EP 131: Self-Directed Neuroplasticity for Well-Being & Resilience | Rick Hanson

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. In this episode of the Radical Responsibility Podcast, I'm thrilled to share with you an interview I did with my friend and colleague Rick Hanson, PhD. Dr. Rick Hanson is a renowned neuropsychologist who I think does a better job than anybody I know in taking the latest findings of neuroscience and distilling them into very useful practical strategies and tools we can all use to improve every dimension of our lives. He's the best selling author of many books and in this interview we go deep into the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of of the human condition and of optimizing human performance.

I'm really thrilled to be here with Dr. Rick Hanson.

How are you? I'm really good, fleet, and as I've said to you before we began, I just have so much respect for you in so many ways and also the topic is incredibly timely and important and close to my own heart. So I'm really happy that we're doing this.

Well, we're thrilled to have you and you were with us last year. So I'm really interested in having the conversation about everything that's happened in this last 12 months, which has been quite incredible. But first I'm going to share a bit of your bio. I know a lot of our audience will already know you well, but I want to make sure Everybody does so. Dr. Rick Hansen Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a psychologist, a senior fellow of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science center, and New York Times best selling author. His books have been published in 29 languages and include Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring, Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing and Mother Nurture. With 900,000 copies in English alone, his free newsletters have 215,000 subscribers and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial need. He's lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford and Harvard and taught in meditation centers worldwide as an expert on positive neuroplasticity. His work has been Featured on the BBC, CBS, NPR and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He and his wife live in Northern California and have two adult children. He loves wilderness and taking a break from emails.

That's great.

Truth.

We were just talking before we got started that one of your Adult Children is doing a podcast with you that has gotten pretty successful, getting a lot of traction.

Yeah, the Being well podcast. I invite people to check it out. I do it with Forrest Hansen, our son and co host, and he's really built it. So there's a tip of the hat to the Being well podcast. You might find it interesting.

That's great. Yeah, I encourage people to check that out and I'll check it out myself. So.

I mean, this year, the last 12, 14 months we've been through, is pretty incredible. I sometimes think we're going to have to get on the other side of it. If we ever do or somehow step outside of it before we'll realize how incredibly challenging and in many ways traumatizing it's actually been, you know, because we're just kind of in it. We're so adaptive as human beings. We kind of almost get used to anything. So, you know, we have all that. The pandemic, which is ongoing, I just. I just saw that. I do a lot of work up in Ontario. They're going into full lockdown again for four weeks, so it hasn't gone away. And in the midst of that, we had all the protests and social upheaval following the police killing, tragedies of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and so many more incredibly divisive, polarized politics. And we've got the looming, really, climate crisis that could get a lot worse very soon if we don't really start changing the way we're living on this planet. So dealing with all that, it's just something. And I'm curious about how that's been for you over the last year. Just for you and your family and your community, how's that been?

I think for so many other people, it's been a wild and bumpy ride. To try to put it in context, I look back on my own youth in the 60s, period of great social change, important developments, the 70s, even then, that was not like the current time. This is weirder and wilder. And I think it's a combination of a sort of perfect storm, of a really serious plague moving through, combined with a long overdue racial reckoning, combined with. I don't think there's any other way than to simply name it one of our major political parties. One out of two has gone nuts in its own core. I myself have a lot of sympathy for fundamental conservative values and orientations. I actually was a registered libertarian for quite some time, so I have some feeling for that. And I appreciate people who kind of stand in a sane but there's no other way to call it. When you look at the insurrection in the Capitol January 6th, when you look at the behavior of Donald Trump, that's absolutely abnormal and outside of the norm of American history. So when you put that together, you know, very dangerous threats combined with social upheaval, linked with a breakdown of leadership, with corruption and malfeasance at the highest level, it's a crazy maker, and there's no other way around it. That's how it's been. I would say that what's helped me, as I reflected about this before, this conversation with you, are three things that might be useful for other people. One is that I really tried to be clear about the threat of the plague of COVID based on the best science, the best information as it was emerging and changing, and then take appropriate caution. I have a lot of background in wilderness rock climbing, and it's really kind of clear, safe, not sure. Here's that absolute binary categorical difference. Safe, not so sure. And I move to safe whenever I can, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to take some steps to do that, such as working at home. So that was one, clarity and caution that reduced the anxiety. Second, just compassion. Oh, wow. You know, how could you not open your heart to everything? Global climate change, the long history of racism in this country, America, all the rest of it? How could you not feel compassion, compassion so important? And then last, a really important thing for me was a shift I call from the ephemeral to the perennial. Just a way of talking. I'm a writer. Ephemeral, things that are changing. This news cycle, this bit of madness, the latest crazy, making tweets, kind of ephemeral. On the other hand, enduring what endures, I found my attention turning much more towards simple things like nature. Trees that were planted before I was born and will endure after I leave the planet, the planet itself, the good heart in so many people, so many efforts to try to grow the good good, to figure things out, to discover a vaccine, to push a broom down hospital hallways at 2 in the morning. And so that sense of the reliability of the good that's enduring amidst what's bad, seeing it clearly, that sense of taking refuge in the knowing of the enduring good was really useful for me.

Wow, that sounds really helpful. Yeah. My wife Sophie and I, where we take our walk just in our little New England town here. There's some really big old trees that maybe may have been planted in the colonial era. And, you know, they're pretty big, and we just love relating With. They're like our friends, you know, just. We'll just go over and touch them or even give them a hug. We've come. Tree huggers. Right. But there's something about getting into the depth, right?

That's right. I'm just waiting for an ant to come out of that forest and, you know, say hello to you.

Yeah, no, because we get pulled so wide into the breath. Right. And we need to find a way to reconnect with our roots. So I love that. That's really great. So you're also. You work with a lot of, you know, people in your programs and students and your ongoing wellness trainings. And so what are you picking up from them? What do you. What have you been learning from them? What are you hearing from them in terms of what they're needing and what they're responding to and how difficult it's been for them?

Well, probably, like a lot of people you have seen, there's a range. And one of the things that has really stood out is the accumulating wear and tear. It's one thing to have a crisis for a day or a week or two or three, but the accumulating wear and tear without an opportunity for respite and refueling really adds up with people over time. And as a psychologist, neuropsychologically trained person, I'm very not aware of, both for myself and for other people, of what happens in your body when stress gradually accumulates with no relief. And so that's what I've kind of seen. People are afraid, people are exhausted, people are eager for.

Some kind of break from the craziness of it all. And I think that's an important thing to. To kind of acknowledge that it's normal in our common humanity. It's normal to feel fried. And to name one emotion in particular that's been really interesting, to feel angry. It's been said sometimes that the taboo.

Experience during Freud's time was sexuality. And I think it's also been said that the taboo, in a sense today is anger. You know, unacknowledged anger is a problem. And I suspect that unacknowledged anger, you know, politically, is a fuel in a variety of ways. And so to really own that we're exhausted and angry to the extent that we are, to me, is useful to start from. And then that takes you, because I'm a practical person, a methods guy. What do we do about it? And that takes us to the. Just doing what we can to find breaks, to hang out with the trees, to connect with Friends and all the rest of that. And beware the corrosive impact of anger in your own mind and to kind of sort out, okay, this is the fieriness, this is the anger, this is the moral outrage that's appropriate and this is the part that's poisonous. The ill will, the resentment, the grudges, the grievances that case in our mind about the people we live with or work with or pass on the street. Be very, very careful about that part. And to me, that's been one of the big takeaways at this time.

Wow, thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you spoke about, I mean, it's really important, I think, to be aware of the landscape and have tremendous compassion for ourselves and others. And then you also spoke, we need, need the way to work with that. Right. Because we don't want to be predominantly acting from a place of being tried and angry. That's not, that's not going to work, work out so well, you know. And you know, you also spoke about the moral outrage, which is very understandable in so many ways. And at the same time, there are many writers and analysts talking about outrage is becoming like a habitual pattern. It's becoming like another, you know, it's like addicted outrage or something. So, you know, it's like, where's that line? Right? So I think it's really important because things are, I mean, hopefully we'll get on the other side of this pandemic and hopefully this is like a 100 year thing and it's not. But from what we're hearing, they may be more frequent because of, they may be arising out of our encroachment upon the natural habitat of other species. But there could be really severe disruptions coming our way. And so we actually, I think, really need to do the work of becoming more resilient. I mean, one of the dangers is as the pandemic lists, we're all just going to want to go back to business as usual and do all the things we haven't been able to do for a while. But I think we need to regard the pandemic not just as in a position, but as a teacher and that we're being stress tested and we need to become more weatherproof for future challenges and crises. So I'm wondering if, I mean, you are, I think, fair to say you're a neuropsychologist or a neuroscientifically trained psychologist, as well as your involvement with positive psychology and positive neuroplasticity. So from that perspective, how would you actually define resilience, what is it from a neurobiological perspective?

Right. Resilience is an individual capability or characteristic that is certainly supported by external factors. And it's important to appreciate that the personal is political, the political is personal. It's not either or. I'm a psychologist, so I tend to focus on the individual level of intervention. But it's nested in regard for these wider systems that really play a huge role in individual well being or suffering. So in that context then, resilience enables us to manage challenges in the pursuit of our important goals and to recover from and weather traumatic, terrible experiences. So resilience helps us do both. Resilience is not just for the worst day of our lives. Resilience helps us keep on going in the midst of the waves of life every single day. It's a necessary personal characteristic for any kind of sustained well being in a changing and challenging world. So that's the nature of resilience. That's what it does. And then what makes us resilient is a really key question. There are physiological characteristics kind of baked into the body that help people be more resilient. We all know what it's like to be well rested compared to having had to stay up all night, what it's like to be well fed rather than hungry.

To have a relatively robust immune system, functioning GI system, and so forth, so forth. In addition to that though, mental qualities, mental qualities of grit, determination, self respect, self compassion, compassion for others, sense of meaning and purpose, executive functions, mindfulness, happiness and other positive emotions, all are major psychological factors of resilience. And the interesting thing on research is that roughly 2/3 or so of these psychological characteristics or factors that make us resilient as well as help us in other ways, roughly 2/3 of them are acquired. They're not just baked into our DNA at the moment of conception. We grow them or we can grow them. And so then I get very interested in what's the actual process of growing the muscles, the psychological muscles that make us resilient in an increasingly challenging world in which the cavalry doesn't seem to be coming very fast, you know, the external sources of support in society and government, politics and so forth, is a really, really slow boat. We're kind of a lot on our own with the other people around us. And so in that context, then it becomes really important to be skillful at muscle building, resilient, muscle building, these various psychological qualities that make us resilient. And then to finish here, I guess this really takes us into positive neuroplasticity which essentially means changing your brain for the better embedded in other bodily systems. And the how of changing your brain for the better is really simple. It's two steps. Experience whatever you want to grow and then help it leave a lasting mark on your brain, leave a lasting trace behind. Without that second step, without the internalization of an experience of mindfulness or happiness or compassion or determination or fortitude, you name it. Without that second step, without that internalization, that experience washes through your brain like water through a sieve, while negative experiences are routinely caught due to the brain's negativity bias. And it's. The second step is easy. You just need to take a little bit of time with it. You know, take a. Stay with the experience for a breath or longer. That'll help those neurons to keep firing together so they wire together. Feel it in your body. The more embodied our experiences are, the greater than neural trace that's left behind from what we want to grow inside ourselves. And last, really focus on what's rewarding about it, what feels good about this experience of self respect or closeness with another person, or patience or determination or happiness. What feels good about it? When you focus on what feels good about it, that increases activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in your brain neurochemicals, which increases the physical trace. So the essence is really simple, you know, two steps, but don't forget the second one. And in that way, each day you can grow a little bit of the qualities inside you that help you become more resilient.

What I'm hearing there in the second step, in part, I'm hearing what you're well known for, this idea of savoring the good. Right. Because positive experiences don't even go into long term memory unless we hold them in short term memory for a period of time. So to counterbalance the negativity bias, we need to really, as you said, take that second tap, spend some time with it. Right. But I'm also hearing the notion of practice. Oh yeah. That we actually need to practice these skills so that they really become part of our really immediately available toolkit. Readily available because they have strong neural pathways supporting them.

Yeah, exactly right. And if I could just expand. I think savoring pleasurable experiences is certainly useful. You know, when you see the flower, you see the tree, you feel close with your partner, let's say. Sure. Additionally, there are many things we want to grow inside for which the sense of savoring is not actually that relevant. For example, if you have some sort of an insight about what's actually true rather than an old belief you used to have. Like, let's say you realize, you know, it's not my fault entirely that, you know, it's not my fault at all that my partner is drinking.

When you realize something like that. For me, I realized growing in my 20s that growing up, I'd been a nerd but not a wimp. That was a good realization. So you can register it and deepen in your conviction. Also, there are bodily states of grit, determination. It's not so much we savor them Sometimes the really important thing to register is healthy remorse. For example, I've had occasions in the last year as a, you know, a privileged white man to realize, oof, I did something really, really unskillful there and really hurtful and casual and oblivious and unconscious and ouch, I feel bad about that, and I want to feel bad about that so I don't do it again. You know, there's a place for registering that kind of thing as well. So I just kind of want to broaden the notion. And you're exactly right. I think it gives us enormous hope at a time, by definition, which are very, very powerful forces coming at us that we have no control over. You know, we have no influence over those forces. At a time like that, it's especially important to feel that you have some power inside your own mind, that you have the ability to grow a little, become a little more skillful, become a little wiser, become a little more patient, become a little more awakened, you know, become a little happier every single day. And you can look for opportunities to have those beneficial experiences of different kinds. And then when you have them, have the humility to slow down and realize, no, this is important to receive into myself. You know, I think about. And this was a big breakthrough for me when I was a teenager, actually, in my very unhappy, pretty, really quite unhappy childhood, to realize that I wasn't doomed.

I couldn't change the past, but I could always learn a little today. I could always heal a little, grow a little each day a little bit. But those little bits would add up over time in the inner temple of our own being. No one can defeat us there from learning a little and growing a little every day. And no one can do that work for us. We're irresponsible. Speaking of radical responsibility, this is the most radical, I think, of all, in our innermost being. And that means that we will earn, rightfully earned, lawfully earned, the fruits of our own practice.

Where does self regulation Fit into this equation of resilience and well being, our capacity for self regulation, whether physiological, self regulation, emotion, self regulation, regulating our own behaviors.

Yeah, I think if you were to sort out major psychological characteristics that promote resilience, certainly I think self regulation would be in that one of the top three or so as a cluster. I think another major cluster has to do with pursuing goals skillfully and being able to cope in functional, skillful ways with a sense of resourcefulness and just capabilities of different kinds. A third major cluster is around mood, positive mood and being able to retain. And in your core, even if around the edges you're frazzled, pissed off, freaked out and really worried and sick inside about what's happening for other people, let's say that certainly can be cooking around the periphery. But in the core of your being you can retain a kind of unconditional fundamental calm and even a sense of inner contaminant and inner peace and a loving heart deep inside, no matter what. So that's the aspect of mood, but with regard to self regulation, absolutely fundamental. And there I would say two kind of major features of that that I'll just call out neurologically. One is to in effect calm down reactive systems, notably in the subcortex, the second of the three major layers or floors of the house of the brain that was built through evolution over 600 million years, especially the last 100 million or so years from the bottom up. And so in that second floor of the house of the brain we have the amygdala, the hippocampus and so forth. And they're ancient in their design. They're kind of primitive, they're really basic. We share them with mice and rats and certain aspects of those subcortical systems we share with crocodiles. I kind of really put it in perspective. And so gradually helping those parts of our brain become less reactive over time. One way into that is to release past painful experiences in various ways that you outlined in your beautiful book. Also bring in, as you also outlined, I really focus on a lot current positive experiences, beneficial experiences, to get in contact with that old negative material, to link to it, in other words, and to gradually ease it and soothe it and replace it like flowers gradually replacing weeds. So that's a really, really important piece of practice to slowly but surely.

Bring peace, bring peace to those parts of ourselves and the young places inside especially that understandably are agitated and fearful and reactive. That's a major thing. And in so doing then we become more regulated in that way. And then it's also really Important to cultivate strengths in top down regulation. Drawing on the third floor of the house of the brain, executive systems in the prefrontal cortex especially so that you can develop more real time mindfulness, more present moment awareness, more disidentification from reactions you can give yourself. I think Tara Brak calls it the sacred pause. Slow it down so that the slower but very powerful more modern neural systems can kind of come online so you don't experience a so called amygdala hijack. So these are things we can do. This is the path of development and it's something that we definitely all can do. I'll tell you one thing that really is a quick one for me. My own personal self regulatory first aid kid. And I kind of realized I do this just sort of watching my mind. One, notice you're upset. That's half of it right there. Just sometimes you just name it. Whoa. Shocked. Wow. So angry.

Whoa.

Hurt. How am I hurt? Or.

You know.

Name it, know it. Second, a little a feeling of compassion, tenderness for yourself, just even a breath's worth or a second's worth, maybe a hand on your heart. It hurts. Ouch. Third, it's really important to mobilize the stance of being on your own side. A kind of a muscular feeling. You know, the compassion part is sort of soft and tender. Then there's a muscular feeling that says, whoa, I got to deal with this or I don't want this to keep on going, or I don't want to be so upset like this. Or wait a second, how you treated me was not right. I'm going to do something about it. You know, it's a feeling and I name it because a lot of people don't have either compassion for themselves or this muscular sense of being a friend to themselves, being for themselves, loyal to themselves, you know, determined on their own behalf. And then fourth, make a plan. There is no replacement for making a plan. And maybe your plan is to get a plan because you don't have a plan, but at least you have the plan to get a plan. A bad plan is better than no plan because at least you know what your plan is. And then you can correct. If the jury of reality comes in and says bad plan, but you got to start somewhere. And those four are kind of first aid, you know, and they'll make you resilient in the, in the moment. It may take a dozen seconds at most to tick, tick, tick, tick through those four. It might take you 12 hours or even 12 days to work your way through them. But those four for me are definitely a kind of first aid kit.

That's really, really helpful. Really helpful. So I love the way before you kind of simplified resilience. And we're all very familiar with how we interact with the world. When we haven't slept well, you know, maybe we're hungry or we're using too much, you know, of substances, you know, too much sugar, alcohol, tobacco, you know, whatever. We're irritable, we're not resilient. We're highly triggerable and irritable. Right. Our window of tolerance, Stan Siegel's term, has gotten very small.

Right.

And then when we're well rested and well fed and, you know, more balanced, we all know we respond better. So that's a really simple way for everyone to understand resilience. I'd like to maybe go a little further because I have a sense that we're entering into some really challenging times. And one way to look at this pandemic is it is stress testing us, but hopefully it's making more and more of us more weatherproof for the challenges that are coming our way. And we're going to need some super resilient people because when there's a danger of chaos, it's going to be those really kind of super resilient people around which others can constellate to create pods of safety, networks of safety, networks of resilience and way even to survive at the local levels and so forth. So what would super resilience look like? Or what does resilience look like on an MRI scan?

Right.

I know Dan Siegel often talks about the evolution of the brain becoming ever more complex that deal with ever more complex challenges, but it's also becoming ever more well integrated and myelinated and so it operates faster, more efficiently and more complexly. So what does a resilient brain look like if we can be that nerdy under an mri? Or how could we talk about moving into really some of us having an interest in just really taking resilience to the next level for ourselves and to be, to be of more service to others.

Yeah.

Well, the interesting thing about the brain, particularly with current technology, is that the brain of a saint and the brain of a serial killer look really, really similarly. Right. You have to really damage your brain to, with current capabilities, discern major differences. That said, it's certainly true, like with meditation, that repeated mental practice actually does change the brain structurally. So in the short version of this, I would say is that there would be good coordination and regulation both top down and very importantly bottom up. To have these more ancient systems of the brain that really help us feel determined and with an open and happy heart. You think about that combination that is really grounded very much in more ancient systems of the brain and the way in which we feel that we know where our place is, our feet are on the ground, and we're present in relationship with others that we care about and who care about us. I mean, that sounds very simple. And that takes us way back in evolution to have that. So I kind of would just say that first. Second, what are the things that really, really help us be resilient, especially as we move further and further into the 21st century? 1. Get good at learning. Learning is the strength of strengths because it's the one that grows the rest of them. And the least important kind of learning is conceptual, language based learning. Even though I've done that a while and I'm decent at it. The most important learning is social, emotional, somatic, motivational, attitudinal, even spiritual learning, the learning in the body. Get good at that. And that's the territory of positive neuroplasticity. Get good at helping yourself become a little stronger and wiser every day. Right there. Get good at learning. Really important. A second thing is to.

Mobilize, to influence what you can, and to take the power you actually have. Particularly for those of us that care about progress and a more progressive movement and actually a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, we actually have a fair amount of power that is often unclaimed. We have the power to see what we see, to value what we value, and to plan what we plan and to act in the ways that we do and to really take that power and to be brave about it and not waste our power in getting caught up in what the Buddha talked about a long time ago. There's no wisdom, there's no sense in arguing with a fool when you're dealing with people who are committed to delusional grievance, who are caught up in a kind of cultic frame. I've personally, in my early 20s, was in what I would call half a cult. I know that mindset. It's impenetrable. It's really difficult to deal with. Rather than trying to grow roses forever in the Sahara desert, why not choose more fertile ground with people who are actually open to discerning what the facts are and are committed to the fundamental moral principle of fair play? You know, the rules for you are rules for them, and rights for them are rights for you. So that's the second Key, I think, is to mobilize and take the action that you can that will really, really bind anxiety. Action binds anxiety. It will lift mood to mobilize and will do what you can to make things even better. And then the last thing I'll just say is for me, kind of the major headlines here, get good at learning, exercise the power you have. Third, truly, truly invest in the common good. The common good of the people you live with or even sleep with, the people sitting across you from the dinner table. The common good in your community, neighborhoods, society, humanity, life altogether. And one of the great lessons I think, of the plague time that's been upon us is the price we have paid in countries around the world, certainly. And now I'll speak of America, my own home country, that I know pretty well. The price we've paid for failing to invest in the common good over.

A generation or two. And it's a little bit like a house when you don't invest in the common good. It's like having a house that looks nice from the outside, it's well painted and all the rest of that, but it's been hollowed out by all kinds of little decisions and consequences and poisons, like being eaten out from the inside by the termites. So then when eventually a storm comes, and storms always do come, it knocks down the whole house. And so I think one of the key takeaways now is the importance of investing in the common good, like public health systems, respect for civil society, law, genuine law and order, genuine justice, science, respect for facts and so forth.

Well, those are three wonderful headlines there, and you've kind of moved into this territory already, but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the connection, maybe the interrelationship and the interdependence, or even the self mutual, self reinforcing quality of physical resilience, mental resilience, emotional resilience and spiritual resilience, kind of that whole landscape. Because we can talk about each of those a little differently and we can have strategies for enhancing each of those. But I wonder if you could talk about those relationships.

Oh yeah. So I'm a software guy, in a sense, professionally, I work on the mind. And as a software guy, boy, have I come to appreciate hardware and the importance of hardware. And so most of us actually know what we ought to do to.

Within practical ways, optimize our own physiology as best we can. And we tend to not do it. And then we eventually paid the piper. And so I just want to put a nod in there for the things we know we should do. Protect your sleep, do some kind of exercise. I've been turning to weight training for the first time in my life in a serious way. And I've been amazed at the benefits of kind of simple, 15, 20 minutes most days of some sort of resistance training. Wow. Kind of blew my mind. You know, pay attention to what are called subclinical results. If you get laboratory tests that are so called within the normal limits, which really ranges typically from roughly the 15th to the 85th percentile, you know, if you're at the low end of that range and the doctor says you're normal, well, maybe it's not so good for you. You know, little things like that, push on that. That's really important. It's also really important to recognize that mental practices can have an enormous impact on your physiological state through the immune system, through impacts on your cardiovascular system, your gastrointestinal system, your endocrine system. You know, what we do in our minds can really, really affect our bodies. And then certainly also more and more, as you well know, Fleet, there's tremendous research about how our relationships with. Are.

Affect us for better or worse. And speaking in terms of the better effects, the felt sense of social connection improves physical health outcomes, increases longevity through a variety of pathways. Just touch.

One of the things that's been a loss for this time is not being able to touch each other. I mean, we went about nine months without hugging our son because even though he lived for just a few miles away, he was more open as a younger person, prudently in his own personal practices. And my wife and I were just not willing to take certain kind of risks as older people. So we need to touch each other. That really affects us as well. And then last, absolutely, whatever people I think define as spirituality, for some it would be a secular kind of spirituality that includes aspects of awe, respect for mystery, engagement with the underlying deep nature of the mind and the nature ultimately of physical reality for others, me included. It draws upon aspects that are more transpersonal, even transcendental, ultimate. That aspect is really, really fundamental for people. I think about, just to finish, maybe Father Thomas Keating, the longtime monastic. Yeah. Developed centering prayer. Absolutely. The real deal. Wonderful person, tall, sort of patrician, and, you know. Yeah, I recall him at a conference I was at, just giving a. Giving a talk. And he said.

A life without a contemplative orientation is a prescription for disaster.

Some form of contemplative orientation that can step back from the movie and the madness, the cavalcade of your own life and be free in your relationship to it. That's fundamentally important. And without it, it's a prescription for disaster.

Well, let's explore that a little further. So some kind of contemplative practice, mindfulness practice, meditation practice, breath work, these kinds of things, deep interiority, prayer.

But especially practices that really enhance self awareness and our self reflective capacity. Those can really enhance resilience at all these levels, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. So, and it would seem to me that especially with, you know, going and we talked a bit about the need to go deep and have the roots that are the contemplative practices of our great contemplative spiritual traditions all allow us to find our way into the depth of our being in some way or another where we can have a direct experience of a part of our being where we are fundamentally okay, right. Unconditionally. It's that eye and that calm in the center of the storm you were talking about before. It's experiential. We know there's nothing. I'm not broken, I don't need fixing. I'm okay. Unconditional goodness. You know, people, it's been called Buddha nature, it's been called Krishna nature, Christ nature. You know, we actually, it's not just it's wonderful to have that idea and have faith in it, but we can actually experience it. And there probably isn't a deeper reservoir of resilience than at least having a one toe down in that. You know, my friend Bo Lazoff, one of the pioneers of prison work, talked about, he gave a talk one time called Keeping one toe on the absolute and how that kind of changes everything, right? If we have access to that deep pool of our being, how that can be the ultimate source of resilience. I wonder if you could address that a little bit more and talk about in terms of whether we're taking a religious, a secular or whatever approach to going deeper in our own being.

Well, first, beautifully said, Fleet and I would underline the common sense.

In people, the common feeling.

Of the truth of what you're talking about. That sense of the truth of what you're talking about is a really important inner resource and inner muscle and inner strength. And to also listen to the longing inside oneself, to feel it and to hear it and to respect it. The longing to stay in contact, as you put it, with that depth of natural basic goodness and even stretching through that fundamental basic individual goodness to a sense of what is timeless, what is unstainable, uncorrodable, that we can remain in Contact with. There's a longing for that I could feel in myself, both of those as you were speaking. You're in touch with it, you have the longing for it. And through just talking with you, I can have that recognition and that longing myself. It's really fundamental and it's simple, it's intimate and available to us to be able to do what I'm talking about here. Absolutely true. And in terms of just practices about it, I mean, this is very, very, very, very much territory that I'm interested in. And maybe I'll just share a couple of things that I think might be useful for people about this.

One is to deliberately widen your view.

Have a sense of your body as a whole, for example, rather than focusing on just one part after another of it, one sensation after another of it, but have a sense of your body as a whole. Or if you like to widen your view visually, even extending your eyes out to the horizon line briefly. And I talk about this in some length in my book Neurodharma really goes into the detail of this. But neurologically, when we have a sense of our body as a whole, or the visual field as a whole, both of these, that tends to draw us into the right hemisphere of the brain, increases activity there. Technically for the right handed people, the same point is just reversed for many left handed people. And in that right hemisphere we're disengaged from a lot of the fussing and feuding that focuses on one little thing after another and we get lost. But if we have a sense of things as a whole.

We pull out of a lot of self referential processing. We come into the present rather than being caught up in the future or the past. And when we have a sense of things as a whole, the field of the whole is relatively stable inside of which things are changing. Pema Chodron puts it really well. You are the sky, everything else, it's just the weather. So the more that we come out into a sense of the whole, the body as a whole, the setting we're in as a whole, gaze out to the horizon, everything as a whole, bird's eye view. That right there draws us into a sense of stability and stillness. That's a really useful thing to do. And then the other really I think.

Thing to do is that you can, you can get a feeling for this is you start to recognize that whatever you're experiencing, this thought, this feeling of I that seems so precious and.

Weighty and real, is just a local rippling of the whole fabric of reality. You can understand that you can recognize that. Yeah. Then it's true. And increasingly, over time, you start to feel it. And so then there, too, you realize that, okay, what's happening here is a local expression. It's a rippling of everything, and everything is enduring. And fundamentally, it's okay. Fundamentally, it's okay. There's work to be done as a local wave in the vast ocean of causes. There's work to be done. We definitely have a lot of work to do here. And fundamentally, I am the whole ocean, and the ocean is enduring. And in that way as well, there can be a fundamental relief from the stress and the suffering of constant changes.

Beautifully said. Really accessible imagery. Very powerful. Maybe that's a good segue into. I mentioned before. I'd love to invite you to offer some kind of practice or resilience, some kind of guided practice, if you'd be so kind as to lead us in something.

Oh, yeah, for sure. I feel honored. This is a really simple meditation that has neurological reasons for it that are along the lines of what I've said so far, as well as some others. I'll just take you through it. It's three breaths. Three kinds of breaths. You can do just one, two, three. I'll take a little more time than that. You can do it with me. I'll do it with you.

And as with any practice, it's an experiment. Kind of see what happens in the laboratory of your own being. And if there's anything about it that you find not right for you, it's okay. Just let it go. You don't have to do it. All right, here we go. The first breath, breathing while feeling your chest as a whole.

Left and right together, front and back together.

Breathing while feeling your chest as a whole.

Okay. In the second sort of breath, breathing while feeling caring. Focusing on the simple feeling of caring. Maybe with a hand on your heart, perhaps aware of the area around your heart, bringing to mind any. Anyone Beings you like, you appreciate.

I'm doing this with Fleet right now, myself as well as my family.

Maybe compassion. Breathing while feeling caring.

Perhaps love.

Okay, and then the third sort of breath could be a little more challenging. Breathing while feeling cared about. What's it like to be with someone who, even in a simple way, is friendly or includes you, maybe respects or appreciates you, likes, even loves you? Breathing while feeling cared about. Letting go of the story. Letting go of the circumstances. Focusing on the feeling, one way or another, of being actually cared about.

Know what it's like to feel cared about.

And then just to sum it all up, we'll do one breath after another.

And see if you can access these feelings. If you can't, with a little more practice over time, you will. So first, breath at your own pace. Breathing while feeling your chest as a whole.

Breathing while feeling caring.

And breathing while feeling cared about.

Good.

That's it. And a little lesson. This is a kind of practice that contains the fundamental principles of practice, which is, you know, cultivating something beneficial, some state of being which then we help to develop as a trait. We're moving from states to traits. States are good, but they're passing and unreliable. Traits woven into, hardwired into our own body are reliable and more enduring. We take them with us wherever we go. And also general point, if you're not able to experience something at will, if you're not able to simply get some state going, that's very understandable. But it's a clue that it would be useful to focus on that particular state of being and train in your ability to call it up at will and then over time internalize it increasingly to grow it as a trait, which will then help it be easier to call upon as a state.

Wow, that is just so simple and beautiful and it took me right into a beautiful kind of state of flow and really appreciate it a lot and ideal to do it with you. It's really feel that genuine sense of connection and genuine authenticity, loving kindness from you. So very, very beautifully done and just such a simple and powerful resilience tool.

To be able to access those states at will and then have them become traits. What a way to deepen our own resilience and well being. So thank you so much.

To me, it's just so wonderful to draw on the example of so many other people, including you, Fleet. Gosh, given your own history, your own history in prison, to recognize that no matter where we are and no matter what the conditions are outside us or even the conditions in our own body, unless we're in that most extreme agony, that's utterly shocking and all we can do is breathe through it and not put any fuel on the fire. But other than those times, even very challenging ones, we can always practice. And that's a fundamental freedom inside us that we need to take responsibility for. And it's wonderfully hopeful to know that no matter who occupies the halls of power, no matter who's, you know, yelling at us across the table, inside our own being, we can always practice.

Wow, that's a great final message. Well, thank you very much. This has been a really rich conversation full of just really deep, practical.

Advice that we can all put into practice immediately to deepen our resilience. So thank you so much.

Thank you Fleet, and really best wishes to anyone and everyone who's listening to this or watching.

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