Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert,
Speaker 1: you're a guy who practices meditation sometimes, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: practice yoga, which entails a certain amount of meditation. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I have I have dabbled in meditation, but I
Speaker 1: do not currently have a rigorous meditative practice in place
Speaker 1: in my life. When you've dabbled, which of the schools
Speaker 1: of meditation did you try? Oh? You know, it was
Speaker 1: one of these where I just kind of ran up
Speaker 1: to the buffet of meditation and tried what was you know,
Speaker 1: which steamer tray had been most recently filled and was available?
Speaker 1: So everything, Yeah, a little of everything. Because I've tried
Speaker 1: some closed eye meditation, some um, some open eye meditation.
Speaker 1: I've some monterra Ronian cheese. Yeah, I mean I've well,
Speaker 1: I've tried stuff that's more on the secular side and
Speaker 1: stuff that's that has more of a spiritual connotation to it.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's one of those things where I feel
Speaker 1: like the first time you try it, especially if someone
Speaker 1: has convinced you that you need to try meditation or
Speaker 1: you need to try Look like, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with yoga. When you're when someone tells you you need
Speaker 1: to try this out, there's a strong chance you are
Speaker 1: you're not going to really get it the first time,
Speaker 1: that you might even dislike it the first time. But
Speaker 1: when you have time to reflect on what you experience
Speaker 1: and then you time to try it again, kind of
Speaker 1: at your own pace, then you can begin to see
Speaker 1: the value in it. You know, something I've noticed in
Speaker 1: recent years about the role of yoga and meditation in
Speaker 1: Western culture is that it has gone from something that's
Speaker 1: widely considered a kind of uh, you know, esoteric practice
Speaker 1: to something that is almost kind of a I don't
Speaker 1: know what you'd call it. Like. Sometimes it seems weird
Speaker 1: to meet people who don't do yoga. I don't do yoga, um,
Speaker 1: but it seems like everybody I know it does yoga
Speaker 1: at least a little bit or or talks about the
Speaker 1: benefits of meditation. And I wonder if this is just
Speaker 1: something that changed. I don't know, when I moved to
Speaker 1: a bigger city. When I you know, when I moved
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, I started noticing a lot more people were
Speaker 1: into meditation and yoga. But I don't know. Have you
Speaker 1: noticed this similar trend in the past five years or so. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it is urban centers are going
Speaker 1: to have more opportunities for this sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: there there has been a steady influx of meditative yogain
Speaker 1: I just kind in Eastern and New Age ideas in general.
Speaker 1: But it feels like these ideas have become mainstream in
Speaker 1: Western culture fairly recently. Like they you know, they were
Speaker 1: there as an esoteric practice in Western culture for some
Speaker 1: number of decades, maybe since the middle late twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and then and now they're fully mainstream. You see yoga
Speaker 1: studios every where, their meditation apps that everybody's talking about there,
Speaker 1: they've all got on their phones biz bros or trying
Speaker 1: out meditation. I know you've seen this trend to right,
Speaker 1: All all the biz bro manager types are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I use meditation to maximize my potential. You might not
Speaker 1: remember this, but we had a yoga teacher come to
Speaker 1: how Stuff works in recent years and he did a
Speaker 1: yoga class for the company, of which I was the
Speaker 1: only person who attended. But this was years ago. You
Speaker 1: might not I don't know if you're even I don't
Speaker 1: think I was aware of this, but he had a
Speaker 1: full list of his offerings and it included like yoga
Speaker 1: for golf fires, yoga for CEOs, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, yoga, yoga for how to fire people.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, how to detach and all. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is interesting because on one hand, it's
Speaker 1: easy to look at it and say, well, you're taking
Speaker 1: you're taking something that maybe has more cultural value or
Speaker 1: more religious or spiritual value, and then you're sort of
Speaker 1: boiling it down or you're you're stripping it apart and
Speaker 1: then selling those parts to people. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and whether you take a a spiritual or religious or
Speaker 1: a secular view of meditation, these are profound, meaningful cultural
Speaker 1: practices that go back for thousands of years. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are certainly cases with especially with yoga, where we
Speaker 1: don't we're not always aware of how recently they've been
Speaker 1: changed by by Western hands and Western minds. But um,
Speaker 1: I guess I was thinking specifically of meditation. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I keep I keep coming back to this example when
Speaker 1: it comes to things like this. So, uh, years ago,
Speaker 1: I was at like a dinner party or something, and
Speaker 1: I got to talking about I think I think I
Speaker 1: was talking about Buddhism or something with someone and Alan
Speaker 1: Watts came up. Familiar with that one Watts a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh. The other individuals said, well, you know Alan Watts,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of the Walmart of Buddhism, isn't he. Uh?
Speaker 1: And I think she kind a minute as a as
Speaker 1: as a put down of of Alan Watts. And and
Speaker 1: sometimes I think back to that and and if you
Speaker 1: if you look at it with the idea that the
Speaker 1: Buddhism in this case has a central truth to it,
Speaker 1: a truth that should be shared with the world, and
Speaker 1: or even you know, wants to be shared with the world,
Speaker 1: then don't you want it in Walmart? Like you need
Speaker 1: you need there to be a Walmart of Buddhism, you
Speaker 1: need there to be a Walmart of yoga and meditation
Speaker 1: if you would all believe in the values of these things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's um, that's sort of the question I was
Speaker 1: wondering about, Like, if you are somebody who participates in
Speaker 1: in this deep, long rooted, profound cultural tradition of meditation,
Speaker 1: so you're a you're a monk or something who does
Speaker 1: meditation as part of your spiritual practice. Are are you
Speaker 1: offended by yoga for golf? Are you offended by you know,
Speaker 1: the meditation app that will help you be a better
Speaker 1: business manager? Or is that or do you just say yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's great. More more people are taking it up,
Speaker 1: more people are seeing the benefits, and it's going to
Speaker 1: more of the world. Yeah, I guess it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's the answer is going to vary
Speaker 1: from person to person and tradition to tradition. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we obviously we'd love to hear back from listeners on
Speaker 1: that because I know we have a number of listeners
Speaker 1: who are involved in various UH yoga or meditation practices.
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about meditative practices and meditation here,
Speaker 1: UH meditative practices date back at least as far as
Speaker 1: the second millennium BC and UH and this goes back
Speaker 1: to the Vedic traditions in India, and since that time,
Speaker 1: countless models have spread throughout human culture, weaving their way
Speaker 1: through Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Secular
Speaker 1: approaches range from elementary school mindfulness instruction UH to meditation apps,
Speaker 1: which you mentioned already from the modern tech savvy human
Speaker 1: and styles of meditation also range from stationary to walking,
Speaker 1: closed eye to open eye, seeded to floating. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there there are these major schools of meditation you've probably
Speaker 1: heard about, such as like the mindfulness meditation or the
Speaker 1: transcendental meditation or compassion meditation. Right, and then of course
Speaker 1: there are different schools, transidental meditation being a major one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that goes to the Mahirishi Maheshioki, right, yes, correct, Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth noting though, that at the center
Speaker 1: of all of these practices, essentially as you have awareness,
Speaker 1: one of, if not the key attributes of human consciousness.
Speaker 1: We come back to that again and again on the show.
Speaker 1: So meditation you could maybe think of as uh, first
Speaker 1: person experiments in attention something like that. Yeah, like I was,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it recently. Like it seems like
Speaker 1: it's nothing short of the deliberate manipulation of the human
Speaker 1: experience itself. I am changing my awareness, or I'm refocusing
Speaker 1: my awareness, and in doing so, I'm kind of reshaping
Speaker 1: my world. I'm kind of reshaping my uh, my experience
Speaker 1: of reality. At least in the short term. It's weird
Speaker 1: to think about how much of our lives we go
Speaker 1: through without intentionally controlling what we're paying attention to. We
Speaker 1: just pay attention to whatever it occurs to us in
Speaker 1: the moment to pay attention to, rather than making a
Speaker 1: deliberate effort to concentrate our awareness in one way or another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the reasons I think everyone should
Speaker 1: try some sort of meditation or some sort of yoga
Speaker 1: at some point, like some sort of a mindfulness exercise,
Speaker 1: even if it ends up not being the thing for you.
Speaker 1: Uh it. At times it can kind of like, I
Speaker 1: feel like you can kind of wake you up, You
Speaker 1: can kind of force you to realize, um, you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of noise is going on in your head
Speaker 1: at any given moment. One meditative thought that you introduced
Speaker 1: to me that I've never heard before, but you brought
Speaker 1: it up on the podcast one time was just sitting
Speaker 1: down and coming back to the thought repeatedly, I wonder
Speaker 1: what my next thought is going to be. Since you
Speaker 1: mentioned this, I've tried it and it's a really interesting experience. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, I believe that was an Eckhart tolle uh idea.
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of a mantra, and in many respects,
Speaker 1: but a very simplified, boiled down mantra. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of like sticking a sticking a little roadblock into your
Speaker 1: constant highway of mental traffic. Yeah. It has a way
Speaker 1: of calling attention to the fact that your mind is
Speaker 1: sort of this deep chasm through from which things emerge
Speaker 1: without really you having any control over. And usually this
Speaker 1: just happens to you and you don't notice. It is
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I'm just thinking, but thinking about thinking
Speaker 1: makes thinking become very mysterious. Yeah, it does. It. It
Speaker 1: forces you to to to reflect on your own cognitive
Speaker 1: processes and trying to figure out what's going on there. Now. Meditation,
Speaker 1: obviously is everyone can tell from the discussion thus far.
Speaker 1: It touches on cognition, It touches on various aspects of
Speaker 1: of of human health, and therefore there have been a
Speaker 1: number of studies over the years that have looked into
Speaker 1: it's it's possible effectiveness on mental or physical health, looking
Speaker 1: at exactly what it does, like what is the meditative
Speaker 1: meditative state look like in the brain and uh, and
Speaker 1: you know, there have been some some key findings that
Speaker 1: have certainly made the rounds over the years and sort
Speaker 1: of forced people to to to look more closely in meditation. Uh.
Speaker 1: One one study that they made a lot of headlines
Speaker 1: was the two thousand twelve study from the Institute for
Speaker 1: Natural Medicine and Prevention. They that found that African Americans
Speaker 1: with heart disease who practice transcendental meditation were less likely
Speaker 1: to experience a heart attack or stroke. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: want to come back to that claim in a minute. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've got complex feelings about the medical research on meditation,
Speaker 1: which we were talking about this off Mike before we
Speaker 1: came on. But um, I would not put them in
Speaker 1: exactly the same bucket with but sort of adjacent to
Speaker 1: the bucket of prayer studies, meaning that both, I guess
Speaker 1: both fit into a larger bucket in this world of buckets,
Speaker 1: the Russian dolls of buckets that we live in. Um. So,
Speaker 1: when it when it comes to these types of research,
Speaker 1: I think some skeptics would look at prayer studies and
Speaker 1: meditation studies and say, why would you waste your time?
Speaker 1: You know what? Why what what can be gained from
Speaker 1: studying this? You can already be pretty sure it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of magical bs, and it's going to be conducted
Speaker 1: by believers who are going to cut corners and their
Speaker 1: methodology to make their worldview look good. And so there's
Speaker 1: part of that I agree with. In part I don't
Speaker 1: agree with. I don't at all agree with the idea
Speaker 1: of why would you waste your time because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it makes more sense to be the kind
Speaker 1: of skeptic that says, well, bring it on, let's see,
Speaker 1: um if it gets good results, and if other people
Speaker 1: can replicate those results, especially hostile people who are you know,
Speaker 1: not part of this worldview, can replicate the same results,
Speaker 1: I think that's something we want to know about, and
Speaker 1: certainly if it's something that can be scientifically studied. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I do think there's some merit
Speaker 1: to the idea that things like prayer studies and meditation
Speaker 1: studies require some careful scrutiny before we accept their results,
Speaker 1: because there are some people who are convinced of the
Speaker 1: results before they start looking for them. Now, that's definitely
Speaker 1: not true of all meditation researchers, I think, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I mean for starters with prayer there, it
Speaker 1: seems like that's more likely a problem because there's not
Speaker 1: really much in the way of secular prayer out there.
Speaker 1: I feel like, for the most part, if you are
Speaker 1: praying to a deity or a group of deities, you
Speaker 1: have some level of belief where you usually you're taking
Speaker 1: on some level of belief in those deities. Though, I
Speaker 1: think you could come up with secular explanations for the
Speaker 1: successive prayer. Like, certainly if you had prayer studies that worked,
Speaker 1: I think that wouldn't necessarily prove any kind of magical
Speaker 1: thing and would just say, well, prayer has some kind
Speaker 1: of benefits, and you could explain that in terms of
Speaker 1: psychology of groups, social dynamics, all kinds of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again to I mean, to your point, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of models of meditation that they don't involve belief
Speaker 1: in the deity or belief in some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: particular model of bodily energy or you know, some other
Speaker 1: kind of like New age mechanism. Yeah. Absolutely, And in
Speaker 1: a minute, we're actually going to air a an interview
Speaker 1: Robert did with a local meditation researcher. What is this
Speaker 1: researcher's name, Rob This is Dr Jennifer and Mascara, and
Speaker 1: she's an assistant professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at
Speaker 1: Immer University here in Atlanta, and she investigates meditation from
Speaker 1: a secular scientific standpoint, So that can absolutely be done.
Speaker 1: But coming back to these medical effects that people claim
Speaker 1: are demonstrated by meditation, I don't want to rule them out,
Speaker 1: and I think research on this is valid and I
Speaker 1: think we should pay attention to it. But I think
Speaker 1: it does deserve scrutiny because coming back to that one
Speaker 1: result you mentioned about heart disease and transcendental meditation, I
Speaker 1: found an American Heart Association scientific statement from seventeen. It
Speaker 1: was actually just released this year. So first, a general
Speaker 1: comment they make, quote, further research on meditation and cardiovascular
Speaker 1: risk is warranted. Such studies, to the degree possible, should
Speaker 1: utilize randomized study design, be adequately powered to meet primary
Speaker 1: study outcome, strive to achieve low dropout rates, include long
Speaker 1: term follow up, and be performed by those without inherent
Speaker 1: bias in the outcome. So generally, they're saying that it
Speaker 1: does appear that there could be some some good places
Speaker 1: to go with meditation and cardiovascular health. Research, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the studies that exist today have some of
Speaker 1: these problems with methodology that make them less robust or
Speaker 1: convincing than they could be. And referring to that twelve
Speaker 1: study about cardiovascular health and transcendental meditation, they say, quote
Speaker 1: the study though, was conducted in two phases after a
Speaker 1: one year hiatus, with fifty eight patients not participating in
Speaker 1: phase two of the study, and some concerns about analysis
Speaker 1: of the data have been raised. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: that when you get this big claim like this, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, you get these amazing results from transcendental NEETs aitation,
Speaker 1: they're saying, Okay, we we might want to be cautious
Speaker 1: about over interpreting these study results because the methodology was
Speaker 1: less than perfect, right, and is consumers we have to
Speaker 1: be careful about sort of having the red wine or
Speaker 1: chocolate effect with studies like this, where we like red
Speaker 1: wine or chocolate and then when a headline comes out
Speaker 1: that supports the thing we like, we just kind of
Speaker 1: we we kind of check it off in our mind
Speaker 1: and move on. Well. Yeah, and to be cautious about
Speaker 1: those studies is not to say that red wine and
Speaker 1: chocolate do not have their their wonderful benefits in terms
Speaker 1: of flavor and enjoyment, And the same thing could probably
Speaker 1: be said about meditation. I would say, even if you
Speaker 1: don't find that meditation has any measurable cardiovascular benefits or
Speaker 1: anything like that, benefits on long term chronic health conditions,
Speaker 1: or pain reduction or anything like that, it's still obviously
Speaker 1: has this role in people's lives that you know, people
Speaker 1: get imans pleasure from it. They find that it changes
Speaker 1: the way they view the world. It it does do something,
Speaker 1: even if it does do everything people claim it does.
Speaker 1: So Ultimately, I think meditation research is a highly valid
Speaker 1: field of study and I and I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if it turned up really effective results. But I also
Speaker 1: think it's a field where I would I would just
Speaker 1: tend to treat claimed results with special caution and scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Not a fault of meditation itself. Nothing wrong with the
Speaker 1: practice of meditation. But but but I but I always
Speaker 1: try to be cautious whenever I see a new claim
Speaker 1: about meditation results. So I recently partnered with the videographer
Speaker 1: and audio producer Tyler clang Here at the Office on
Speaker 1: a couple of interviews for a meditation video project. Now,
Speaker 1: company priorities changed and that kind of left the project
Speaker 1: in limbo. But I didn't want to lose the great
Speaker 1: time content we'd already achieved, So we're gonna feature some
Speaker 1: interview content with every university meditation researcher Dr Jennifer Moscaro
Speaker 1: and with a physician vedic meditation teacher, Jill Wiener. This
Speaker 1: will also enable us to to finish the video in
Speaker 1: some form and you can look for that in the
Speaker 1: near future. Obviously, we'll put that up on Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com and and also on the
Speaker 1: social media platforms. So let's go ahead and introduce Dr
Speaker 1: Jennifer Mascaro here again. She's Assistant Professor of Family and
Speaker 1: Preventive Medicine at Emory University here in Atlanta, where she's
Speaker 1: also worked with the Department of Anthropology. She specializes in
Speaker 1: the variation in and plasticity of human social cognition and
Speaker 1: the biology of interconnectedness. She recently came into the studio
Speaker 1: and chatted with us about the current state of meditation
Speaker 1: research and her own fascinating contributions to the study of
Speaker 1: not only mindfulness meditation, but compassion meditation. Robert. I want
Speaker 1: to say I enjoyed this interview and I thought Dr
Speaker 1: mscarro was great. Awesome. Well, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will just jump right
Speaker 1: into the interview questions with Dr Muscarrow. Thank you, thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Hi. Dr Mscaa, thank you for joining us here.
Speaker 1: So my first question is just broadly speaking, what's the
Speaker 1: current foe because of your research at Amory, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of the research that we're doing is on different
Speaker 1: meditation practices that we think have the most evidence for
Speaker 1: impacting people's well being UM. And so in particular, we're
Speaker 1: looking at two different types of meditation. So one is
Speaker 1: called mindfulness meditation, and that's actually what most people think
Speaker 1: of when they hear about meditation UM. But we're also
Speaker 1: doing a lot of research on a compassion meditation practice
Speaker 1: that comes from a very old Tibetan Buddhist tradition UM
Speaker 1: and is thought to cultivate feelings of connectedness with others, UM,
Speaker 1: feelings of compassion and empathy for others. And and it
Speaker 1: turns out that that's really good for our well being.
Speaker 1: So what's your personal history with meditation? I started dabbling
Speaker 1: primarily with mindfulness meditation. Back when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I was a really serious athlete, and um, it turns
Speaker 1: out that mindfulness meditation is really helpful for um mitigating
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety, especially when you're performing. And so I
Speaker 1: used to do mindfulness practices when I was anxious about
Speaker 1: a big game or you know, in the aftermath if
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't perform very well. It was
Speaker 1: really helpful for not ruminating. Um. And so I dabbled
Speaker 1: here and there. Um. But then uh, it really it
Speaker 1: um took a new direction when I started graduate school
Speaker 1: and I was interested in the plasticity of the brain.
Speaker 1: And here, you know, we have these practices that have
Speaker 1: been um uh cultivated and perfected um over you know,
Speaker 1: many many hundreds of years that we think impact the
Speaker 1: brain and systems in the brain that I was really
Speaker 1: interested in studying. And so UM, I really turned from
Speaker 1: being a dabbling practitioner to really more of an at
Speaker 1: least hopefully objective scientist. So how do you go about
Speaker 1: conducting hard scientific research on something like meditation. We try
Speaker 1: to do research on meditation similar to the way you
Speaker 1: would do research on, for example, a dru or any
Speaker 1: intervention So the gold standard is with a randomized clinical
Speaker 1: trial where you randomize some people to the meditation practice
Speaker 1: that you're interested in, and you have another group that's
Speaker 1: randomized some control group. UM, the ideal study design has
Speaker 1: your compared meditation to an active control group. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things about UH an intervention that could be helpful, could
Speaker 1: change people that aren't due to the meditation practice itself.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a group practice, it may just
Speaker 1: be meeting with a group of people that you think
Speaker 1: are like minded. Maybe meeting with a teacher, like a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher is really helpful because you you have someone
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, a role model. There could be
Speaker 1: non specific things that are kind of doing the work,
Speaker 1: so you really want to try to control for those
Speaker 1: types of things. So UM, one of the big ways
Speaker 1: that meditation is studies is with that sort of design.
Speaker 1: Another thing though, that people do is UM. They point
Speaker 1: out that that misses a lot of the cultural, um
Speaker 1: and contextual factors that often accompany meditation. So some people
Speaker 1: UM and I think this is really important research to
Speaker 1: are doing research where they're really doing more qualitative research
Speaker 1: to try to dig in and understand what meditation means
Speaker 1: to people when they practice it. What are the fact
Speaker 1: the sort of contextual factors, the cultural factors that that
Speaker 1: might be UM at play. So you're talking about stripping
Speaker 1: away some of the ritualized cultural aspects to understand what's
Speaker 1: actually taking place in the body and mind. But isn't
Speaker 1: the counter argument that you can't separate these two aspects
Speaker 1: of meditative practice exactly? And that's an issue that accompanies
Speaker 1: a lot of different scientific domains. UM. You know, when
Speaker 1: you try to take something and put it in a
Speaker 1: laboratory setting to study it, you necessarily strip it front
Speaker 1: of UM extraneous features that might be really important UM.
Speaker 1: And so that is a debate that happens in a
Speaker 1: lot of domains of science, but it's particularly in portant
Speaker 1: with meditation because there are these UM sort of cultural
Speaker 1: embedded factors that might are likely very very important and
Speaker 1: maybe the most important. So you are often the researchers
Speaker 1: you study meditation are often sort of straddling this difficult
Speaker 1: question of trying to UM to empirically study a practice
Speaker 1: in the best way they can, but all the while
Speaker 1: not removing and reducing it to something that is less
Speaker 1: than than what it really is. Now at least one
Speaker 1: of your studies, you even go so far as to
Speaker 1: avoid calling it meditation, right, So um Exactly, one of
Speaker 1: the challenges when you do meditation research is you don't
Speaker 1: want to bias people um at the outset. Uh. You
Speaker 1: don't want to bring people in and and and uh
Speaker 1: sort of enhance the placebo effect essentially um uh. And
Speaker 1: so with a lot of our research, we really try
Speaker 1: to reduce some of the terms that we use that
Speaker 1: might convey a bias to our articipants um uh. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing is meditation, even though we talk
Speaker 1: about it here is being secularized and sort of stripped
Speaker 1: of its religious connotations. It's really impossible to to to
Speaker 1: do that. And so um there are a lot of
Speaker 1: populations for whom that term um. You know, it comes
Speaker 1: with some baggage or some connotations that may dissuade them
Speaker 1: people from from practicing or change the way they um
Speaker 1: they sort of interpreted or or accepted. And so um
Speaker 1: we we try to minimize that the bias and our
Speaker 1: participants as much as we can. And so one of
Speaker 1: the ways we do that is to sometimes we don't
Speaker 1: even call it meditation. Now on the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, emory benefits from a partnership with Tibetan monks.
Speaker 1: How do you incorporate traditional meditation practitioners into the research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crucial, and that's one of the really exciting things
Speaker 1: about this research is this sort of partnership between scholars
Speaker 1: of a lot of different areas that are really coming
Speaker 1: together to try to understand a rich tradition in uh
Speaker 1: the richest way that they can. And so UM we
Speaker 1: have a sort of a constant dialogue with those contemplative
Speaker 1: practitioners to try to understand um, the historical tradition, the
Speaker 1: textual tradition, UH, and the monastic tradition. You know, UM,
Speaker 1: those are all those are three different things that have
Speaker 1: UM a real bearing on what we're studying, and and
Speaker 1: it's impossible for scientists and scholars to have expertise in
Speaker 1: all those domains, and so it's it's really kind of
Speaker 1: a fun. Part of what we do is a dialogue
Speaker 1: with UM, the the Tibetan practitioners that we get to
Speaker 1: work with, whether dealing with a traditional Eastern model or
Speaker 1: a modern Western model. I think there's a tendency to
Speaker 1: see meditation as an exercise and shutting out the world.
Speaker 1: But as you already said, Uh, empathy plays an important
Speaker 1: role in many meditation traditions as well. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about the Tibetan practice of lo jan, right, yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so we look at a compassion meditation practice that emerges
Speaker 1: from the low Jong or mind training tradition UM, and
Speaker 1: that is a tradition that UM places a heavy emphasis
Speaker 1: on compassion. I mean that is Uh. One of the
Speaker 1: ultimate goals is to be a being of of compassion.
Speaker 1: And so these are practices that are thought to help
Speaker 1: us feel compassion, not only to the people around us
Speaker 1: that UM we often feel compassion for, but um to
Speaker 1: others that we don't know, and to people that we
Speaker 1: often have difficult challenges with. And so UM, that's not
Speaker 1: one of the preconceived notions that we often have about meditation.
Speaker 1: Often when the word meditation comes up, it's about focus
Speaker 1: and attention, and often it becomes a tool of achievement. UM.
Speaker 1: But this is a tradition where UM cultivating compassion for
Speaker 1: others was of of the most importance and UM. Within
Speaker 1: that monastic tradition, the practices were really UM done quite
Speaker 1: often to benefit others, not not to benefit oneself, not
Speaker 1: to reduce stress or anxiety in oneself, but to benefit others.
Speaker 1: What have you learned from your research thus far? Can
Speaker 1: meditation actually rewire our neural circuitry for empathic behavior? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's um taking our research and
Speaker 1: coupling it with the incredible research that's coming out of
Speaker 1: other other universities. I think it's it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that these practices, compassion meditation practices, loving kindness meditation practices,
Speaker 1: and even mindfulness. There's evidence that mindfulness impacts are social
Speaker 1: connections with others. Um and Uh. This research really suggests that, UM,
Speaker 1: that we can augment the systems in our brain that
Speaker 1: help us connect with others, that help us read others emotions. Um.
Speaker 1: And then when you do that, it's very clear that
Speaker 1: there are huge health benefits. So one of the emerging
Speaker 1: UM lines that is connecting a lot of domains of
Speaker 1: health researches the incredible importance of our social relationships. UM.
Speaker 1: Our social relationships impact the way our immune system functions,
Speaker 1: the way our stress system functions, and so as soon
Speaker 1: as you are able to bolster a feeling of connectedness,
Speaker 1: a feeling of sort of interdependency with others. UM. You
Speaker 1: you really do change the way you respond to the
Speaker 1: world around you, and you it becomes less threatening, changes
Speaker 1: our body and our brain. You also used f m
Speaker 1: RI I in this study were able to observe the
Speaker 1: effects of meditation in a subject's neural activity. We did
Speaker 1: so UM. There are two different ways that you can
Speaker 1: use functional MRI to study meditation. So you could have
Speaker 1: people actually meditate in the fm RI I scanner and
Speaker 1: see what their brain is doing while they meditate. UM.
Speaker 1: But we did a slightly different thing. We had people
Speaker 1: practice meditation for several weeks and then we wanted to
Speaker 1: see how that changed the way their brain UH function
Speaker 1: when they did certain important cognitive tasks UM. And we
Speaker 1: found that UM, when people practice compassion meditation, they actually
Speaker 1: got more accurate when they read other people's facial expressions.
Speaker 1: So what we did was we showed them photographs of
Speaker 1: the eye region of people's faces and we had them
Speaker 1: judge what they thought the person was thinking or feeling.
Speaker 1: And after the meditation training, they actually got more accurate.
Speaker 1: Their scores went up, and then the activity in the
Speaker 1: systems in the brain that are important for doing that
Speaker 1: UM for reading other people's facial expressions. The activity in
Speaker 1: those regions actually increased as well. So do you think
Speaker 1: meditation in the form of cognitive based compassion training can
Speaker 1: be used to boost empathy and say an actual psychopath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such an interesting question, and it's one we immediately
Speaker 1: thought about when we found, um, the results of our
Speaker 1: first study where we were seeing this effect on people's
Speaker 1: ability to read facial expressions. You immediately think of populations
Speaker 1: of people that may benefit, so children, UM, or clinical
Speaker 1: populations that really seemed to struggle with these types of
Speaker 1: social interactions and social skills. Um, it's we we haven't
Speaker 1: done any studies with clinical populations in that way. UM,
Speaker 1: so it's definitely too early to say. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I think is a really interesting and important UM
Speaker 1: direction for meditation research to go is really to try
Speaker 1: to understand whether there are differences in how amenable different
Speaker 1: people are too actually practicing. And what I mean is, UM,
Speaker 1: there's a real likelihood that, UM, there's a bit of
Speaker 1: a catch twenty two where the people who might benefit
Speaker 1: most from something like cognitively based compassion training may actually
Speaker 1: really struggle to do it, or it may not resonate
Speaker 1: with them, they may not understand it, um. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's particularly important when we turn our attention
Speaker 1: to clinical populations. It may be that the populations that
Speaker 1: would really benefit the most, or could really stand to
Speaker 1: benefit from something like compassion meditation or mindfulness meditation, they
Speaker 1: actually may have a real difficulty with with doing it.
Speaker 1: So some brains are going to be a little more
Speaker 1: susceptible to meditation than others. Well that's the hypothesis. Um,
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of evidence. Now, UM we did, uh,
Speaker 1: we have one study where we found that UM, people's
Speaker 1: brain activity that related to empathy actually predicted how much
Speaker 1: they would engage with the training. In other words, people
Speaker 1: who had a brain that seemed to be more empathic
Speaker 1: at the outset actually practiced more UM. And that does
Speaker 1: suggest to us that there may be some populations of
Speaker 1: people that take to meditation more that may find it
Speaker 1: easier or it may resonate with them. And conversely, there
Speaker 1: may be populations of people where for whom it's really
Speaker 1: a struggle, they may not understand or may um not
Speaker 1: resonate with them as much. Exactly. So, what does cognitive
Speaker 1: based compassion training look like and what does it feel like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. So UM, it's it's quite different
Speaker 1: actually than the mindfulness meditation and practices that are often
Speaker 1: talked about in popular media. UM. But it actually does
Speaker 1: start with a little bit of mindfulness practices. So the
Speaker 1: first segment of of CBCT actually is the goal is
Speaker 1: to entrain attention um. And so there it begins with
Speaker 1: some mindfulness to the body, mindfulness to the breath, and
Speaker 1: then mindfulness to sort of everything, all the thoughts and
Speaker 1: sensations that stream throughout our our mind constantly UM. But
Speaker 1: put pretty quickly, you know, the goal there is to
Speaker 1: to just sort of cultivate this awareness so that we
Speaker 1: can move on to the compassion components. And UM. What
Speaker 1: it does from there is it begins with um uh
Speaker 1: an appreciation for our um, our ability to be more compassionate,
Speaker 1: our ability to um cultivate the positive mental skills that
Speaker 1: we have, and and a compassion for ourselves as humans
Speaker 1: that these things are difficult um. And then it moves
Speaker 1: from there to discussions of and and deep contemplation of
Speaker 1: our interconnectedness with others. So um, you might think deeply
Speaker 1: about people in your life and how much we rely
Speaker 1: on them, even people that we don't think of very
Speaker 1: often as being very important to us UM when we
Speaker 1: really get down to it, we rely on so many
Speaker 1: people in our lives for essentially everything, UM. And then
Speaker 1: we move on to an awareness that UM, all of
Speaker 1: those people that were interconnected with interconnected with UM, they
Speaker 1: are at base so similar to us. UM. We are
Speaker 1: also similar in UM wanting well being for ourselves and
Speaker 1: for our loved ones, and really wanting to be free
Speaker 1: of distress and suffering. And UM. Those recognitions are quite powerful,
Speaker 1: the recognition that we are so connected with one another
Speaker 1: and that we are at base so similar to one another. UM.
Speaker 1: The thought is that from there emerges a natural compassion
Speaker 1: empathy for for those around us. Broadly speaking, what sort
Speaker 1: of rides have been made in meditation research over the
Speaker 1: past twenty five years. Meditation research has UM come a
Speaker 1: long way. So when it started UM years ago, it
Speaker 1: was not in the mainstream. It was really the pioneers
Speaker 1: of meditation research really had to do a lot of
Speaker 1: it kind of in the back room, on the hush hush.
Speaker 1: It was not considered rigorous science or or rigorous health. UM. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a rigorous subject of to study UM. But UH,
Speaker 1: since then those pioneers have really demonstrated, especially in the
Speaker 1: case of mindfulness meditation, how powerful Uh some of these
Speaker 1: practices can be how UM for a lot of different domains,
Speaker 1: both for UM reducing suffering, so reducing depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: but also for enhancing the positive things like resilience. UM.
Speaker 1: And as soon as some of that research started to
Speaker 1: get out and started to be conducted really rigorously, UM,
Speaker 1: it started to be taken more seriously. And so when
Speaker 1: it is taken more seriously, doors open up, so more
Speaker 1: research funding goes into you know, big studies with lots
Speaker 1: of people, and all of that has a snowballing effect
Speaker 1: because we're able to ask UM more nuanced and better questions.
Speaker 1: We moved from just UM really clunky questions like is
Speaker 1: meditation good for us, to you know, better questions like
Speaker 1: what is it good for UM? And are there potentially
Speaker 1: negative effects? You know, could it be that there are
Speaker 1: some situations in which meditation is harmful? We start to
Speaker 1: get a a better tool for for really studying these
Speaker 1: things in a better way. So that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I see it is UM evolving over the last twenty
Speaker 1: five years. In the paper the neural mediators of kindness
Speaker 1: based meditation a theoretical model. You mentioned that two factors
Speaker 1: are necessary for empathic response, a shared effective experience iriant
Speaker 1: and a cognitive understanding. How did these come together in
Speaker 1: empathy and what happens if either component is missing? The
Speaker 1: idea is out there from the amazing social cognitive neuroscientists
Speaker 1: that have moved this field forward, that there are these
Speaker 1: UM that when you look at empathy as we define it,
Speaker 1: UM as as scientists define it, it does seem to
Speaker 1: have a few different components. And so in particular, those
Speaker 1: do seem to be UM sort of a shared resonance
Speaker 1: and ability to essentially try on someone else's emotions. But
Speaker 1: at the same time there has to be some sort
Speaker 1: of cognitive awareness that those emotions are you're feeling them
Speaker 1: because someone else is feeling them. They're not necessarily just
Speaker 1: your own emotions, but UM, you are recognizing them and
Speaker 1: someone else UM. And so uh, how that plays out
Speaker 1: is I think the million dollar question, because those seem
Speaker 1: to be really UM dynamic processing UM. They're talked about
Speaker 1: as different systems in the brain that allow us to
Speaker 1: do those different things, and it's quite likely that UM
Speaker 1: those UH skills sort of interact where you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you may very cognitively attend to someone and then the
Speaker 1: emotions follow, or quite often it's probably the reverse. So
Speaker 1: there's probably a very dynamic um complex interplay going on
Speaker 1: to UH that that probably differs in every experience. You know,
Speaker 1: every we think of the times we empathize with someone,
Speaker 1: it's it's not the same every time, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a really dynamic process going
Speaker 1: on there. But one of the um to your second question,
Speaker 1: one of the pieces of evidence that scientists look at
Speaker 1: to suggest that they are there, that there are these
Speaker 1: different components is that it does appear that there are
Speaker 1: clinical UM cases in which one is missing but not
Speaker 1: the other. And so this is not cut and dry.
Speaker 1: But UM, you mentioned psychopaths, and there is a large
Speaker 1: bit of agreement that psychopaths tend to UM really be
Speaker 1: missing more the affective sort of resonance component of empathy. UM,
Speaker 1: they often do okay on the more cognitive um UH
Speaker 1: aspects of empathy, and and that the deficits really seem
Speaker 1: to be in their ability to to mirror someone's um
Speaker 1: UH emotions, especially negative emotions. UM, they really seem to
Speaker 1: not resonate with others anxiety and fear and suffering the
Speaker 1: way we do. UM. And then there are other clinical
Speaker 1: domains autism is often brought up where there's a different
Speaker 1: picture of what's going on. There may be more of
Speaker 1: the sort of cognitive piece that is that is problematic there,
Speaker 1: and they may actually um do quite well at at
Speaker 1: taking on other's emotions, maybe even too well. UM. So
Speaker 1: there's it's not a cut and dry sort of situation,
Speaker 1: but it does look like UM, there are different clinical
Speaker 1: domains in which one or the other is more problematic,
Speaker 1: and that tells us that these are um at least
Speaker 1: just slightly discrete systems that are not completely synonymous. Now
Speaker 1: when you explain it like that, I can't help but
Speaker 1: wonder how it all shakes out in my own head,
Speaker 1: like how much of how much of it is call
Speaker 1: um A, how much of it is call them B?
Speaker 1: And how does it come together? Right? Yeah? And then
Speaker 1: there are there's a new movement of thought out there
Speaker 1: that um. There there are some scholars that are arguing
Speaker 1: that we should put us push aside empathy altogether, because
Speaker 1: what really translates into compassionate behavior is not those things,
Speaker 1: but um, our morals and our ethical code and uh
Speaker 1: and some of those types of things, and that's a
Speaker 1: whole other domain completely, um. But there is some uh
Speaker 1: dynamic interaction that occurs between those components that allow us
Speaker 1: to to empathize and then are are deep seated sort
Speaker 1: of ethical, moral and cultural codes that help us translate
Speaker 1: that into action. So tell me this, do you think
Speaker 1: the world would be a better place if everyone practiced meditation?
Speaker 1: Most of the things that we do in meditation, so
Speaker 1: whether that's mindfulness or compassion meditation. Um. I think the
Speaker 1: reason that they're so impactful is they're very different from
Speaker 1: the things that we generally get sucked into doing in
Speaker 1: our day to day life and um so um uh
Speaker 1: it's especially in our you know, fragmented, incredibly busy lifestyle
Speaker 1: here in the sort of modern West. Um, we are
Speaker 1: often disconnected from that interdependency and notions of interdependency that
Speaker 1: are quite obvious when we're able to take some time
Speaker 1: and look each other in the eye. Um. And so
Speaker 1: taking the time to to reconnect with those sorts of
Speaker 1: feelings and thoughts I think would be very powerful and
Speaker 1: very powerful for everyone. Um Uh. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different meditation practices out there, and so I think
Speaker 1: the next the way that this field is going, the
Speaker 1: next step for the field of meditation research is really
Speaker 1: to try to understand which practices benefit whom and for
Speaker 1: what and um, so that will better help us answer
Speaker 1: the question of should everyone do mindfulness meditation, should everyone
Speaker 1: do compassion meditation? Or is it that some people could
Speaker 1: benefit more from one or the other. Um, we're all
Speaker 1: busy people and we don't have time to do everything. Um.
Speaker 1: But but anything that can help us feel more connected
Speaker 1: and look at one another in the eye and um
Speaker 1: and notice our shared humanity, I think that would benefit
Speaker 1: all of us. For your own part, what is the
Speaker 1: meditative state like and what do you feel you gain
Speaker 1: from it personally? Yeah? Um, so you know, I grapple
Speaker 1: with a lot of this stuff, you know, from the
Speaker 1: day to day, and so I noticed that it casually
Speaker 1: impacts me all the time, you know. Um, well, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say all the time. Maybe not as much as
Speaker 1: it it should. But there are many times where you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in traffic and someone cuts me off, and I
Speaker 1: behave differently than than I might have if I if
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking of these things quite often, but there's
Speaker 1: a deeper, richer personal experience that comes, for example, UM,
Speaker 1: when I am lucky enough to go on a meditation
Speaker 1: retreat or have UM you know, longer periods of time
Speaker 1: in more contemplative states and UM. That always strikes me
Speaker 1: as a very interesting phenomenon of UM, this incredible emotional
Speaker 1: richness that sort of bubbles to the surface UM and
Speaker 1: UH in both positive and negative ways. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: sadness and happiness are closer to the surface. UM. But
Speaker 1: even when the sadness is close over the surface, UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's often uh feels like a really powerful positive thing. UM.
Speaker 1: And so those deep moments of extended contemplation UM really
Speaker 1: just feel like to me like an opening up of
Speaker 1: this emotional life that often is numbed UM when when
Speaker 1: we're busy and not attending to it. What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the implementation of mindfulness in grade school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a big movement to UM to implement especially
Speaker 1: mindfulness in UM in in the K through twelve curriculum. UM.
Speaker 1: And there is some good research indicating that it is helpful,
Speaker 1: especially with emotion regulation UM social interactions for young children. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I think that has a lot of potential UM.
Speaker 1: And then we are looking at the possibility of incorporating
Speaker 1: UM some compassion for because practices in K through twelve,
Speaker 1: and it's striking how quickly children pick up on it UM,
Speaker 1: even faster often than adults do. UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: the examples and exercises that come with cognitively based compassion training,
Speaker 1: kids pick up on it right away. And so I
Speaker 1: think it has a real powerful potential for helping kids
Speaker 1: remain connected with one another UM, and remain connected not
Speaker 1: with just with their close friends, but maybe with UM
Speaker 1: others that they may have trouble with, others that they
Speaker 1: may not see as one of them, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden become you know, a shared human human, you know,
Speaker 1: with the the shared childhood experience that they're going through UM.
Speaker 1: And so I think there is a lot of potential.
Speaker 1: Do you know if there are any cultures out there
Speaker 1: that that introduced children to meditation at at at a
Speaker 1: really young age. Monastic traditions are so rich and so
Speaker 1: different from one another, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: monastic traditions where children UM go away quite young and
Speaker 1: and begin a monastic lifestyle. I'm a little hesitant because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of monastic traditions that UM, you know,
Speaker 1: don't practice a lot of meditation. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of diversity in terms of what UM goes on in
Speaker 1: different monastic traditions, but certainly UM, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of traditions in which the training starts quite early. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: once again I want to thank Dr ms Garrow for
Speaker 1: setting down and chatting with me about her meditation research
Speaker 1: and just meditation research in general. I thought one thing
Speaker 1: that was really interesting was the sort of the two
Speaker 1: factor empathy model she talked about. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: about that, Robert, Does that ring true to you in
Speaker 1: in your life? Like the idea that there is a
Speaker 1: cognitive component to empathy and then the affective mirroring component
Speaker 1: of empathy. Yeah, Like I say, it really made me
Speaker 1: tease apart my own experience with meditation, but also my
Speaker 1: own experience with things like empathy, Like you know, just
Speaker 1: how much of it, how much of all may how
Speaker 1: much a column B? How is this coming together in
Speaker 1: my mind state? And how might it be coming together
Speaker 1: differently or not at all in other mind states? You know,
Speaker 1: because because it's so easy to fall into the trap
Speaker 1: to think that we all have essentially the same hardware
Speaker 1: and software firing up every time we're engaging with the world.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think that if you are, if you
Speaker 1: happen to be in euro atypical person, that like you
Speaker 1: can catch yourself having failings of empathy and that's you're
Speaker 1: sometimes failing in one column and sometimes failing in the
Speaker 1: other column. Yeah. Yeah, I think so, because I guess
Speaker 1: I'm paranoid enough that occasionally I'll I'll think back on
Speaker 1: my day and I'll particularly I'll think about conversations and
Speaker 1: I wonder who did was I? And was that? Did
Speaker 1: I have enough empathy in that particular conversation? Did I?
Speaker 1: Did I talk too much about my own stuff that?
Speaker 1: Did I? Did I ask enough about someone else's stuff? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know you can drive yourself nuts with those questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Um. Yeah. And so now
Speaker 1: we have a whole other way to to dive into
Speaker 1: that paranoid self criticism exactly. All right, Well, I think
Speaker 1: we should do a quick break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back from that break, we can talk about your
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Jill Weener. So when working on the
Speaker 1: meditation video, I also interview Jill Weener, physician specializing in
Speaker 1: Vedic meditation for wellness and stress management, and she is
Speaker 1: also based here in Atlanta. She came in and she
Speaker 1: had a lot to share about the particular strategies of
Speaker 1: vedic meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and the use of mantras. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but probably most importantly for our discussion here, she
Speaker 1: had a lot to say about stress. So she is
Speaker 1: is an instructor of what she calls vedic meditation, which
Speaker 1: from what I could tell, is very similar to or
Speaker 1: maybe the same thing as transcendental meditation. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: to it seems to be very too closely related fields
Speaker 1: of meditation, Like it involves using mantras to achieve this
Speaker 1: state of trends. And yeah, I think that that that
Speaker 1: sums it up. So we're not gonna, you know, the
Speaker 1: entire interview here with with Jill, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: to just are a portion of it because it sets
Speaker 1: sets us up for a nice discussion about one particular
Speaker 1: quality of both veting meditation and the general science of stress.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's mandatory. I think that
Speaker 1: stress is probably the biggest epidemic we've ever faced. Um
Speaker 1: It underlies everything, and it underlies immune dysfunction, digestive digestive issues,
Speaker 1: pain regulation, all these medical issues that we see as
Speaker 1: physicians and as as patients that we experience, and if
Speaker 1: we don't have a meditation practice to help us regulate
Speaker 1: the way our bodies process stress, we it's like you're
Speaker 1: not you can't ever catch up to it. The stress
Speaker 1: keeps accumulating and accumulating and making you sicker and soer.
Speaker 1: So for me as a health care provider helping me
Speaker 1: be able to care for people, that having the meditation
Speaker 1: is that personal practice for me was hugely important. But
Speaker 1: also as a human being who has stress and stress
Speaker 1: related symptoms and illness, um it also helps with that
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So Adaptation energy we like to think
Speaker 1: of it like your bank account of patients, your ability
Speaker 1: to adapt and what typically gives you adaptation energy is sleep, eating, well, exercise,
Speaker 1: anything you find to be restorative, like working on cars
Speaker 1: or gardening or knitting or walking your dog. When life
Speaker 1: throws you a little curveball, um, it takes away a
Speaker 1: little bit of adaptation energy. And if you have enough
Speaker 1: adaptation energy, you can handle anything that comes at you.
Speaker 1: What happens is we only have a certain amount typically,
Speaker 1: and as it starts to run out, your patient runs
Speaker 1: a little thin, and you feel a little a little thready,
Speaker 1: and then one little thing happens it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: that big a deal, and you lose it and you
Speaker 1: snap and have a full stress fight or flight reaction.
Speaker 1: So Vata meditation and lots of other forms of meditation
Speaker 1: give you rest as well. So one of the key
Speaker 1: ideas that the Jail mentions here and references a lot
Speaker 1: is that of adaptation energy. This concept that you have
Speaker 1: a personal depletable energy reserve for dealing with stress, a
Speaker 1: reserve that can be replenished as well as diminished. And
Speaker 1: you see it referenced in meditation, and I think it's
Speaker 1: easy to simply dismiss something like that is just a
Speaker 1: meditation buzzword or something. But when I started looking into it,
Speaker 1: like what what is adaptation energy? Does it? Does it
Speaker 1: exist outside of the terminology of a particular school of meditation,
Speaker 1: it really gets quite fascinating. So the term originates with
Speaker 1: Austrian indocrinologist Hans Celier, which I imagine a number of
Speaker 1: people may be familiar with that name because he is
Speaker 1: he is a huge name in the science of stress,
Speaker 1: just the understanding of stress, the the cultural use of
Speaker 1: the word stress today. He's sort of I mean, I
Speaker 1: imagine that stress was just a concept that had always
Speaker 1: been around, but he pretty much introduced the modern medical
Speaker 1: concept of stress. Right. Yeah, it's hard to it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that right now, to to think back, you know,
Speaker 1: you think back on even ancient figures. You can imagine
Speaker 1: Odysseus saying, oh man, this is such a stressful voyage home.
Speaker 1: I'm just so stressed out. I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: get home and just relax. So they talked about like
Speaker 1: wearisomeness and anguish, but they didn't talk about stress. That's true.
Speaker 1: So yeah. In in nineteen thirty five, he identified stress
Speaker 1: as a syndrome occurring in laboratory rats. In night, he
Speaker 1: defined general adaptation drum, which is also known as is
Speaker 1: G a S or gas. I've seen some commentators say
Speaker 1: that this is, you know, rather unfortunate, that that that's
Speaker 1: what what one can refer to it as. But he
Speaker 1: signaled this out as a three stage biological response to stress.
Speaker 1: So the the three stages are as follows. First alarm,
Speaker 1: This occurs when you encounter stress. The also known as
Speaker 1: the alarm reaction stage the a R stage, and includes
Speaker 1: the arousal of your fight or flight response to a stressor,
Speaker 1: and all of your internal alarms are activated and you
Speaker 1: prepare to face danger or runaway. And then he lays
Speaker 1: out the second stage, the resistant stage, the stage of
Speaker 1: resistance or SR. And in this UH the human response
Speaker 1: to dangers in full swing, So your pupils dialate, your
Speaker 1: heart rate and respiration go up, and your muscles contract.
Speaker 1: And then where you really get into the general adaptation
Speaker 1: syndrome here is a third stage of exhaustion. This is
Speaker 1: when your body stays in an excited state for prolonged
Speaker 1: perioded inner of the final state of of the gas
Speaker 1: UH the state of exhaustion or SC and This this
Speaker 1: occurs when in response to a stressor that has gone
Speaker 1: on too long. In the state of hyper arousal, the
Speaker 1: body's immune system begins to wear down and as a result,
Speaker 1: the person will become more susceptible to infections and other
Speaker 1: illnesses as the body's defenses have been spent on dealing
Speaker 1: with the stresser. So one interesting way I read to
Speaker 1: think about stress is that you think about a disease
Speaker 1: or an injury or something like that causing symptoms. You know,
Speaker 1: there there are symptoms that result from some type of
Speaker 1: damage to or pressure upon the body, but there are
Speaker 1: also these general symptoms that seem to happen basically no
Speaker 1: matter what you're doing to the body, as long as
Speaker 1: it's having some kind of cumulative negative effect. So like
Speaker 1: whether it's some whether you're tired and deprived of sleep,
Speaker 1: or infected by a disease, or you have gotten a
Speaker 1: bodily injury, or you know, any number of things that
Speaker 1: could happen, do you they all seem to sort of
Speaker 1: lead to this similar cluster of symptoms, And so you
Speaker 1: could think one way to think about stress is the
Speaker 1: body's general response to negativity. Yeah, and I mean, and
Speaker 1: I guess the other side of it too. To consider
Speaker 1: with stress is that a lot of like the basic
Speaker 1: evolved biological adaptations, you know, we weren't we were we
Speaker 1: evolved to deal with tigers essentially, but not paper tigers
Speaker 1: so much. And that's one of the problems with the
Speaker 1: modern world, right, is that we we we get so
Speaker 1: stressed out over things that are not actual mediate threats,
Speaker 1: but they never go away. Yeah, they never go away.
Speaker 1: They're constantly coming at you. Uh. So you can definitely
Speaker 1: see the modern application of this, this idea, the general
Speaker 1: adaptation syndrome, and the idea that you would have only
Speaker 1: so much like bodily and mentally mental energy to deal
Speaker 1: with a barrage of stressors. Yeah, and Celia, he did
Speaker 1: sort of have an idea that there were this was
Speaker 1: a modern problem in a way, right. Yeah, Like so
Speaker 1: you could imagine maybe our ancestors living living on a
Speaker 1: savannah somewhere would have a fight or flight response if, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a large leopard comes near them or something.
Speaker 1: You know, you that's like an immediate stress point that
Speaker 1: you've got to deal with. But what if it's like
Speaker 1: you have put yourself into a state of being where
Speaker 1: you're almost never facing actual acute danger, but your entire life,
Speaker 1: there's a leopard over there on the horizon and it
Speaker 1: never gets too close to you, but it also never
Speaker 1: goes away. Yeah, it's always potentially in your email folder.
Speaker 1: It's always potentially in your mailbox or on your doorstep.
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it's uh, this is this is
Speaker 1: the paper tiger that we've we've grown accustomed to, or
Speaker 1: haven't grown accustomed to if you rather so. One of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about Celia's work is is that the
Speaker 1: modern use of the word stress stems from his work UH,
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, his findings that were rejected by physiologists
Speaker 1: until the nineteen seventies. As Russell Winer put put it
Speaker 1: in his h his paper Putting Stress in Life hand
Speaker 1: Celier in the making of Stress Theory UH, Celia used
Speaker 1: stress to describe an organism's adaptation response to the environment
Speaker 1: quote that is, the state manifested by the gas. In
Speaker 1: this reconceptualization of stress, Celier believed himself to have discovered
Speaker 1: a universal truth regarding the relationships of organisms with their environment.
Speaker 1: And he also pointed out that Celier had some pretty
Speaker 1: lofty ideas about his stress theory UH, that civilization was
Speaker 1: disordered on two vital levels. The quote diseases of civilization,
Speaker 1: such as cardiovascular diseases. These were caused by poor adaptation
Speaker 1: to modern industrial life. And on another level, entirely he
Speaker 1: saw that Western civilization bore the cracks of intense social instability,
Speaker 1: and stress theory, he argued, could save us from both
Speaker 1: of these. So he was he was not shy about
Speaker 1: championing stress theory. According to Viner, the US military were
Speaker 1: among the first to really embrace his ideas on stress
Speaker 1: and operational efficiency in the post war period, and they
Speaker 1: somehow doesn't surprise me. Yeah, they jumped right in there.
Speaker 1: It fall does fall in line with a lot of
Speaker 1: the recent topics we've covered, uh, related to Cold War research,
Speaker 1: Like mid century military research went into a lot of
Speaker 1: fringe territory, though I guess this is one that eventually
Speaker 1: became mainstream science. Yeah, because on one hand, there's you
Speaker 1: want to know how your troops are going to behave
Speaker 1: in a stressful situation, but they also considered stress a
Speaker 1: useful weapon in potential psychological warfare based on his work
Speaker 1: and the work of others. Uh. In fact, Viner says, quote,
Speaker 1: the military's fascination with stress became such that by nine
Speaker 1: seventy six, over one third of prominent researchers in the
Speaker 1: stress area were based in US military institutions. So it's
Speaker 1: it's no surprise then. I suppose that one of the
Speaker 1: papers that I found on adaptation energy came from a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine issue of the FBI Law Enforcement bulletin
Speaker 1: title Alarmingly enough, on the Edge colon Uh, integrating spirituality
Speaker 1: into law enforcement. Did you read it? I mean, what
Speaker 1: kind of a read is this? Um? It was an
Speaker 1: interesting read. I just basically just made me just kept
Speaker 1: coming back and saying, wait, is this the real FBI Bulton?
Speaker 1: Is this something else? Does FBI stand for something other
Speaker 1: than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because it's certainly it's
Speaker 1: certainly interesting to see this article in an FBI publication
Speaker 1: after watching um My Hunters, which of course displays a
Speaker 1: sort of the old school FBI the Netflix series Mind. Yes,
Speaker 1: the old school FBI of the sixties and seventies, like
Speaker 1: entering into a new um a new age that is
Speaker 1: open to psychological science. And you can find that arcase
Speaker 1: everyone wants to read it for them stuff. You can
Speaker 1: find that online. It's by in Knees Tuck. But the
Speaker 1: concept of of of adaptation, energy and stress. Uh. This
Speaker 1: was also embraced by transcendental meditation. To bring us back
Speaker 1: to meditation, and Celier himself became interested in the use
Speaker 1: of transcendental meditation as a stress management method after meeting
Speaker 1: with the Maharishi mahash Yogi, the founder of the transcendental
Speaker 1: meditation movement in the nineties seventies, something that he discussed
Speaker 1: in later interviews. Interesting. Now, adaptation energy itself remains hypothetical,
Speaker 1: but many scientific studies surrounding meditation uh relate to the
Speaker 1: physiological effects of stress. Yeah. I was thinking when listening
Speaker 1: to uh Dr Weener's interview that even if the adaptation
Speaker 1: energy theory is not um but if it's not literally
Speaker 1: correct in that you have some kind of fixed number
Speaker 1: of reserves that are depleted, I think it could be
Speaker 1: could be very easily an analogy for something that is
Speaker 1: very true of the body, which is that there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as cumulative stress. You might not have
Speaker 1: a number that could be measured and that can be
Speaker 1: built up and stuff like that, but there are cumulative
Speaker 1: effects of stress, and it can behave sort of analogously
Speaker 1: to what she describes. Yeah, I mean, you can think
Speaker 1: of it just like, how many times would you need
Speaker 1: to be, say, reminded of something stressful in your life?
Speaker 1: How many times would you or you would you need
Speaker 1: to have someone jump out at you and scare you
Speaker 1: before it would begin to wear you down, you know,
Speaker 1: just in the course of a day. And therefore it
Speaker 1: might be useful to find a room where nobody jumped
Speaker 1: stout at you, or nobody shouts something stressful at you,
Speaker 1: And of course for the most part, we don't. We
Speaker 1: don't even have to rely on someone else to jump
Speaker 1: out or someone else to yell something stressful, because we
Speaker 1: have the this wonderful dialogue that's going on in our
Speaker 1: minds most of the time, the email leopard and the
Speaker 1: email leopard as well. But yeah, we have the default
Speaker 1: mode network in our mind, constantly fretting over past in future.
Speaker 1: It's it's shutting off that voice. It's finding a room
Speaker 1: where that voice cannot reaches, that that has value. And
Speaker 1: that's where meditation comes in. Yeah, and I can certainly
Speaker 1: believe also that meditative practices could increase one's resistance to
Speaker 1: uh to to these stressors as they come at you,
Speaker 1: even after you've stopped practicing it for the moment. Indeed.
Speaker 1: Now for this episode, thanks as always to Alexander Williams
Speaker 1: for running the boards on this one, and thanks to
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang and Tari Harrison, who also came up with
Speaker 1: a couple of the questions that we used in the
Speaker 1: interview with Mascarrow. Thanks of course to Dr Jennifer Mascarrow
Speaker 1: for talking with us and to Dr Jill Weener. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you want to check out Dr
Speaker 1: Joel Weiner's work, you can head on over to Jill
Speaker 1: Weener dot com. That's w E N E R. And
Speaker 1: if you want to check out our work here's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all
Speaker 1: the episodes, as well as links out to our various
Speaker 1: social media accounts. And if you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly, as always, you can email us
Speaker 1: at blow them Minto's how stuff Works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
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