Interview: Relaxation Response with Peg Baim, MS RN

I decided that this was the wave of the future for medicine. So it was so profound that it launched me into a completely different career track. I have to say it was, and this is going to sound embellished, but it's sincere, it was a miracle for me.

From Mind Body Space, it's RxChillPill, a show about science-backed resilience skills and powerful stress management tools to make you the boss of your own brain. Brain. I'm your host, Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a physician specializing in mind-body medicine and a mom of two amazing kids. There are three different kinds of episodes: one where I interview fascinating people and experts who share resilience tips for the mind, body, and space; another where you'll find short meditations you can do anywhere, anytime to get your daily dose of the relaxation response, the complete opposite of the stress response; In the third type, you'll get science-backed resilience boosters and antidotes to stress that really work, so you can tap into your own brain superpowers and apply liberally in your daily life. This episode was recorded live, and I apologize, the first 10 minutes I sound like I'm underwater and very far away. Stick around, it gets much better, and this is an amazing episode. I am so excited to introduce today's guest, Peg Baim. She has a very special place in my heart. I've had a few mentors in my life and a handful of people who really helped me beyond measure to have that courage to make monumental changes in my life, and Peg is one of them. I remember I found the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine on the Harvard Medical School Continuing Medical Education site almost a decade ago, and Peg was the person I spoke to about their training program. I don't think I'd even heard of the field at the time, but the course description deeply resonated with me. Around that time, I'd lost my best friend and my mother in the same year, so clearly I was searching for something. And I remember with gratitude Peg's open honesty about the obstacles to non-pharmacological paths for a physician like me, and she was honest about it not being well reimbursed. And so it was not part of the mainstream care at that point. And our medical colleagues were still not 100% convinced about the legitimacy of mind-body medicine in the medical field proper. Even knowing all this, I was still fascinated, and I went up to Boston, leaving my kids for one of the very few handful of times. And that's saying a lot because I'm with my kids all the time and Maybe too much. A little bit of separation anxiety there, at least when they were little, on my part and theirs. When I got to the conference, I was so inspired by Dr. Benson, who gave the opening lecture and led us through the relaxation response, a physiologic response that he coined in a laboratory at Harvard Medical School, which is the exact opposite of the stress response in our bodies. He had us just focus on a word or phrase with an open, non-judgmental attitude for about 10 minutes. I've recorded his method of eliciting the relaxation response in another podcast, so I invite you to listen and use it to get your daily dose of relaxation response. So just focusing on a word or phrase with an open, nonjudgmental attitude for about 10 minutes twice a day, or 20 minutes at a time. So Dr. Benson says that this is one of the many ways we can elicit the relaxation response. The conference and the idea of staying well through non-pharmacologic lifestyle choices made so much more sense to me than anything else that we did in traditional medicine, where we learned to diagnose and treat disease once it had already advanced enough that a definitive reimbursable diagnosis could be made, and often at a disease stage where we need medication and surgery. Now don't get me wrong, I love modern medicine and surgery. It has definitely saved lives of loved ones. But if I have a choice, I would definitely take that, that ounce of prevention over the pound of cure. So as you can imagine, I was hooked. Peg's lecture, I still remember it clearly to this day, was nothing short of awesome. I went into additional training with her and some of the staff at the center and eventually earned certification to teach the program that Peg co-authored, the SMART program. Juna Bobby MD, Stress Management and Resilience Training. I resigned from my position as an attending radiologist and started teaching mind-body medicine. I have to say that it transformed my personal life in powerful ways, and it's not too far-fetched to say that mind-body medicine may have even saved my life in many ways. So since then, meditation is now recognized as generally good for our health and complementary and alternative medicine is officially recognized by many healthcare providers. And there's a National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health officially recognized by the National Institute of Health. And there is now the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the Physician Committee of Responsible Medicine that are further solidifying a place in traditional settings for non-pharmaceutical, non-surgical treatments. The Benson Henry Institute program has grown so much so that the most recent conference I went to in the fall of 2019 was held in the huge ballroom at Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, and it was happily overflowing with doctors and healthcare providers from all over the world. Peg is the clinical director of the Center for Training at the Benson Henry Institute, where she has earned international recognition as a leading educator and lecturer in the field of mind-body medicine. She is the director of the Stress Management and Resiliency Training SMART program and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts General Institute for Health Professions, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. Peg is a researcher and clinician who created innovative programs for patients and healthcare providers. So without further ado, my interview with one of my favorite people in the world, Peg Bame.

Hi, Peg!

Hi, Juna!

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, I love Peg! And she loves Juna. This is great.

I met you 10 years ago. You were one of the original people there, right?

Well, I wasn't the first crew. I was sort of the second tier that came in. But I was part of the first crew in that I was a patient. That's how I actually became affiliated with what is now the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General. It started years ago in Boston at Beth Israel Medical Center. And that's where they started to run these clinical programs. They were, at the time, 12 weeks 2.5 hours a week, with one of those weeks being a half-day session. And my friend would talk about all the anxiety that I had.

Your husband would talk to who about all the anxiety?

Herb Benson, who was—

He was colleagues with your husband?

He was. Herb Benson was the cardiologist that started the Mind Body Institute at Beth Israel Hospital. And my husband at the time was a cardiologist working at Beth Israel. So they were colleagues, and in that relationship, my husband would complain about all the anxiety that I had. Your ex-husband, right? He's deceased now. It's probably easier to say former husband than ex, but in any event— So he would come to work and he would complain to his buddy? Yeah, well, yeah, you could put it that way, about his wife's anxiety. Which, you know, if you've ever lived with anybody's anxiety, it's no day at the park, right? It's not easy. To be fair to him and her, Benson kept saying to him, "You just gotta get her into one of our programs." So you had anxiety in what sense?

Were you diagnosed?

You know, I've never been officially diagnosed, and I've never had it to the level I've ever had to take a medication for it. Now that we treat I see so many patients with anxiety and depression. I just thank God for, you know, the medical interventions that we have for some of these folks. But I had pretty severe social anxiety. So the way I could cope with that would just be to avoid social situations. And that was, again, hard for my husband, who had a lot of social engagements. So having had pretty significant social anxiety from the age of 13, I would always have a hard time in these social situations. Even through nursing school, you know, I said 12 words. I mean, it was really remarkable. In fact, after I got through this and I was giving a lot of lectures locally, one of my classmates from nursing school came up to me. She's like, "Are you?" And she had said my maiden name. She goes, "Because I can't believe you're the same person." That's how dramatic the social anxiety was compared to once it got treated.

Meet your husband and get married when you had such social anxiety?

Was he— Well, I didn't meet him socially. I tend not to meet people socially. I meet people at work, like, like I met you at work, right? And so I'm always comfortable at work. And so I was an oncology nurse at Stanford, and my former husband at the time was an intern there.

In California?

Yeah.

I didn't realize that.

Yep, that's where we met.

Okay, but you didn't grow up there, right?

No, I grew up in Massachusetts, but then when I graduated from school, I went out west. And then we dated on and off for 6 years, and then he took a job at Beth Israel in Boston. And so then we ended up coming back to this area, which was thrilling for my parents because then, right, I was back home, which was great. So the social anxiety was crippling in a way, had an impact on our relationship for sure. In complaining about me to Herb Benson, who was running the Mind Body Institute at the time, Herb just kept saying, "Really? The program will help her. The program will help her." I was really desperate because I will backtrack for a second and say I would have gone on medication. Many years ago, I had pulled a muscle in my back, and at the time, we didn't have a lot of medications for anxiety. We had Valium.

Valium.

And they gave— I used to sneak some of my mother's Valium if I had to go out, and I loved it. That's what they gave my mother.

That's definitely a dip.

Well, my mother never got addicted to it. I have to say, I remember the first time I took a Valium, I just thought, is this how other people feel? This is heaven. And when I pulled my back muscle, they gave me Valium, and on a Friday, 5 milligrams relaxed me, but by Sunday, 20 milligrams relaxed me. And I realized, you know, we know in medicine tachyphylaxis I had built such a resistance to the drug, I thought if I was ever going to treat my anxiety with Valium, who was going to give me 100mg of Valium every day? And you could survive that, right? Exactly, exactly. So I was desperate. I mean, maybe 2 or 3 times I would take my mother's Valium, you know, coming home and visiting. There were times that I had to go out socially, but I do know my mother had Valium. I do know there are a few times that I took it, and I do remember just saying, This is awesome, right? And then it was, it was so corrective, but I realized when they did prescribe it for me when I had that muscle pull, and that's when I was a nurse actually in California, that's when I realized, you know, medication, at least for the drugs we had then, was never going to be a long-term solution.

Because you already knew that you would have to up the dose.

Exactly.

But it was so acceptable back then. 'cause I remember my mom like almost offering it to me when I was— I have a distinct memory of watching a plane crash on TV and getting very anxious about it, and my mother offered it to me. I think it's very interesting.

How old were you?

I guess I was in high school.

Yeah, wow.

And I do remember taking maybe half a dose once here or there and thinking, wow, this is really relaxing.

Yeah.

But I never got hooked on it. You were smart to recognize that?

Well, I never had access to it, right? And I snuck it from my mother. It's not as if she ever just said, "Here, honey, try this, this controlled substance that I'm giving you." It was very acceptable at that time. Yes.

I mean, everybody's mom prescribed it.

Yeah, that, that's true. Well, you know, again, right? If you knew better, you would have done better. So we didn't know better at the time.

So when her Herb told your husband, how long had he been doing it at that point, Dr.

Benson?

So I think maybe about 3 or 4 years.

Okay, and he said this will really help Peg.

Exactly.

And so you went into the program, it was a 12-week program at that point?

Yes, yeah.

Okay, and so you said I'll try anything, is that—

Well, I was desperate and, and you know, it was a good endorsement, right? And, and I thought—

I mean, just from Mass General.

What do I have to lose, right? And so I went into the program, and I have to say it was— and this is gonna sound embellished, but it's sincere— it was a miracle for me. By the end of that program, for the first time in my adult life, since the age of 13 really, I felt I could regulate this anxiety.

Wow.

And it was so stunning to me At the time, I was a nurse working in medicine, critical care medicine, and I decided that this was the wave of the future for medicine, that I left critical care nursing and I went back to school just to study in the discipline, which is behavioral medicine at the time. It then has this subcategory now, this whole new division, which is mind-body medicine. So it was so profound that it launched me into a completely different career track.

Wow. Do you remember when you first came?

I can remember even the patients in the group. Traumatic experience or a dramatically uplifting experience, how the brain will really hold on to those.

Uh-huh.

So it's vivid.

So you walk in, you don't know anything about Mind-Body Medicine. At the time, that was not really talked about in hospitals, right?

Right.

What were you expecting?

Well, I had always been interested in meditation, and I was at the time 33 years old, and I had been interested in meditation ever since I was in high school, and the TM community was big in Boston when I was going to school, you know, after high school, and so it's not as if the word meditation or meditation was foreign was foreign to me, but I had never had a teacher in a sense, and really the discipline of a structured class and a daily practice.

I see.

And that's what happened at the Mind Body Program, is that meditation as a physiologic technique was taught to us. It was explained as a physiology that was countered to stress physiology, which Herb Benson had named that physiology the relaxation response. And so my two worlds were coming together. As a nurse, I was very medically oriented with a scientific underpinning as a foundation. And now meditation, which was something I dabbled in, was beginning to have a scientific foundation. And it was used as a healing modality, which really suited me as a nurse.

And this was in the '90s?

This was, um, in the '80s.

And was that acceptable at the time? Was it something that— you said meditation was something that you grew up with.

I, I grew up with, um, parents that were very spiritually oriented.

Okay.

Um, my mother was highly intuitive, so we always read books about Edgar Cayce. There was always discussions about spirituality and what we would call in the '70s the New Age movement. So that was always a sort of a conversation and something that was part of my lifestyle. But now at the Mind Body Institute at Beth Israel, it was becoming merged with science.

Okay.

And used as a medicine. So to speak.

The first class, they introduce you to meditation?

Yes, they talk about the physiology of meditation as the relaxation response that Herb Benson had described in his research. They were teaching us techniques, and they were also teaching us spiritual principles.

Oh.

Because the people who were working at the institute, they were all very spiritual people. Spiritually oriented at the time. It was really under all the research on coping.

Okay.

So that research at the time was how to be an effective coper, because if you were an effective coper, which was a discipline under behavioral medicine that was linked to cognitive reappraisal, your brain would recognize a stress response as a threat, your body would turn on a physiology, and now you had to cope with that stress. And there was a lot of research now as how to have people become effective copers so they could turn off the stress response. And so a lot of that coping was really about cognitive therapy and positive psychology.

Mm-hmm.

But it was really about coping, problem-solving, how to be a good problem solver. If it was something that was threatening that you couldn't solve, solve the problem of it, how do you accept it?

And so you either problem solve or accept.

Exactly. Or the complexity of some stressful situations, you had to do a little bit of both, and you had to have a lot of finesse to know how to use those.

And did you feel the benefits right away?

Like, yes.

So the first class, you said, this is for me.

I did. It was— first of all, I loved what I was listening to. Okay, so I was buying into it. Steve Maurer, he was a licensed mental health provider.

Okay.

The people that were the clinicians— Herb was the scientist— the people who were giving direct care, they all had their own spiritual practice, so they all had their own meditation practice.

And so they taught you all different types of meditation?

There was an eclectic approach to to meditation, but Herb had distilled all those different approaches down to just 2 or 3 simple techniques. And that was a confusion in the early years. People thought the relaxation response was a technique as opposed to a physiology. But many meditation techniques will render that same physiology.

So for those listening out there, You're saying that the relaxation response is actually just physiology that we're describing that could be brought on by any—

whatever.

Well, it has to meet certain criteria. Mindfulness, a lot of yoga practices, you know, a lot of practices under Sufism, contemplation, which is often ascribed to Christianity. There are common attitudes that occur under those different disciplines that lead to the same physiology, which is the relaxation response. And Herb described them, which is you need to have sustained focus for your attention.

Mm-hmm.

And you also need to have a receptive, open attitude.

Mm-hmm.

Now, in the early years of Herb's research, you know, there were just a handful of studies every few years that were looking at this physiology. Now, last year there were over 400 studies on meditation, and now we have genomics, we have neural imaging, And so now we're really understanding this physiology on a much deeper level. At the time Herb Benson was identifying this physiology, actually at Harvard Medical School, a few doors down where Walter Cannon had identified the stress response. And so instead of your blood pressure going up, your heart rate going up, all these metabolic indices going up, Herb discovered, wow, when people are focusing and moving into this receptive attitude, which, by the way, he discovered because he was, he was measuring these physiologic responses in individuals that were— these were yogis of the TM community. They were actually eliciting changes in their blood pressure. Blood pressure went down, oxygen consumption went down. And so Herb named the physiology the relaxation response because what he was saying was it was a direct counter to what Walter Cannon had described as the stress response.

Mm-hmm. And, um, but he also studied many other different kinds of—

Well, that's what Herb did. Techniques? He, he started to—

Do you call them techniques? Well, I—

What word would you use? I think techniques is the word toujours.

Okay.

You know, meditation methods was great because it was alliteration, but they're not really methods, so they're techniques. But it does appear that just two conditions do have to be met no matter what technique you're using. The mindfulness community often refer to them as focused attention and open monitoring. So there's, you know, we're very creative as a species. So we see things and name things in different ways. But it is fascinating to see you do have to practice regulating your attention until your brain is able to sustain attention. And so there are lots of different ways you can practice regulating and sustaining your attention, and so those open up to a lot of different techniques.

And for you, how does it— how is it different from, let's say, somebody studying? Let's say they're focused on studying chemistry, let's say.

That's a great question. So now we understand that there's a lot of different network systems that are operating when the brain is doing different activities. About 10 years ago, there was a network system of the brain that's engaged whenever we're thinking.

So you're talking about the default mode network?

Exactly. The default mode network, it's a lot of different regions within the brain that are communicating with each other that allow us to be mentally engaged which is studying, reading, when the mind is wandering off in its own little world of processing on a cognitive level that's akin to thinking, and basically just plain old, you know, thinking. And now what we understand is that meditation techniques that elicit the relaxation response are actually guiding your brain into two other brain functions, not under the influence of the default mode network, but under the influence of different brain activity, which is in a sense interoceptive awareness and proprioceptive awareness. And as it turns out, looking at those brain regions, if you're operating on only under those and the default mode network is off, That's exactly where everybody's brain is when they're quote-unquote meditating.

Uh-huh. You're talking about mainly the senses, right? Using your senses.

Exactly, exactly.

Okay.

So you're not thinking.

You have to break your everyday train of thought. That's what Dr. Benson says.

Isn't that brilliant? He would just say— and that was a way in the early years that he would witness that people weren't thinking. And so thinking, he said ordinary consciousness is thinking, and that's breaking the train of everyday thought.

But we're not talking about emptying your mind of thoughts, because a lot of people have this question like, "I can't stop thinking," and they feel like they can't meditate because they can't stop thinking. But we're not talking about stopping thinking or emptying your—

Well, it's putting the cart in front of the horse when you say that.

Okay.

Because now that we understand this is all neural and synaptic plasticity, this is all brain activity, that if you're very thinky, let's say, you're living in an environment, as we are, that are inviting the brain to be in the default mode network, then the default mode network develops. And we're not living in an activity that that invites people to simply be interoceptive or proprioceptive. And so what happens is that if you want to be able to just be focused and receptive, which we could just say that's simply being aware and experiencing, then you do have to have techniques that allow you to build your interoceptive and proprioceptive networks to the degree where your brain can then turn off the default mode network.

Mm-hmm.

So once you're able to do that, and the research now that's been accumulating over the last 20 years has given evidence that the dose-response— how much do we have to practice regulating and sustaining attention which is our interoceptive and proprioceptive networks, to the degree to which the brain then can hang out there and turn off the default mode network. And it looks to be a practice of about 20 minutes, once or twice a day.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe it takes 5 to 8 weeks for many people.

Mm-hmm.

We're all different, right? So some people sooner, some people a little later. But because we've understood now that the brain is malleable, We now understand that the brain makes new neurons in certain regions of the brain and can make new connections among these neurons. We understand that when you practice certain brain activities, those activities develop. And that's what meditation techniques are.

So could this happen if you're standing outside in the woods as much as it could happen if you're sitting on a mat?

Well, you know, we just live a few miles away right now from Walden Pond. Oh, I've been there. It's beautiful. Well, you know, I mean, we could really talk about, you know, sort of the mystical aspects of that movement, right?

Feeling the breeze on your face or hearing the leaves on the trees. Is that what you're referring to as well?

Focused and receptive.

Okay.

That's what— that is exactly what was happening. Nature is very captivating, right? Nature holds our attention. It's very dynamic. Birds are singing, you know, the lake is moving. Critters are crawling around. And so in that environment that's also beautiful, your brain actually is really prone to that interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness, and the brain's thinking activity begins to decrease.

And so you have to be present, like, what if— moment to moment, right?

Exactly, exactly.

That's Interesting. I never really thought about it that way.

Lots of ways to really— and then once they're cultivated, your brain actually decreases thinking under your conscious will.

Okay. And so you're saying you can go inside, as in do a body scan, for example, focus on different parts of your body, as well as—

Well, that's a technique, isn't it?

Yes.

So the body scan is one of the ways in which you're really increasing proprioceptive and interoceptive awareness. I'm feeling, you know, maybe the temperature on my skin, or I'm feeling the position of my body right now, and I might be feeling, you know, that I might be a little hungry, or I might even be feeling a particular emotional, or that kind of emotional balanced feeling, right? Maybe I'm feeling a little I feel sorrowful right now. That's all that interoceptive awareness. Now I could start thinking about how I'm feeling, and that's the default mode network.

But if there's a sorrow, isn't there a thought associated with that?

No, that's interoceptive. So Buddha, right, who probably had a fantastic meditation practice, right? You know, Buddha—

Yeah, but he had to leave his family.

Well, well, that's right. He had to get into a place where he could be free of all that the environmental stimulation for thinking. Yeah, right.

So not really an option for you or I sometimes, right?

Oh, that's right.

Two children.

That's true. But I did have a bathroom, and I always knew I could close that door and sit in that tub and I could be interceptive. That's awesome. That was— that was— it was— some people called it an escape, right? It was— it was a great way to build my skill when the—

when the kids were in the bathtub or something where you you have that feeling of the water and the sensation of those temperature.

Isn't that true? And those were the days of Calgon Take Me Away, so the fragrance was always there.

So all the senses.

Exactly. You'd have a candle going sometimes. Absolutely.

So the bathroom.

And you'd hear the running water, so if the kids were, you know, sort of bickering down the hall, you know, you were protected from all that.

So all the pond and the bathroom.

That's right. But now we understand why did those environments work.

Yeah.

It was because it invited the senses, the awareness of moment-to-moment self-awareness. And when you're in that brain activity, you're not in the default mode network, which was a different brain activity.

So I just want to pull you back to that first 12 weeks Now the course is 8 weeks.

Yes.

But it has the intake and the check-in, so that's really effective. Like 11 weeks, right?

We say now that it's kind of an advanced program now.

Okay.

Because there's a lot of science in it. We always had individual visits to enter into the program. Everyone in that group as a patient participant was a known quantity to the group leader.

And so you're sitting in this 12-week course. Can you describe that to me?

We were always taught a technique on how to meditate, and very similar to the ways in which we do it now, because these techniques are really, you know, they're ancient techniques. So there was nothing new under the sun. We had to go to these different wisdom traditions. So there was contemplation, there was insight, there was body scan, there was mindfulness. There were all the techniques were in there from its inception. And don't forget the people that were running the program in the early years, they all had exposure to a lot of different wisdom traditions, meditation techniques, and they all had their own practices. And now that we understand that the different techniques lead you to the same place, they were all using the same language. Every week—

Dr. Benson did have medical students count down from 10 to 1, right? Was that—

that was—

that could be a technique.

Uh, yeah, that's one of his favorite stories where the Harvard medical students couldn't hold their attention long enough to sequence down from 10 to 1. And so he said, well, just focus on the number 1. And people thought, you know, the oneness of the universe. And Herb's like, no, because the medical students could only count to 1, right? But you see, it was just focusing.

So there are many ways to get there.

Absolutely.

And for you, what is your practice to get there?

Right now, what's exciting is that when you look at the research done on coping and positivity— positivity heals and protects, right? You know, just the cultivation of positive emotions is a great way to use your brain and experience yourself and your life. But It also is a great buffer of the stress response. So now when you look at the, the recent research where we're understanding brain activity and its association with positive emotions, we're understanding the stress system more, and interoceptive awareness. Now I think what's very exciting is you could focus on any positive human quality and you actually awaken and arouse that quality within you. So if you have a quality, and let's say that quality is patience. Now if you've ever felt patience, then we know that has to be mapped in the brain. There has to be neural correlates, right? There has to be neural substrates for a human, as our species is across the board, to be able to have the capacity to interoceptively experience patience.

Mm-hmm.

Now the brain, in its infinite intelligence, knows the label given those neural substrates. So you could merely focus on the word patience.

Mm-hmm.

And typically within 17 to 30 seconds, if you can sustain focus that long, which is something, it's a brain activity you have to develop. If you've practiced focusing your attention, you build the ability to sustain attention. Now let's say, I'd like to be patient today.

Mm-hmm.

And if I focus on patience, and I can sustain that focus, within 30 seconds I begin to, and this is what I think is exciting. The mystics used to say, "You awaken and arouse the quality within you." Now the neuroscientists say, "You bring that experience online." So the two worlds are merging.

So it's different language, different vocabulary, but the same.

When you focus, right, whatever you focus on is what you bring into your experience. And so that's a great way—

And the science is mapping it out because now we can actually witness it, see it.

And that's some of the early research on the brain mapping of emotion that we're extrapolating now, right? Based on our anecdotal evidence that when we're focusing on these qualities, by golly, we begin to feel them. And that's the meditation technique that's been around, again, for centuries, and that's contemplation. It's that sustained focus. Whatever I want to know more deeply, I will focus on that, and my brain begins to unpack it, brings the awareness of that into my experience.

Mm-hmm.

And so over those 12 initial weeks, all these different techniques, I'm starting to feel not anxiety. I'm starting to feel confidence. I'm starting to feel 'balanced,' you know? I'm starting to feel sort of my own ability to regulate my own physiology, which is power. And then there's insight meditation. Now, I remembered one of the meditations that they taught us was called the Safe Place Imagery. And you're listening to all these uplifting words, and they're guiding you to be focused and receptive. You know, "Notice where you are. Is it a place where you're comfortable? Is it a place where you're alert?" And so they're using language that invites you not to be thinking but to simply be and experience. I asked in that meditation what would heal my anxiety, and what I received from my brain was the word "power." Then I asked, "How do I learn power?" And my brain said, "Marcus Aurelius." Now, I must admit, I only survived 2 years of Latin in high school, and I knew the name Marcus Aurelius, but that's all I knew.

Wow!

Now, somehow or other, my brain must have caught a commercial or walked walking through Barnes Noble, right? All this big store.

This was all pre-Google too, right?

It was. So we're walking through these bookstores. There had just come out a biography on Marcus Aurelius. Oh. And quite frankly, Marcus Aurelius was a human being from history who had manifested on a very deep level this human quality: power. Power is influence, and it's one of the prime antidotes of anxiety. Anxiety is, "I'm not safe, I'm not in control." We understood that from cognitive science. Now we're understanding one of the antidotes is, "Okay, I don't have control," which is very all or nothing, but I have influence, and that's power.

Over my own mind.

Well, over— Or a situation. That's right. Over me.

You have power over how you're going to react to the situation.

I have influence, exactly.

So locus of control.

But isn't it— that's right.

Okay.

But isn't that amazing that that's something I received in a non-thinking state of mind? So you're meditating and all of a sudden you just go out and buy this book. You ask the brain a question.

And you go and buy his book?

And then I'm walking in Barnes Noble, you know, soon thereafter, and there I see this book.

So you pick it up.

Of course I'm gonna pick it up! And I start to read it and I start to realize, oh my goodness, what good information.

And I've seen some of his quotes on your slides, right?

Well, what's fascinating is that now we understand, you know, the brain's job is to absorb data.

Yes.

The brain's job now is to be an organ of predictive regulation.

Yes.

The brain's job— the stress response is a signal to adapt. But the brain, if you're intelligent, you take in a lot of information, the brain ends up with a lot of data. And then when you stop thinking, you ask the brain a question, it has to take the data, suss it out, and give you the best answer it can come up with to absolutely guide you through predictive regulation to adapt. So when I asked the brain, what do I do with this anxiety, which is my stress response, the best of my brain's ability had data, probably from those 2 years that I took Latin, Marcus Aurelius must have shown up, right? And there it was in the brain. Isn't that extraordinary?

Yeah, your brain knows, and you have to sit there and be patient.

Now there are some experiences that we have in meditation that we don't quite understand how the brain knows that.

Okay.

Maybe, you know, this epigenetics, maybe the brain is throughout human evolution, that it collects intelligence. There are some experiences that those of us who meditate have that is magnificent that the neuroscience hasn't quite been able to figure out as yet. But we've come a long way.

But for you, during those 12 weeks, somehow the way that it was presented to to you with the science.

I was meditating. I was starting to ask my brain questions. I was getting insight. I was desperate to heal my anxiety, so I was disciplined in my practices that they were teaching me. And every week I felt more and more like myself.

Wow.

To the end of that 12 weeks, I was sold.

Wow.

I was leaving critical care nursing immediately. I was going back to school and I was going to study in this field.

Wow. So then you studied the field and you came back as—

I'm a nurse, so I actually came back at the time as a clinical nurse specialist in behavioral medicine. My clinical rotation was at the Mind Body Medical Institute. I was there for a year as a student building my skill, and as it turned out, when I graduated, someone was leaving the institute and I had been trained there as a student for a year. I was hired. Awesome.

And you've been there ever since?

Uh, they'll have to carry me out.

How many years now?

Well, I began my official employment there in 1990, so it's been 30 years.

Wow. And you definitely inspired me. You were the one who, um, inspired me to change track into mind-body medicine. Since, yes, after I met you and had intensives with you. Yeah, I remember this particular practice you did changed my life, that core belief exercise where you took me down the path of overreaction and what was at the root of the overreaction.

That's actually Aaron Beck and David Burns technique from, from CBT, right? The origins of CBT.

I told you about how Upset I would get when my husband burnt toast.

Yes, yes, we would say that's an overreaction.

Yes.

So all of our stress response, on some level, these really grand overreactions are reflections of some of our deepest fears, right?

Yes. So he used to burn toast, and I had told him multiple times, please, I can't stand the smell of burnt toast. And the fact that he kept doing it meant to me so deep down that he didn't care, right? So that's how it spiraled down into that.

Isn't that—

yes, yeah, that he didn't care about me and that's why he was burning toast, right? Right. So when you showed that to me, that was a revelation. I remember that moment.

That's a breakthrough. Yes, isn't it?

You realize that everyone's stress response is, is really their stress response, you know?

I mean, it's not to say that people can't mistreat us and we're gonna have a stress response to that, but then you have to have an adaptive response to that.

Uh-huh.

But we take everybody's mistakes, right, personally.

Yeah.

And you start to begin to own your own stress response. It's like if somebody's making a mistake in front of me, let's say they don't treat us well, then if we are regulating our own stress response, we would understand Hey, if they knew better, they'd do better, right? Which is part of that nonjudgmental awareness, the part of the brain that is compassion that develops under meditation.

And also you might know that they're triggering you about something you're upset about.

If they're behaving in a way that's out of balance, then that's their stress response.

Yes, but it could also trigger your stress response.

Well, I think that's—

Or anachronistic response.

I mean, being someone who's divorced, I think a common reason to divorce is that their stress response triggers your stress response, which triggers their stress response, which triggers their stress response, and the beat goes on. And rather than helping each other heal and grow and develop, you know, these bad marriages is that, you know, for a variety of reasons, you can't hold your balance in the midst of the other's imbalance.

I see.

And so you just keep triggering each other's imbalances.

So let me ask you about that. Because now you've been in this field for over 30 years and obviously have a deep meditation practice, and you also know all of the science. Does that keep you immune from being triggered?

No, of course not. Of course not. You know, I often like to say to patients, you know, we're a young species, you know, we're not enlightened, you know. And you've got to love the stress response, right? I mean, the stress response is a way to get our attention. And it's just that it's never intended to be a physiology to get stuck in, because the more your brain is exposed to the stress response, the more likely your brain is going to go into the stress response. And so that's when you just see that we don't treat each other very well, that we, you know, people are still growing up under these influences of poverty or under abuse and one other one fashion or another, you realize, you know, our brains are very vulnerable, that the more you keep pinging the stress response, the more the brain stress response develops, to the point where we develop maladaptive behaviors and to try to protect ourselves from that stress response. But the brain still has a very low threshold to turn on stress, and the brain becomes very inefficient at turning off stress when no longer needed. So now we're understanding why do we have to exercise, why do we have to get good sleep, what's so great about a healthy diet, why should we meditate, why do we have to cultivate positive emotions. These are absolutely all behaviors now that we understand are regulating and changing the body's stress response. So instead of the brain being remodeled under stress, where we're all victims, right? We're all egocentric. We're actually— these are attitudes and behaviors that develop the brain's adaptive resources, and then we become more physiologically balanced, more positive, and we feel more profoundly connected to one another.

In other words, we have to keep at it. Well, we can't just—

each and every one of us, every day. That's right. We're one neural circuit away from that stress response, but, you know, to really, in, in a way, to honor what the stress response is for and to realize it was always intended to be the launch pad for adaptation, never to be a remodeling system to the brain that was going to trap you in it, which is tantamount to being trapped in hell. It's the embodiment of all negative emotions. So resilience is bouncing up, right? So it's not just bouncing back. That's the beauty of being dynamic, is that once you're in the stress response, you're always you're healing your brain stress network, which is the launchpad to then be, to be a coper. How do you cope with the stress response? You actually are becoming a better problem solver, you're becoming a better accepter, you're cultivating more positive emotions. In a sense, every time you adapt appropriately to your own stress response, you're becoming more wise, You're becoming more compassionate.

Mm-hmm. So it's not like a straight launch pad up to this level of understanding.

You're never done.

You're never done, but it's back— but you're not all at the baseline either. No, you got rid of your social anxiety.

You're always becoming more resilient. Okay. You're always bouncing more forward to deepen your ability to problem-solve, to deepen your ability to to understand the other and be compassionate, or understand yourself and be compassionate, to be able to accept.

So it's a jagged line of progress.

It is.

But you're always progressing upwards.

Absolutely.

Okay, so you're—

You always have the opportunity to progress forward. You always have the opportunity to not progress, and you always have the opportunity to regress.

Uh-huh.

That's because the brain is very dynamic.

I think I was just telling you about this. I was renovating a house last year. I was in a big construction project, and I felt like I regressed into my old ways. And sure enough, I was, you know, losing all my patience. And of course, as the budget started to, um, you know, just— I went back to a lot of my old ways, let's say, like alligator mode, right?

Yeah.

So, but I guess I have to say that I did come back to balance faster than I thought.

And I suspect you went even farther down the road. You didn't go back to your baseline through the process. It takes a lot of courage to expose yourself to something as stressful as that kind of level of renovation and building your own home, right?

Especially under a time limit.

Oh, absolutely. Time constraints, money constraints. Exactly. My goodness, right? Some would say that's ludicrous. That's like throwing yourself into the fire pit of stress, right? But you have an opportunity that stress can make you or break you. And the brain has this amazing capacity to have it do either one. So you can always, out of your own self-compassion, which is the most significant attitude to have— don't tolerate your own suffering. So once Once you're stressed, you'll do what you can to cope effectively with that stressor. And if you're going to cope effectively with that stressor, that stress response, you have to rely on your brain's adaptive resources. And your brain knows what's adaptive, which means it knows exactly what you should problem-solve and how to do it, and your brain also knows what you have surrender to and accept, which means what you have to milk for positive meaning. And if you choose to heal your own suffering, which is your experience of your stress response, you're going to become a better coper, which means you're going to become a better problem solver and a better accepter. And when you do those well, you're cultivating wisdom and compassion.

So, so pragmatically when I saw myself slipping back into my, you know, triggers.

Of course.

From my traumatic childhood that I had and this whole experience of this trauma of building a home. And, uh, but then I forgave myself.

But it's even better to have compassion, which means you understand this— your stress response is you. It's there to heal you. And so what are your stressors that are inborn in your brain based on your experiences? So when you have your stress response, you're yelling at somebody because they didn't do something the way you wanted it, and then you could have shame and embarrassment and guilt. You know, it's like, "I can't believe I— this wonderful person I yelled at." Or you could be self-righteous and rageful. "How dare they do it in a way that's wrong? I'm paying good money." You see, those are your stress responses. So then, now out of compassion for yourself, you then say, "Okay, what's, what's the perfection here? How do I heal that?" Some of it could be problem-solving. Some of it is, "I've got to fire this person and hire somebody else." So your brain knows to what degree are you going to adapt to that stress that's problem-solving versus acceptance. When you meditate, you turn off all your thinking brain, which is contaminated with fear, which is the stress response.

Mm-hmm.

So when you're not thinking and you're in that non-thinking interoceptive proprioceptive network, mm-hmm, you're actually operating under the guidance of your prefrontal cortex, not your brain stress network where the fear is. You're actually guided under your brain's adaptive mechanisms. And your brain guides you to know how to heal that. Again, once people develop this brain function, you begin to understand all these wisdom traditions were based on these activities, these quote-unquote meditation techniques, these mystical practices that now we understand is normal brain functioning to guide the brain through human evolution.

Mm-hmm.

It all begins with I'm out of balance, my stress response, how do I heal it? And when I heal it, I become a healing influence on others. So let's say somebody—

I shouldn't say who.

Oh, go for it.

I shouldn't.

It's always good to talk hypotheticals.

So let's say a carpenter was doing shoddy work, you were saying. Yeah.

Well, so here it's not in their best interest to do shoddy work. And it's not in your best interest to pay good money for shoddy work. And so your brain would guide you for problem solving. And so you would be sure you were being clear as to what you wanted. They had to tell you whether they were capable of doing it or not.

Uh-huh.

You would negotiate the price for that. And then if they didn't fulfill their commitment, then they should have consequences for that behavior. And that would be part of problem solving. But let's say your expectations on human work— this, in this situation, carpentry— is in a sense unrealistic. Then you would never find a carpenter that would fill, satisfy your stress response. And then your brain would have that data, and your brain would, in the situation where you are being self-righteous and angry at this quote-unquote shoddy work, which is your perception, when the work is actually quite elegant. You know, and nothing's perfect, right? You know, focusing on the piki-yun that's not ideal among the majesty of all this other work. Your brain would guide you to accept, which is to surrender to whatever you didn't like that was not ideal and would have you milk that situation for positive meaning. The brain harbors hundreds of different perceptions that allow us to adapt, and they're all there in the human brain for the taking when we stop thinking and we start moving into this other brain activity.

Okay, so then I have my next question for you. So when we're under that sort of deep stress where you've been completely triggered. My last interview, we, we were talking about this, that it's funny, sometimes when you're in the thick of it, that's when it's the hardest to meditate. That's when it's the hardest.

Yeah, you're under the grip of the brain stress response.

Yeah.

So how would you recommend—

well, this is when we have to let each other off the hook, right? It's that, you know, not, not everybody even has free access to their own adaptive resources because their brain's already been remodeled, maybe at an early age, maybe through genetic influence, to be more stress-activating, and they've developed maladaptive behaviors.

I mean, or childhood trauma can cause brain changes.

Absolutely, absolutely. And then, and, and sometimes, you know, if you don't have good role models, you don't have a good support system,— then to survive, people can develop these maladaptive behaviors. And so out of compassion for another human being that hasn't had the advantage of your resources, your support system, right, then we wouldn't condemn these people, hate these people. We would be wise in response to them and to know how best to protect ourselves, right? Always, you're responsible for yourself first. To know whether this is an environment, a situation where we can have a positive influence. So self-compassion is first, self-preservation is first.

Because that's the only way you're gonna open up your mind to these solutions.

That's right, and you're the only one you're responsible to heal, is you. But now there's some other very interesting research that is evidencing that when an individual becomes more adaptive, they're likely influencing about 1,000 other people. Isn't that beautiful?

Wow, each person influencing 1,000 other people.

Yes, this is research that came out of the Framingham Heart Study, where they started to understand when people changed their behaviors, how many people were they influencing.

That's amazing.

And it may actually even be more now because of social networking, This is before we had, you know, this, the, all these opportunities to connect with so many people with a flick of a finger, right, on a text or what have you. Isn't it stunning? But see, that can go two ways. So if we're so influential with each other, then the more people that are, their brains remodeled under stress and maladaptive coping responses, they're also very influential. So, but the more people that are adaptive and are developing their brain in a way that is cultivating all the brain's adaptive qualities, then they're influential. And we could say these are the forces of good and evil. It's just another way to use language.

The way the brain gets remodeled in the same experience—

Your brain can get remodeled into your brain stress network, which is we're all victims in that network. It's all about me in that network. It's all under the influence of the belief system of negative thoughts and negative emotions.

And we influence each other.

So what if that brain gets developed and then that's our influence? Is that maladaptive, that negativity? You know, like lying would be part of that.

Cheating. We just had an issue with cheating.

That's right.

These would all be rampant these days.

Those are maladaptive behaviors, right? It's one of those things where you can step back and say, if everybody did it, Would it make life easier for us or harder for us? It's one really, you know, general principle you can apply to see whether something's adaptive or maladaptive. So when it comes to cheating, you realize, okay, well, maybe cheating is adaptive. Well, if everybody did it, it would make life harder. So you realize, okay.

So in the generation now where schooling is gonna have to change, I mean, in the near future, I do believe there's more of a cooperative type of workforce, that's gonna have to happen, and that schools are gonna have to adapt to this sort of cooperative learning. Rather than—

Now that's very adaptive thinking for you.

Yes! I'm talking about the kids who are sharing knowledge sometimes, and maybe you can call that cheating.

Why do people cheat? And in some ways we don't want to make too many overgeneralizations because life is really complicated.

Yes.

But there are some situations where some people are more advantaged than others. So we have that inequity, and so some people feel entitled to cheat because they're at a disadvantage. Well, then you could say these are people that have never cultivated the ability to, to know how to strive for excellence, to put in that kind of effort, or to even if things were handed to them, maybe they don't even have enough of their own ability to, to have self-confidence. To know they could do it in a legitimate way.

Yeah.

Or if—

and they're under a lot of stress—

they might be under a lot. So again, you know, we, we have to be careful about individual situations because that's the complexity of it all.

Yes, I think we need an hour for that segment. So we were talking about being triggered and going back into that state and not having the wherewithal to be able to sit down and meditate when you're in your worst, right? And you said have compassion. So what is compassion?

Well, I just would take it one step back and just say people's brains get remodeled. And there are some individuals through that remodeling, myself included, right? Having that severe anxiety. You can ask yourself, how did I end up with such severe anxiety? My brain had actually gotten remodeled into that stress response. We don't have time to focus on that now, but there are reasons epigenetically, you know, environmentally and genetically why people's brains can be more prone to turn on the stress response and to not be very efficient at turning stress off when no longer needed. And then you do end up developing these maladaptive behaviors. But within a completely different region of the brain is the embodiment of what we call compassion. So we understand all these different adaptive perspectives, compassion being one of them. They come from their own unique perspectives. So the brain operates under interpreting and perceiving. And it has to give value to what it perceives. Value is, right, how it interprets. Let's just say someone is angry. The brain has interpreted a situation that triggers anger as being unfair. Let's say someone's sad. The brain has then, in that situation, it is perceiving that situation through a loss. So we understand now through the cognitive behavioral science that the brain has very specific perceptions that link to these different negative feelings. Those negative feelings are the brain's stress system. It's the communication of one's stress response. It begins the conversation for how to adapt. If something's unfair, right, then you have to now go to a different belief system within the brain that guides us to deal with unfairness. Once you're more adaptive, you're not under the influence of your own stress response that may be distorted. You may have learned everybody's to be mistrustful, right? And so it's very easy for you to think everything's unfair. When you're in your adaptive brain network, which is this non-thinking brain network, you are free of your learned distorted beliefs. So you're in an area of yourself that is self-awareness, and you have all these adaptive resources. Your brain then might guide you away from the unfairness, the injustice, and maybe let's say you've distorted it, as an example. Your brain then will lead you into, "Hey, this comes from this experience you had as a kid. You're projecting that on this situation right now." So what is that? That is understanding. That's compassion. Compassion is You understand suffering. With compassion, that particular belief system, those perspectives that we call compassion, is we understand the origins of suffering, whether it's in ourselves or in another. When you go deep into these qualities, and you can go deep into anger, which is rage, or you could be a little into anger, which is mift, Well, compassion is the same way. You could be a little understanding, or you could have the depth of understanding. When you go deep into compassion, do you know where your brain goes? Unconditional love. You want the best for everybody. Isn't that extraordinary to know that's in your brain for the taking? That It's tappable.

Well, how do you tap into it when you're in that state?

You get the brain you build. Well, this is the thing, is that it's a process, right? So you can't go from 0 to 60. And that's when you understand that other people might be so out of balance, so stress activating, so maladaptive, you end up realizing, hey, if they knew better, they'd do better, right? That's, that's the way their brain is.

That's the motto.

And these attitudes and behaviors, right, nutrition, restorative sleep, exercise, don't surrender to your stress response, do what you need to do to effectively cope with it. Let's say that it is somebody who's now— you're raging at the carpenter. Well, you realize you need more support to get out of the stress response into your adaptive response. You know, maybe you go for a long walk. Maybe you go for a run. Maybe you have fragrances that uplift you. Maybe you'll just open up a photo album, right, of people that you have fond memories of. So you want to be able to move out of that brain network and get back to yourself.

But let's say you can't, like this person that I was talking to, they couldn't. But then after the whole stress is over, you come back to balance. And say, "Hey, what was that about?" Then you also am able to move forward and progress, right? And pick up at that point.

But see, what happens to some people is that now they have regret, they have shame, they have guilt. If you can do attitudes and behaviors that move you into this different region of the brain, then what develops is what's there: self-compassion. It's self-awareness. It is a non-judgmental state of mind. So when you're not thinking but you're alert and you're aware and experiencing, you cannot be judgmental.

So when you come back to that, out of that acute stress response, you're saying then don't spiral into the judgment, shame.

Hang out there as long as you can because your stress response— but let's say you do spiral back. Now you're so guilt-ridden. Now you realize, well, guess what? I've got to get back into my non-thinking brain to figure out how do I heal this guilt. And that's the beauty of the brain's two network systems. So the suffering— have intolerance for your own suffering. Now you flip into the other part of the brain that informs you to look at the situation differently. You're now back into your thinking thinking brain, "Oh, I'm guilty again." Okay, we've got to go back into the top-down region of the brain again. And that's the process of healing. The stress response goes into your adaptive response, then you go back into your stress response, and then you flip it back into your adaptive response. You get the brain you build. The more you do attitudes and behaviors that activate the adaptive response, the more that develops.

And then that resilience you were talking about, you're bouncing back, not just back, but above.

You are.

Your baseline.

You keep deepening your ability to connect to those beautiful qualities. Now you just don't have a little compassion, you keep deepening your ability to understand yourself and others. And boy, the beauty of that is when you go deep into compassion, can you imagine having unconditional love? Love for yourself. You know, I, I have had moments there, but I don't live there, right? It's just like, it's like, but I know that it's, that it's there, so I know I can get there. But I keep— I like love it every time I'm stressed because it's an opportunity to just go deeper, and eventually maybe I'll be able to experience that even more and more unconditional self-love.

And you've been teaching for 30 years now.

Yes, and I'm thinking, teach what you need to learn.

You teach what you need to learn.

Carl Rogers said it, right? It's so true.

Because, you know, even as teachers and even as somebody who is an expert in this field, you obviously have times, and I do, where you regress back to certain triggers.

You're never done.

You're never done.

Of course not. You wouldn't want to ever be done. These, these adaptive perspectives are bottomless. Right.

So what do you tell people? For example, a student might say, "Hey, you lost it and you're my teacher." You know, that happens all the time, right, to people who are teaching.

Yeah.

You know, we're not perfect, but maybe somebody who's learning from us sees the humanness of us and thinks, "What's going on here?

You should know what you're doing." Well, again, to think that your brain can develop to the point where you never activate the stress system, you couldn't survive, right?

Yeah.

And the fact that you activate the stress response is part of being human. And so I'll often say to my patients, you know, honor your stress response. It really is— your brain is giving you attention to not only allow you to to deal with the complexity of life and the complexity of one another that's part of life, but it's also your launchpad to continue to heal and grow. And isn't it beautiful to understand that I'm a species, we have an opportunity to evolve, and that I'm gonna contribute to the evolution of the species, and as I'm working in that process where we're never done, it's It's constant change. I get to be the beneficiary of what it is I'm developing.

You're learning as you're teaching, always.

Always.

Yeah.

Yes.

And we don't have to be perfect to help other people.

Well, I think perfect is— you have to sort of understand what is perfection. Now, there is a way you and I in everyday language use that that word. But when you're in a non-thinking meditative state and you contemplate, you focus on the word perfection, your brain actually connects to that quality in a very different way than the way you and I use it. We are perfection.

Oh, okay. I'm going to contemplate on that next time.

Have fun!

I just have to say, At one point, one of my best friends who's a pediatrician, Dr. Maranti, said to me, "You know, I'm not perfect, but I give great advice and it helps other people." Let's just say you were perfect on the level of the way we distort that word. Okay.

How much good would you be for other people? You'd begin—

It would be unattainable.

You'd lose sight of what it was like to be them. And then you wouldn't be— you'd be— not be able to share with them how to heal their suffering.

The relatability.

Exactly.

The compassion.

Exactly.

Okay.

You realize that we're all in this together. That's actually part of the human quality of humility. Ashley Brilliant said we're perfectly Imperfect. Isn't that a great quote? We're perfectly imperfect. The non-thinking brain loves that.

I also have a question about resilience because I ran across this wonderful woman and she teaches resilience to some very traumatized teens in New York City, and she said that a lot of them have a problem with the word resilience. They're angry about that word. They say, "I was never given a choice to be resilient. I did not choose to be resilient, and I resent that you call me resilient.

I had no choice." I understand that, yes.

So what do you say to them?

Well, again, you know, I think it's the meaning behind the word resilient. You know, sometimes the people in life, especially historically, who are astounding human beings, deep compassion, deep wisdom, they have had very difficult experiences in life, but they have come through the other side. And that's this process of the deeper my stress is, then the harder I have to work to heal it. And the healing influence are these deep adaptive perspectives. So on the one hand, when you're saying to somebody, we admire this quality called resilience, And then we're saying to them that the way you got there is because you had this traumatic experience.

Mm-hmm. Right, because I do find that a lot of people who study this material have gone through some pretty big traumas in their life.

Yes, yes.

Do you find that to be true?

I do find it to be true, but here on the other side is that sometimes we think, "I'm the only one that had that awful experience." and your life is easy. But the other thing is, you know, everybody loses people they love dearly, right? Everybody knows their life is going to end. It's true that some experiences are so much harsher. Well, it is, it is interesting. As we evolve, hopefully we're going to evolve to where we're constantly working towards more compassion, more wisdom, which means as humans, we're gonna have to experience less and less suffering as time goes on. But I can understand why people would be offended by the word resilient. We're honoring resilience right now, as we should, but these people are saying, "Yeah, look at me now, but you didn't know the hell I had to go through." Yes. And again— And they had no choice. They had no choice. And then we could say, we should listen to the suffering that they did endure and do our best to try to heal it. Robert Sapolsky from Stanford, you know, has written a lot on poverty and the influence on the human brain. It's not as if we aren't aware of it, but knowledge isn't always what changes us. So maybe we need to have a lot of people that have suffered that become resilient who then will be the people that'll guide us to really work and make changes so just socially we have less poverty. In some ways, it's what I was saying earlier, it makes it harder for people when the brain is getting remodeled under the stress response. If we were more evolved as a species, How do we heal and move forward into these adaptive qualities without having to do it through suffering? We would understand some of the experiences that children are having growing up.

Mm-hmm.

If we were more compassionate as a species, we wouldn't have to have those harsh experiences like poverty, So we would have better support systems. We would. And then instead of them having to heal the depth of that suffering, right, we could then learn. Yes, as a species we do seem to know better, but we're not there yet to do better.

And we're hoping— thank you so much for all this time you're spending with me. I just want to end end with asking you 3 things. If you had to tell your kids from all of this mind-body medicine that you've been practicing for, you know, we're in a sort of accelerated time, what would you tell them?

Um, I would say, isn't it great that you had a mother that was not a perfect mother? Because I gave you opportunities to really feel your stress and to heal it.

I say that to my kids all the time.

Yeah, I think the other is, is that, you know, it's probably a lot easier to keep your body healthy than to try to make it healthy once, you know, we've turned on some of these illnesses. And so I would really just guide them to get good sleep, become a good coper, you know, exercise, meditate, to really do self-care. That would be important. And the third thing I would probably tell my children is that please cultivate compassion because I'm going to need you when I'm older and I want you to want to take care of me.

That's awesome. So to summarize, the first thing would be like you needed to suffer.

Well, I didn't do it on purpose, but some good can come of it.

Yes, absolutely. Milk it for goodness.

That's right. And, uh, and to not suffer.

Physical body.

Absolutely.

Take care of your physical body.

Which is the same as taking care of your brain.

Yes, because your brain is also physical.

It's one big open system. Yeah.

And the third is to cultivate compassion.

Yes, very nice. For us and for them. Sounds great.

Thank you so much, Peg.

My pleasure, Juna Bobby MD.

I loved this and I hope we can do this again soon. Wonderful.

Hope it's helpful.

Thank you.

If you found this podcast helpful to you, please subscribe, post ratings and reviews, and share it with everyone you know who wants to stress less and do more. This knowledge is really powerful and science-based. We need to share it with as many people as possible to help with this epidemic of stress and the stress-related diseases that we're seeing today. I know your time is gold, so thank you, and I want to hear from you. Go to mindbodyspace.com Subscribe and ask me any questions and suggest any topics that you'd like to hear in the future. You'll also find episode show notes and resources on the podcast page. While you're there, check out our online school for courses you can take, like Stress Less and Do More series for students and parents, Get Smarter Than Our Smartphones course, and the full-on SMART course. SMART stands for Stress Management and Resilience Training. It's a research-backed course designed by the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and I'm your certified provider. Until next time, this is Dr. Juna Bobby MD wishing you wellness.