Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you've listened to other episodes or the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: you've probably learned that becoming happier often involves changing your behavior,
Speaker 1: things like trying to be more social, getting in a
Speaker 1: bit of cardio, taking time to experience gratitude. The research
Speaker 1: shows that all of these things will improve your well
Speaker 1: being if you do them. The problem is we actually
Speaker 1: have to do these things, and if you're like me,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of times when you know what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do, but you really would rather do
Speaker 1: something else. You may know it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: head out of the house and see a friend if
Speaker 1: you're feeling down, but if it's raining and you're already
Speaker 1: on the couch, being social feels like a chore. You
Speaker 1: may swear you're going to get up early to practice
Speaker 1: guitar or hit the gym in the morning, but when
Speaker 1: that alarm clock goes off, there are definitely some days
Speaker 1: you'd rather stay in bed. These kinds of moments, these
Speaker 1: feelings of desiring something you know isn't consistent with your
Speaker 1: bigger goals, they come up whenever we're trying to change
Speaker 1: our behavior for the better. Building happier habits often means
Speaker 1: not getting what we want in the moment, and that
Speaker 1: can feel pretty yucky. It's the reason many of us
Speaker 1: give up working on the goals we desire most. But
Speaker 1: what if I told you there was a way to
Speaker 1: outsmart those little moments of discomfort and simply sail through them.
Speaker 1: What if there was a strategy, a strategy that's both
Speaker 1: ancient and backed up by modern science, that allows you
Speaker 1: to push through positive behaviors when you really want to backslide.
Speaker 1: And what if using this technique also had a host
Speaker 1: of other health benefits like reducing inflammation, decreasing stress levels,
Speaker 1: improving concentration, and even making you happier and less anxious.
Speaker 1: It's also totally free and only involves a couple minutes
Speaker 1: a day to learn what the strategy is and how
Speaker 1: it works. We're going to talk with an expert, my
Speaker 1: friend and colleague here at Yale, the neuroscientist, doctor Hetty Cooper.
Speaker 1: And to make it even more fun, we'll do all
Speaker 1: of that in front of a live studio audience here
Speaker 1: on campus. So welcome to the next installment of the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab twenty twenty. So we're gonna start off with
Speaker 1: a question for the audience a little bit of a quiz.
Speaker 1: I want you to answer whether, in the last two
Speaker 1: months or so, how many of you have experienced no
Speaker 1: stress at all, no frustrations, nothing. On the count of three,
Speaker 1: we're gonna clap. Ready, one, two three, not not really
Speaker 1: here anything? Okay, all right, So here's a second question.
Speaker 1: On the count of three, I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: to clap if you've experienced a little bit of stress,
Speaker 1: maybe a few frustrations, but nothing more than that. Ready, one,
Speaker 1: two three, Okay. Now I'm going to ask if there's
Speaker 1: you to clap if in the last two months you've
Speaker 1: experienced a lot of stress to the point that it
Speaker 1: sometimes made it kind of hard to function. One two three,
Speaker 1: all right. So I'm here in hetty. Most people are
Speaker 1: going with they kind of experience a lot of stress.
Speaker 1: I know you use this question a lot in your talks.
Speaker 1: Is this kind of a common answer that you get?
Speaker 1: Very very common answers. So I would say that nine
Speaker 1: times out of ten, the most clapping that I get
Speaker 1: or the most hands are raised for have you experienced
Speaker 1: a lot of stress? This is a very very common
Speaker 1: thing to report, And so talk about why this is
Speaker 1: such a bad thing, because I mean again and feeling
Speaker 1: a lot of stress means you're anxious and so on.
Speaker 1: But stress really has an incredible impact on our bodies, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so stress is actually known to have a toxic effect
Speaker 1: on most of our bodily systems. So stress was designed
Speaker 1: as a physiological response to a real threat in the environment.
Speaker 1: And since we are actually somewhat ancient species, we were
Speaker 1: in the savannah, maybe running away from a predator who
Speaker 1: might eat us. Right, So the stress response in our
Speaker 1: body was really made to mobilize various physiological systems to
Speaker 1: allow us to run, to allow us to fight. It
Speaker 1: wasn't really designed to let us prepare for exams or
Speaker 1: deal with bad teaching reviews. And so when we experience
Speaker 1: the same kind of physiological response in the context of
Speaker 1: these everyday experiences that we now have in our modern
Speaker 1: day and time, and especially when we have them for many,
Speaker 1: many days in a row, that physiological response is actually
Speaker 1: toxic to multiple physiological systems. And it's also really bad
Speaker 1: for us achieving our goals. Right, you know, when you
Speaker 1: think about we're here around the new year, we want
Speaker 1: to be achieving our Newar's resolutions. We want to be
Speaker 1: behaving better. But as things get more stressful, that's even harder, right,
Speaker 1: It's so much harder, And it's so much harder because
Speaker 1: in the moment, even if we haven't been stressed for
Speaker 1: months and we're just stressed in this moment, stress interferes
Speaker 1: with our ability to think. So we know that people
Speaker 1: when they're really really stressed, their cognitive performance is actually impaired.
Speaker 1: It interferes with our ability to control our urges and
Speaker 1: control our behaviors, and it sometimes even interferes with our
Speaker 1: bodies functioning in the way that they're supposed to, because again,
Speaker 1: all of the blood is going out of your brain
Speaker 1: and out of your gut and into your thigh muscle,
Speaker 1: so you can run away, and that's really not effective.
Speaker 1: In what we're trying to do is let's say study
Speaker 1: for an exam, and so everyone here is feeling really stressed.
Speaker 1: Are we doing or are we just gonna be stuck
Speaker 1: feeling stressed all the time? Or is there another path? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I think that the great news is are there
Speaker 1: are things that we could all do to reduce our stress.
Speaker 1: And I think that today we might focus on one
Speaker 1: of them, in particular that I study, which is mindfulness.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're mindful, does that just mean you
Speaker 1: don't have any stress anymo So mindfulness. We often think
Speaker 1: about it in I say, we me, some of my colleagues,
Speaker 1: people in my lab. We often think about it as
Speaker 1: a two component process, which is a component of attention,
Speaker 1: where attention is really oriented to what is happening right now.
Speaker 1: So in this moment, it might be the sound of
Speaker 1: my voice if you're here in this room. It might
Speaker 1: be looking at me and Laurie sitting here in the
Speaker 1: front of the room. Might be the sensation of your
Speaker 1: butt on the chair, or your back, or maybe your
Speaker 1: hands touching each other, everything that might be happening in
Speaker 1: this moment, and your attention is oriented to it instead
Speaker 1: of thinking about something that happened to you earlier or
Speaker 1: something that might happen later. You're really right here. And
Speaker 1: the important second component is really a component of attitude,
Speaker 1: and that's a particular kind of attitude. It's an attitude
Speaker 1: that's really open, it's curious, and it's accepting this moment
Speaker 1: exactly as it is. And when we think about doing
Speaker 1: that moment by moment, we might consider that accepting this
Speaker 1: moment as it is noticing it right fully acknowledging everything
Speaker 1: that might be happening, including maybe the fact that you
Speaker 1: have deadlines and you're stressed about getting into a class,
Speaker 1: or you have some kind of problem at work. If
Speaker 1: you have a job, and you're letting everything that's already
Speaker 1: happened be exactly as it is. You're not fighting with it,
Speaker 1: you're not arguing with it, you're not wishing for it
Speaker 1: to be different. You're just letting it be. And the
Speaker 1: remarkable thing that happens when you can really be in
Speaker 1: that state is that it really opens you up to
Speaker 1: make better decisions about the next moment. And in doing so,
Speaker 1: we see that people actually experience less stress and also
Speaker 1: that they make better decisions. And so this is an
Speaker 1: idea that's been around for a long time. You're not
Speaker 1: the first person who's come up. I am far from
Speaker 1: the first person who've come up with this. So mindfuls
Speaker 1: is really rooted in a very ancient Buddhist tradition, so
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago, as the story goes, the Buddha
Speaker 1: sat under a tree and became enlightened when he considered
Speaker 1: all of the human condition and one of the solutions
Speaker 1: that he came up with for how we might exit
Speaker 1: this human condition that is full of suffering is that
Speaker 1: we might practice mindfulness. And mindfuls is really a part
Speaker 1: of a set of practices within the Buddhist tradition. It's
Speaker 1: not the only one, but really entails practicing interacting with
Speaker 1: our lives in this way that doesn't argue with what
Speaker 1: is already here. My understanding is that mindfulness comes through
Speaker 1: a certain set of behaviors, Right, you kind of have
Speaker 1: to practice it. Yeah, So you can bring mindfulness into
Speaker 1: any particular moment, and being able to do that with
Speaker 1: more ease, being able to do that almost more automatically
Speaker 1: does require practice. Mindfuls. Practice is a little bit like
Speaker 1: going to the gym. So at this moment, even if
Speaker 1: you've never gone to the gym before, you can probably
Speaker 1: lift some weight. Right, there's some amount of weight that
Speaker 1: you could already lift, But if you practice lifting weights,
Speaker 1: you can suddenly start overtime lifting heavier and heavier weights.
Speaker 1: I think about mindfulness in a very much the same way.
Speaker 1: So you can be mindful in this moment, it just
Speaker 1: might not be as easy to sustain it over time.
Speaker 1: And if you want to make it easier for you
Speaker 1: to bring mindfulness into many moments, especially difficult moments, stressful moments.
Speaker 1: You would benefit from practicing it over time, and that
Speaker 1: form of practice is often considered meditation, this kind of
Speaker 1: formal practice where you're really trying to be mindful accepted
Speaker 1: present moments. Yeah, so I think one can practice mindfulness
Speaker 1: across many moments in the day in a way to
Speaker 1: really practice, kind of like you can. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: practicing lifting something right now. To those of you who
Speaker 1: can't see me, I'm lifting a bottle of water. And
Speaker 1: so I just practice lifting something much as you would
Speaker 1: at the gym. And so you can do it moment
Speaker 1: by moment across the day. And when you're washing the dishes,
Speaker 1: just wash the dishes. Notice how it feels like set
Speaker 1: the sensation of water in your hands. And even if
Speaker 1: you might notice some thoughts about how you don't like
Speaker 1: washing the dishes, you can notice that as well and
Speaker 1: continue doing it anyway. And if you actually want to
Speaker 1: practice really seriously, you go to the gym. You don't
Speaker 1: just lift the occasional bottle of water. You set some
Speaker 1: time and you go and you dedicate that time to exercising,
Speaker 1: and you do it with the most intention that you
Speaker 1: can bring forth. And it's the same with mindfulness practice.
Speaker 1: So you set a time, and you decide how long
Speaker 1: you're going to do it for, and you during that
Speaker 1: time set your intention to practice it with the most
Speaker 1: focus that you can bring. And so sometimes when people
Speaker 1: hear these terms kind of mindfulness or meditation, it conjures
Speaker 1: up a kind of hippie top vibe, you know, dude
Speaker 1: with long hair and robes and kind of you know, like,
Speaker 1: maybe you're not like a dude with long hair, look
Speaker 1: like a reasonable scientist, right, and so, so talk about
Speaker 1: how sometimes these concepts get a bit of a bad
Speaker 1: rap from people. Yeah, first of all, one of the
Speaker 1: things that are really interesting is that I think that
Speaker 1: mindfless gets a bad rap partly because it's often being
Speaker 1: explained in contexts that are not necessarily here at Yale
Speaker 1: by scientists. It's often talked about by people who might
Speaker 1: actually resemble hippie dippy dudes with long hair and robes.
Speaker 1: I think that what me and many other people in
Speaker 1: my fields are trying to do is to actually bring
Speaker 1: some serious inquiry, serious teaching, and serious science to bear
Speaker 1: on this ancient Eastern tradition. And what I hope that
Speaker 1: achieves is the idea that even though something might have
Speaker 1: been understood first by people who are a little bit
Speaker 1: hippie dippy, they might actually be more serious than you
Speaker 1: might imagine and might benefit you, even though it might
Speaker 1: not be your natural orientation to engage. So maybe the
Speaker 1: best way to show people what this experience of mindfulness
Speaker 1: is like is to try it out. Audience, are you
Speaker 1: ready to try out a little quick meditation? All right, hetty?
Speaker 1: Why don't you walk us through one? All right? So,
Speaker 1: to those of you who are here, I'm going to
Speaker 1: recommend that you first get comfortable in your chair and
Speaker 1: close your eyes. If you are listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: not here, you might even be driving on your commute.
Speaker 1: Please don't close your eyes. It's very important, though, to
Speaker 1: really try to bring a sense of attention to this moment.
Speaker 1: And again, you can get maybe comfortable in your chair.
Speaker 1: If you've closed your eyes. You can also notice maybe
Speaker 1: your facial muscles relax a bit. We often talk in
Speaker 1: sitting meditation about kind of carrying a dignified position, having
Speaker 1: your head higher than your shoulders. Your back should be
Speaker 1: somewhat erect, maybe almost noticing as if there's a string,
Speaker 1: pulling your head up to the ceiling. And as you
Speaker 1: are doing this, maybe take one deep breath to prepare,
Speaker 1: and now move your attention to the physical sensation of
Speaker 1: the breath wherever you feel it most strongly in the body.
Speaker 1: And again, those of you who are listening, if you
Speaker 1: are not able to notice your breath because there's so
Speaker 1: much going on, you can actually use your visual field
Speaker 1: as your object of meditation. The idea is to just
Speaker 1: pick some physical element in your experience and just set
Speaker 1: your intention to focus on that for the next few minutes.
Speaker 1: And as you do that, and especially if you're noticing
Speaker 1: the breath, you can just notice the spontaneous movement of
Speaker 1: the breath. Everything inside us and outside us is moving
Speaker 1: all the time. Experience is constantly shifting, moment is moving
Speaker 1: into moment, and we're just using the breath or anything
Speaker 1: else that we might choose as an anchor as a
Speaker 1: sample element of our experience to focus on for the
Speaker 1: next few minutes. Remember, we're just practicing. And if you're
Speaker 1: noticing the movement of the breath, don't try to change
Speaker 1: it in any way. Just pay attention to it. And
Speaker 1: here is a key part. If you notice that your
Speaker 1: mind is wandering, just notice it, even see if if
Speaker 1: you can accept it. Ah, my mind wandered, And then
Speaker 1: firmly but gently bringing your attention back to the physical
Speaker 1: sensation of the breath. And again, if you notice that
Speaker 1: your mind is wandering, just note it, mind wandering. Can
Speaker 1: you even ask yourself? Can I be okay with this
Speaker 1: moment where I noticed that my mind did something that
Speaker 1: was not in my intention. And then again gently and
Speaker 1: firmly bring your attention back to your anchor. And when
Speaker 1: you're ready, you can open your eyes, come back. Welcome.
Speaker 1: So snap your fingers. If your mind wandered at least
Speaker 1: once during this exercise, I'm seeing everybody here snap their fingers.
Speaker 1: That is really typical. Mind wandering is what minds do.
Speaker 1: It's the normal state actually of our existence. And the
Speaker 1: practice what we did here is that I asked you
Speaker 1: to set the intention to notice something else, right, to
Speaker 1: pay attention to something else. And if you notice that
Speaker 1: your mind was wandering, then your mind was doing not
Speaker 1: what you intended for it to do, right. It was
Speaker 1: kind of going off script. And the practice is to
Speaker 1: notice that it happens and let that be and let
Speaker 1: that go right. It's already done. It's in the past.
Speaker 1: We can't change that your mind wandered. I can't change
Speaker 1: that my mind wanders, and I can notice it when
Speaker 1: it happens, and in that moment, practice noticing right that
Speaker 1: moment is actually the moment we learned from the most.
Speaker 1: What we would like to do over and over in
Speaker 1: life is to wake up for mind wandering and pay
Speaker 1: attention to where we are and to accept the fact
Speaker 1: that it has wandered, and to develop this faculty of
Speaker 1: attention and the faculty of acceptance, the skill to let
Speaker 1: things that have already happened be as they were, to
Speaker 1: let this moment be as it is, and move on
Speaker 1: to the next. And the idea is that as you
Speaker 1: develop these skills, you also learn a whole lot of
Speaker 1: things about yourself. And we might also learn that we're
Speaker 1: not our thoughts, that our thoughts kind of do their
Speaker 1: own thing, that we don't really control where they go,
Speaker 1: and that that happens, and in that we might learn
Speaker 1: a new way of being, a way in which when
Speaker 1: things go out of our control, we can just let
Speaker 1: that be and then focus on what to do in
Speaker 1: the next moment, and then come back to doing what
Speaker 1: was in our intention to begin with, whether it's to
Speaker 1: study when our mind is wandering about something else that
Speaker 1: we're upset about, whether we're faced with some news that
Speaker 1: we didn't expect and we need to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do next to make our lives go back in
Speaker 1: the direction that we intended. And so you're talking about
Speaker 1: all these benefits in some ways kind of clitically, But
Speaker 1: these are the kind of benefits that you've seen personally, right.
Speaker 1: I first meditated many many years ago, even before college,
Speaker 1: just a few times, because I was invited to do
Speaker 1: it in a context of a yoga class, and I
Speaker 1: did it faithfully while I went to that yoga class.
Speaker 1: And then I moved to go to college at Columbia,
Speaker 1: and I abandoned the practice completely because it was hard
Speaker 1: and annoying and I found it too difficult and overwhelming.
Speaker 1: And then I was reintroduced to it a few years later.
Speaker 1: And what happened then is that I really learned to
Speaker 1: engage with it in a way that almost immediately I
Speaker 1: noticed made me better, made my life better, made my
Speaker 1: experience easier. I was going through a lot of stress
Speaker 1: at the times, really really difficult period, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that when I walked out of my mindfuls practice. I
Speaker 1: felt calmer and that my day went better if I
Speaker 1: did it in the morning, and that over time my
Speaker 1: focus got better, and that my ability to deal with
Speaker 1: things happening outside of my control was really much improved.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the motivation that I had then,
Speaker 1: especially in the absence of any evidence or research on mindfulness,
Speaker 1: I was really motivated by kind of my own first
Speaker 1: person science. It worked for me, and so I kept
Speaker 1: doing it. So you have seen personally the benefits of mindfuls,
Speaker 1: but we're also learning that this isn't just you. Science
Speaker 1: is really showing us mindfulness is doing incredible things for
Speaker 1: our brains and for our bodies. But we actually have
Speaker 1: to take a break, so we're going to hear about
Speaker 1: the science when we come back. The Happiness Lab will
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. All right, welcome back. We've
Speaker 1: heard a little bit about the history of mindfulness and
Speaker 1: meditation in some of the personal benefits hetty that you've seen,
Speaker 1: But now I want you to take me into the
Speaker 1: empirical work. What has the science really shown us about
Speaker 1: how meditation changes the brain and the body. So there's
Speaker 1: now not only studies but meta analyses, which are studies
Speaker 1: other studies showing that mindfuls is effective for depression, for anxiety,
Speaker 1: for substance use disorders, and for some other disorders as well,
Speaker 1: reducing the suffering of people who on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis really have a life that is full of
Speaker 1: struggle and beyond that. And actually some of the first
Speaker 1: such on mindfulness was on people who didn't have any
Speaker 1: form of psychopology, but we're just stressed. People with chronic pain,
Speaker 1: people who have normal everyday life stressors experienced tremendous improvements
Speaker 1: with the practice of mindfulness. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: mindfulness for everyone or for every single condition out there.
Speaker 1: And the data are actually quite strong that if you
Speaker 1: take a mindfuls course or learn how to meditate, that
Speaker 1: you might experience less stress, more happiness, better well being,
Speaker 1: and a reduction and symptoms like depression and anxiety. And
Speaker 1: so you've shown that one of the reasons mindfulness and
Speaker 1: meditation in particular can be so powerful is that it's
Speaker 1: really changing the way our brain functions on autopilot. Right
Speaker 1: when we have people sit in a brain scanner, typically
Speaker 1: a functional magnetic resince imaging skinner fMRI, and don't ask
Speaker 1: them to do anything in particular. In those moments, two
Speaker 1: things happen. The first thing that happens is that people's
Speaker 1: mind wander. We know that we talked about that. And
Speaker 1: the second thing that we can see in the brain
Speaker 1: scan themselves is that there's a network of regions that
Speaker 1: get recruited in those moments of mind wandering, and we
Speaker 1: actually have come to call those the default mode network.
Speaker 1: And that network of regions is really reflective of the
Speaker 1: default state of the mind, which is to wander and
Speaker 1: to kind of got in the background, right. We all
Speaker 1: know that there is it's almost like a crazy suck
Speaker 1: buppet sitting on our shoulder, constantly commenting on everything that's
Speaker 1: going on, where we can not only experience that as humans,
Speaker 1: but there's also a network or a pattern of brain
Speaker 1: activity that is associated with that kind of default mode
Speaker 1: of the brain. And that default mode network is significantly
Speaker 1: affected by the practice of meditation. So in one study
Speaker 1: in my lab, we recruited individuals who were experienced meditators,
Speaker 1: people who've meditated for many, many years. We asked them
Speaker 1: in the scanner to both meditate some of the time
Speaker 1: and also to just lie there and do nothing in particular.
Speaker 1: And we also recruited a very well matched group of
Speaker 1: control participants who've never meditated before, and we asked them
Speaker 1: to do the exact same thing, and when we compared
Speaker 1: brain activity between the two groups, So what we found
Speaker 1: is that those individuals who meditated showed significant reductions and
Speaker 1: brain activity in that default mode network and also altered
Speaker 1: connectivity within that network, and that was significantly different from
Speaker 1: those very well matched controls who've never meditated. They also
Speaker 1: importantly reported less mind wandering. And the thing that's really
Speaker 1: cool is that those individuals they've meditated for many, many years,
Speaker 1: and the average number of hours that they meditated is
Speaker 1: ten thousand hours. That's a lot of meditation. What's really
Speaker 1: cool is that other labs have now recruited individuals who've
Speaker 1: meditated much less. In some cases, people were randomized to
Speaker 1: meditate for just three days, and again their brain activity
Speaker 1: was measured, and what they reported is that the group
Speaker 1: of individuals who've just meditated for three days, we're starting
Speaker 1: to show the same changes in network connectivity within the
Speaker 1: default mode network that we were seeing in the experienced meditators,
Speaker 1: suggesting that the same pattern that we see in people
Speaker 1: who've meditated a lot actually starts changing after much, much
Speaker 1: less practice, which is pretty cool because it means within
Speaker 1: a couple days of meditation, you're really changing them out
Speaker 1: of concentration that your brain can do kind of naturally. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm really interested in what happens to people right
Speaker 1: when they start meditating, because I realize that while it's
Speaker 1: really interesting for everybody to know about these expert meditators,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit like talking about Olympic athletes, right,
Speaker 1: who've really practiced this for a really long time. Most
Speaker 1: people really want to know if I start meditating tomorrow,
Speaker 1: am I get to see benefits? And the good news
Speaker 1: is the answer is absolutely yes. We started looking at
Speaker 1: what we call like minimal dose right the first time
Speaker 1: that anybody's ever meditated. After just ten minutes of meditating
Speaker 1: for the very very first time, their cognitive performance got
Speaker 1: just a little bit better and better than the control
Speaker 1: group who did another activity during those ten minutes. A
Speaker 1: caveat to these data is that, again, across these multiple studies,
Speaker 1: we also show that people who are the very very
Speaker 1: extreme end of neuroticism self reported neuroticism, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the tendency to have a negative emotion and judge
Speaker 1: or experience a lot. Those people actually don't benefit from
Speaker 1: the first ten minutes of mindfulness. And this is important
Speaker 1: because one, it just showed us that there's individual differences
Speaker 1: and not everybody benefits to the same degree, and not
Speaker 1: everybody benefits immediately. But it also gives us another avenue
Speaker 1: of research, which we're working on now to try to
Speaker 1: understand what is the minimal dose for these people who
Speaker 1: don't benefit from just ten minutes. Do they need to
Speaker 1: meditate twice? Do they start benefiting after three times. We're
Speaker 1: still working on figuring that out. But the surprising thing
Speaker 1: about the benefits, I mean, you're talking about these benefits
Speaker 1: in terms of concentration, they're more attentive and so on.
Speaker 1: There's also emotional benefits as well. Right, we get a
Speaker 1: happiness boost from this kind of mindfulness practice. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's a few different ways to think about the happiness boost.
Speaker 1: One way to think about the happiness boost is that
Speaker 1: it actually is directly related to the degree to which
Speaker 1: mindfulness practice reduces mind wandering. So there's research that was
Speaker 1: done by Matt Killingworth and Dan Gilbert are Harvard some
Speaker 1: years ago where they asked people to use their smartphone
Speaker 1: and they cued them a few times a day and
Speaker 1: ask them to report, amongst other things, what are you doing,
Speaker 1: what activity are you engaged on? And was your mind
Speaker 1: wandering when the que went off? And what they discovered
Speaker 1: is that people's minds wander a lot. In fact, people's
Speaker 1: mind were wandering almost fifty percent of the time that
Speaker 1: they were being cued, and during almost every single activity,
Speaker 1: even during sex, which is pretty remarkable, I think. And
Speaker 1: what was worse is that they discovered that to the
Speaker 1: degree that people's mind wandered, that was related to being unhappy.
Speaker 1: And that suggests that if we can reduce mind wandering,
Speaker 1: mindfulness might not only make you more mindful, but it
Speaker 1: might also make you happier because your mind is wandering less.
Speaker 1: Another way is by reducing stress. Stress is not a
Speaker 1: happy experience. In fact, for most people' stress as a
Speaker 1: very aversive experience. And so if over time we can
Speaker 1: reduce our stress levels, that is another way of saying
Speaker 1: they're becoming happier, they're becoming less stressed. Another way to
Speaker 1: think about it that we think about sometimes is that
Speaker 1: in the moment, we've found that when people are mindful
Speaker 1: of a negative experience. Just in the moment when they
Speaker 1: come into the lab, we might induce a negative experience.
Speaker 1: We've done this with either very gory images that often
Speaker 1: make people feel quite negatively, and we've also done this
Speaker 1: with physical pain. And specifically, what we see in the
Speaker 1: context of pains is that we see reductions in activity
Speaker 1: and brain regions that are typically associated with pain and
Speaker 1: that are sensitive to rising temperatures. And that suggests it's
Speaker 1: not that they're just telling us that they're feeling less
Speaker 1: negatively or that they're feeling less pain, but we actually
Speaker 1: see a reduction even in the neural pain signature in
Speaker 1: terms of their brain activity, and so that really is
Speaker 1: consistent with the idea that they're actually experiencing less pain.
Speaker 1: I think this benefit of meditation so important because when
Speaker 1: we think about trying to achieve happiness, when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about trying to achieve our goal becoming better people, often
Speaker 1: in the act of doing that involves doing something that
Speaker 1: makes us feel a little uncomfortable or kind of painful.
Speaker 1: You know, we're in our New Year's resolution season, so
Speaker 1: everybody's exercising, you know, they getting out of bed in
Speaker 1: the morning, when the bed is all cozy and stuff
Speaker 1: that's kind of uncomfortable. And the claim is that through
Speaker 1: this practice of being mindful of that discomfort, you can
Speaker 1: kind of magically overcome it, or at least kind of
Speaker 1: be with it. Yeah. I love that you're saying magically,
Speaker 1: because even to me, sometimes the benefits of the fact
Speaker 1: is feel like magic, and I think it's actually not
Speaker 1: magic at all, in the sense that if you can
Speaker 1: learn to tolerate the fact that your mind does sometimes
Speaker 1: things that are unexpected and often aversive, over and over,
Speaker 1: and you learn to accept it, and you learn to
Speaker 1: let it go and move on. And that action of
Speaker 1: letting go of something that happened that's unpleasant and moving
Speaker 1: on is exactly what we need to do what you're describing, right,
Speaker 1: to tolerate the fact that it's really not fun to
Speaker 1: wake up under hour earlier to go running, or it's
Speaker 1: really not fun to go to the gym and lift
Speaker 1: these really heavy weights, or any kind of practice right,
Speaker 1: not smoking anymore, feeling withdrawal symptoms. All of these things
Speaker 1: that we might do in our New Year's resolution, they
Speaker 1: require us to tolerate some discomfort around on these new behaviors.
Speaker 1: That we're trying to acquire. And if we learn by
Speaker 1: practicing mindfulness to tolerate our discomfort, we can then apply
Speaker 1: it to all of these other elements in life that
Speaker 1: we might want to improve. And this is a practice
Speaker 1: that you and others have called urge surfing. I love
Speaker 1: this term. So what is urge surfing? So Urge surfing
Speaker 1: is a phrase that's often used in the context of
Speaker 1: substances disorders to describe using the mindful skill in the
Speaker 1: presence of urges or craving, and craving is an incredibly
Speaker 1: common experience, right, So if you've ever experienced craving for
Speaker 1: any thing, please clap your hands. I mean, we won't
Speaker 1: ask you what you're craving because that could get us
Speaker 1: in trouble. So everybody here was clapping their hands. And
Speaker 1: this is consistent with very large scale epidemological studies that
Speaker 1: show that pretty much ninety nine percent of individuals report
Speaker 1: that they crave something sometimes. Craving is an incredibly common experience.
Speaker 1: We all know what it feels like. And the idea
Speaker 1: of the urge surfing exercise is that you just sit
Speaker 1: there and notice the craving. And actually what you might
Speaker 1: notice is that craving has an arc like most emotions,
Speaker 1: where it will rise, it will reach a peak, and
Speaker 1: at some point it will actually start coming down by itself.
Speaker 1: And that in noticing and accepting the craving as it is,
Speaker 1: we might notice it over time, the craving itself actually
Speaker 1: comes down, and even in the moment we might notice
Speaker 1: it, it it comes down. And in my lab, we've done
Speaker 1: these kinds of studies, especially with cigarette smokers and with food,
Speaker 1: where we ask people we actually induce craving. So you
Speaker 1: guys all know how people might induce craving for food, right,
Speaker 1: So this is what food ads are all about. We
Speaker 1: show you a picture of a yummy burger and immediately
Speaker 1: go na, looks yummy. I want to have that, And
Speaker 1: then you might actually go and get the burger. And
Speaker 1: so we do something like that in my lab, where
Speaker 1: we show people pictures of food, or we show if
Speaker 1: their cigarette smokers, we show them pictures of other people smoking.
Speaker 1: And we know that this increases people's craving. And then
Speaker 1: we might ask them to use one of a variety
Speaker 1: of strategies. One of them might be mindfulness. So we
Speaker 1: might ask them to notice and accept their experience exactly
Speaker 1: as it is, And what we see when we do
Speaker 1: this is that people report less craving when they're just
Speaker 1: noticing and accepting the sensation as it is, and we
Speaker 1: see a reduction in brain activity and regions that are
Speaker 1: associated with craving, suggesting that even by bringing mindfulness and
Speaker 1: acceptance to the moment of craving, we might already experience
Speaker 1: some improvement. I love this this phase of like, can
Speaker 1: we just notice the experience exactly the way is and
Speaker 1: just get through it? I mean, I think that's so
Speaker 1: useful for everything from the discomfort that you feel when
Speaker 1: you're trying to do you know, your new goal, or
Speaker 1: what you experience when you're anxious about a minus or
Speaker 1: anxious about getting into classes, which for listeners at home,
Speaker 1: this is what my Yale students are going through right now.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get into classes. They're trying to get
Speaker 1: into Hetty's class, and they're not able to get in.
Speaker 1: So it's very sad. But the idea is just can
Speaker 1: I sit with this? Can I just be okay with
Speaker 1: this feeling? We often encourage our participants who are not
Speaker 1: trained in mindfulness when they come into these studies to
Speaker 1: really just ask themselves, can I just be okay with
Speaker 1: this moment? Can I just be okay with this feeling
Speaker 1: exactly as it is? And the idea is that by
Speaker 1: actually asking yourself if you can be okay with it,
Speaker 1: you actually open yourself up to doing something more useful
Speaker 1: in the next moment. So for our listeners and for
Speaker 1: the folks in the audience here who want to get
Speaker 1: going with this, you know what recommendations do you have
Speaker 1: for folks who want to get started? Try it right now,
Speaker 1: Take a moment right now and see whether you can
Speaker 1: practice a little bit of this. And if you want
Speaker 1: to kick up the intensity of this practice, you might
Speaker 1: think about something that's currently really upsetting you, or some
Speaker 1: stress so that you have in your life, and see
Speaker 1: if you can just notice the experience of stress and
Speaker 1: just let that be. We're not saying that you're going
Speaker 1: to let the situation be exactly as it is. We're
Speaker 1: just asking about the feelings that you already have. Can
Speaker 1: you just let this feeling be here? And over time
Speaker 1: is especially as you get more practice, you might notice
Speaker 1: as you do this, your sensation of stress about this
Speaker 1: experience is coming down just a little bit. And overtime
Speaker 1: it might start coming down quite a bit. The second
Speaker 1: invitation is to really start making this a daily practice,
Speaker 1: or at least a frequent practice, something that you might
Speaker 1: allow yourself to do for five minutes or ten minutes
Speaker 1: a day for a period, and then if you start
Speaker 1: noticing changes, maybe, or if you are just really motivated,
Speaker 1: start doing it for longer. I think that over time,
Speaker 1: the idea is not that you're necessarily going to meditate
Speaker 1: an hour a day for the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: but that you will do it until you start noticing
Speaker 1: the benefits that you yourself might be experiencing, and then
Speaker 1: you will actually feel spontaneously motivated or easically motivated to
Speaker 1: do it more and more. And I think I've now
Speaker 1: seen it with students and friends and other people in
Speaker 1: my life who've tried the practice, maybe found it a
Speaker 1: little bit annoying at first, and then after a while
Speaker 1: notice that it's actually been really transformative. It's such a
Speaker 1: wonderful way to kind of do some like gymnastics with
Speaker 1: your mind, or like bring your mind to the gym.
Speaker 1: I wanted to end with the sort of more of
Speaker 1: a philosophical question. I feel like as a society we're
Speaker 1: more distracted than ever, and in some ways we're more
Speaker 1: kind of cravy than ever for all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Do you think understanding the science of this stuff is
Speaker 1: going to make us happier, like we can claim back
Speaker 1: the present moment and stop all this craving. I guess
Speaker 1: my hope is that everybody who might have even a
Speaker 1: little bit of curiosity will try it at least once,
Speaker 1: and maybe even twice, with the hope that even if
Speaker 1: it will bestow just a little bit of benefit to you,
Speaker 1: that you would have an opportunity to try it. And
Speaker 1: of course my hope is that we all will together
Speaker 1: and make a world that is just a little kinder
Speaker 1: and a little bit more mindful. Everyone, can you please
Speaker 1: join me in thanking doctor Hetty Cooper for a fa
Speaker 1: Thank you boys for coming and really appreciate it. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show was mastered by Evan Fiola and our original
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Ben Davis,
Speaker 1: Mia Lavelle, Julia Barton, Carle mcgliori, Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries.