Speaker 1: Chocolate only there's as a temporizing measure when we're lonely,
Speaker 1: as compared to like reaching out and calling a friend.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Judson Brewer, m D and PhD. He's the director of
Speaker 1: Research at the Center for Mindfulness and Associate Professor in
Speaker 1: Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Speaker 1: He is also an adjunct faculty member at Yale University
Speaker 1: and a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Speaker 1: His book is The Craving Mind, From Cigarettes to Smartphones
Speaker 1: to Love, Why we get hooked and how we can
Speaker 1: break bad habits. Can you think of a time in
Speaker 1: your life when you've been helped, along, supported, or encouraged.
Speaker 1: If so, this is a time that you can choose
Speaker 1: to pay it forward. A couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 1: quit my day job to focus on the One you
Speaker 1: Feed full time. You might think, since I chose to
Speaker 1: leave that job, that the show generates enough in for
Speaker 1: me to live on. But that's not the case yet.
Speaker 1: So I'm asking for your support today. But you're not
Speaker 1: just supporting me, you're actually supporting a tool that's helping
Speaker 1: thousands of people feed their good wolf and hopefully making
Speaker 1: this whole world just a little bit better. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever considered supporting the show, now is the time
Speaker 1: to do it. Please go today to One you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash supporter and make a donation. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. And here's the interview with Judson Brewer. Hi,
Speaker 1: jud welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. You have a book called
Speaker 1: The Craving Mind From Cigarettes to Smartphones, to love, why
Speaker 1: we get hooked, and how we can break bad habits,
Speaker 1: which is right up my alley. And um, the fact
Speaker 1: that you do a lot of research on meditation and
Speaker 1: mindfulness is also really interesting to me. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to getting into your work. But let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. It means so much because
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, it describes how we learn to do
Speaker 1: everything that we do, from tying our shoes two smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 1: In your book you talk about you call it a
Speaker 1: couple of different things. When you call it reward based learning,
Speaker 1: and you also refer to it as a habit loop.
Speaker 1: But can you walk listeners through what that means and
Speaker 1: how that functions, because I think it's pretty key that
Speaker 1: we understand that really before we go much further in
Speaker 1: to anything else that you've got, I'd be happy to
Speaker 1: this process was was set up, probably so we'd remember
Speaker 1: where food is. So I'll use food as an example. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's say that in our ancestors days, they were out
Speaker 1: foraging for food and when they found a food source
Speaker 1: that they ate the food. And when they ate the
Speaker 1: food and it was nutritious as compared to poisonous, the
Speaker 1: signal from their stomach would send a dopamine signal into
Speaker 1: their brain that would say, remember what you ate and
Speaker 1: where you found it. And so it basically sets up
Speaker 1: this this habit loop that needs three components. It needs
Speaker 1: a trigger, a behavior, and a result or a reward.
Speaker 1: So the trigger in this case would be, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing berries or something that looks nutritious. The behavior would
Speaker 1: be eating it, and then that reward would be that
Speaker 1: dopamine signal that says, hey, you know that was good,
Speaker 1: do it again. And that really is at the heart
Speaker 1: of our behavior, you say, simply put, the more that
Speaker 1: a behavior or is repeated, the more we learned to
Speaker 1: see the world a certain way through a lens that
Speaker 1: is biased based on rewards and punishments from previous actions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say we Um, it's like we start to
Speaker 1: wear glasses and we start to see the world. You know.
Speaker 1: So that example was food, you know, learning to eat food.
Speaker 1: But in modern day, where food is plentiful, that habit
Speaker 1: loop is still at play. You know, we're angry and
Speaker 1: we give somebody the universal sign of displeasure, um, and
Speaker 1: we feel smug. You know, it's the same habit loop.
Speaker 1: Or if we're you know, lonely and we eat a
Speaker 1: cupcake or some chocolate and we feel a little bit better,
Speaker 1: that same habit loop as at play. And so it's
Speaker 1: like we start wearing glasses that say, if I'm lonely,
Speaker 1: I should eat chocolate, and modern day we call that
Speaker 1: subjective bias. And one of the things that really runs
Speaker 1: is a theme through the whole book, is that those
Speaker 1: loops and that bias are not necessarily very useful for
Speaker 1: us in certain cases, and we don't often examine them.
Speaker 1: So to your point, let's use the chocolate and lonely.
Speaker 1: I'm lonely, so I eat chocolate, and the reward is
Speaker 1: that I'm less lonely. Maybe that is the behavior early on,
Speaker 1: but but very often over time it doesn't really deliver
Speaker 1: the reward, or the reward isn't really solving the real problem. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you've really nailed it. So you know, chocolate only serves
Speaker 1: as a temporizing measure when lonely as compared to like
Speaker 1: reaching out and calling a friend. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: explore that further, but I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about a couple of concepts that you talk about
Speaker 1: in regards to addiction. You say, addiction is continued use
Speaker 1: despite adverse consequences, and you go on to say that
Speaker 1: talking about the way that addicts were trying to avoid
Speaker 1: something more often rarely did one of them say that
Speaker 1: it felt great to go on a three day cocaine binge,
Speaker 1: blow hundreds of dollars or more ay and sleep it
Speaker 1: off for the next few days. They describe their reward
Speaker 1: based learning as a way to avoid situations, to numb
Speaker 1: their pain, mask unpleasant emotions, and most often succumbed to
Speaker 1: their cravings. Scratching that damn itch. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that you follow that up with is talking about
Speaker 1: how every time we give into a craving, we reinforce
Speaker 1: that loop. Yeah, so it's this is that feeding bit
Speaker 1: that goes, you know, back to the starting of the wolf.
Speaker 1: We feed the wolf, it keeps coming back for more.
Speaker 1: And the same is true when we drank, when we're
Speaker 1: trying to numb ourselves, or when we eat. You know,
Speaker 1: at a patient who she formed a binge eating pattern
Speaker 1: where she did eat entire large pizzas and one sitting.
Speaker 1: But she learned that pattern. She started feeding that pattern
Speaker 1: literally around the age of eight, and she'd been feeding
Speaker 1: it for you know, about twenty years when I first
Speaker 1: saw her. I'm a recovering alcohol a heroin attics, so
Speaker 1: I've got plenty of miles on this particular subject. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things for me that I
Speaker 1: often stay sober off of just never having to get
Speaker 1: sober again. I just that's enough for me. Like I
Speaker 1: think back to how awful that is, and how awful
Speaker 1: cravings are, and and I've used the analogy um often
Speaker 1: that cravings are like stray cats. If you feed them,
Speaker 1: they kind of keep coming back. But if you just don't,
Speaker 1: sooner or later they get the message and go elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And and you you talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: in the book about how, yes, the craving will be
Speaker 1: there in the beginning, but it will it will in essence,
Speaker 1: if you don't feed it, it it will burn itself out. Yes,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've seen that. I've certainly experienced that
Speaker 1: myself in a number of different realms, and we've even
Speaker 1: done clinical studies where we've seen this bear out in
Speaker 1: the data, you know, And one of our smoking studies
Speaker 1: we found that at the end of treatment, we we
Speaker 1: gave people mindfulness training, and at the end of treatment,
Speaker 1: a number of them had quit smoking, and their cravings
Speaker 1: were still at the same level as the people that
Speaker 1: hadn't quit smoking. Yet over time, as they stopped fueling
Speaker 1: that fire of craving, you know, as they stopped adding
Speaker 1: cigarettes as fuel to the fire, their cravings went down
Speaker 1: over time, and it was about three months before we
Speaker 1: saw its statistically significant difference between those two groups. So
Speaker 1: that makes me want to ask you a question that
Speaker 1: I'm curious about whether you have seen this anywhere or
Speaker 1: there's any data anywhere to support this. But I got
Speaker 1: sober the first time at age twenty four, and UM
Speaker 1: stayed sober about eight years and then went out and
Speaker 1: then came back. And the first time that I got sober,
Speaker 1: the desire to use left me fairly quickly. The second time,
Speaker 1: it's like it just haunted me for a long time.
Speaker 1: And I've heard a lot of people who have been
Speaker 1: in a situation similar to mine where they achieved a
Speaker 1: long period of abstinence of something and and when they
Speaker 1: tried at the second time, it was harder in some way.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious if you have any idea why that
Speaker 1: might be, if there's any data, or is that just anecdotal.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not nonsense because it's my experience, but
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think it's nonsense. A lot of
Speaker 1: my patients have, you know, when I'm seeing them there,
Speaker 1: like on their fourth or fifth recovery attempt. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think if there's anybody specifically that had their
Speaker 1: second one, you know, like you and this other person
Speaker 1: that you described. UM. The one thing I can say
Speaker 1: is that it it kind of gets entrenched a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and it can also have to do with
Speaker 1: our brains developing certain habit patterns over time, so you know,
Speaker 1: after about the age of twenty two or so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, certain there's a lot of pruning that happens
Speaker 1: in our in our prefrontal cortex in particular, and so
Speaker 1: there can that's a nice critical period, and then after
Speaker 1: that things can get a little more locked in and
Speaker 1: the brain is still amazingly plastic. So I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you know, you have these eight years and then after
Speaker 1: that you went back to using and then got sober again.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? I used for maybe three years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that can be you know, I'm just speculating. I'll
Speaker 1: give you some baseless speculation, some bs so so baseless
Speaker 1: speculation there says, you know, there's something with that second
Speaker 1: piece where it gets locked in a bit, and then
Speaker 1: probably a combination of circumstances in your brain being a
Speaker 1: little bit more mature and different that it gets locked
Speaker 1: in a little bit more and it's harder, you know,
Speaker 1: harder to quit where And maybe it's you know, I'm
Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing the brain, but it's kind of like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: he he's he might be serious this time. We gotta
Speaker 1: hold on, we gotta kick his kick his butt. On
Speaker 1: this one. Yeah. Yeah, So one of the things that
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the book is this idea of we
Speaker 1: we just mentioned each time that you do the behavior,
Speaker 1: you reinforce the habit, and you taught people the idea
Speaker 1: of you use the analogy of surfing. Cravings are like waves, um,
Speaker 1: and people could surf those cravings. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about what that means and how that works. How does
Speaker 1: somebody do that? Yeah, it's a it's a good question.
Speaker 1: So often cravings and you tell me if this has
Speaker 1: been the case for you. These cravings feel so big
Speaker 1: that they feel like one they're gonna crush us and
Speaker 1: two they're gonna last forever. And so um, that's actually
Speaker 1: a cognitive distortion that our brain is making where it
Speaker 1: says this is terrible, make it go away as quick
Speaker 1: as possible, and I'm going to tell you that this
Speaker 1: is really really bad and it's gonna last forever to
Speaker 1: convince you to get it over with quickly. So with
Speaker 1: with art surfing, we can actually help people break it
Speaker 1: down and see that these are just cognitive distortions. And
Speaker 1: this is one thing that Mondfalness training helps with these cravings.
Speaker 1: They come and they crest and eventually they go away.
Speaker 1: So one thing that I've asked a lot of my
Speaker 1: patients as well, have you had a craving that's lasted forever?
Speaker 1: And they at first like, may no, wait because because
Speaker 1: it would still be here, lasted forever. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: a great way to kind of step back and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: these cravings do come and go. It's easier to look
Speaker 1: at it after the wave is gone, but when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. Um. You know, I like
Speaker 1: the analogy of a wave because you know, this big
Speaker 1: wave comes up, and if we don't have something to
Speaker 1: keep us afloat, like a surfboard, we're gonna get crushed
Speaker 1: by it. So we can actually use awareness to help
Speaker 1: us stay afloat. And so the way that we help
Speaker 1: people surf these cravings is give them kind of a
Speaker 1: surfboard or a buoyancy of awareness which helps them actually
Speaker 1: turn toward the direct experience of what cravings actually feel like.
Speaker 1: So um, the way to do that is simply by turning.
Speaker 1: Instead of running away, you know, and trying to distance
Speaker 1: ourselves from the craving, it's actually paradoxically turning towards them
Speaker 1: and asking, Okay, what's this feel like in my body
Speaker 1: right now, and then when we start to break it
Speaker 1: down into okay, it's tightness, it's tension, it's burning, it's clenching,
Speaker 1: it's this and that that actually helps us stay on
Speaker 1: top of the wave as it gets big, as it crests,
Speaker 1: and as it goes away, as compared to getting crushed
Speaker 1: by it. And here's the rest of the interview with
Speaker 1: Judson Brewer. You did a study where you tried mindfulness
Speaker 1: based habit change um. But you brought people in and
Speaker 1: you said, all right, we're gonna have this mindfulness training
Speaker 1: group and then we're going to try what was at
Speaker 1: the time. I don't know if it still is, but
Speaker 1: at the time it was this Freedom from Smoking course
Speaker 1: that the American Lung Association kind of considered the state
Speaker 1: of the art way of getting people to stop smoking.
Speaker 1: And the course that you developed and that you worked
Speaker 1: with people on was twice as effective as the other course.
Speaker 1: And that's using the technique largely that we just talked about,
Speaker 1: this idea of surfing the craving, which is really to
Speaker 1: your point, is paying attention to it instead of trying
Speaker 1: to avoid it, instead of trying to make it go
Speaker 1: away is too simply just go Okay, what is this,
Speaker 1: what's it like? And you then tried to deconstruct that
Speaker 1: and say, what was it about the mindfulness therapy that
Speaker 1: was so effective? So let me break this down and
Speaker 1: try And so you did another study where you found
Speaker 1: that an acronym for rain. And I'll let you talk
Speaker 1: about what RAIN is in a second, but that that
Speaker 1: method was at the heart of what really led to
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of what you were doing. Yeah, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about it. And we've actually even extended this beyond
Speaker 1: smoking to even eating, helping people work with binge eating
Speaker 1: and emotional eating. But the acronym is called RAIN because
Speaker 1: it starts with R where you have to recognize the craving.
Speaker 1: If we're an autopilot, we don't recognize it, forget about it.
Speaker 1: You know it's going to crush us. So that's the
Speaker 1: R is for recognized. The A is for accept or
Speaker 1: allow it to be there, or even acknowledge. So instead
Speaker 1: of running away from and saying, Okay, here's this craving
Speaker 1: and even you know, come on, let's let's do this
Speaker 1: UM and the eye stands for investigating. This is the
Speaker 1: most critical piece I think of investigation is bringing curiosity
Speaker 1: to what the craving feels like. And this is where
Speaker 1: we're turning towards that experience. Like I just mentioned, so
Speaker 1: we're investigating what is the feel like in my body?
Speaker 1: Is it tightness? Is a tension? Is it burning? Is
Speaker 1: it heat? Is it clenching? Is it whatever? And then
Speaker 1: the end stands for a note and we simply note
Speaker 1: those physical sensations from moment to moment, and that rain
Speaker 1: acronym helped us start to see these are physical sensations
Speaker 1: and from moment to moment, those sensations might be here,
Speaker 1: they might change a little bit, but they come and go,
Speaker 1: and it helps kind of remind us that cravings are
Speaker 1: made up of these little sensations. They come and go,
Speaker 1: they're not permanent. And this is where you know, we
Speaker 1: got actually at our follow up when we did our
Speaker 1: follow up data point, we actually had five times the
Speaker 1: quit rates of this gold standard treatment for smoking. And
Speaker 1: with this we tested this even with a with an
Speaker 1: app based mindfulness training for eating called eat right Now,
Speaker 1: we actually got at reduction in craving related eating after
Speaker 1: just a couple of months. So you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: starting to see this converge in a number of different
Speaker 1: behaviors that share this common habit. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: go back for a second to the habit loop where
Speaker 1: you talk about trigger behavior reward. Actually, first I want
Speaker 1: to say those results are amazing and I'm not terribly
Speaker 1: surprised by them, but it is a remarkable improvement over
Speaker 1: the other types of approaches. But you talk about this
Speaker 1: idea of the trigger behavior and reward, and what's so
Speaker 1: interesting to me is that a lot of what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is recognizing that the craving is happening and
Speaker 1: that that behavior is designed to bring about a reward,
Speaker 1: and that if we can recognize that that is the case,
Speaker 1: it can make such a big difference. Because my my
Speaker 1: girlfriend said this really, really well. As she started to
Speaker 1: realize that eating had an emotional component, she went, when
Speaker 1: I thought that what I really wanted was a cupcake,
Speaker 1: there was only one answer in the world for that,
Speaker 1: and that was a cupcake. When I realized that what
Speaker 1: it was was that I was lonely or I was sad,
Speaker 1: there's lots of answers for loneliness or sadness, and I
Speaker 1: just thought that was such a wise way of realizing
Speaker 1: what's happening underneath. And the habit loop is so important
Speaker 1: because we've got a trigger, loneliness, sadness, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: We're used to the behavior that we think leads to
Speaker 1: this reward. But you can insert a different behavior in
Speaker 1: the middle there. I think it was Charles Doohig in
Speaker 1: his book The Power Habit talks about this that one
Speaker 1: of the easiest ways to change the habit is you
Speaker 1: you still have the trigger, you still have the reward,
Speaker 1: you change the behavior in the middle. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: one way to change it. And this is where it
Speaker 1: gets really interesting because with addiction treatment often there's a
Speaker 1: substitute behavior, like with smoking. You know, if you eat
Speaker 1: candy instead of smoking, it fits right within Tingk's paradigm.
Speaker 1: You know, you just put in a different behavior. It
Speaker 1: gets even more interesting when we bring in behaviors that
Speaker 1: are simply awareness, so mindfulness. And if you think of
Speaker 1: awareness as a substitute behavior, it provides two different things.
Speaker 1: One is, it's intrinsically available, so we don't need to
Speaker 1: go outside of ourselves to get something like to eat
Speaker 1: candy or a cupcake, for example. But also the reward
Speaker 1: is different, so there's this excitement that comes when we're
Speaker 1: anticipating eating candy or chocolate or a cupcake. But the
Speaker 1: curiosity itself has a different feel to it, that's more
Speaker 1: of a open, expanded feeling than that of the contracted
Speaker 1: excitement of I'm about to eat chocolate or candy, and
Speaker 1: that reward in itself, this is something we can all explore.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the feeling of contraction
Speaker 1: that comes from excitement versus the expansion that comes from joy, um,
Speaker 1: the joy actually feels better. And so our brains start
Speaker 1: to learn, you know, they're always comparing what's a better reward. Well,
Speaker 1: that joy is actually more rewarding than the excitement that
Speaker 1: comes with anticipating eating candy or something like that, and
Speaker 1: so that in its self can become more intrinsically rewarding
Speaker 1: and feed on itself in a way that doesn't depend
Speaker 1: on things outside of us, which can be very helpful.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I do think if you look at
Speaker 1: what I referenced with Charles do Higgs model, that is
Speaker 1: the one thing about it that I have found to
Speaker 1: be potentially challenging is that if you're after the same reward,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always work that way. You can't just go
Speaker 1: if the reward. I'm after his excitement, right, and you're
Speaker 1: used to getting that from you know, any number of
Speaker 1: illicit behaviors. You don't get that same excitement by substituting
Speaker 1: playing scrabble in the middle or something, right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: work the same way. And so that's what I really
Speaker 1: like about what you're talking about, and kind of leads
Speaker 1: to right where I wanted to go next, which is
Speaker 1: this concept of excitement versus curiosity or aliveness. And you
Speaker 1: quote a Burmese meditation teacher who says, in their quest
Speaker 1: for happiness, people mistake excitement of the mind for all happiness.
Speaker 1: And you go on to kind of talk about your
Speaker 1: own experience with that, about how you sort of discovered
Speaker 1: that yourself over time on meditation retreats in different things.
Speaker 1: Yeah it took me a while. Yeah, yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: work in progress. So so that was that was sided
Speaker 1: about upon Tito is this Burmese master, And I just
Speaker 1: really love that quote. I think it's from his book
Speaker 1: called In This Very Life, and it it highlights something
Speaker 1: that I had had really not noticed before, which was
Speaker 1: I thought that the highest level of happiness was like
Speaker 1: you know, that kiss or the roller coaster or the
Speaker 1: mountain bike ride or this or that. You knew that excitement,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until I actually discovered the really blissful joy,
Speaker 1: the piece that comes from simply being and actually curiosity
Speaker 1: taps into that same thing that I was blown away by.
Speaker 1: How much more rewarding that was? Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: how and this gets back to what I was saying
Speaker 1: before about examining the reward and seeing if it's really working.
Speaker 1: If what we're after by doing these various behaviors is
Speaker 1: a change of consciousness in a positive way, right, which
Speaker 1: is you know what what it's all sort of about
Speaker 1: is to really, in addition to interrogating the craving and
Speaker 1: and the mindfulness of that, but interrogating is this behavior
Speaker 1: working for what I think it is? You have questions
Speaker 1: like what does this reward actually feel? Like? How long
Speaker 1: does the feeling last? Does it fix whatever caused our
Speaker 1: disease in the first place? You say, indeed, we may
Speaker 1: be mindlessly pressing our dopamine levers thinking this is as
Speaker 1: good as it gets. Our stress compass may be miscalibrated,
Speaker 1: or we may not know how to read it. We
Speaker 1: may be mistakenly pointing ourselves towards these dopamine driven rewards
Speaker 1: instead of away from them. We may be looking for
Speaker 1: love in all the wrong places. And man, that is
Speaker 1: such a great description of addictive behavior is that my
Speaker 1: experience with it is that they all work in the beginning.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that we become addicted to things. They
Speaker 1: do something very positive. They provide what we're looking for.
Speaker 1: They provide that change of consciousness in a positive way.
Speaker 1: The problem with them all is they just all become
Speaker 1: maladaptive over time. It doesn't work anymore. And yet that
Speaker 1: habit loop, as you talk about, is so ingrained that
Speaker 1: we are unable to just even see that our minds
Speaker 1: become habituated. Are receptors down regulate and then we start
Speaker 1: chasing that high as compared to being high. And here's
Speaker 1: the rest of the interview. So let's talk for a
Speaker 1: second about that idea of excitement, because you say excitement
Speaker 1: brings with it a restlessness and a contracted urge for
Speaker 1: more joy that results from curiosity is smoother and open
Speaker 1: rather than contracted. And I think the word contraction is
Speaker 1: so interesting. We had Michael Pollen on not too long ago,
Speaker 1: um and you feature prominently in his book. I had
Speaker 1: actually read your book, because you and I had planned
Speaker 1: to do this like six months ago, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had read your book before, and but he and
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about that idea of of contraction,
Speaker 1: about how a lot of what our consciousness does is
Speaker 1: just contract down upon itself. It reduces what what comes in.
Speaker 1: And for me, that was what addiction was all about.
Speaker 1: Was I felt so sort of disconnected from everything that
Speaker 1: those things opened that consciousness up. But that's another effect
Speaker 1: that meditation and mindfulness can often have, is to take
Speaker 1: us to a state that is not contracted. And you
Speaker 1: share in the book that for you, you realized after
Speaker 1: a certain point that whether it was good feelings that
Speaker 1: you were after you were chasing, whether they were bad feelings,
Speaker 1: that all these things had income and that contraction, that
Speaker 1: sort of shutting down a little bit of our consciousness
Speaker 1: to a to a smaller focal point. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: chasing a lot of different things, and it's amazing. You know,
Speaker 1: I could probably could have written many more chapters in
Speaker 1: that book, but many of those chapters were based on
Speaker 1: my own experience, Like you know, addicted to distraction, addicted
Speaker 1: to thinking, addicted to love, you know, all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just seemed like that was the
Speaker 1: best stuff on earth until I realized that it wasn't right.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about curiosity, because I
Speaker 1: find curiosity to be a very useful trait in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But let's talk about curiosity in terms
Speaker 1: of this sense of breaking bad habits. It might be
Speaker 1: helpful even to start with. And we can even link
Speaker 1: this to contraction and expansion as well. So probably let's
Speaker 1: see what would be the opposite of curiosity when we
Speaker 1: when we kind of think we know right, and so
Speaker 1: we're not curious at all. And so you know, if
Speaker 1: I ask you a question and you say, oh, I
Speaker 1: know the answer, and I say, oh, that's not the
Speaker 1: right answer, do you feel contracted or do you feel expanded? Well,
Speaker 1: probably contracted, yeah, because it's like, well no, I know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like so that we can kind of
Speaker 1: use that to kind of calibrate this this conversation even
Speaker 1: and so we're not we're not out there exploring. We're
Speaker 1: really just probably locking ourselves into our position ready to
Speaker 1: defend it. I don't know, the image that comes up
Speaker 1: is like, you know, we build a castle or afford
Speaker 1: around whatever our ideas are or whatever our feelings or
Speaker 1: our sensations are, and then we try to protect those.
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, this reminds me of some work
Speaker 1: that Carol Dweck did probably twenty or thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: around fixed versus growth mindset. You're probably familiar with that,
Speaker 1: where you know, we kind of think this is who
Speaker 1: I am. You know, whether it's I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: cupcake addict or I'm a whatever, this is who I am.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of locked into that. And then anything
Speaker 1: that we don't explore any other possibilities, but that that
Speaker 1: growth mindset is where we're open. Oh, and this is
Speaker 1: where curiosity comes in. It's like, oh, do I really
Speaker 1: need this cupcake right now? And then? Or is it?
Speaker 1: Am I lonely? Like you talked about your girlfriend pointing
Speaker 1: out And when we are curious, we're actually open to
Speaker 1: literally explore other possibilities. And so, you know, if we're lonely,
Speaker 1: we can actually see it's not just a cupcake. It's
Speaker 1: a cupcake or this or this or this or this
Speaker 1: or this, And the curiosity is what helps us step
Speaker 1: back and say, well, it's actually needed right now and
Speaker 1: it actually feels great to be curious. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of that old Suzuki quote in the beginner's mind
Speaker 1: there are many possibilities, and the experts there are few.
Speaker 1: But this also applies a lot to meditation and mindfulness, right,
Speaker 1: because for me, the experiences of meditation and mindfulness go
Speaker 1: the best when what I'm doing is trying to sort
Speaker 1: of just what's happening, pay attention to what's happening. Once
Speaker 1: I get into this is what I expect to happen,
Speaker 1: or this is what meditation is supposed to be like,
Speaker 1: or my mind is supposed to be quiet. It's not
Speaker 1: enjoyable and it's not productive. But if I can get
Speaker 1: out of that into the curious, what is my experience like?
Speaker 1: It changes everything, absolutely, absolutely, and that's what beginner's mind
Speaker 1: is all about. This makes me think of something else
Speaker 1: that you wrote. You say it doesn't take any work.
Speaker 1: Since awareness is always available, we can simply rest in
Speaker 1: being aware. Excitement, on the other hand, requires something to
Speaker 1: happen to us, or requires us to procure something that
Speaker 1: we want. We have to do something to get what
Speaker 1: we want. I just love the way you wrote that,
Speaker 1: but I also now want to take that to the
Speaker 1: idea of the default mode network and the idea that
Speaker 1: that seems to have something to do with also whether
Speaker 1: we are doing or not doing something. So the default
Speaker 1: one network, just for a little bit of background, it's
Speaker 1: this network of brain regions that's involved in self referential processing,
Speaker 1: which is just a fancy word which means thinking about ourselves.
Speaker 1: So basically, you know, whenever we're worried about what somebody's
Speaker 1: thinking about us, or we're ruminating or we're planning in
Speaker 1: the future, we're worrying about things we did in the past,
Speaker 1: we're most likely to be activating this network of brand regions.
Speaker 1: And once the default mode network is active, when we're
Speaker 1: doing something, as in we're doing our lives, right, you know,
Speaker 1: which is this constant thing that we're you know, it's
Speaker 1: always running in the back of our head, not being
Speaker 1: focused on a particular task. That's not what we're talking
Speaker 1: about because that tends to shut down the default mode network. Right. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you're talking about doing in the sense of trying to
Speaker 1: make something happen as it relates to our self or
Speaker 1: conception of ourselves. Yeah, it's kind of like thinking about me,
Speaker 1: How is this affecting me? If somebody says, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you look tired, and then I start worrying. Oh do
Speaker 1: I look tired. That's not exactly a task, but it
Speaker 1: certainly is my brain doing something. So that network of
Speaker 1: brain regions gets activated when we're worrying, when we're planning,
Speaker 1: and even when we're craving. There's been a number of
Speaker 1: studies ranging from chocolate to uh cigarettes, um, gambling to
Speaker 1: cocaine that that activate regions of this default more network
Speaker 1: when people are just shown pictures of those activities um.
Speaker 1: Because they trigger rumination, they and they trigger craving, they
Speaker 1: trigger anticipation of getting. That's a kind of preparing even
Speaker 1: for for action, if you want to think of it
Speaker 1: that way, is our our our brain starts thinking, oh
Speaker 1: and anticipating, yeah, let's do this. You know, so the
Speaker 1: cupcake becomes the only solution, as you put it beautifully earlier.
Speaker 1: And that's actually kind of a fixed mindset if you
Speaker 1: think about it. We're fixating, we're zooming in, we're honing in,
Speaker 1: and we're going for it. Uh. The contrast to that
Speaker 1: is curiosity being open. And we've even we've done some
Speaker 1: studies with effort rides where you can measure brain activity.
Speaker 1: We've even done some with e g. Where we can
Speaker 1: compare the doing of or getting caught up. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: more accurate to say getting caught caught up in our
Speaker 1: experience because we get caught up in self referential thinking,
Speaker 1: we get caught up in rumination, we get caught up
Speaker 1: in craving. That caught upness actually has a contracted feel
Speaker 1: to it as well, right, Whereas curiosity, which has that
Speaker 1: expanded feeling to it, is what deactivates the default mode network,
Speaker 1: or at least the one region that we've been studying
Speaker 1: called the posterior singulate cortex. And so curiosity, different types
Speaker 1: of meditation, gratitude, things like that. I would say, because
Speaker 1: we haven't tested everything, but I would say that anything
Speaker 1: that leads to a expansion is probably deactivating this default
Speaker 1: mode network. And so you can think of it as
Speaker 1: this binary. You know, we're contracting when we're caught up,
Speaker 1: we're expanding when we're letting go, and that correlates with
Speaker 1: toggling of this brain activity. It increases when we're contracted,
Speaker 1: decreases when we're letting go. There's a spiritual teacher audio
Speaker 1: Shanti that we've had on the show a few times,
Speaker 1: and he has a saying that I mentioned to Michael
Speaker 1: Pollen in our conversation, and I just think it applies
Speaker 1: to this, which is he describes the ego simply as
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It is just a contraction. It's
Speaker 1: less a thing than it is a thought process, a
Speaker 1: way of of the brain working, which is an interesting
Speaker 1: way to think about it. And of course all your
Speaker 1: studies where you put people, hook people up to these
Speaker 1: devices and then measure what happens is they meditate and
Speaker 1: do different things is totally fascinating. I I try to
Speaker 1: do in a little of that with like the consumer
Speaker 1: e g. Devices which just doesn't work, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: the technology just isn't there. But I find that so
Speaker 1: fascinating that you can do that. And one of the
Speaker 1: studies you talk about in the book that's so interesting
Speaker 1: is working with people meditating and noticing that when they
Speaker 1: drop deeper into meditation, we see this decrease in the
Speaker 1: default mode network. But that as part of what you
Speaker 1: have do is they can then check how they're doing,
Speaker 1: and the minute they pull out of the meditation to
Speaker 1: check how am I doing, boom, you see the default
Speaker 1: mode network, you know, jump right back up, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's about how am I doing exactly exactly, and and
Speaker 1: they get caught up in wow, look all I'm doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was doing a great job right exactly. Well. I
Speaker 1: like that that you mentioned that audio. Shanti mentions this
Speaker 1: contraction is the ego because that's really how you know,
Speaker 1: I think of um right now. My working hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that the experiential self. So there I think there are
Speaker 1: different aspects of self. So there's this conceptual self, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm Judd, right, But that concept doesn't necessarily lead
Speaker 1: to a contraction. If somebody says, you know, if a
Speaker 1: cop comes to my front door and says, where's Judd,
Speaker 1: I might have a little bit of a contraction around
Speaker 1: that concept. Oh crap, what did I do? So there's
Speaker 1: this concept of me that's very different than the experience
Speaker 1: of me. But I think what, I don't want to
Speaker 1: put words into his shanty's mouth, but I would say
Speaker 1: my own words. There would be that that contraction tells
Speaker 1: us this is me, right. And so if he's talking
Speaker 1: about the ego being that contraction, I totally agree. And
Speaker 1: we even have a neural correlate for that now with
Speaker 1: the posterior single a cortex. So there may be a
Speaker 1: conceptual self and there may be an experiential self that
Speaker 1: are linked, and it makes sense that they would be linked.
Speaker 1: But that contraction is where all the trouble starts. And
Speaker 1: is that the conceptual self? No, no, no, I think
Speaker 1: it's no problem to have a concept of I'm Judd,
Speaker 1: got it. But it's a real problem when I start
Speaker 1: taking myself personally or when I started becoming you know,
Speaker 1: all ego inflated around you know, I'm Judd, know right right.
Speaker 1: In the book, you say our brain data filled in
Speaker 1: a critical piece of the puzzle. How our thoughts, feelings,
Speaker 1: and behaviors relate to us. A thought is simply or
Speaker 1: a word or an image in our mind until we
Speaker 1: think it is so great and exciting that we can't
Speaker 1: get it out of our heads. A craving is just
Speaker 1: a craving unless we get sucked into it. How we
Speaker 1: relate to our thoughts and feelings makes all the difference.
Speaker 1: And that contraction is that relationship, which is like holding
Speaker 1: on this is me where I gotta have that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things in Michael Pollan's book that I
Speaker 1: found I found the whole thing to be fascinating. But
Speaker 1: at one point he relates going to your lab and
Speaker 1: getting hooked up to all this equipment and and meditating
Speaker 1: and your measuring him, and it's it's all fine. And
Speaker 1: then he says, hang on a second, I want to
Speaker 1: try something, and he goes and he he recounts in
Speaker 1: his own mind one of his psychedelic experiences, and in
Speaker 1: that moment, you see the same thing happened that happens
Speaker 1: with experienced meditators, which is that default mode network kind
Speaker 1: of drops offline. I just thought that that was fascinating
Speaker 1: that just recalling that state of mind, of openness, of
Speaker 1: of lack of contraction, just recalling that state of mind
Speaker 1: had a similar effect to what we would assume is
Speaker 1: happening while he's all in the psychedelic Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. You know, the ancient term for mindfulness, the
Speaker 1: word is sati, which literally means to remember. And so
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I think with psychedelics and Michael and I've
Speaker 1: had some great conversations about this, I think psychedelics can
Speaker 1: kind of show us this place that we always have
Speaker 1: access to, yet we don't know that, and we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be tripping on a psychedelic to access
Speaker 1: these places. We can actually just go back and have
Speaker 1: that memory and then we're there. Right. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you go back to some really powerful
Speaker 1: memory that you've had, it really feels like you're there. Well,
Speaker 1: why can't we do that with a with a psychedelic
Speaker 1: experience and then be back in that space. Now the
Speaker 1: interesting piece there is when we're back in that space,
Speaker 1: we can learn to do that without tripping on the mush. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the really interesting part of that
Speaker 1: work And what I found so fascinating about his book was,
Speaker 1: you know, I love the subtitle of it was what
Speaker 1: this teaches is about the way our brain works. I'm
Speaker 1: not getting exactly, but you know, it's much worthier than that,
Speaker 1: but that was the essence of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: all these things are pointing at, whether it be psychedelics,
Speaker 1: whether it be meditation, mindfulness, you know, a variety of
Speaker 1: different techniques are all about that expansion. They're all back
Speaker 1: to that idea of expansion and and there being lots
Speaker 1: of different ways to do that. Here's another interesting tidbit.
Speaker 1: Psychedelics are not addictive, but many many other drugs are
Speaker 1: because they affect different systems, right, and so these you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's cocaine, alcohol, hair in or even Facebook, which
Speaker 1: has been shown to do the same thing, um activate
Speaker 1: the dopamine system, which is associated with restless contraction. Whereas
Speaker 1: psychedelics induced this expansion to the point where we lose
Speaker 1: a sense of self, we lose that experiential sense of self,
Speaker 1: and meditation can do the same thing, where we expand
Speaker 1: to the point where we lose this boundary between ourselves
Speaker 1: and the rest of the world and we merge. And
Speaker 1: this is where the folks talk about non dual experiences.
Speaker 1: I don't assume this has been done, but maybe it has.
Speaker 1: Has there been any studies that have captured people who
Speaker 1: have a mystical experience or a non dual experience and
Speaker 1: show that essentially that that part of the brain shuts off.
Speaker 1: The best I can say, there was a guy, Robin
Speaker 1: Carhart Harris, who was featured also in Michael Pollan's book,
Speaker 1: is at the University College London u c L where
Speaker 1: they actually injected psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, in
Speaker 1: p bulls veins as they were in the from Rice Scanner.
Speaker 1: It has a very rapid onset in short half life
Speaker 1: that way, so they can capture those moments very accurately.
Speaker 1: And they found it was interesting because we've published our
Speaker 1: first big paper on experience meditators back in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and several months later after we'd published that, his paper
Speaker 1: came out in the same journal and I saw that
Speaker 1: and I immediately called him and I said, this cannot
Speaker 1: be a coincidence because it was the same network brand
Speaker 1: Regions that was totally turned off, right. He said, yeah, this,
Speaker 1: I don't think the coincidence. That's what got me interested
Speaker 1: in actually um and became friends with Roland Griffiths, who
Speaker 1: has done all this work at Johns Hopkins with Psychedelics.
Speaker 1: It's it's the story is absolutely fascinating. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: We are at the end of our time here, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate because we could talk forever, but you and
Speaker 1: I are going to continue talking afterwards. In the post
Speaker 1: show conversation Nation that listeners. If you're interested in getting
Speaker 1: the post show conversations, you can get them by being
Speaker 1: a supporter of the show. When you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash support, you can get access to those and you
Speaker 1: can even listen to them in your podcast player, just
Speaker 1: like everything else. And a couple of things I want
Speaker 1: to talk about are some more of those studies. But
Speaker 1: I also want to talk about your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: types of meditation and the approaches to meditation that are
Speaker 1: most useful in bringing about this sort of more expanded mindset.
Speaker 1: So jud thank you so much. I loved reading the
Speaker 1: book and this has been a really fun conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been my pleasure. Thank you. Yes, Okay bye. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head
Speaker 1: over to one you Feed net slash support. The One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors
Speaker 1: for supporting the show.