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  • >>Ming: [Chinese accent]

  • Hello. Good afternoon, my friends. My name is Ming. I'm the jolly good fellow who at

  • Google. And I'm jolly today because our honored guest, Rich Hanson, brought this book, right?

  • This book is about happiness, love and wisdom and it's about a new science of happiness,

  • love and wisdom and is called Buddha's Brain. It's like, it's all my favorite topics in

  • one convenient value sized packet.

  • And so what-what's there not to like about this book, right? That's why I'm happy today.

  • Dr. Rick Hanson, he's a neuropsychologist, author and teacher at the intersection of

  • psychology, neurology and contemplative practice. He co-founded the Wellspring Institute for

  • Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and he's the author of the book called Mother

  • Nurture, which is one of very few books that I-I am aware of, maybe the only book, that

  • is about taking care of, about taking care of mothers. And he's also an-an authority

  • on how the arrival of children affect moms, fathers and marriages.

  • And Rick enjoys rock climbing, good conversations and good books and in his free time he tries

  • to save the world.

  • [laughter]

  • So with that let's welcome my friend, Dr. Rich Hanson.

  • >>Rick Hanson: Okay.

  • [applause]

  • >>Rick Hanson: Thank you, Ming, thank you.

  • Well, with Ming here, I'm in good company.

  • Can you hear me okay?

  • How's this sound?

  • It's okay, alright, great. And if it gets bad, please let me know.

  • I wanted to say first of all that I've never been to Google before. I use your products

  • many times a day of course, but one of the great things about being able to be here is

  • that gives me a little thing I can use to impress my kids. And that's very important

  • when you're a parent.

  • As you probably know or will discover, they are 22 and 19 and so this is one of the very

  • few things that actually made them pay attention to anything I had to say.

  • So, my intent here is to go through a number of topics, four in particular and to do it

  • fairly quickly.

  • So, my son to put be me at ease said, "Don't worry Dad, you're gonna be talking to some

  • of the smartest people on the planet."

  • [laughter]

  • And thanks Forrest. I'll, but in a way that's kind good because I do tend to zip along at

  • a fairly breakneck pace. And so my plan is to go through these topics kinda in four sections,

  • pause for breath at the end of each one, do some few questions or comments, and then keep

  • going, alright?

  • I'm gonna be working a lot within one of these three circles: Buddhism or really contemplative

  • practice generally, the one I'm trained the most in is Buddhism.

  • I'm not here to push Buddhism or any ism, but it's a source of great insight into actually

  • how the mind works, as well as psychology and neurology.

  • That said, I think it's humbling and appropriate to appreciate the fact that there's really,

  • literally, so little we actually know about the mind and the brain these days. It's a

  • nice quote here from Ani Tenzin Palmo here. Now, no one really still knows yet what a

  • thought actually is even though we're goin' to be talking about them a fair amount.

  • Okay, so prelims out of the way, let's get into your amazing brain.

  • First, some basic specs. It's kind of mind boggling for me endlessly to appreciate really

  • how complicated the brain is.

  • [laughter]

  • In particular, I wanna focus as an overarching theme on the fundamental idea of using the

  • mind to change the brain for the better, so that it benefits the mind and in widening

  • ripples, all beings.

  • So, to do that we wanna get, I wanna get first at some basic information about the brain

  • and about what I call self-directed neuroplasticity. The fundamental idea that mental activity

  • sculpts neural structure, which gives us opportunities increasingly to intervene actually inside

  • the black box of the brain.

  • That's important because there's a fundamental problem in that the brain through biological

  • evolution is highly inclined toward noting and responding to negative experiences, and

  • in particular has a kind of deeply engrained threat reactivity that's then increased by

  • personal history as well cultural and political factors that leads to what I call "Paper Tiger

  • Paranoia."

  • And so then last I'm gonna talk about what to do about that, with self-directed neuroplasticity

  • in terms of coming back to the natural state of the brain which is really the optimal brain.

  • So I thought, "This is my opportunity at Google, I'm gonna take a big swing and hopefully hit

  • the ball."

  • So, let's dive in.

  • And one way to think about this is purely abstractly, fine. But a more powerful way

  • to think about it is that what we're talking about is happening right here, right now,

  • right between your ears.

  • Okay. So here we go.

  • Back to where we were, the technical specs of the brain.

  • Kinda remarkable to realize that in roughly three pounds, about five cups worth of tissue,

  • are about one point one trillion cells, 100 billion neurons, a trillion support cells.

  • They're connected with each other in a variety of ways. A typical neuron connects with about

  • 5,000 other neurons making about 500 trillion synapses.

  • Lots of information moves through the brain and the nervous system. The brain moves information

  • around like a heart moves blood around in effect.

  • A fair amount of, of the interaction between neurons is just noise. Noisy networks as you

  • all probably know are very, are the, are optimized for signal transmission, but that said, out

  • of all the noise there are so many signals going on in the brain that in the time it

  • takes roughly to take a single breath, roughly a quadrillion messages moved around inside

  • your head.

  • The brain is literally the most complex object yet known to science; more complex than an

  • exploding star; more complex even than the American economy.

  • [laughter]

  • So, here's a schematic neuron. You can see the receiving end at the le-at the left as

  • you face the screen. The output end is at the right hand s-side. It is like a little

  • on-off switch. Neurons are continually firing. A neuron that's not firing is a dead neuron.

  • And basically the summation moment to moment of roughly 5,000 inputs every few milliseconds

  • determines whether the neuron will fire.

  • [pause]

  • Okay? Great.

  • [pause]

  • So, I wanna talk now about two critical words that are really easy t-to lose. This is probably

  • the most intellectually danced slide I've got. I wanna talk about the mind and the brain.

  • I define the mind as the flows of information through the nervous system. The nervous system

  • has its headquarters in the brain. Information is represented by the nervous system much

  • like a computer hard drive represents information, or sound waves right now are representing

  • information; radio waves represent information. It's the classic and familiar distinction

  • between hardware and software.

  • In essence, therefore, apart from hypothetical transcendental factors, the mind is what the

  • brain does. No brain, no mind.

  • Now, I say the brain is the necessary condition for the mind; it's also a proximally sufficient

  • condition. It's only proximally sufficient because the brain is embedded in our nervous

  • system, embedded in a body, embedded, whoops, and embedded in culture and both here and

  • now and across time.

  • So, to talk about the brain as the, the brain as the local, the locally, it's the necessary

  • condition and it's the locally sufficient condition for the mind. And as we'll see,

  • the brain also depends on the mind.

  • Now the way to understand the brain is really in a context of biological evolution. The

  • nervous system is about 600 million years old. As you know life came on the planet about

  • three and half billion years ago. Multi-celled creatures arose around 650 million years ago

  • and they were complicated enough to need some method of communication between their sensing

  • organs and their motor systems around 600 million years ago, thus the beginning of the

  • brain.

  • In terms of vertebrates it essentially evolved more or less in the way you see. This is kind

  • of a schematic picture. The inner reptile brain and there's the squirrel monkey brain

  • and there's the early stone tool making hominid brain, the cave man brain and the modern brain.

  • The modern brain is essentially identical with the cave man brain.

  • How many of you by the way have blue eyes or green eyes? Okay. You are mutants. In other

  • words, until about 5,000 years ago nobody had blue eyes. I mean biological evolution

  • is continuing. The first blue eyed person was identified probably about 5,000 years

  • ago; probably around Denmark and then blue eyes have proliferated around the world for

  • various reasons.

  • But evolution is continuing.

  • So, in terms of that evolution the brain developed three fundamental goal-directed systems. You

  • could say they're motivational systems; this why we do stuff.

  • The first system was the avoid system: withdraw from threats; freeze; back up; get away. On

  • top of that then with roughly invertebrates, crustaceans, lizards and so forth, and fish

  • in the sea, a more sophisticated approaching system developed to pursue opportunities.

  • And then with birds and mammals and then primates and particularly humans, the attach system

  • developed. That's the social system in the brain that forms connections and bonds with

  • us and seeks proximity, closeness, intimacy, love, and belonging.

  • Although the vagus nerve as it evolved loosely matched to these three systems, they're anatomically

  • blurred in their distinctions in the brain and they intertwine with each other and any

  • single system can use two others for its ends.

  • This typology by the way: approach, avoid, attach or avoid, approach, attach is one we'll

  • be returning to again and again. And it's a really useful way to think about how people

  • are motivated and also think about how suffering and dysfunction and harm arise in terms of

  • each one of those three systems.

  • And also, on the other hand, how happiness, benevolence, and helpfulness arise in a different

  • mode of action in each one of those three systems.

  • So, love and the brain. It's interesting to realize and this is what's called the social

  • brain theory, that probably the primary driver of evolution of the brain in the last hundred

  • million years has been social capabilities or love broadly defined.

  • For example, reptiles and fish approach and avoid, they don't attach, right? They have

  • their babies, they swim away, if the babies are still there a few hours later they'll

  • eat them, mos, in most species. Whereas birds and mammals do raise their young and often

  • form para-bonds at least temporarily.

  • It's interesting that the brain developed in three major stages driven really by the

  • reproductive advantages, which is the engine of biological evolution of social skills,

  • if you will.

  • The first stage was with birds and mammals. They've got bigger brains per body weight

  • than reptiles and fish do because the quote unquote "computational requirements" of raising

  • young and picking a partner require a bigger brain.

  • Similarly, at the next stage of development, there is a correlation between the size and

  • complexity of the social group of a primate species and the size of the cerebral cortex

  • in proportion to body weight.

  • In other words, the grooming, the hierarchies, who's up, who's down, who's alpha, who's beta,

  • how can I still get some if I'm beta, the coalitions and all the rest of that. Right?

  • You've gotta have a pretty big brain.

  • And then last, since the first hominids began making stone tools around two and a half million

  • years ago, the brain has tripled in size.

  • They were smart enough to make stone tools. How many here can make a stone tool? I can't

  • make a stone tool. I don't know, but they could do. Ah, you maybe could? That's good.

  • Most people don't raise their hand when I ask them that question. That's a good one.

  • Yet the build out of the brain has been primarily devoted to social capacities: language, cooperative

  • planning, empa-empathy, the presentation of self, both authentically and with artful deception

  • and all the rest of that has been much of what the volume of the brain, that's as I

  • said tripled, the other two-thirds is devoted to.

  • Interestingly, for babies or humans to have a bigger brain there's a kinda physical limit

  • on how big the brain can be in a newborn and still enable its mother to walk upright. And

  • so you start hitting a limit there.

  • Most species, primate species, there's basically a two-to-one ratio between the volume of the

  • brain at birth and how big it eventually gets. The human brain it's probably about a four-fold

  • maybe even a five-fold increase; to do that we needed a longer childhood.

  • To have a longer childhood with a very vulnerable infant you needed to develop bonds between

  • mothers and infants and also bring fathers into the mix. And also the band itself because

  • it quote unquote "takes a village to raise a child."

  • And those requirements helped drive the evolution of the social capabilities and inclinations

  • that would enable that to occur, which then enabled bigger brains. And the advantages

  • of those bigger brains drove them increasing social capacities and here we are today.

  • So, three facts about the brain in terms of self-directed neuroplasticity.

  • So, first fact about the brain: as the brain changes, the mind changes; in good ways and

  • bad. The left is a good slide hopefully, caffeine, sugar, pleasure; right slide, a concussion.

  • The second fact about the brain is that as the mind changes, the brain changes. This

  • is a critically important fact. In other words, immaterial mental activity, the movement of

  • information through this hardware substrate maps to material neural activity that produces

  • temporary changes as well as lasting ones.

  • Temporary changes include alterations in brain waves, increased consumption of supplies like

  • oxygen and glucose, ebbs and flows of neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, other neurotransmitters

  • and so forth.

  • And I'm gonna show you some slides of temporary, fleeting changes in the structures of the

  • brain or brain activity that mapped to mental activity.

  • This is a slide of someone who's head's been kinda cut this way and that's the caudate

  • nucleus lit up because it's consuming more oxygen. It's a part of the brain that's involved

  • in the rewards center and it activates in this particular study when college sophomores

  • who are absolutely in love are shown a picture of their sweetheart. Male and female they

  • both get a major light up in the caudate nucleus.

  • I'm gonna go through by the way a number of examples here. It's fascinating to get into

  • some of the detail, but I'm gonna keep us moving along.

  • Here's another slide that looks at envy and schadenfreude. This is a study done in Japan

  • with college students who were told about someone very much like them who was spectacularly

  • more successful.

  • And in the scanner what arose inside them were activations in the physical pain network,

  • in other words, emotional pain much as evolution. Evolution's a big pludge, essentially. It

  • just uses lower systems and adapts them to higher purposes. So, social pain uses physical

  • pain as a fundamental basis. Similarly, social pleasure uses physical pleasure systems.

  • So, in phase one, they told these students that there is this spectacularly wonderful

  • person who made them really look horrible; envy, physical pain.

  • And then in phase two of the study they were told that this person encountered a humiliating

  • downfall, schadenfreude, pleasure at the suffering of others and the pleasure network was activated.

  • As you can see an example in this study.

  • Here we go.

  • Here's another one. This is self in the brain.

  • We were talking about this at lunch. These, in this study basically it's kinda hard to

  • see maybe, but maybe not. The squares, the-the diamonds, and the crosses have to do with

  • different activations of self-related activity in the brain.

  • For example, recognizing yourself in a photograph distinct from others or naming a personal

  • memory like what I did last summer, or making a difficult choice.

  • What's interesting -

  • [pause]

  • [coughing]

  • in this picture is to see how widely distributed self-related activations are throughout the

  • brain. There's no part of the brain that's special for I, for me, for ego, for mine.

  • It's widely distributive which has some pretty profound implications.

  • How 'bout consciousness? The big magilla, right? Well again, when a person is conscious

  • or is entering different kinds of consciousness, different parts of the brain are activated.

  • And if you mess with those parts of the brain like intersect at the linkages between the

  • thalamus which is the central relay station in the brain and the cerebral cortex, you

  • anesthetize somebody.

  • On the other hand, as consciousness changes or activates it uses different parts of the

  • brain. Something as ineffable as awareness alters or engages neural activity.

  • Now, let's talk about meditation. This is a slide, this is this, in this shot the head

  • is cut this way, if you will. Of a Buddhist mediator doing compassion meditation, and

  • the part of the brain that is activated there is called the anterior which means frontal

  • cingulate cortex which is a part of the brain that's involved in the executive control of

  • attention; staying concentrated and attentive. It also is an area where the thinking and

  • feeling are brought together as well.

  • So, it's interesting to realize that when this person is in the scanner doing a kind

  • of spacious, infinite, boundless compassion meditation, that this part of the brain is

  • activated.

  • Interestingly, this is a slide of Christian nuns in prayer who are doing a very different

  • kind of spiritual activity which activates some of the same region, ACC in the upper

  • left hand slide, left ACC, anterior cingulate cortex.

  • It lights up 'cause they're focusing their attention, but also interestingly they got

  • activation in the insula, which is a part of the brain that tracks the interior sensations

  • of the body, which suggests that for these nuns who are women, of course, doing that

  • particular practice it had a very embodied quality, which kinda makes sense intuitively.

  • And also they got an activation in the caudate nucleus. Again, it was very emotionally rewarding

  • to bring to mind their most profound spiritual experience.

  • [pause]

  • Okay.

  • In essence, now I wanna talk about lasting changes in the brain 'cause those were all

  • temporary, fleeting changes, mostly having to do with which part of the brain uses metabolic

  • supplies.

  • [pause]

  • Mental activity shapes neural structure. It leaves lasting residues behind. This is the

  • essence of what's called neuroplasticity. It does it in a variety of ways, I lis-I listed

  • some of the mechanisms of action. Busy regions get more blood flow over time. Existing synapses

  • get strengthened. You also get interestingly altered gene expression. That's epigenetics.

  • In other words, ineffable mental activity can alter the expression of strips of atoms

  • inside this long chain of DNA. Right, for example people who routinely activate relaxation

  • training get improved gene expression of the portions of DNA that down regulate the stress

  • response.

  • Isn't that kind of amazing? To think that doing this long, deep breathing or going to

  • one of Ming's classes is actually gonna alter the expression of this strip of atoms inside

  • some molecules somewhere. That just is pretty far out.

  • Classically there a line from the Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb, "Neurons that fire

  • together, wire together." In other words when neural circuits or even individual neurons

  • start associating with each other the connections between them are strengthened. Okay, great.

  • So, this has a number of implications and I wanna show you a slide here of some of the

  • effects of this.

  • This was a study that was done on Buddhists meditators taking a look at people in terms

  • of years of practice and looking at changes in neural structure.

  • In this particular study they found that people who had significant long term practice, which

  • has probably amounted to 20 to 40 minutes most days, in the real world of-of Western

  • practitioners, they actually had thicker cortical tissues in two key regions.

  • One is the insula, that's number one, where they're tuning into their body and their deep

  • emotions and self awareness in general.

  • And also area number two is the executive portions of the prefrontal cortex that have

  • to do with controlling attention.

  • The third region is the sensory motor strip where they were tracking their body sensations.

  • The interesting other finding is in, is seen in the lower right hand graph where the blue

  • circles were compared to the red squares. Red squares are the control group. They experienced

  • what's called cortical thinning with aging, normal cortical thinning.

  • People lose probably by the time they're 80 about three to five percent of cortical mass.

  • But the people who routinely used those regions, those are the blue circles, did not lose cortical

  • tissue in those regions as a function of using it and not losing it.

  • There are other examples. Some of them are quite down to earth. I don't know if you've

  • ever been to London. It's a spaghetti snarl of streets. Taxi cab drivers who have to memorize

  • the streets of London have a thicker hippocampus at the end of their training than they did

  • at the beginning. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that's involved in visual, spatial

  • memory.

  • Pianists who work routinely with certain kinds of movements have thicker, mo-motor cortices

  • in the parts that control fine motor regions.

  • In one study I read it's very interesting. They took two groups of skilled pianists and

  • they had them practice a certain kind of song or piece that involved certain specific motor

  • movements. And then they divided the group and they had one group do it like 10 minutes

  • every day and the other group just imagine doing it 10 minutes every day. And each group

  • had roughly equivalent build out of neural structure. Wow. Okay.

  • So, some perspectives here.

  • Marvin Minski, one of my favorites, probably well know here, probably of godfather of cognitive

  • science, Society of Mind, a great book. Anyway you can see here he's saying a principal activities

  • of brains are making changes in themselves.

  • I wanna offer a bit of perspective on this which is that neuroplasticity is not breaking

  • news. It gets talked about a lot as if it's some new finding. No, it's been understood

  • for a hundred years or more that obviously mental activity had to change brain structure.

  • What else is learning? The news is in the details.

  • Most neuroplasticity is not dramatic; it's very, very incremental. Like do, can you remember

  • what you had for breakfast or didn't have for breakfast this morning? That's neuroplasticity.

  • Now what's the capital of Nebraska? Right? That's neuroplasticity. It's pretty hum-drum.

  • It's interesting though that even though neurons that fire together are wired together throughout

  • the nervous system; the ones that really wire together do so in the field of awareness.

  • That means that residues of conscious experience are continually sifting into neural structure.

  • Implicit memory is mainly where they do this. This is not memory for specific events, that's

  • explicit memory for recollections. This is the internal felt sense of what it feels like

  • to be me, action, dispositions, biases, emotional residues, and all the rest.

  • The point of all this really the take away, for me there are half a dozen key take aways

  • and this is one of them, is to really be a lot more thoughtful about what I experience

  • moment to moment. Because whatever those neurons are doing, for better or worse, they're wiring

  • together.

  • Dwell in one's experience on themes of stress or tension or frustration or imminent failure

  • or self doubt and all the rest of that, guess what, we're building neural structures of

  • pessimism, depression, anxiety, lack of confidence, insecurity, and inadequacy, self-criticism,

  • etc.

  • On the other hand, rest experience and cultivate experiences that have a certain ease to them,

  • a certain relaxation; never be more than 100 feet away from food, things like that. That's

  • gonna cultivate neural structures that promote optimism, resilience, a positive mood, confidence,

  • a willingness to reach high and take big risks.

  • Our experience really, really matters. Much of it is in the back [inaudible]. People don't

  • really know what they're experiencing. That's why mindful, self-awareness is so critical

  • or as Ming says, "Searching inside yourself."

  • I'm really happy I was able to get that line in here.

  • Alright. So, that's right.

  • [laughter]

  • As I was saying earlier, most people are not very good a mindful attention. Attention is

  • the preeminent way to build neural structure. It's like a combination spotlight and vacuum

  • cleaner. It illuminates what it rests upon and then shloop sucks it into the brain.

  • But for most people that spot light and vacuum cleaner is very skittery. They can't rest

  • it and keep it at some place where they wanna keep it or they can't move it very readily

  • if they're getting sucked into obsessive ruminating, right? Just kinda goin' over and over and

  • over again about some technical problem or some personally upsetting experience.

  • That's why as William James said, the father really of American psychology, "The education

  • of attention would be an education par excellence."

  • So now what are we gonna do with this mindful self awareness, with the idea of self directed

  • neuroplasticity? It's the fundamental idea that we can use the mind to change the brain

  • to change the mind for the better.

  • It was always understood that if people did mental activity A they would get mental result

  • C and then it was increasingly understood during the last hundred years that somehow

  • mental activity A produced mental result C via the black box B of the brain.

  • But nobody knew how the black box worked. Increasingly though with these modern technologies

  • that can peer inside the living, active brain non-invasively we are now getting clearer

  • and clearer about the circuitry, about the levers, the dials, the buttons, the dynamics

  • inside the black box so that it's increasingly possible to do reverse engineering.

  • In other words, to identify what is the neural substrate in the black box of optimal states

  • of functioning, happiness, relationship, stress res-relief, and all the rest of that and then

  • use mental activity alone. Not medication, not electroshock treatment, but mental activity

  • alone to target those neural substrates and build them out in increasingly skillful ways.

  • That's the opportunity. And by the way, it's a historically unprecedented one.

  • The knowledge about the brain has essentially doubled in the last 20 years. I mean, we live

  • in an historically extraordinary time for many reasons, this is certainly one of them.

  • And it's also historically unprecedented in the coming together of those three circles

  • that I talked about previously: psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice; the

  • contemplatives being the Olympic athletes of mental training for millennia.

  • And so I'm really excited about this. We're just at the beginning of it all. I think modern

  • neuroscience is roughly where biology and medicine was about 100 years after the invention

  • of the tele, of the microscope, which is to say about 1720.

  • Where is it gonna be 300 years? Okay.

  • So, let's talk about some of the challenges now. What are we gonna do with this self-directed

  • neuroplasticity? We've gotta deal with the negativity bias.

  • This is a really, really, critically important slide. In order words, in our evolutionary

  • history we had to track carrots and sticks, right? Approach carrots, avoid sticks. That's

  • really important. But for survival purposes in very harsh frequently lethal environments,

  • sticks are more salient than carrots.

  • In other words, if you miss a carrot today you'll probably get a chance at one tomorrow.

  • But if you fail to avoid a stick today --

  • [claps hands together]

  • whap. No more carrots forever.

  • So, the brain responded because Mother Nature is a harsh teacher. Whatever confers reproductive

  • advantages, that's what gets built out in the brain. So there are number of ways this

  • is done. I've listed just a few.

  • For example, the amygdala which is the alarm center of the brain is primed to flag negative

  • events. Probably about two-thirds or more of its cells are dedicated processors if you

  • will for negative information or potentially negative information.

  • And the amygdala and hippocampus are very close to each other. The hippocampus does

  • visual spatial memory but more broadly it does memory for context, rapidly flag anything

  • that's remotely negative, store it, and retrieve it on a fast track. The bottom line is that

  • the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones, unless it's

  • a million dollar moment.

  • So, in effect all those three systems: avoid, approach, attach; the avoid system is very

  • fast in that reptilian brain if you will, and it routinely hijacks the approach and

  • attach systems and puts them to its bidding. And therefore, as a result, in the title of

  • a very famous paper, Bad Is Stronger Than Good.

  • By the way, I'm gonna post these slides on my Website and you'll be able to access them

  • if want and at the end of them are a bunch of excellent books as well as a number of

  • papers and a ref-and the references for this presentation.

  • Okay.

  • So, what are some examples of bad being stronger than good? In relationships on the average

  • it takes about five positive interactions to even out a single negative one. Alright,

  • what's the history of the last three days in your intimate relationships, with family

  • members, lovers, or children? It-it's quite cautionary to think about that.

  • Or ultimately people will do much more to avoid losing a loss than getting an equivalent

  • gain. In order words, people will work harder or they'll put up with more electrical shock

  • to avoid losing a hundred bucks you gave 'em in an experiment than they'll work hard to

  • get a hundred bucks you put on the table that they gotta fight for.

  • Or last, it's really easy to make people feel helpless. In dog studies, for example, who

  • have a limbic system and emotional system very much like our own, you can train a dog

  • in helplessness in about five tries. Five cycles where bad things happen that they have

  • zero control over, roughly you can train 'em in helplessness and then it takes dozens even

  • a hundred or more trials to untrain them. And the parallels for human beings are much

  • the same.

  • That's why I think it's really important to pay a lot of attention to feeling helpless

  • and a sense of futility and to work really hard to not feel that way. And if nothing

  • else redefine the game into one you can actually win at, where you actually do have efficacy.

  • Now on the, this next question naturally arises here: yeah, but isn't there some good with

  • negative experiences? Well sure, okay.

  • Remorse keeps us kinda on the path of virtue; sorrow opens the heart; negative experiences

  • can increase resilience and all the rest.

  • But walk down downtown or walk around this campus which is a pretty rarefied environment,

  • look at faces, look at my face. You can see the suffering in faces.

  • Is there any shortage of negative experiences in the world? Is anyone here; would you like

  • more negative experiences? We could give you some of ours.

  • [laughter]

  • Any volunteers? I've never had a volunteer yet who'd like more negative experiences.

  • So what are we gonna do about this?

  • Now, negative experiences it's important to realize have significant mental and physical

  • health consequences.

  • I'll just zip through this slide, I won't get into the detail of it, but chronic stress

  • is one of the main results. Because when we're upset our stress response systems are activated.

  • Getting angry, even just irritated, getting nervous about something, feeling depressed,

  • feeling ashamed or inadequate or alarmed in any way, shape, or form triggers the fight/flight

  • response systems through the sympathetic nervous system and HPAA stands for hypothalamic pituitary

  • adrenal axis; the endocrine system in other words, because the nervous system and the

  • endocrine system work together in terms of stress response. It's pernicious.

  • Chronic stress is the enemy particularly for people who are interested in living past 35.

  • In order words, unlike our great, great grandparents in the cave man days, most of us wanna live

  • past 35.

  • What kind of life are we gonna have the slowly accumulating impacts of chronic stress were

  • pretty irrelevant on the Serengeti, three, five, one millions years ago, but they're

  • very relevant today in modern times. Okay.

  • So, how would you like to do something experiential for a minute or two, get out of this head

  • stuff for a second?

  • So, now that I gave you the bad news and I'm gonna give you more bad news in a minute,

  • I wanna talk about self-compassion for a moment.

  • This is a hot area of research. A lot of the benefits of self-esteem actually boil down

  • to self-compassion. Arguably self-compassion's more powerful, partly 'cause it's so emotional.

  • Self-compassion is not self-pity, it's not wallowing, it's taking a moment and it's usually

  • typically less than 10 seconds to just have a sense of, "Ow, that hurts. This sucks. That

  • doesn't feel good. I wish it was better. Eh, shoo, pause then suck it up and move on, right?

  • But first do that self-compassion phase.

  • And people just suck it up and move on without having done self-compassion first they haven't

  • fueled themselves in a deep way.

  • Now self-compassion's actually quite hard for many people. So, as a little example of

  • this reverse engineering idea I talked about earlier, I've thought through what are things

  • that activate the neural substrates of compassion so that people can do self-compassion who

  • may find it difficult. And that's in those three bullets right there.

  • So, I'll do it right now. This is private. You don't have to do it. You can think about

  • anything else. You could really even get involved in self-criticism and self-loathing, but that's

  • really up to you.

  • Okay, so first step bring to mind a sense of being cared about by somebody.

  • [pause]

  • Could be a pet, a grandparent, someone in your life today, a spirit entity, a group

  • of people, just the felt sense. What's it feel like to feel cared about?

  • [pause]

  • Second and you can go at your own pace or not do this at all.

  • Bring to mind also someone that you naturally feel compassion for. In order words you naturally

  • wish that they not suffer. And you have an attitude of tender concern. Maybe a child,

  • a dear friend, relative, a group of people, starving refugees somewhere, whatever.

  • [pause]

  • Third step, this is a mindfulness practice now, sink into the experience of compassion

  • in your body. What's it feel like?

  • [pause]

  • Stay present with it.

  • [pause]

  • And then come from that embodied felt sense of compassion to yourself. With the sense

  • of the ways in which life is hard, it's not perfect, you might combine it with some verbal

  • inner language like, "You know may I feel better, may I feel better about this thing,

  • may it go better for me with that man or woman in my life, may I not suffer."

  • [pause]

  • Okay, great.

  • I guarantee you if you did it, you let out neural circuits of self-compassion and every

  • time you do this it doesn't build much structure but it builds a little bit of structure. And

  • if you do it routinely over time those neurons fire together, therefore they wire together

  • and you're building the neural substrates of self-compassion. Alright.

  • So, now let's get into some more bad news.

  • I wanna talk here about threat reactivity and Paper Tiger Paranoia.

  • If you think about it there're two major mistakes we can make in life. We, on the one hand we

  • can think there is a tiger in the bushes when there isn't one. Okay?

  • On the other hand, we can think there's no tiger in bushes and its all fine, but there

  • really is one about to pounce.

  • Now, we evolved to make the first mistake a hundred times, ten thousand times to avoid

  • making the second mistake even once 'cause that's how you stop having gene copies, alright?

  • This evolutionary tendency which is deeply ingrained in people to be threat reactive

  • is then intensified by temperament; some people are more anxious than others. Then life happens,

  • personal history. Then you have culture and then you have political manipulation.

  • It's a classic story obviously throughout human history to build up a sense of external

  • threat or even internal threat and on the basis of that get more compliance from the

  • populace. I mean that story's been told a thousand times or more in human history.

  • This threat reactivity happens at the individual level, happens inside me, happens inside you,

  • it happens between people like in a relationship, within a family; happens at the level of organizations.

  • It's interesting to think about how that may or may not be happening at Google and how

  • you've taken wise steps here to stop it from happening.

  • And it obviously happens at the national level and the international level; the level between

  • nations in the world all together.

  • This has a lot of implications, really, if you think about the current moment in world

  • history.

  • What are some of the results of this threat reactivity, both at the individual, organizational,

  • and national level?

  • First, initial appraisals are mistaken. There's a tendency to overestimate threats, underestimate

  • opportunities and underestimate resources either for coping with threats or for capturing

  • opportunities.

  • We tend to update these appraisals with information that selectively confirms them and we tend

  • to through the mechanisms of what's called cognitive dissonance, we tend to ignore, devalue,

  • or alter information that doesn't fit these pictures.

  • Thus we end up with views of ourselves, other people, and the world, and the future and

  • the past that are ignorant, selective, and distorted.

  • Any comments or questions so far?

  • [pause]

  • That's the bad news. Now, the good news.

  • Actually there's more bad news, I apologize.

  • [laughter]

  • I turned the page too quickly, my mistake. I was eager to get on.

  • So I thought to myself, "What's a short list in one slide of the major costs of threat

  • reactivity." You could probably add a few items to this list with a little thought.

  • For one, feeling threatened feels bad. As soon as we feel threatened activates the stress

  • response system. We start getting stress hormones. We start focusing around the threat and with

  • all the consequences I talked about before.

  • Feeling over threatened makes people over invest in threat protection and not invest

  • in things like raising kids or schooling or building infrastructure or taking long, making

  • long term plans.

  • Then you've got the story of the boy who cried "Tiger." In other words, if people feel flooded

  • with threats that are actually not real or, or are overstated or are easily managed by

  • one thing or another, it's easy to miss the needle in the haystack of the actual threat.

  • That's really important to think about.

  • I think that's one of the things that's happened with things like global warming, people are

  • so caught up in this endless list of murders on the evening news and a sense of global

  • threat all-all around us, and that they miss long term things that are actually gonna very

  • consequential.

  • If we act when we're threatened we tend to overreact; that creates cycles in which other

  • people feel threatened and confirm our worst fears. The approach system gets inhibited

  • when people feel threatened, when the avoid system activates so we tend to not pursue

  • opportunities or we play small, lose our nerve, or give up too quickly.

  • And then the approach system is, pardon me, the attach system is put in the service of

  • threats; people tend to really bond with us; they increase their sense of fear and anger

  • toward them; and they put up with more mistreatment within us to "protect me, protect me." Strong

  • father figure if you will, from them out there about to get me.

  • [pause]

  • Obviously threat reactivity, and you can think of it on the global scale or even inside this

  • country, red state, blue state, or even more locally in terms of different groups of us's

  • and thems.

  • Threat reactivity is a major source of prejudice, oppression, and war. And if we wanna make

  • this world a better place helping people see through Paper Tiger Paranoia is a fundamentally

  • profound and powerful way to do that.

  • And my little hope is that Google will in some ways help that happen.

  • So, now let's talk about the optimal brain. Let's talk about how to deal with this kind

  • of Paper Tiger Paranoia. And these, by the way, are practices and tools you can use in

  • your own personal life and I'm gonna talk about them.

  • So, think about reverse engineering. What's the state of the brain in peak performance

  • modes, peek productivity? Or in a state, of let's say self actualization? Or enlightenment

  • or close to it?

  • Clearly there've been many people throughout human history that have been in these states.

  • Many of us in this room, probably everybody in this room has gotten into that zone at

  • one time or another.

  • What in the world could be happening in the brain when a person is in that zone?

  • Well the home base of the human brain which alas we are so, so easily driven from is characterized

  • by I call 'em the four C's: calm, contented, caring, and creative.

  • And you can see how calm, contented, and caring map to the three systems, right? Avoid, approach,

  • and attach, and creative, generative. People are generative. Obviously, it's extraordinarily

  • generative here.

  • People are generative in particular when they go into the zone of calm, contented, and caring.

  • This is the brain in its natural; let's call it a responsive mode. It's not offline; it's

  • not anesthetized; it's engaged in the world, it's embodied and it's enactive. It's continually

  • leaning forward into the future, but it does so in a particular mode of operation.

  • To look at it in a schematic you can see this triangle here in which the three systems,

  • and by the way, this graphic comes from a little earlier form of this material in which

  • I called the attach system "affiliation system."

  • It can see the way in which the brain operates; your brain, my brain operates, our brains

  • operate when we're in this natural state.

  • The problem though is that to survive we leave home. In other words, on a hair trigger Mother

  • Nature has given us the capability of activating any one of these three systems or all three

  • of them in concert in a different kind of mode. Call it a reactive mode that then drives

  • us from home. It's a kind of inner homelessness.

  • In other words, when people feel threatened or harm they're in the reactive mode. When

  • they can't attain important goals, they're frustrated or disappointed, reactive mode.

  • When they feel isolated, abandoned, devalued, they're not getting the healthy normal narcissistic

  • supplies they need, when they feel left out, dissed, shunned, and so forth that also triggers

  • this reactive mode.

  • And it too has a number of consequences. So here's a little slide that summarizes that.

  • So those are the choices really, reactive mode which is the ordinary experience. Look

  • at the front page, it's all reactive mode. Watch the evening news, mostly reactive mode.

  • A lot of life. Think about dealing with some issue with an intimate, a friend, a partner,

  • a family member.

  • As they say in the spiritual biz, "Think you're enlightened? Go visit your parents for the

  • holidays." What's it like in the real world? What's it like in traffic when someone flips

  • you off? What's it like when you, the person you like least as a political figure is yappin'

  • away on the evening news? What happens then? We easily get triggered into this reactive

  • mode.

  • So now, what to do about it; how to come home. How to recover the fundamental natural responsive

  • mode of the brain right in the middle of the trenches; not in a cave in Tibet; not in a

  • monastery, but in daily life one step at a time, one breath at a time.

  • As the Tibetans say, "If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves."

  • So how can each one of us take care of the minutes in our own life or help others take

  • care of the minutes in their lives so that year, so that the years will get better and

  • better for this planet?

  • Well, first I wanna talk about three fundamental pillars of practice that show up in contemplative

  • traditions as well as in Western psychology: mindfulness, virtue, and wisdom.

  • And by different terms you see these again and again and again and I think that's because

  • they map to three central functions arguably the three central functions of the nervous

  • system which is to say receiving and learning; regulating and prioritizing which map very

  • closely to mindfulness, virtue and wisdom. And which also map to the three fundamental

  • phases of any kind of personal growth or emotional healing which is to say, "Open up to it. Experience

  • it. Be with it. Be mindful of it."

  • Second phase at the just right moment, help it move along, release that negative stuff.

  • And then third phase when there's a space there replace it with something better. Or

  • in six words, "Let be, let go, let in."

  • And the reason I think that these fundamental pillars of practice are found again and again,

  • including in traditions that were certainly pre-technical, is because they map so closely

  • to the universal human nervous system.

  • As a take away point at the bottom, mindfulness is viable but it's not enough. Mindfulness

  • needs to be matched with virtue, with values, and with wisdom. Some fundamental understanding;

  • somebody who wants to find wisdom always asks, giving up a lesser pleasure for a greater

  • one.

  • I mean it's that clarity about what is the greater good here that I'm gonna sacrifice

  • this lesser pleasure for. I mean that's-that's wisdom.

  • Additionally, I wanna talk, there's some general factors for the responsive mode that I just

  • wanna call to your attention here.

  • If you wanna drop your brain into its natural state of calm, contented, caring, and creative,

  • self-compassion, getting on your own side. So many people are not on their own side.

  • In other words they're not for themselves.

  • It's so interesting to think about it. That's a critical mo-moment to actually say, "No.

  • How it feels to be me matters. My brain matters over time. I'm gonna be for myself. I'm gonna

  • try to do little things everyday that will build a better brain or other aspects of my

  • life gradually over time."

  • Mindful self-awareness I've talked about.

  • Seeing the world clearly. I think Google has helped enormously here and it can continue

  • to help in the future particularly by appreciating the depth of threat reactivity; the depth

  • of the paranoid trance and the insidiousness of it.

  • Taking life less personally; appreciating increasingly that it's not really about me

  • and one particular practice which is the chapter in my book, Buddhist Brain, and will probably

  • be very central to the book I write after the one I'm writing now, is taking in the

  • good.

  • And so if we could I'd like to do a little practice here with you about taking in the

  • good, 'cause if you think about it continually the brain is taking in the bad, 'member? It's

  • like Velcro for negative experiences; Teflon for positive ones. It has dedicated --

  • [snapping fingers] snap, snap, snap

  • systems that just suck any kind of negative information into the brain.

  • Think about a hundred things happen in the course of the day, right? Seventy are pretty

  • good, 28 are neutral, 2 are kinda sucky. What are the ones you think about as you fall asleep?

  • Usually it's the stuff that was a drag, right? And that's the brain. It just wants to grab

  • hold of that.

  • That's why using mindful awareness for about 20, 30 seconds in a row can actually build

  • out neural structure in a much more positive way.

  • So if you like, let's do it together. And you don't have to do it, but let's give it

  • a crack.

  • So first off, first step, pick a positive fact. It could be I-I particularly like picking

  • a positive fact about a good quality inside yourself. Where ever you go, there you are,

  • right? Or you could think about a good condition in the world or a good event recently; someone

  • was nice to you, some good thing happened.

  • And then let yourself really feel it. All kinds of good facts occur, but we don't register

  • them. They don't move the needle, but in this case we're helping ourselves 'cause we're

  • on our own side to let our self feel good. It's a private act; no one needs to know you're

  • doing it.

  • There are lots of taboos about feeling good, feeling happy, you can hide it behind your

  • face, but let yourself feel good and then in particular in the second step savor it

  • for 15, 20, 30 seconds in a row. Stay with feeling good for a quarter of a minute.

  • [pause]

  • And as you do it, sense and intend that this good experience is gradually sifting down

  • into you. It's sinking in and even perhaps filling a hole in your heart. Gradually soothing,

  • even replacing perhaps old places of pain.

  • [pause]

  • Or at a minimum simply being a moment of good experience.

  • [pause]

  • And that's it.

  • Now, any single time you do this won't make much difference, half a dozen times a day,

  • continually looking for opportunities to take in the good to make your brain like Velcro

  • for positive experiences will make it like Teflon for negative ones.

  • And over time, everyone I've ever worked with whose done this within a week or two people

  • start feeling different, within a few weeks and certainly a few months quite radically

  • different.

  • This is also a fantastic method for children, particularly kids that either the spirited

  • or anxious, rigid ends of the temperamental spectrum. Jack rabbits and turtles, right?

  • They're all normal. There's no disorder there in jack rabbititis; it's a normal temperamental

  • variation, but it's tough to be a jack rabbit in a turtle culture in some ways, certainly

  • in turtle schools.

  • So, anyway taking in the good for a few moments just before bed is a great way to fill the

  • heart of kids. And I'll use metaphors with them like putting a jewel in their heart and

  • so forth.

  • It naturally comes up of course, why do this? Which inter, is an interesting question, like

  • what a taboo right there on feeling good.

  • Benefits of positive emotions are kind of a proxy for the benefits of taking in the

  • good. There's a lot of research on positive emotions. I'll just leave that slide there

  • for a moment. But positive emotions, wow, have fantastic benefits. Happiness really

  • is skillful means.

  • If you take a look at my Website, wisebrain.org you'll see the slide sets for a number of

  • talks and one of the nice things about positive emotions is they steady the mind 'cause they

  • do it in various ways having to do with dopamine and working memory, but it's a great way to

  • support concentration and productivity to encourage positive emotion.

  • Also it comes up whether it's selfish to feel happy. And I think Bertrand Russell had a

  • fantastic line here. He pointed out that as he conceived of it right, "The good life is

  • a happy one because happy people are good people."

  • And there's a lot of research that shows that, with some significant exceptions, people who

  • have basic well being, who already have a sense of overflowingness inside themselves,

  • are more inclined to offer benefit to other people.

  • So, from the standpoint obviously of productivity and reducing turnover and anything like that,

  • whether it's at Google or any company in the world, helping people feel happy at work is

  • a great way to promote productivity and generosity and teamwork and team building with other

  • people.

  • Moving to an end here and then hoping to have a few more minutes for questions and discussion

  • at the end.

  • I also took a look at specific factors that are, may not be so obvious for activating

  • the responsive mode of the brain for each one of these three fundamental systems.

  • In the approach system for example, focusing on gladness and gratitude; fantastic.

  • People do things like the three blessings exercise at the end of the day. They just

  • list three things to be grateful for; take half a minute to focus on them. That has had

  • amazing results for such a simple intervention.

  • And giving one's self over to one's best purposes is another way to activate the approach system

  • in a context of prior contentment and wisdom.

  • The affiliating system, one I wanna call out there is the last one the idea of acting with

  • unilateral virtue. In other words, living by your own code of integrity and good conduct

  • regardless of what the other person does. In other words, not getting involved in this

  • kind of Mexican standoff.

  • I do couples counseling as well as other things where people basically say, "I'll treat you

  • well if you treat me well. You go first." And we know where that really gets us.

  • On the other hand, if you act with unilateral virtue, it makes you feel good right off the

  • top; it also gives you a sense of initiative; and it puts you on the high moral ground so

  • that after a few days or weeks even you can then say very rightfully to the other person,

  • "I stopped being a jerk. I'm givin' you what you want. I'm lining off your reasonable complaints.

  • Alright, how 'bout me?" Okay?

  • And then last with regard to the avoid system, calming the body in general. As soon as we

  • get activated in the stress response system we're primed to go negative 'cause those systems

  • are disposed and lean toward negative responsiveness.

  • So, activating a calming, soothing response whenever we feel stressed or upset is a good

  • basic default.

  • And then I would say last, tolerate risking a dreaded experience. We live small. We live

  • in a way to avoid experiences we dread, and then that becomes the new normal and after

  • awhile we start to forget about it.

  • It's a little bit like these tigers that are in cages, speaking of tigers. They remove

  • the cage because they've built a park around them, but the tiger will not cross the line

  • that's written, that's painted there on the cement because they still live within that

  • box. They still presume that limitation.

  • The trick is to risk the dreaded experience instead of avoiding it. In other words, put

  • one's neck out in a meeting; tell someone you love them; open up to some feelings and

  • see that it goes well which it usually does. Okay?

  • In effect, this is in the traditional phrase, "taking a fruit as the path." In other words,

  • taking the end as the means. Taking the end of calm, contentment, and caring are here

  • in this, and I reordered it, gladness, love and peace, taking that as the method as well

  • as the destination.

  • In, for example, literally I found myself increasing; I just named these three words

  • to myself. I did before I came down here to give this talk which was making me nervous

  • I said, "Rick, gladness, love, peace, okay, good. In the zone. Okay. Good place."

  • Whatever works for you to get in your zone, different things work for different people.

  • All the great teachers have offered huge tool boxes with a diversity of tools. Neurological

  • diversity is the most critically important and fundamental and substantive kind of diversity

  • there really is.

  • And so, that's why I think is really important to find one's own way.

  • That gives us a fundamental choice, right? Reactive mode which is the ordinary lot, characterized

  • tries by suffering, ignorance and harm. Or the responsive mode; the natural state of

  • the brain which can see through Paper Tiger Paranoia and can be gradually cultivated with

  • self-directed neuroplasticity.

  • And that's the opportunity for us all today. It's historically unprecedented; it's grounded

  • in science; papers are coming out everyday basically with new opportunities to figure

  • out how to reverse engineer the brain and each one of us can do this in our own lives

  • with benefits that ripple throughout the entire planet.

  • So, I thank you for your attention. It's a great privilege to be here.

  • [applause]

  • Thank you, very much.

  • Question or comment for the last minute?

  • One or, one? Yes, no?

  • >>male in audience #1: I have a question about I-I-I've heard that

  • a number of traditions anyway say that if you're trying to make a change in your consciousness

  • when a point comes, the point comes when you can actually make a shift, there will be an

  • opposite, there will be a-a resistance, there'll be like a, a pull from where you came from

  • that will try to keep the status quo.

  • How does that, is-is that know as an actual something that happens in the brain that tries

  • to keep us in our, in our previously more contractive consciousness?

  • >>Rick Hanson: I think that's true in two ways and wonderfully

  • untrue in a third, alright?

  • First, the brain is a giant association network. Everything's connected to everything else.

  • So if we have a breakthrough over here we still have that old learning over there. People

  • say to me sometimes, "I feel guilty that I'm still upset about my childhood." Right? Well

  • of course you are. The brain learned. It's designed to learn and that learning persists

  • until it gradually is replaced or overcome, first.

  • Second, it's very interesting how the brain is organized. It's very much basically yin

  • and yang, in effect, on stop and go. Inhibitor fire, that's the way the brain are organized.

  • And I think a lot of knowledge structures in the brain are organized around figuring

  • ground or something in its thesis antithesis in effect.

  • So, when you break through in one area or you think about something very often the opposite

  • comes up.

  • For example, think about something that makes you feel proud of yourself; pause. Very often

  • something will come up that's associated with self-doubt. So-so what you're saying I think

  • is natural.

  • That said, very often people will have a breakthrough and they get a release, they're done with

  • it. They saw through it; they changed; they got it.

  • I love the line from practice, "Gradual cultivation, sudden awakening, gradual cultivation, sudden

  • awakening, gradual cultivation, sudden awakening."

  • So very often what we have, is we have awakenings; we have insights; we realize something. Then

  • we've got to cultivate around it; we've got to back fill; we've gotta build an infrastructure

  • which then enables the next awakening; the next insight; the next breakthrough; the next

  • release to be even deeper.

  • But something I've really come to see, honestly, I've been a therapist a long time; it's made

  • me more compassionate, but it's made me tough as nails in this sense that most people will

  • not do the work. But if you do the work, the sky's the limit in the changes you can make

  • in your mind, your brain, and your life, and in this world.

  • Okay, thank you.

  • [applause]

  • Thanks.

>>Ming: [Chinese accent]

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