2: do this third person stuff, So let's train teachers and

1032
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 2: measure the effect on their students or trained parents and

1033
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:46,080
Speaker 2: this sort of stuff. So, yeah, this is really in

1034
00:55:46,120 --> 00:55:49,200
Speaker 2: our radar. We didn't touch on it, but the next

1035
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:53,360
Speaker 2: I have post traumatic stress some projects coming out that

1036
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:56,359
Speaker 2: we're looking into that because again, this idea of what

1037
00:55:56,520 --> 00:55:59,480
Speaker 2: makes your thoughts sticky and drive emotional reactions is at

1038
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 2: the core of have so much mental health. So I

1039
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 2: got some other projects on the go.

1040
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, go.

1041
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 3: Once you get into the emotional space, it's a it's wow,

1042
00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:13,440
Speaker 3: it's a Pandora's box. Eh yeah yeah, yeah great, This

1043
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 3: has been awesome. Thanks for your time and and and

1044
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 3: your insights for people, and so take yourself off to

1045
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 3: Cody Jackson dot com. DODA you sign up to some

1046
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:26,840
Speaker 3: online courses and let's get better emotional balance because.

1047
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 2: Who doesn't need that ship? Yeah absolutely, thanks, thanks for

1048
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 2: thanks