0:15

Pushkin. If

0:18

you've listened to other episodes or the Happiness Lab,

0:21

you've probably learned that becoming happier often

0:23

involves changing your behavior, things

0:25

like trying to be more social, getting in

0:27

a bit of cardio, taking time to experience

0:30

gratitude. The research shows that

0:32

all of these things will improve your well being

0:34

if you do them. The problem

0:36

is we actually have to do these things, and

0:39

if you're like me, there are a lot of times

0:41

when you know what you're supposed to do, but

0:43

you really would rather do something else. You

0:45

may know it's a good idea to head out of the house

0:47

and see a friend if you're feeling down, but

0:50

if it's raining and you're already on the couch,

0:52

being social feels like a chore. You may

0:54

swear you're going to get up early to practice guitar

0:57

or hit the gym in the morning, but when that

0:59

alarm clock goes off, there are definitely

1:01

some days you'd rather stay in bed. These

1:03

kinds of moments, these feelings of desiring

1:06

something you know isn't consistent with your

1:08

bigger goals, they come up whenever

1:11

we're trying to change our behavior for the better. Building

1:13

happier habits often means not getting

1:16

what we want in the moment, and that can feel

1:18

pretty yucky. It's the reason many

1:20

of us give up working on the goals we desire

1:22

most. But what if I told

1:24

you there was a way to outsmart those little moments

1:26

of discomfort and simply sail through them.

1:29

What if there was a strategy, a strategy

1:31

that's both ancient and backed up by modern

1:33

science, that allows you to push through

1:36

positive behaviors when you really want

1:38

to backslide. And what if using this

1:40

technique also had a host of other health

1:42

benefits like reducing inflammation,

1:45

decreasing stress levels, improving

1:47

concentration, and even making you

1:49

happier and less anxious. It's

1:51

also totally free and only involves

1:54

a couple minutes a day to learn

1:56

what the strategy is and how it works. We're

1:58

going to talk with an expert, my friend and colleague

2:00

here at Yale, the neuroscientist, doctor

2:03

Hetty Cooper. And to make it even more fun,

2:05

we'll do all of that in front of a live studio audience

2:07

here on campus. So welcome to

2:09

the next installment of the Happiness Lab twenty

2:12

twenty.

2:22

So we're gonna start off with a question for the audience

2:24

a little bit of a quiz. I want you

2:26

to answer whether,

2:29

in the last two months or so, how many

2:31

of you have experienced no stress

2:33

at all, no frustrations, nothing. On

2:35

the count of three, we're gonna clap. Ready, one,

2:37

two three, not

2:41

not really here anything? Okay, all right, So here's a second

2:43

question. On the count of three, I'm going to ask you to

2:45

clap if you've experienced a

2:48

little bit of stress, maybe a few frustrations,

2:50

but nothing more than that. Ready, one, two three,

2:55

Okay. Now I'm going to ask if there's

2:57

you to clap if in the last two months you've

2:59

experienced a lot of stress to

3:02

the point that it sometimes made it kind of hard to

3:04

function. One two three,

3:09

all right. So I'm here in hetty. Most people are

3:11

going with they kind of experience a

3:13

lot of stress. I know you use this question a

3:15

lot in your talks. Is this kind of a common answer that

3:17

you get? Very very common answers. So I would

3:19

say that nine times out of ten, the most

3:21

clapping that I get or the most hands

3:23

are raised for have you experienced a

3:25

lot of stress? This is a very very common thing

3:27

to report, And so talk about why this is

3:29

such a bad thing, because I mean again and feeling

3:32

a lot of stress means you're anxious and so on. But stress

3:34

really has an incredible impact on

3:36

our bodies, right, Yeah, so stress is

3:38

actually known to have a toxic effect

3:40

on most of our bodily systems. So stress

3:43

was designed as a physiological response to a

3:45

real threat in the environment. And since we

3:47

are actually somewhat ancient species, we

3:49

were in the savannah, maybe running away from a predator

3:51

who might eat us. Right, So the stress

3:53

response in our body was really made to mobilize

3:56

various physiological systems to allow us to run,

3:58

to allow us to fight. It wasn't really designed

4:00

to let us prepare for exams

4:03

or deal with bad teaching reviews. And

4:06

so when we experience the same kind of physiological

4:08

response in the context of these everyday experiences

4:11

that we now have in our modern day and time, and

4:13

especially when we have them for many, many days in a

4:15

row, that physiological response is actually

4:18

toxic to multiple physiological systems. And it's

4:20

also really bad for us achieving our goals.

4:22

Right, you know, when you think about we're here around

4:24

the new year, we want to be achieving

4:26

our Newar's resolutions. We want to be behaving better.

4:29

But as things get more stressful, that's

4:31

even harder, right, It's so much harder, And it's so

4:33

much harder because in the moment, even if we haven't

4:35

been stressed for months and we're just stressed in this moment,

4:37

stress interferes with our ability to think. So we know

4:39

that people when they're really really stressed, their cognitive

4:41

performance is actually impaired. It interferes

4:44

with our ability to control our urges and control

4:46

our behaviors, and it sometimes even interferes

4:48

with our bodies functioning in the way that they're supposed

4:50

to, because again, all of the blood is going out

4:52

of your brain and out of your gut and into

4:54

your thigh muscle, so you can run away, and that's

4:57

really not effective. In what we're trying to do is

4:59

let's say study for an exam, and

5:01

so everyone here is feeling really stressed.

5:03

Are we doing or are we just gonna be

5:05

stuck feeling stressed all the time? Or is there another path?

5:08

Yeah? So I think that the great news is are there are things that

5:10

we could all do to reduce our stress. And I think that today

5:12

we might focus on one of them, in particular that I study,

5:14

which is mindfulness. I mean, if you're mindful,

5:16

does that just mean you don't have any stress anymo So mindfulness.

5:19

We often think about it in I say, we me,

5:21

some of my colleagues, people in my lab. We often think about

5:24

it as a two component process, which is a component of attention,

5:26

where attention is really oriented to what is happening

5:29

right now. So in this moment, it might be the sound

5:31

of my voice if you're here in this room. It might

5:33

be looking at me and Laurie sitting here in the front of the room.

5:35

Might be the sensation of your butt on the chair,

5:38

or your back, or maybe your hands touching each other,

5:40

everything that might be happening in this moment, and your attention

5:42

is oriented to it instead of thinking about something

5:45

that happened to you earlier or something that might happen later.

5:47

You're really right here. And the important

5:49

second component is really a component of attitude,

5:52

and that's a particular kind of attitude. It's an attitude

5:54

that's really open, it's curious, and it's

5:56

accepting this moment exactly as it is. And

5:59

when we think about doing that moment by

6:01

moment, we might consider

6:03

that accepting this moment as it is noticing

6:05

it right fully acknowledging everything that might be happening,

6:08

including maybe the fact that you have deadlines and you're

6:10

stressed about getting into a class, or you have some kind

6:12

of problem at work. If you have a job, and you're

6:14

letting everything that's already happened be exactly

6:17

as it is. You're not fighting with it, you're not arguing

6:19

with it, you're not wishing for it to be different. You're

6:21

just letting it be. And the remarkable

6:24

thing that happens when you can really be in that state

6:26

is that it really opens you up to

6:28

make better decisions about the next moment. And

6:30

in doing so, we see that

6:33

people actually experience less stress and

6:35

also that they make better decisions. And so

6:37

this is an idea that's been around for a long

6:39

time. You're not the first person who's come up. I am

6:41

far from the first person who've come up with

6:43

this. So mindfuls is really rooted in a very

6:45

ancient Buddhist tradition, so thousands of years

6:48

ago, as the story goes, the Buddha

6:50

sat under a tree and became

6:52

enlightened when he considered all of the human

6:55

condition and one of the solutions

6:57

that he came up with for how we might

6:59

exit this human condition that is full of suffering

7:02

is that we might practice mindfulness. And mindfuls is really

7:04

a part of a set of practices within the Buddhist

7:06

tradition. It's not the only one, but really

7:09

entails practicing interacting with our

7:11

lives in this way that doesn't argue with what

7:13

is already here. My understanding is that mindfulness

7:16

comes through a certain set of behaviors,

7:18

Right, you kind of have to practice it. Yeah,

7:21

So you can bring mindfulness into

7:23

any particular moment, and being

7:25

able to do that with more ease, being able to

7:27

do that almost more automatically does require

7:29

practice. Mindfuls. Practice is a little bit

7:31

like going to the gym. So at this moment, even if

7:33

you've never gone to the gym before, you can probably lift some

7:35

weight. Right, there's some amount of weight that you could already

7:37

lift, But if you practice lifting weights,

7:39

you can suddenly start overtime lifting

7:42

heavier and heavier weights. I think about mindfulness

7:44

in a very much the same way. So

7:47

you can be mindful in this moment, it just

7:49

might not be as easy to sustain it over time.

7:51

And if you want to make it easier for you to bring

7:53

mindfulness into many moments, especially difficult

7:56

moments, stressful moments. You would

7:58

benefit from practicing it over time, and that

8:00

form of practice is often considered meditation,

8:03

this kind of formal practice where you're really

8:05

trying to be mindful accepted present

8:07

moments. Yeah, so I think one can

8:10

practice mindfulness across many moments

8:12

in the day in a way to really practice, kind

8:14

of like you can. You know, I'm practicing lifting something

8:17

right now. To those of you who can't see me, I'm lifting a bottle

8:19

of water. And so I just practice lifting something

8:21

much as you would at the gym. And

8:23

so you can do it moment by moment across the

8:25

day. And when you're washing the dishes, just wash

8:28

the dishes. Notice how it feels like set the sensation

8:30

of water in your hands. And even if you might notice

8:32

some thoughts about how you don't like washing the dishes,

8:34

you can notice that as well and continue doing it anyway.

8:37

And if you actually want to practice

8:39

really seriously, you go to the gym. You don't

8:41

just lift the occasional bottle of water. You

8:43

set some time and you go and you dedicate that

8:46

time to exercising, and you do it with the most intention

8:48

that you can bring forth. And it's the same with mindfulness

8:50

practice. So you set a time, and you decide

8:52

how long you're going to do it for, and you during

8:54

that time set your intention to practice it with the

8:57

most focus that you can bring.

9:00

And so sometimes when people hear these

9:02

terms kind of mindfulness or meditation,

9:05

it conjures up a kind of hippie

9:07

top vibe, you know, dude with long

9:10

hair and robes and kind of you know, like,

9:12

maybe you're not like a dude with long hair,

9:16

look like a reasonable scientist, right, and

9:18

so, so talk about how sometimes these

9:21

concepts get a bit of a bad rap from people.

9:23

Yeah, first of all, one of the things that are really interesting

9:25

is that I think that mindfless gets a bad rap partly

9:27

because it's often being explained

9:29

in contexts that are not necessarily here

9:31

at Yale by scientists. It's often talked

9:34

about by people who might actually resemble hippie

9:36

dippy dudes with long hair and robes.

9:38

I think that what me and many other people in my fields

9:40

are trying to do is to actually bring

9:43

some serious inquiry, serious

9:45

teaching, and serious science to bear

9:47

on this ancient Eastern tradition.

9:49

And what I hope that achieves

9:52

is the idea that even though something might

9:54

have been understood first by people who are

9:56

a little bit hippie dippy, they might actually

9:58

be more serious than you might imagine and might benefit

10:01

you, even though it might not be your natural orientation

10:03

to engage. So maybe the best way to

10:05

show people what this experience of mindfulness

10:08

is like is to try it out. Audience,

10:10

are you ready to try out a little quick meditation? All

10:17

right, hetty? Why don't you walk us through

10:19

one? All right? So, to those of you who

10:21

are here, I'm going to recommend that you first get comfortable

10:23

in your chair and close your eyes. If you are listening

10:25

to this podcast not here, you might even

10:28

be driving on your commute. Please don't close your eyes.

10:31

It's very important, though, to really try

10:33

to bring a sense of attention to this moment.

10:35

And again, you can get maybe comfortable in your

10:37

chair. If you've closed your eyes. You

10:40

can also notice maybe your facial muscles

10:42

relax a bit. We often talk in

10:44

sitting meditation about kind of carrying a

10:46

dignified position, having your head higher

10:48

than your shoulders. Your back should be somewhat

10:51

erect, maybe almost noticing as

10:53

if there's a string, pulling your head up to the ceiling.

10:56

And as you are doing this, maybe

10:59

take one deep breath to prepare,

11:04

and now move your attention

11:07

to the physical sensation of the breath wherever

11:09

you feel it most strongly in the body. And

11:11

again, those of you who are listening, if you are

11:13

not able to notice your breath because there's so much

11:15

going on, you can actually use your visual

11:19

field as your object of meditation. The

11:21

idea is to just pick some physical

11:23

element in your experience and just set

11:25

your intention to focus on that for the next few minutes.

11:29

And as you do that, and especially if

11:31

you're noticing the breath, you can just notice the spontaneous

11:34

movement of the breath. Everything inside us

11:36

and outside us is moving all the time.

11:39

Experience is constantly shifting, moment

11:42

is moving into moment, and

11:44

we're just using the breath or anything

11:46

else that we might choose as an anchor as

11:49

a sample element of our experience

11:52

to focus on for the next few minutes. Remember, we're just

11:54

practicing. And

11:56

if you're noticing the movement of the breath, don't

11:58

try to change it in any way. Just pay attention

12:01

to it. And here

12:03

is a key part. If you notice that your

12:05

mind is wandering, just notice

12:08

it, even see if if you can accept it. Ah,

12:11

my mind wandered, And then firmly

12:15

but gently bringing your attention

12:17

back to the physical sensation of the breath. And

12:35

again, if you notice that your mind is wandering, just

12:38

note it, mind wandering. Can

12:41

you even ask yourself? Can I be okay with this moment

12:43

where I noticed that my mind did something

12:45

that was not in my intention. And

12:48

then again gently and firmly bring

12:51

your attention back to your anchor. And

13:06

when you're ready, you can open your eyes, come

13:10

back. Welcome.

13:17

So snap your fingers. If

13:19

your mind wandered at least once during

13:21

this exercise, I'm seeing

13:23

everybody here snap their fingers. That

13:25

is really typical. Mind wandering is what minds

13:28

do. It's the normal state actually

13:30

of our existence. And the practice

13:32

what we did here is that I asked you to set

13:34

the intention to notice something else, right,

13:37

to pay attention to something else. And if

13:39

you notice that your mind was wandering, then your mind

13:41

was doing not what you intended for it to do, right.

13:44

It was kind of going off script. And the

13:46

practice is to notice that it

13:48

happens and let that be and let that

13:50

go right. It's already done. It's in the

13:52

past. We can't change that your mind

13:54

wandered. I can't change that my mind wanders,

13:57

and I can notice it when it happens, and in that

13:59

moment, practice noticing right that moment is actually

14:01

the moment we learned from the most. What we would like to

14:03

do over and over in life is to wake up

14:05

for mind wandering and pay attention to where we are and

14:09

to accept the fact that it has wandered, and to

14:11

develop this faculty of attention and

14:13

the faculty of acceptance, the skill to

14:15

let things that have already happened be as they were,

14:18

to let this moment be as it is, and

14:20

move on to the next. And the idea is that as

14:22

you develop these skills, you also learn a whole

14:24

lot of things about yourself. And we might

14:26

also learn that we're not our thoughts, that

14:29

our thoughts kind of do their own thing, that we

14:31

don't really control where they go, and that

14:33

that happens, and in that we might learn

14:35

a new way of being, a way in which when things

14:38

go out of our control, we can just

14:40

let that be and then focus

14:42

on what to do in the next moment, and then come back

14:44

to doing what was in our intention to begin with, whether

14:46

it's to study when our mind is wandering

14:48

about something else that we're upset about, whether

14:51

we're faced with some news that we didn't expect

14:53

and we need to figure out what to do next to make our

14:56

lives go back in the direction that we

14:58

intended. And so you're talking about

15:00

all these benefits in some ways kind

15:02

of clitically, But these are the kind of benefits

15:04

that you've seen personally, right. I first meditated

15:07

many many years ago, even before college,

15:09

just a few times, because I was invited to do it in a

15:11

context of a yoga class, and

15:13

I did it faithfully while I went to that yoga class. And

15:15

then I moved to go to college at Columbia, and I

15:17

abandoned the practice completely because it was hard

15:19

and annoying and I found

15:21

it too difficult and overwhelming. And

15:23

then I was reintroduced to it a few years later.

15:26

And what happened then is that I really

15:28

learned to engage with it in a way

15:30

that almost immediately I noticed made me

15:32

better, made my life better, made my experience

15:35

easier. I was going through a lot of stress at

15:37

the times, really really difficult period, and

15:39

I noticed that when I walked out of my

15:41

mindfuls practice. I felt calmer and

15:43

that my day went better if I did it in the morning, and

15:46

that over time my focus got

15:48

better, and that my ability to deal with things

15:50

happening outside of my control was really

15:52

much improved. And a lot of the motivation that I had

15:54

then, especially in the absence of any evidence

15:57

or research on mindfulness, I was really motivated

15:59

by kind of my own first person science. It worked for

16:02

me, and so I kept doing it. So you have seen

16:04

personally the benefits of mindfuls, but we're also learning

16:06

that this isn't just you. Science is really

16:08

showing us mindfulness is doing incredible

16:10

things for our brains and for our bodies.

16:13

But we actually have to take a break, so we're going to hear

16:15

about the science when we come back. The Happiness

16:17

Lab will be back in a moment. All

16:37

right, welcome back. We've heard a little bit about the

16:39

history of mindfulness and meditation in

16:42

some of the personal benefits hetty that you've seen, But

16:44

now I want you to take me into the empirical work.

16:46

What has the science really shown us about

16:48

how meditation changes the brain and the body.

16:51

So there's now not only studies but meta analyses,

16:53

which are studies other studies showing that mindfuls

16:55

is effective for depression, for anxiety, for substance

16:58

use disorders, and for some other disorders

17:00

as well, reducing the suffering of

17:02

people who on a day to day basis really have

17:04

a life that is full of struggle and beyond

17:07

that. And actually some of the first such on mindfulness

17:10

was on people who didn't have any form of psychopology,

17:12

but we're just stressed. People with chronic pain,

17:14

people who have normal everyday life stressors

17:17

experienced tremendous improvements with the practice

17:19

of mindfulness. And I'm not saying that mindfulness

17:21

for everyone or for every single condition out there.

17:23

And the data are actually quite strong that

17:26

if you take a mindfuls course or

17:28

learn how to meditate, that you might experience less

17:30

stress, more happiness, better well being,

17:32

and a reduction and symptoms like depression and anxiety.

17:35

And so you've shown that one of the reasons mindfulness

17:37

and meditation in particular can be so powerful

17:39

is that it's really changing the way

17:42

our brain functions on autopilot. Right

17:44

when we have people sit in a brain scanner,

17:46

typically a functional magnetic resince imaging skinner

17:48

fMRI, and don't ask them to do

17:50

anything in particular. In those moments, two

17:53

things happen. The first thing that happens is that

17:55

people's mind wander. We know that we talked about that.

17:57

And the second thing that we can see in the brain scan themselves

17:59

is that there's a network of regions that get recruited

18:01

in those moments of mind wandering, and we actually

18:04

have come to call those the default mode network. And

18:06

that network of regions is really reflective

18:08

of the default state of the mind, which is to wander

18:10

and to kind of got in the background,

18:13

right. We all know that there is it's almost like a crazy suck

18:15

buppet sitting on our shoulder, constantly commenting

18:17

on everything that's going on, where we can not

18:19

only experience that as humans, but there's also a

18:22

network or a pattern of brain activity that

18:24

is associated with that kind of default mode of the

18:26

brain. And that default mode network is

18:29

significantly affected by the practice of meditation.

18:31

So in one study in my lab, we recruited individuals

18:33

who were experienced meditators,

18:35

people who've meditated for many, many years. We

18:37

asked them in the scanner to both meditate some of

18:40

the time and also to just lie there and

18:42

do nothing in particular. And we also recruited

18:44

a very well matched group of control

18:46

participants who've never meditated before, and we

18:48

asked them to do the exact same thing, and when we

18:50

compared brain activity between the two groups, So what

18:52

we found is that those individuals who meditated

18:55

showed significant reductions and brain activity

18:57

in that default mode network and also altered

18:59

connectivity within that network, and

19:02

that was significantly different from those very well

19:04

matched controls who've never meditated. They

19:06

also importantly reported less mind

19:08

wandering. And the thing that's really cool

19:10

is that those individuals they've meditated for many,

19:13

many years, and the average number of

19:15

hours that they meditated is ten thousand hours.

19:17

That's a lot of meditation. What's really

19:19

cool is that other labs have now recruited

19:21

individuals who've meditated much less. In some

19:23

cases, people were randomized to meditate

19:26

for just three days, and again their brain

19:28

activity was measured, and what they reported is

19:30

that the group of individuals who've just meditated

19:33

for three days, we're starting to show the same changes

19:35

in network connectivity

19:38

within the default mode network that we were seeing

19:40

in the experienced meditators, suggesting that the

19:42

same pattern that we see in people who've meditated a

19:44

lot actually starts changing after much,

19:46

much less practice, which is pretty

19:48

cool because it means within a couple days of meditation,

19:51

you're really changing them out of concentration that

19:53

your brain can do kind of naturally.

19:55

Right. Yeah, So I'm really interested in what

19:57

happens to people right when they start meditating,

20:00

because I realize that while it's really interesting for everybody

20:02

to know about these expert meditators, that's a little

20:04

bit like talking about Olympic athletes,

20:06

right, who've really practiced this for a really long

20:08

time. Most people really want to know if I start meditating

20:11

tomorrow, am I get to see benefits? And the

20:13

good news is the answer is absolutely yes. We

20:15

started looking at what we call like minimal dose

20:17

right the first time that anybody's ever meditated. After

20:20

just ten minutes of meditating for the very very

20:22

first time, their cognitive performance got

20:24

just a little bit better and better than the control

20:26

group who did another activity during those ten

20:28

minutes. A caveat to these data is that, again,

20:30

across these multiple studies, we also show

20:33

that people who are the very very extreme

20:35

end of neuroticism self reported neuroticism,

20:37

which is kind of the tendency to have a negative

20:39

emotion and judge or experience a lot. Those

20:41

people actually don't benefit from the first ten minutes

20:44

of mindfulness. And this is important because one, it just

20:46

showed us that there's individual differences and not

20:48

everybody benefits to the same degree, and not everybody

20:50

benefits immediately. But it also gives us

20:52

another avenue of research, which we're working on now

20:54

to try to understand what is the minimal dose

20:56

for these people who don't benefit from just ten

20:59

minutes. Do they need to meditate twice? Do they start

21:01

benefiting after three times. We're still working

21:03

on figuring that out. But the surprising

21:05

thing about the benefits, I mean, you're talking about these benefits

21:07

in terms of concentration, they're more attentive

21:09

and so on. There's also emotional benefits

21:12

as well. Right, we get a happiness

21:14

boost from this kind of mindfulness practice.

21:16

Yeah, So there's a few different ways to think about the

21:18

happiness boost. One way to think about the happiness

21:21

boost is that it actually is directly related to the degree

21:23

to which mindfulness practice reduces mind wandering.

21:25

So there's research that was done by Matt Killingworth

21:28

and Dan Gilbert are Harvard some years ago where

21:30

they asked people to use their smartphone and they cued

21:32

them a few times a day and ask them to report, amongst

21:34

other things, what are you doing, what activity

21:36

are you engaged on? And was your mind wandering

21:39

when the que went off? And what they

21:41

discovered is that people's minds wander

21:43

a lot. In fact, people's mind were wandering

21:45

almost fifty percent of the time that they were being

21:47

cued, and during almost every

21:50

single activity, even during sex, which is pretty

21:52

remarkable, I think. And what

21:54

was worse is that they discovered that to the degree

21:56

that people's mind wandered, that was related to being

21:59

unhappy. And that suggests that if we can reduce

22:01

mind wandering, mindfulness might not only

22:03

make you more mindful, but it might also make you happier

22:05

because your mind is wandering less. Another way is by reducing

22:08

stress. Stress is not a happy experience. In

22:10

fact, for most people' stress as a very aversive experience.

22:12

And so if over time we can reduce our stress levels,

22:14

that is another way of saying they're becoming happier, they're

22:17

becoming less stressed. Another way to think about

22:19

it that we think about sometimes is that in the moment,

22:21

we've found that when people are mindful of a negative

22:23

experience. Just in the moment when they come into the lab,

22:26

we might induce a negative experience. We've done

22:28

this with either very gory images

22:31

that often make people feel quite negatively, and

22:33

we've also done this with physical pain. And

22:35

specifically, what we see in the context of pains

22:37

is that we see reductions in activity and brain

22:40

regions that are typically associated with pain and

22:42

that are sensitive to rising temperatures. And

22:44

that suggests it's not that they're just telling

22:46

us that they're feeling less negatively or that they're feeling

22:48

less pain, but we actually see a reduction even

22:50

in the neural pain signature in terms of their

22:52

brain activity, and so that really is consistent

22:54

with the idea that they're actually experiencing less pain.

22:57

I think this benefit of meditation so important

22:59

because when we think about trying to achieve

23:02

happiness, when we're thinking about trying to achieve our goal

23:04

becoming better people, often in the act of doing

23:06

that involves doing something that makes us feel

23:08

a little uncomfortable or kind of painful. You know,

23:10

we're in our New Year's resolution season, so everybody's

23:12

exercising, you know, they getting out of bed in the

23:14

morning, when the bed is all cozy and stuff that's

23:17

kind of uncomfortable. And the claim is that through

23:19

this practice of being mindful of that discomfort,

23:21

you can kind of magically overcome it,

23:23

or at least kind of be with it. Yeah. I love

23:25

that you're saying magically, because even to me, sometimes

23:28

the benefits of the fact is feel like magic,

23:30

and I think it's actually not magic at all, in

23:32

the sense that if you can learn

23:34

to tolerate the fact that your mind does

23:37

sometimes things that are unexpected and

23:39

often aversive, over and over, and

23:42

you learn to accept it, and you learn to let it go and

23:44

move on. And that action of letting

23:46

go of something that happened that's unpleasant and moving on

23:48

is exactly what we need to do what you're describing, right,

23:50

to tolerate the fact that it's really not

23:53

fun to wake up under hour earlier to go

23:55

running, or it's really not fun to go

23:57

to the gym and lift these really heavy weights, or

24:00

any kind of practice right, not smoking

24:02

anymore, feeling withdrawal symptoms.

24:04

All of these things that we might do in our New Year's resolution,

24:06

they require us to tolerate some discomfort around

24:09

on these new behaviors. That we're trying to acquire. And

24:11

if we learn by practicing mindfulness to

24:13

tolerate our discomfort, we can then apply

24:15

it to all of these other elements in life that we

24:17

might want to improve. And this is a practice that

24:19

you and others have called urge surfing. I love

24:21

this term. So what is urge surfing? So Urge

24:23

surfing is a phrase that's often used

24:25

in the context of substances disorders to describe

24:28

using the mindful skill in the presence of urges

24:31

or craving, and craving is an incredibly

24:33

common experience, right, So if you've

24:35

ever experienced craving for any thing, please clap

24:37

your hands. I

24:41

mean, we won't ask you what you're craving because that could

24:43

get us in trouble. So everybody

24:45

here was clapping their hands. And this is consistent with very

24:48

large scale epidemological studies that show that pretty

24:50

much ninety nine percent of individuals report that they

24:52

crave something sometimes. Craving is an

24:54

incredibly common experience. We all know what it feels

24:56

like. And the idea of the urge surfing exercise

24:59

is that you just sit there and notice

25:01

the craving. And actually what you might

25:03

notice is that craving has an arc

25:05

like most emotions, where it will rise, it

25:07

will reach a peak, and at some point it will actually

25:10

start coming down by itself. And that in

25:12

noticing and accepting the craving as it is,

25:15

we might notice it over time, the craving itself

25:17

actually comes down, and even in the moment we

25:19

might notice it, it it comes down. And in my lab,

25:21

we've done these kinds of studies, especially with cigarette

25:23

smokers and with food, where we ask people we actually

25:26

induce craving. So you

25:28

guys all know how people might induce craving

25:30

for food, right, So this is what food ads are all

25:32

about. We show you a picture of a yummy burger

25:35

and immediately go na, looks yummy.

25:37

I want to have that, And then you might actually

25:39

go and get the burger. And so we do

25:41

something like that in my lab, where we show people

25:44

pictures of food, or we show if their cigarette smokers,

25:46

we show them pictures of other people smoking. And

25:48

we know that this increases people's craving. And

25:50

then we might ask them to use one of a variety

25:53

of strategies. One of them might be mindfulness. So

25:55

we might ask them to notice and accept

25:57

their experience exactly as it is, And what

25:59

we see when we do this is that people report

26:01

less craving when they're just noticing and accepting the

26:04

sensation as it is, and we see a reduction

26:06

in brain activity and regions that are associated with craving,

26:08

suggesting that even by bringing mindfulness

26:11

and acceptance to the moment of craving, we

26:13

might already experience some improvement. I

26:15

love this this phase of like, can we

26:17

just notice the experience exactly

26:20

the way is and just get through it? I mean, I think that's

26:22

so useful for everything from the discomfort

26:24

that you feel when you're trying to do you know, your

26:26

new goal, or what you experience

26:28

when you're anxious about a minus or anxious about

26:30

getting into classes, which for listeners at home, this

26:32

is what my Yale students are going through right now. They're trying to get into

26:34

classes. They're trying to get into Hetty's class, and they're not able

26:37

to get in. So it's very sad. But the idea is

26:39

just can I sit with this? Can

26:42

I just be okay with this feeling? We often encourage

26:44

our participants who are not trained in mindfulness when they

26:46

come into these studies to really just ask themselves,

26:48

can I just be okay with this moment? Can I

26:50

just be okay with this feeling exactly as

26:52

it is? And the idea is that by actually

26:55

asking yourself if you can be okay with it, you

26:57

actually open yourself up to doing something

26:59

more useful in the next moment. So

27:01

for our listeners and for the folks in the audience here

27:03

who want to get going with this, you know what

27:05

recommendations do you have for folks who want to get

27:08

started? Try it right now, Take a moment right

27:10

now and see whether you can practice a little

27:12

bit of this. And if you want to kick up

27:14

the intensity of this practice, you might think about something

27:16

that's currently really upsetting you, or some stress

27:18

so that you have in your life, and see if you can

27:20

just notice the experience of stress and just let that

27:22

be. We're not saying that you're going to let the situation

27:25

be exactly as it is. We're just asking about the

27:27

feelings that you already have. Can you just let

27:29

this feeling be here? And over time

27:31

is especially as you get more practice, you

27:33

might notice as you do this, your sensation of stress

27:36

about this experience is coming down just a little

27:38

bit. And overtime it might start coming down quite

27:40

a bit. The second invitation is to really start

27:42

making this a daily practice, or at least a

27:44

frequent practice, something that you might allow

27:46

yourself to do for five minutes or ten minutes a day

27:49

for a period, and then if you start

27:51

noticing changes, maybe, or if you are just

27:53

really motivated, start doing it for longer.

27:55

I think that over time, the idea is not that you're necessarily

27:57

going to meditate an hour a day for the rest of your life,

28:00

but that you will do it until you start noticing

28:03

the benefits that you yourself might be

28:05

experiencing, and then you will actually

28:07

feel spontaneously motivated or easically

28:09

motivated to do it more and more. And I think I've

28:11

now seen it with students and friends and

28:13

other people in my life who've tried the practice,

28:16

maybe found it a little bit annoying at first, and

28:18

then after a while notice that it's actually been really

28:20

transformative. It's such a wonderful way to

28:22

kind of do some like gymnastics

28:25

with your mind, or like bring your mind to the gym.

28:27

I wanted to end with the sort of more of a philosophical

28:29

question. I feel like as a society we're more distracted

28:32

than ever, and in some ways we're more kind of cravy

28:34

than ever for all kinds of things. Do you think

28:36

understanding the science of this stuff is going to make

28:38

us happier, like we can claim back the

28:40

present moment and stop all this craving. I

28:43

guess my hope is that everybody

28:45

who might have even a little bit of curiosity

28:47

will try it at least once, and maybe even

28:49

twice, with the hope that even if

28:51

it will bestow just a little bit of benefit

28:53

to you, that you would have an opportunity to try it.

28:56

And of course my hope is that we all will together

28:58

and make a world that is just a little kinder and a little

29:00

bit more mindful. Everyone, can you please join

29:02

me in thanking doctor Hetty Cooper

29:04

for a fa Thank

29:10

you boys for coming and really appreciate it. The

29:28

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan

29:31

Dilley. The show was mastered by Evan

29:33

Fiola and our original music was composed

29:35

by Zachary Silver. Special

29:38

thanks to Ben Davis, Mia Lavelle, Julia

29:40

Barton, Carle mcgliori, Heather Fain,

29:42

Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and

29:45

Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is

29:47

brought to you by Pushkin Industries.