Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show. You may not
Speaker 1: realize we have years and years of incredible episodes in
Speaker 1: our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've
Speaker 1: decided to hand pick one of our favorites. And it
Speaker 1: may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth another liston. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with
Speaker 1: Judson Brewer Chocolate Only there's as a temporizing measure, we
Speaker 1: were lonely as compared to like reaching out and calling
Speaker 1: a friend. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our 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've 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. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Judson Brewer,
Speaker 1: m d and pH d. He's the director of Research
Speaker 1: at the Center for Mindfulness and Associate Professor in Medicine
Speaker 1: and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He
Speaker 1: is also an adjunct faculty member at Yale University and
Speaker 1: a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His
Speaker 1: book is The Craving Mind, From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love,
Speaker 1: Why We Get Hooked and How we Can Break Bad Habits. 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: the 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 learned 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 into
Speaker 1: anything else that you've got. I'd be happy to this
Speaker 1: process was was set up probably so we'd remember where
Speaker 1: 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 dope mean signal
Speaker 1: into their brain that would say, remember what you ate
Speaker 1: and where you found it. And so it basically sets
Speaker 1: up this this habit loop that needs three components. It
Speaker 1: needs 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 is repeated, the more we learned to see
Speaker 1: the world a certain way through a lens that is
Speaker 1: 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, for angry and
Speaker 1: we give somebody the universe 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, we eat a cupcake
Speaker 1: or some chocolate and we feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1: That same habit loop as it 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: as 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 there's
Speaker 1: as a temper rising measure when allow me as compared
Speaker 1: to like reaching out and calling a friend. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to explore that further, but I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about a couple of concepts that you
Speaker 1: talk about in regards to addiction. You say addiction is
Speaker 1: continued use despite adverse consequences, and you go on to
Speaker 1: say that talking about the way that addicts were trying
Speaker 1: to avoid something more often rarely did one of them
Speaker 1: say that it felt great to go on a three
Speaker 1: day cocaine binge, blow hundreds of dollars or more a day,
Speaker 1: and sleep it off for the next few days. They
Speaker 1: describe their reward based learning as a way to avoid situations,
Speaker 1: to numb their pain, mask unpleasant emotions, and most often
Speaker 1: succumbed to their cravings, scratching that damn itch. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that you follow that up with is
Speaker 1: talking about how every time we give into a craving,
Speaker 1: we reinforce that loop. Yeah, so it's this is that
Speaker 1: feeding bit that goes, you know, back to the start
Speaker 1: of the wolf. We feed the wolf, it keeps coming
Speaker 1: back for more. And the same is true when we drink,
Speaker 1: when we're trying to numb ourselves, or when we eat,
Speaker 1: you know, at a patient who she formed a binge
Speaker 1: eating pattern where she didn't eat entire large pizzas and
Speaker 1: one sitting. But she learned that pattern. She started feeding
Speaker 1: that pattern literally around the age of eight, and she'd
Speaker 1: been feeding it for you know, about twenty years when
Speaker 1: I first saw her. I'm a recovering alcoholic heroin attics,
Speaker 1: so I've got plenty of miles on this particular subject.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things for me that
Speaker 1: I often stay sober off of just never having to
Speaker 1: get sober again. I just that's enough for me. Like
Speaker 1: I think back to how awful that is, and how
Speaker 1: awful cravings are, and and I've used the analogy um
Speaker 1: often 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: or later they get the message and go elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: and you you talk about that a little bit in
Speaker 1: the book, about how, yes, the craving will be there
Speaker 1: in the beginning, but it will it will in essence,
Speaker 1: if you don't feed 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. Some something and and when they
Speaker 1: tried it 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's 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 speculations, some bs so so baseless
Speaker 1: speculation there. Saying is you know there's something with that
Speaker 1: second piece where it gets locked in a bit and
Speaker 1: then probably a combination of circumstances and and your brain
Speaker 1: being a little bit more mature and different that it
Speaker 1: gets locked in a little bit more and it's harder,
Speaker 1: you know, harder to quit where it And maybe it's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm anthropomorphizing the brain, but it's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's he might be serious this time.
Speaker 1: We gotta hold on, we gotta kick his kick his
Speaker 1: butt on this one. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that you mentioned in the book is this idea
Speaker 1: of we we just mentioned each time that you do
Speaker 1: the behavior, you reinforce the habit, and you taught people
Speaker 1: the idea of you use the analogy of surfing. Cravings
Speaker 1: are like waves, um, and people could surf those cravings.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about what that means and how
Speaker 1: that works. How does somebody do that Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a good question. So often crave things and you
Speaker 1: tell me if this has been the case for you.
Speaker 1: These cravings feel so big that they feel like one
Speaker 1: they're gonna crush us and two they're gonna last forever,
Speaker 1: and so um, that's actually a cognitive distortion that our
Speaker 1: brain is making where it says this is terrible, make
Speaker 1: it go away as quick as possible, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you that this is really really bad and
Speaker 1: it's gonna last forever to convince you to get it
Speaker 1: over with quickly. So with with art surfing, we can
Speaker 1: actually help people break it down and see that these
Speaker 1: are just cognitive distortions. And this is one thing that
Speaker 1: mondalness training helps with these cravings. They come and they crest,
Speaker 1: and eventually they go away. So one thing that I've
Speaker 1: asked a lot of my patients as well, have you
Speaker 1: had a craving that's lasted forever? And they at first like,
Speaker 1: may no, wait because because it would still be here
Speaker 1: lasted forever. Um. So that's a great way to kind
Speaker 1: of step back and say, Okay, these cravings do come
Speaker 1: and go. It's easier to look at it after the
Speaker 1: wave is gone. But when you're in the middle of it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I like the analogy of a wave, because
Speaker 1: you know, this big wave comes up, and if we
Speaker 1: don't have something to keep us afloat, like a surfboard,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get crushed by it. So we can actually
Speaker 1: use awareness to help us stay afloat. And so the
Speaker 1: way that we help people surf these cravings is give
Speaker 1: them kind of a surfboard or a buoyancy of awareness
Speaker 1: which helps them actually turn toward the direct experience of
Speaker 1: what cravings actually feel like. So Um, the way to
Speaker 1: do that is simply by turning instead of running away,
Speaker 1: you know, and trying to distance ourselves from the craving,
Speaker 1: it's actually paradoxically turning toward them and asking, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: this feel like in my body right now? And then
Speaker 1: when we start to break it down into okay, it's tightness,
Speaker 1: it's tension, it's burning, it's clenching, it's this and that
Speaker 1: that actually helps us stay on top of the wave
Speaker 1: as it gets big, as it crests, and as it
Speaker 1: goes way, as compared to getting crushed by it. You
Speaker 1: did a study where you tried mindfulness based habit change um,
Speaker 1: but you brought people in and you said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this mindfulness training group and then we're
Speaker 1: going to try what was at the time. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it still is, but at the time, it
Speaker 1: was this freedom from Smoking course that the American Lung
Speaker 1: Association kind of considered the state of the art way
Speaker 1: of getting people to stop smoking. And the course that
Speaker 1: you developed and that you worked with people on was
Speaker 1: twice as effective as the other course. And that's using
Speaker 1: the technique largely that we just talked about, this idea
Speaker 1: of surfing the craving, which is really to your point,
Speaker 1: is paying attention to it instead of trying to avoid it,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to make it go away, is to
Speaker 1: simply just go, Okay, what is this? What's it like?
Speaker 1: And you then try to deconstruct that and say, what
Speaker 1: was it about the mindfulness therapy that was so effective?
Speaker 1: So let me break this down and try And so
Speaker 1: you did another study where you found that an acronym
Speaker 1: for rain and I'll let you talk about what rain
Speaker 1: is in a second, but that that method was at
Speaker 1: the heart of what really led to the effectiveness of
Speaker 1: what you were doing. Yeah, and I'll talk about it,
Speaker 1: and we've actually even extended this beyond smoking to even eating,
Speaker 1: helping people work with binge eating and emotional eating. But
Speaker 1: the acronym is called RAIN because it starts with our
Speaker 1: where you have to recognize the craving. If we're an autopilot,
Speaker 1: we don't recognize it, forget about it. You know it's
Speaker 1: going to crush us. So that's the R is for recognized.
Speaker 1: The A is for accept or allow it to be there,
Speaker 1: or even acknowledge. So instead of running away from and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's this craving and even you know, come on, let's
Speaker 1: let's do this um and the eye stands for investigating.
Speaker 1: This is the most critical piece I think of investigation
Speaker 1: is bringing curiosity to what the craving feels like. And
Speaker 1: this is where we're turning towards that experience like I
Speaker 1: just mentioned, So we're investigating what does this feel like
Speaker 1: in my body? Is it tightness? Is a tension? Is
Speaker 1: it burning? Is it heat? Is it clenching? Is it whatever?
Speaker 1: And then the end stands for a note, and we
Speaker 1: simply note those physical sensations from moment to moment, and
Speaker 1: that RAIN acronym helped us start to see, these are
Speaker 1: physical sensations and from moment to moment, those sensations might
Speaker 1: be here, they might change a little bit, but they
Speaker 1: come and go, and it helps kind of remind us
Speaker 1: that cravings are made up of these little sensations. They
Speaker 1: come and go, they're not permanent. And this is where
Speaker 1: we got Actually at our follow up, when we did
Speaker 1: our follow up data point, we actually at five times
Speaker 1: the quit rates of this gold standard treatment for smoking.
Speaker 1: And with this we tested this even with a with
Speaker 1: an app based mindfulness training for eating called eat right Now,
Speaker 1: we actually got a 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 loop. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to go back for a second to the habit loop
Speaker 1: where you talk about trigger behavior reward. Actually, first I
Speaker 1: want to say those results are amazing and I'm not
Speaker 1: terribly surprised by them, but it is a remarkable improvement
Speaker 1: over the other types of approaches. But you talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of the trigger behavior and reward, and what's
Speaker 1: so interesting to me is that a lot of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about is recognizing that the craving is happening
Speaker 1: and 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 of Habit, talks about this that
Speaker 1: one of the easiest ways to change a habit is
Speaker 1: you 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 Twek'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. You know, if you think
Speaker 1: of 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 brands 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 itself can become more intrinsically rewarding and
Speaker 1: feed on itself in a way that doesn't depend on
Speaker 1: things outside of us, which can be very helpful. I agree,
Speaker 1: and I do think if you look at what I
Speaker 1: referenced with Charles do Higgs model, that is the one
Speaker 1: thing about it that I have found to be potentially
Speaker 1: challenging is that if you're after the same reward, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always work that way. You can't just go if
Speaker 1: the reward I'm after his excitement, right, and you're used
Speaker 1: to getting that from you know, any number of illicit behaviors.
Speaker 1: You don't get that same excitement by substituting playing scrabble
Speaker 1: in the middle or something, right, It doesn't work the
Speaker 1: same way. And so that's what I really like about
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, and kind of leads to right
Speaker 1: where I wanted to go next, which is this concept
Speaker 1: of excitement versus curiosity or aliveness and you quote a
Speaker 1: Burmese meditation teacher who says, in their Quest for Happiness,
Speaker 1: people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness, and
Speaker 1: you go on to kind of talk about your own
Speaker 1: experience with that, about how you sort of discovered that
Speaker 1: yourself over time on meditation retreats, in different things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It took me a while. Yeah, yeah, me to work
Speaker 1: in progress. So so that was that was signed out.
Speaker 1: Is this Burmese master And I just really love that quote.
Speaker 1: I think it's from his book called In This Very Life,
Speaker 1: and it it highlights something that I had had really
Speaker 1: not noticed before, which was I thought that the highest
Speaker 1: level of happiness was like you know, that kiss, or
Speaker 1: the roller coaster or the mountain bike ride or this
Speaker 1: or that, you know, that excitement. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I actually discovered the really blissful joy, the piece that
Speaker 1: comes from simply being and actually curiosity taps into that
Speaker 1: same thing that I was blown away by. How much
Speaker 1: more rewarding that was. Yeah, you talk about how and
Speaker 1: this gets back to what I was saying before about
Speaker 1: examining the reward and seeing if it's really working, if
Speaker 1: what we're after by doing these various behaviors is a
Speaker 1: change of consciousness in a positive way, right, which is,
Speaker 1: you know what, what it's all sort of about is
Speaker 1: to really in addition to interrogating the craving and the
Speaker 1: mindfulness of that, but interrogating is this behavior working for
Speaker 1: what I think it is? You have questions like what
Speaker 1: does this reward actually feel? Like? How long does the
Speaker 1: feeling last? Does it fix whatever caused our disease in
Speaker 1: the first place? You say, indeed, we may be mindlessly
Speaker 1: pressing our dopamine levers thinking this is as good as
Speaker 1: it gets. Our stress compass may be miscalibrated, or we
Speaker 1: may not know how to read it. We may be
Speaker 1: mistakenly pointing ourselves towards these dopamine driven rewards instead of
Speaker 1: away from them. We may be looking for love in
Speaker 1: all the wrong places. And man, that is such a
Speaker 1: great description of addictive behavior. Is that my experience with
Speaker 1: it is that they all work in the beginning. There's
Speaker 1: a reason that we become addicted to things. They do
Speaker 1: something very positive. They provide what we're looking for. They
Speaker 1: provide that change of consciousness in a positive way. The
Speaker 1: problem with them all is they just all become maladaptive
Speaker 1: over time, it doesn't work anymore. And yet that habit loop,
Speaker 1: as you talk about, is so ingrained that we are
Speaker 1: unable to do us even see that our minds become habituated,
Speaker 1: are receptors down regulate, and then we start chasing that
Speaker 1: high as compared to being high. So let's talk for
Speaker 1: a second about that idea of excitement, because you say
Speaker 1: excitement brings with it a restlessness and a contracted urge
Speaker 1: for more. Joy that results from curiosity is smoother and
Speaker 1: open rather than contracted. And I think the word contraction
Speaker 1: is so interesting. We had Michael Pollen on not too
Speaker 1: long ago, um and you feature prominently in his book.
Speaker 1: I had actually read your book because you and I
Speaker 1: had planned to do this like six months ago, and
Speaker 1: you know I had read your book before. And but
Speaker 1: he and I talked a lot about that idea of
Speaker 1: of contraction, about how a lot of what our consciousness
Speaker 1: does is just contract down upon itself. It reduces what
Speaker 1: what comes in. And for me, that was what addiction
Speaker 1: was all about, was I felt so sort of disconnected
Speaker 1: from everything that those things opened that consciousness up. But
Speaker 1: that's another effect that meditation and mindfulness can often have
Speaker 1: is to take us to a state that is not contracted.
Speaker 1: And you share in the book that for you, you
Speaker 1: realized after a certain point that whether it was good
Speaker 1: feelings that you were after you were chasing, whether they
Speaker 1: were bad feelings, that all these things had income, and
Speaker 1: that contraction, that sort of shutting down a little bit
Speaker 1: of our consciousness to a to a smaller focal point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was chasing a lot of different things, and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, I could probably could have written many more
Speaker 1: chapters in that book, but many of those chapters were
Speaker 1: based on my own experience, like you know, addicted to distraction,
Speaker 1: addicted 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 yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is where curiosity comes in. It's like, oh, do I
Speaker 1: really need this cupcake right now? And then? Or is it?
Speaker 1: Am I lonely? Like you talked about your girlfriend pointing out?
Speaker 1: And when we are curious, we're actually open to literally
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: right because for me, the experiences of meditation and mindfulness
Speaker 1: go the best when what I'm doing is trying to
Speaker 1: sort of just what's happening, pay attention to what's happening.
Speaker 1: Once 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 do doing something. So the
Speaker 1: default mode network, just for a little bit of background,
Speaker 1: it's this network of brain regions that's involved in self
Speaker 1: referential processing, which is just a fancy word which means
Speaker 1: thinking about ourselves. So basically, you know, whenever we're worried
Speaker 1: about what somebody's thinking about us, or we're ruminating or
Speaker 1: we're planning in the future, we're worrying about things we
Speaker 1: did in the past, we're most likely to be activating
Speaker 1: this network of brain regions. And in one sense, the
Speaker 1: default mode network is active when we're doing something, as
Speaker 1: in we're doing our lives, right, you know, which is
Speaker 1: this constant thing that we're you know, it's always running
Speaker 1: in the back of our head, not being focused on
Speaker 1: a particular task. That's not what we're talking about, because
Speaker 1: 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 some he says, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you look tired, and then I start worrying,
Speaker 1: Oh do I look tired? That's not exactly a task,
Speaker 1: but it certainly is my brain doing something. So that
Speaker 1: network of brain regions gets activated when we're worrying, when
Speaker 1: we're planning, and even when we're craving. There's been a
Speaker 1: number of studies ranging from chocolate to uh cigarettes, um,
Speaker 1: gambling to cocaine that that activate regions of this default
Speaker 1: more network. 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 riots 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 up in our experience
Speaker 1: because we get caught up in self referential thinking, we
Speaker 1: get caught up in rumination, we get caught up in craving.
Speaker 1: That caught up nous actually has a contracted feel to
Speaker 1: it as well, right, Whereas curiosity, which has that expanded
Speaker 1: 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 Shanti,
Speaker 1: that we've had on the show a few times, and
Speaker 1: he has a saying that I mentioned to Michael Paullen
Speaker 1: in our conversation, and I just think it applies to this,
Speaker 1: which is he describes the ego simply as that's all
Speaker 1: it is. It is just a contraction. It's less a
Speaker 1: thing than it is a thought process, a way of
Speaker 1: of the brain working, which is an interesting way to
Speaker 1: think about it. And of course, all your studies where
Speaker 1: you put people, hook people up to these devices and
Speaker 1: then measure what happens is they meditate and do different
Speaker 1: things is totally fatacinating. I I try to do it
Speaker 1: a little of that with like the consumer e g. Devices,
Speaker 1: which just doesn't work, but it's you know, the technology
Speaker 1: just isn't there. But I find that so fascinating that
Speaker 1: you can do that. And one of the studies you
Speaker 1: talk about in the book that's so interesting is working
Speaker 1: with people meditating and noticing that when they drop deeper
Speaker 1: into meditation, we see this decrease in the default mode network.
Speaker 1: But that as part of what you have them do
Speaker 1: is they can then check how they're doing. And the
Speaker 1: minute they pull out of the meditation to check how
Speaker 1: am I doing? Boom, you see the default mode network,
Speaker 1: you know, jump right back up. Yeah, because it's about
Speaker 1: how am I doing exactly exactly, and and they get
Speaker 1: caught up in wow, look at all I'm doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was doing great job? Right right exactly. Well, I
Speaker 1: like that that you mentioned the audio Shanti mentions this
Speaker 1: contraction is the ego because that's really how you know,
Speaker 1: I think of right now. My working hypothesis is that
Speaker 1: the experiential self. So there I think there are different
Speaker 1: 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 started
Speaker 1: taking myself personally or when I started becoming you know,
Speaker 1: all ego inflated around you know, I'm Judd 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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that contraction is that relationship, which is like holding on,
Speaker 1: this is me where I gotta have that. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the things in Michael Pollan's book that I found.
Speaker 1: I found the whole thing to be fascinating. But at
Speaker 1: one point he relates going to your lab and getting
Speaker 1: hooked up to all this equipment and and meditating and
Speaker 1: your measure in him and it's it's all fine. And
Speaker 1: then he says, hanging 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 happen 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 on the psychedelic. Yeah, this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, the ancient term for mindfulness, the word is sati,
Speaker 1: which literally means to remember. And so it's interesting I
Speaker 1: think with psychedelics and Michael and I've had some great
Speaker 1: conversations about this, I think psychedelics can kind of show
Speaker 1: us this place that we always have access to, yet
Speaker 1: we don't know that, And we don't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: be tripping on a psychedelic to access these places. We
Speaker 1: can actually just go back and have that memory and
Speaker 1: then we're there, right. It's like you know, if you
Speaker 1: if you go back to some really powerful memory that
Speaker 1: you've had, it really feels like you're there right. 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 work.
Speaker 1: 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, mindful this. You know, a variety
Speaker 1: of different techniques are all about that expansion. They're all
Speaker 1: back to that idea of expansion and and there being
Speaker 1: lots 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, heroin, or even Facebook, which has
Speaker 1: been shown to do the same thing, um activate the
Speaker 1: dopamine system, which is associated with restless contraction. Whereas psychedelics
Speaker 1: induced this expansion to the point where we lose a
Speaker 1: 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 the have been any studies that have captured people
Speaker 1: who have a mystical experience or a non dual experience
Speaker 1: and show that essentially that that part of the brain
Speaker 1: shuts off. The best I can say, there was a guy,
Speaker 1: Robin Carhart Harris, who was featured also in Michael Pollan's books,
Speaker 1: at the University College London u c L where they
Speaker 1: actually injected psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, in people's
Speaker 1: veins as they were in the from Rice scanner. It
Speaker 1: has a very rapid onset in short half life that way,
Speaker 1: so they can capture those moments very accurately, and they
Speaker 1: found it was interesting because we've published our first big
Speaker 1: paper on experience meditators back in two thousand eleven, and
Speaker 1: several months later after we'd published that, his paper came
Speaker 1: out in the same journal and I saw that and
Speaker 1: I immediately called him and I said, this cannot be
Speaker 1: a coincidence because it was the same network of 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 Rolan Griffiths, who
Speaker 1: has done all this work at John's 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 that listeners. If you're interested in getting the
Speaker 1: post show conversations, you can get them by being a
Speaker 1: supporter of the show. When you feed dot net slash support,
Speaker 1: you can get access to those and you can even
Speaker 1: listen to them in your podcast player, just like everything else.
Speaker 1: And a couple of things I want to talk about
Speaker 1: are some more of those studies. But I also want
Speaker 1: to talk about your thoughts on the types of meditation
Speaker 1: and the approaches to meditation that are most useful in
Speaker 1: bringing about this sort of more expanded mindset. So jud
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I loved reading the book and
Speaker 1: this has been a really fun conversation. Ye've spend my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yes, Okay, bye, If what you just heard
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