EP 194: Rick Hanson | Inner Strength and Positive Neuroplasticity

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. And I'm thrilled to be here with my colleague and friend Rick Hansen. Welcome, Rick Fleet.

It's always a pleasure to talk with you and greetings to everybody listening.

Really, really excited to be able to start off day one of our summit with Dr. Rick Hanson. Really a thrill. I'm going to share a bit of your bio background with our audience. I'm sure most of them are more than familiar with you, but in case not, I'll read this Rick Hansen, Ph.D. is a psychologist, 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. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on BBC, cbs, NPR and 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. Don't we all. Anytime we can. Well again, welcome. Welcome Rick and thank you so much for being part of this. Thank you so much. Yeah, I guess I just want to start off with we've been through another really challenging year. Multiple waves of the COVID 19 pandemic, multiple variants and doesn't seem to be over yet as much as we want it to be. Everything else that's been going on, there's increasing cultural divisiveness, political polarization, so much uncertainty on every front, even about the immediate future. I mean, what's going on now in Ukraine and in Europe? There's so many different things creating so much uncertainty in the world and, and so much fear and anxiety for so many people. So I'm just curious as how the past year has been for you and your family and your community, what you're experiencing with your students and so forth.

Due to a lot of reasons including personal advantage or privilege, the last year has actually been pretty good for me and My family and all. And I suspect that like a lot of people, what's become kind of clearer is two poles. On the one hand, boy, more than ever, I am really interested in and dedicated to lasting qualitative change in the state of the world. And if people have an interest in what I've been saying about that recently, whether it's about global warming or the restoration of healthy human politics to what they used to be in hunter gatherer times, before agriculture came along and enabled these huge concentrations of wealth and power, they can go check out things. I've written about that recently and talked about it in my Wednesday meditation group online, so you can find that easily. So on the one hand, boy, the older I get, the more pissed off I get in a good way about the fundamental state of affairs and the importance.

Well, I'm not the only one. Okay, good.

Still raging after all those years on one hand. On the other hand, really interesting, fleet. And I bet you feel much the same way over here. There's just a growing deepening of personal practice with this kind of big picture, somewhat disenchanted, in a healthy sense sort of view that recognizes, you know, humanity's been at this a long time. We're all going to do what we can. We have limited influence individually for sure. We're going to do what we can and meanwhile, what is perennially available to us, no matter how bad the conditions are around us, they're the classic teachings, you know, well, go into the heart, come into yourself, be awake, practice, deepen and center in what is timeless and universal. And so both of those have been strong developments for me in the last year.

Absolutely, absolutely. It seems like, you know, out of necessity we deepen and thank goodness we've been introduced to these amazing teachings and contemplative traditions and wisdom. And when things get really challenging, it wakes us up even further to the necessity. And it's helpful to have that perspective, you know, that we all have limited influence. Sometimes I kind of rail I wish I had more influence, but others probably wouldn't like that.

But we do have limited influence and yet we try to do what we can, Right? We try to do what we can and. But I think it's so important for us, as you said, to keep deepening because whatever contributions we can make, hopefully they're coming from a place of deeper wisdom and not knowing and won't just add to the, to the phrase, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm glad, you know, that this has been a good year for you and it has for me as well. And I think we both realize we enjoy a lot of privilege and in having those circumstances. And.

I'm glad you're speaking up and speaking out on these broader issues. I'm really grateful for that. So today we are focused on individual resilience, beginning off the summit, which runs the whole span from individual, collective, relational, systemic, the whole thing. And yet, and certainly we can't really talk about individual resilience in a vacuum. Right. We're social beings. But nonetheless, I think we can at least begin there. And.

You do a really great job on presenting the latest findings and insights from neuroscience and psychology in well integrated ways that we can all use to really improve our lives and take care of ourselves and take care of our families. And you wrote the book Resilient how to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness. I love that idea of an unshakable core. And so maybe from a neuroscientific perspectives and wells modern psychology, what do we know about resilience? Or what is resilience? And how do we get more of it?

Conversation. How do we get more of it?

I have a little pill. It's a blue pill. All you have to do is take the blue pill and you're all set. Wouldn't it be great? Yeah.

Well, so resilience is an individual characteristic that is of course affected, as you well say, by circles of influence around us. That said, just focusing on the individual, we are resilient when we can manage the stresses of everyday life in pursuit of our goals and also live through and recover from the worst day of our life. Both are really true. Sometimes people narrow the notion of resilience in terms strictly and entirely of trauma. Yes, response to trauma is important, but what about the other days of your life, for most people, let's say. And so what are those capabilities inside us that help us to be resilient in this way? They include many familiar inner strengths, such as mindfulness, compassion, self compassion, willpower, grit, self worth, and positive emotions in general as major factors of resilience. So the good news is that we actually can tap into and more fundamentally grow these inner strengths over time through what's called positive neuroplasticity. In other words, we can actually turn experiences into lasting changes inside our own brains. We can move from states to traits, and that process of moving from states to traits is critically important. Otherwise we're dependent on our situations and relationships and circumstances. But when the music stops playing, as it has a lot during this time of COVID then Suddenly we're left with only what we've grown inside ourselves. And for many people, that cupboard is a little bare. So my own work, as you know, is very much about how we can actually quote, unquote, take in the good of experiences of self worth, grit, commitment to sobriety, commitment to social justice, feeling cared about, feeling caring, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We can take in these experiences by staying with them for a breath or two or longer, feeling them in our body and appreciating what is meaningful or enjoyable about them. And in so doing, turbocharged the transition from states to traits and really hardwire these inner strengths in lasting ways inside ourselves. And to me, that's one of the most positive, hopeful and practical takeaways from cutting edge science about how we truly can grow resilience inside ourselves and help other people to do so as well over time.

Well, you kind of pointed in the direction of my next question, which is about positive neuroplasticity. I want to go there in a moment. But first, you know, listening to a lot of what you seem to be. I mean there is that recovering from those really tough blows we get and the tough traumas, and then there's the everyday need to manage our lives and our emotions and our, and our own physiology. So what we might call self regulation and with other people. Yeah, yeah.

And it hopefully, ideally learning to co regulate with other people, maybe we'll talk about that more. But you know, I think you could say resilience has a lot to do with our capacity for self regulation. And, and if we're not, if we don't kind of develop that or own our own kind of responsibility, if you will, to self regulate, then we're pretty much being regulated by some combination of our childhood conditioning that we had very little to say about, which is a mixed bag for most of us. And then what's going on around us. And sometimes that's kind of a rough ride if we're not taking ownership for how to regulate. So building these capacities to self regulate is that one direction we could say that is really about foundational to our resilience.

I really appreciate you cutting to the chase and highlighting that. Absolutely. Self regulation, really fundamental. I would nominate two other things as factors of resilience, the second being the executive functions that can help us keep on going effectively toward important goals. So there's some self regulation involved in that, but there's also being able to make plans and to have skills with other people. A major support for resilience is being emotionally and socially intelligent and skillful with others. So I would add that to self regulation. And then the other one I really want to highlight, Fleet, is that a fundamental aspect of real resilience is the capacity to maintain a core of well being along the way. There are people who can white knuckle their way through life, who can in a very tough minded way, survive terrible conditions, who simultaneously feel very grim, depressed, anxious and unhappy inside. That's not real resilience. In part because that dysphoria, to use the technical fancy term, that distress will gradually wear down the resilience in your immune system and other bodily systems and in your mind altogether. And also maintaining well being along the way gives you that more positive outlook. It tends to help you open your heart, it leans you toward other people and it points to the fact that life is not just as the Dalai Lama points out, what's the purpose of life? Happiness in the broadest kind of term. So I would flag those two other things in addition to the self regulation that you've named.

Yeah, absolutely. And you've written a lot about well being, a lot about resilience and a lot about happiness. And they all seem to be very interrelated obviously. And that the importance of that executive function, of course we need to self regulate somewhat to have access to that. Right. Or we get triggered out of that. But I'm wondering, you know, so there's all this, all these things we can talk about at the kind of neurobiological level and things that we can use skills and mind training and practices which you can actually see the result of from current, now neuroscientific studies of the brain. You can see that real changes get made through self directed neuroplasticity, lasting changes. And at the same time, could you say there's, you know, we're talking about that notion of deepening and relying on the deep traditions and also use some of these practices to drop into a depth that maybe is a bit beyond the biology. I don't know, I suppose it's all on a continuum, but some depth that is individual and both may be collective, where we experience a profound kind of innate goodness, wholeness, okayness, that is really unshakable. And I wonder if you could talk about that, that deeper foundational sense of regardless of what's going on up here, some way or another, it's okay.

Wow. Well, here we are in the deep end of the pool. So I was looking forward to this.

I approach this question, which is a classic, fundamental, incredibly important question. I approach it in two levels, if you'll bear with me. The first level sits inside what's called the natural frame of materialism, the Big Bang universe as it is. Nothing supernatural, nothing transomed at all. The domain of scientific inquiry and so forth. And it seems really clear and wonderfully hopeful that when animals like us.

Feel in the core of their being that their needs are met, enough in the moment doesn't have to be perfect, but there's an enoughness of safety in the present, an enoughness of satisfaction and an enoughness of connection as profoundly social creatures, right? When there's that felt sense of an enoughness in the present, the body mind combination defaults to its resting state. And its resting state that it comes home to, I call it the Green Zone, has fundamental qualities of repair and recovery, physiologically and psychologically in terms of our three major needs, has an atmosphere of peacefulness, contentment and love. This is not woo woo, this is not airy fairy. This is why, as in the title of Robert Sapolsky's classic on stress, why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Because simpler animals without our neurological and mental capabilities are so in the present that when they get away from the lion, they come back to the Green Zone really quickly. But of course, human beings obsess about the lion and how to prevent it in the future. And why did the lion attack in the first place? And why am I bad? Why does no one love me and all the rest of that, right? That's why zebras don't get ulcers.

But the good, the blessing and curse of consciousness, right?

Yeah, that's right. So the good news is that when we do these inner practices, which of course can be very helpfully supported by lifting people out of poverty and enabling everybody to have fresh and healthy water and not having a nuclear war, et cetera, et cetera, external conditions as well are involved here, but certainly on the inside, if you can help yourself authentically meet your needs through growing psychological strengths that help you meet your needs and. And second, taking the good of the experiences of needs met, you then are much more able to rest in the Green Zone and come home. In which you're right, there is this fundamental sense of peacefulness and loving connection with others that's just pure science, that's hardcore biology, no nonsense, with two practical takeaways. Grow inner strengths that help you meet your needs. And second, when you feel safe enough, satisfied enough, or connected enough in the present, bring a big spoon, yum yum yum, and really, really take it in okay. Now, I could let you interject if you like. Or I can. Or I can.

The deepest level.

I like you. And I think many, many other people.

Experience and rationally believe that there is an underlying ground of being, an underlying ground of all, where words start to evaporate. So it's difficult to talk about. But it has qualities of timelessness, peacefulness, and even a kind of benevolence in it, in the endless arising of the present moment continuously. And there's a sense there of common nature. If this is the deep nature of all, it is the deep nature of every one of us, including our adversaries and including our dearest friends. And through practices, we can become increasingly accessible to and.

One with this underlying and universal ground of being. And that's personally a very important part of my practice and, you know, one that I respect in other people like you. Fleet.

Well, I'm really happy you were willing to go there. And it seems like there's two ways that traditionally, commonly as human beings, we access that one may be externally, kind of out in the natural world, that we get that sense of the cosmos, the natural world, the beauty of the world, our connectedness with nature. And, you know, and then it's more of the internally through our embodiment practices. And, you know, I think maybe at the interface of that deeper ground of being, which maybe is beyond the individual self altogether, but that we all have access to because it's the ground of who we are. And then the more neurophysiological level, somewhere in that interface, subtle body, subtle mind, the more we drop into these embodiment practices and really settle, there seems to be a natural kind of resonance, of course, coherence or flow that we can tap into that seems to have tremendous potential for healing.

And then rewiring ourselves for resilience or just allowing the nervousness to kind of untangle itself and rewire itself for resilience. I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

When we are having experiences of the absolute. When we are having experiences, let's say, of. Of spaciousness, timelessness, universal love. You know, we're talking about really profound things here. We're talking about things that, for me are actually even more profound than that feeling you get when you're standing on the seashore looking up at the stars, as beautiful as that is, or walking amongst the woods.

Even more profoundly than that. Whatever the most profound experiences are that you can imagine, even if you're experiencing something that transcends the Big Bang universe, the experience of that is occurring in A brain in a physical body that's embedded in the Big Bang universe. So that those kind of self transcendent transpersonal experiences can indeed leave lasting traces behind in your own body that then you can tap into and draw upon as you go on down the road of life. So that's incredibly hopeful. Additionally, I would add that much as you say, I think there are certain kinds of practices that really tend to draw us toward the infinite. One is the simple practice, as you all know, of spaciousness, an awareness of spaciousness in your own consciousness. So there you are, you're observing your breathing, you're steadying your mind, so there's some stability there that's really foundational. And then you have a gradual sense of spaciousness, openness in your own mind and you start to have a sense of wow, everything's happening at the same time in terms of the streaming of consciousness. It's all okay, it's all just one process. Ah. And that sense of spaciousness does tend to do some very interesting things neurologically, including deactivate parts of the brain that are caught up in the future or the past and bring you into the present, and also reduce activity in parts of the brain that keep fabricating a sense of self. So as we go into that sense of spaciousness, we stop regretting the past and worrying about the future and being preoccupied with ourself while opening out into everything, just that, that sense of spaciousness of your own mind or as you said earlier, lifting your gaze to the horizon and beyond. So there are definitely. That's a good example of things we can actually do that are increasingly evidenced through MRI scans and all the rest that can help us be a lot happier and more resilient. Because when you have that kind of spaciousness, right, you're less disturbed by any particular thing. Think. Flowing through the field of awareness.

Yeah, I love what you said before. I was happy that you brought it up. About when we feel some level of assurance that we can have our basic needs met or some reasonable bandwidth of our needs met. And absent that fear, there is a sense of well being. And not only that, I think it's one of the really, for me, it's one of the arguments for the unconditional goodness of humanity and life that human beings, absent fear, with some assurance that we can get our needs met, are incredibly partnering and collaborative and well behaved. I mean, what are the vast majority of human beings do? Every day we get up, we do our best to take care of ourselves, our families, we queue up at the well, at the market, we drive on the right side of the road. We're incredibly collaborative, but when we get really afraid, then other things can happen. So if we want a safer, more resilient world, obviously we need to lower the fear levels for as many people as possible. Right? I mean, that's kind of one angle to look, look at it through, I think. And this we also know that well being is highly correlated with pro social behaviors.

Right.

And a lack of well being is also correlated with antisocial or problematic behavior. So and you know, we know how to create well being, right. So at least at an individual level, we do know how to create the world we want. And if we could extrapolate that out to the larger world. So it brings us back to what you, you spoke about as positive neuroplasticity. You've also used the term self directed neuroplasticity and the idea that we can take some agency in rewiring our nervous system, our brain, in ways that will enhance well being, that are going to lead to pro social behavior behaviors, which creates kind of a virtuous cycle. Because when we act virtuously in the world, it creates a positive momentum that further increases our resilience. When we act non virtuously, then we have all kinds of internal struggles around it. And you know that all the feelings, it can be a non virtuous cycle.

Right.

So it seems like these skill sets and there's a number of maps out there. You know, think of.

Dr. Dan Siegel's map of the window of tolerance and zone of resilience. I think of the polyvagal maps of, you know, keeping your social engagement systems online and when you move into that yellow or red zone. So there's kind of these maps of how we can learn to be relatively well regulated and in a responsive relational mode, responding from our best self with a greater bandwidth of life, even more of the challenging things of life. So I wonder if you could talk about that because it seems like a lot of your work and what you've offered to your courses and your programs, that foundational course you have on well being, you've really provided roadmaps and skills designed to help people do that work of positive neuroplasticity.

Well, thank you for saying that. And by the way, you offered a fantastic summary of that entire territory.

In terms of a map. I'd like to mention just kind of briefly in passing, my latest book, Neurodharma, which talks about basically awakening in terms of seven fundamental qualities that are available within all of us and which can be developed as we approach really the upper limits of human potential, the upper bound of human potential, the top of the mountain. And these seven qualities, I'll just kind of name them quickly for people, are particularly relevant the farther along you get. Steadying your mind, warming your heart, resting in fullness.

Being wholeness, receiving nowness, opening into allness and finding timelessness. So just again think about where you're at as someone who's listening here with steadying your mind, is your heart open? Are you rested in a sense of enoughness and equanimity in the present? Those are the first three. And also, do you have that sense of wholeness that you can accept yourself fully and have a sense of spaciousness in your awareness? Are you able to really stay in the present with the arising immediacy of the front edge of now continuously while having a sense of openness into everything, sense of allness, which involves a releasing of the contracted construction of the presumed self. And most fundamentally, do you have some intuition of timelessness, of unconditionality, you know, of the infinite, the absolute. So that's a roadmap as well. I just kind of wanted to mention.

I'm a map person. I find them very helpful and that's a wonderful mapping of the journey and the different dimensions that we where we can increase our well being and resilience.

Yeah, the first three are very, you know, foundational. I'm a practicing psychotherapist, been for 35 years, a lot of hard care, hardcore work there. And that said, all the great teachers talk about one way or another, these qualities of wholeness, nowness, wholeness and timelessness that we can develop as well. So underlining that, second thing I'd love to underline is just to piggyback on what you said, which is the possibility of practice routinely, you know, when I'm talking with people or I'm talking with myself after the shock wears off of some bad news you got from your doctor, something your partner said, something your kid did, something you saw on the news after you kind of get past the initial what of that? The fundamental question always is, okay, how are you practicing with that? How are you coping with it and how are you trying to learn from it? What are you trying to find inside yourself that you, you can draw on to help you get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day? That's practice. And it's fantastic to appreciate that we have that sacred power of practice. I think it has three fundamental elements. I summarize them as loving, knowing and growing. The elements of warm heartedness, compassion, kindness, so forth, knowing, the mindfulness of awareness of the world around you, the world inside you. And third, critically important, cultivation, development, growth, healing, the development of lasting, beneficial change over time. All three of those work together in Sanskrit or Pali. You'll recognize the terms metta, sati and Bhavana. And I think that it's fantastic to appreciate that with modern science we can see the evidence if we need it, but obviously the great teachers did not need MRIs. We can see the evidence that people can actually change their brains over time to become more loving, more mindful, and more turbocharged in their own actual learning process. You really can gradually weave beautiful qualities of mind and heart into your own body. So they're with you increasingly wherever you go.

I love that. Loving, growing and knowing. Loving, knowing and growing. I love that. And you know, this is really.

This is our destiny, right? I mean, as human beings, I'm. When you think of, you know, a seed is planted, a flower grows, a tree grows, your vegetable garden grows. I mean, it's just. As human beings, we're designed for loving, knowing and growing. And it's more, it's in some sense it's just lowering the fear, removing some of the obstacles, having some practices, some skillful means. Another very common map that we kind of look at all this work on. And your work has always been very holistic and whole person oriented. So we often talk about the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions or biopsycho, social, physical or spiritual, something like that. So I wonder if you could talk about the interrelatedness and even interdependence of those dimensions of, of our life and our being as we do this work.

You know, it's really interesting. Fleet people, including me, routinely.

Say things like that, but we don't tend to really think about it. The interrelatedness, what does it actually mean that we are physical? We also have a mental life that's intangible. Physical is tangible. Our mental life, our psychology, is by definition intangible. It's grounded in information which is not tangible. Right. And in all that, we're continuously interdependent. You know, we rest in interdependence, inner being, as Thich Nhat Hanh put it, with, in my own view, a fundamental aspect of life and reality that is transpersonal, transcendental.

The combination of all that is, I think, something that many people don't really take into account. And you're highlighting it here, you're moving it off of some sort of needlepoint sampler. On the wall to really foregrounding how that combination matters and just kind of engaging your question as I'm practicing right now with your question. In terms of its import, what I can see immediately, at least for myself, is that there's been a long journey over the course of my life from being a very introverted, shy, scared, kind of dorky, nerdy kid. A long journey of appreciating relationships, a long journey of appreciating the warmth in my own heart. And people listening might contemplate on that themselves. You know, we want to feel connected, but we can't make other people connect with us. But on the other hand, we have the power continuously to find compassion, kindness, friendliness, and even love as appropriate, no matter what others do. You know, we always have the power to tap into that wellspring inside us that draws us into the felt sense of connection. So I guess I'll maybe just leave it there. That one of the things I'll just flag has been super helpful for me is honestly engaging a path of love increasingly over time. Maybe I'll say one more little thing, you know, as a fellow Buddhist kind of person.

If you think of the Buddha's drive theory of suffering, basically anticipating Freud by 2500 years, that we get into trouble when we get caught up in craving, if we can be with the pleasant or the unpleasant or the relational as they are, you know, in the famous sutta in the scene, let there be only the seen and the thought. Only the thought. If we could just be with our experiences as they are without trying to clutch at them and crave the pleasant or crave the ending of the unpleasant, we actually do a lot better, right? The question becomes then, how to end craving. If the ending of craving is the ending of suffering, how do we end craving? Well, classically, there are three major teachings about how to do that. One of them is pretty conceptual. It's based on insight into emptiness and impermanence. So you deepen in your insight, your vipassana, your recognition of the emptiness of all that exists. It exists, but it exists emptily. Okay, that's good. That's pretty heady. Then there's this other path also, one that I'm very engaged with, which is to reduce the sense of something missing or something wrong inside you in the present that initiates a drive state biologically. So that goes to the points I've been making about growing psychological strengths so that you're able to cope with challenges without feeling an invasive sense of deficit and disturbance, and also so that you can increasingly internalize a sense of, well, being deep down inside yourself, no matter what's happening around you. Okay, that's really good. And then there's a third path, the path of love. The path of opening the heart, warming the heart, and recognizing interrelatedness. And the interesting thing is that.

The path of love integrates the path of insight and the path of equanimity. The two other ones I named love is supreme.

I don't know which rock star said that, but love is indeed supreme.

Yeah, well, it's definitely, I think, the connective, the connective tissue.

I love where you went with that. And for me.

A lot of that could be brought down to our willingness to feel. I think sometimes when we think of spiritual development or evolution or getting free, we tend to think in transcendental terms. And then I won't have to suffer, I won't have to feel. And of course, I think over time, everything we're talking about can reduce the, the amount of suffering. But none of us are ever going to escape suffering as long as we have a body. But we've been incultivated not to feel. And I think that being willing to feel, being willing to feel our vulnerability, being willing to feel both the pleasant and the unpleasant, the painful, the joyful, is part of the roadway into this integration you're talking about. And it is kind of a leap because something in psychology we call the pain paradox, that, that we naturally and sinking, withdraw from pain or want to push it away. That's human, that's normal. We tend to be kind of addicted to comfort and pleasure and really live in some fear around discomfort and pain. And yet we know from thousands of years in human history, as well as modern psychology and therapy and all these other modalities, that all the good stuff is really on the other side of the pain, of moving through the pain, being willing to feel the pain. And so I wonder how that resonates with you just as willingness to feel as being kind of a north star in our life rather than running away from it. I mean, you mentioned before about a phrase you said I liked, you know, checking in with, how am I working with this? And that really struck me because, you know, I was just in a very reactive state about something yesterday. And, you know, and I was, you know, I knew I was in a reactive state. I was trying not to get carried away, but I wasn't really working with. I was still pretty hooked and bought into it. Right. And, and then at some point, you know, I, I found just because my training I found myself stumbling into kind of working with it and getting to a bit of a different place. And I suddenly realized that I have been working with it. So I think just having that inquiry, am I working with this? And how am I working with this? Because then I'm not trapped in it. But for me, working with the first stage of working with is often willing to just be willing to feel it and not trying to escape. I'm curious about your thoughts about that.

So many layers to that.

Well, I basically think that there are three useful ways to engage our mind. Let be, let go, let in. Those are the big three. And they can be summarized even more simply as being with the mind, Working with the mind. And you can see people who emphasize both of those paths. And you can also see people who overemphasize one path or the other. I think of practice as like a great bird that has two wings, being with and working with. And you need both wings to fly. Where we start and the most fundamental practice is being with where we feel our feelings, we experience our experience. As Samuel Bondar puts it, we wake down, not just wake up. And that has been an incredibly important part of my own journey. As someone who is numb from the neck down when he wandered into adulthood or at least left home for college, and also someone who by nature tends to be a real work with, fix it, get to it, solve the problem. I've had to really appreciate the power of just utter radical acceptance, as Tar Brock puts it, and just simply, simply being with things, that's where we start. But it's not the entirety of practice. And I think a lot of people in the mindfulness world and the non dual world and the spiritual world, and frankly in my own root tradition in the Theravada Buddhist world, just stop with being with. And they don't realize that as the Buddha taught and lots and lots of other great teachers and also modern neuropsychologists, there's a place for working with your mind as well.

And also as we work with our mind, we become more able to be with it. Eventually we just kind of be with it. We're fully cooked. We're just hanging out on the front edge of now. Experiences flowing through, be with, be with, be with. But to get there for many, almost everybody, includes a process of working with the mind. I think of it, to summarize, our mind is like a garden, right? We can witness it and observe it. That's being with it, that's letting be. Also, though we can pull weeds, that's letting Go. Releasing afflictive emotions, problematic desires, pathogenic beliefs. Use the cycling. Go. Pull the weeds, Let go. But we also must replace the weeds with flowers. We let in, we cultivate. That's where the learning dimension of practice comes in. We cultivate wholesome qualities, lessons learned, new commitments for the future, as I'm sure you did. I'm sure you did with what you were reacting to yesterday.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned insight before. So in that process, we can get insight into what's the context? I'm holding this in. How am I framing this? Is there another way to frame it?

And.

And then just that commitment to not get lost in anger and aggression and things like this, because we know where they lead if we get lost in them, and instead to try to find. To plant those virtuous seeds. So pulling the weeds and planting the virtuous seeds. Absolutely. And all these ways that we can work with it.

It's really helpful to have one thing you're growing these days, just kind of to know what's that one thing you get two or three. Okay. But for sure, one that you're kind of developing, maybe you're trying to help yourself.

Kale, Spinach. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eat your spinach. Eat your vegetables. Like, one thing I've been just kind of working on is how quickly I can disengage from an entanglement in my mind with my wife, with something on the news, with an event. Can I in a genuine way, can I get to freedom in relationship to it? Can I move into what I call mind like air? Can I shift from being, you know, mind like brick, angry, velcro saturated, epoxy brick, to mind like air. Right. Okay. That's a good practice. You know, whatever your practice might be. What's that one thing that you're helping yourself develop more of these days?

Absolutely. So you mentioned that wonderful framework from your book Neurodharma, and you've been integrating psychology and the dharma and neuroscience for a long time. And although, I mean, there is no silver bullet, there's no one magic pill, there's no one size fits all. And having some kind of awareness practice, some kind of mind training, some kind of mindfulness practice is very advantageous at the least to give us a window into everything we've been talking about, to have the presence of mind, the spaciousness of mind, to be able to do these things that we're talking, to be able to be with, to work with and so forth, to let go, to let be and so forth. So I wonder if you could just talk about the value or the importance of some kind of mind training practice, some kind of self awareness awareness practice. And of course, there are many practices can be universal across all traditions. And, and today we have the whole world of apps and everything, you know, but. And listening mindfully to music may be a wonderful thing. I'm not sure it's exactly the same experience as really sitting there with your mind, you know, front row seat of all the craziness of mind and really working with it. So I'm just wondering what you might have to say about the value of finding some kind of mindfulness or awareness practice as a kind of fundamental tool.

Oh.

Absolutely. So I have a background just in psychotherapy and also in the business world. Lots and lots of different kind of people. And I find myself, especially with people who are just sort of beginning to consider the notion of practice at all. I emphasize the elements of autonomy and competence. And what I mean by that is, who's the boss of your mind? Are you basically an active agent, kind of a hammer rather than a nail, with your own thoughts and feelings? Or are you just at the effect of whatever you think, whatever you feel, and whatever your impulses are right there? Are you the author of your own life? Do you have your hand on the tiller of your little boat, or are you just drifting downstream right there? A lot of people will be startled and realize, oh, wow, I need to kind of influence this in a more positive direction. I can't totally control my mind, but gradually I can take responsibility for it and start influencing it. So that's one question. The second is, do you want to be skillful at it? Do you want to be skillful with managing your own thoughts and feelings and reactions? Do you want to be skillful in managing where your attention is, moves around, because it's like a vacuum cleaner sucking whatever it rests upon into your being, a lot of which is correct, right? Do you want to be skillful with that or do you want to be clueless? Do you want to be incompetent in managing the most important aspect of your life, which is actually your own mind? Because that's the origin point, as is the opening lines in the Dhammapada. You know, mind precedes all things, right? It's the maker of the life that we have. So right there, two kind of motives. They might seem a little abstract, but I found that for a lot of people, especially people who are a little resistant to a more psychological kind of orientation, including mind training, hey, you know, do you want to kind of be in charge of this and also do you want to be competent at it. So that said, I think it's completely true. The more also that the world pushes us around, the more important it is to.

Feel that in the innermost sanctuary, the sacred ground of our own being, that we have influence there and we are taking responsibility for what is there and we are influencing who we are becoming. What's the most important minute of your life? It's the next one, minute after minute after minute, because that's the great field of opportunity. We can influence who we are becoming. Now that influence is going to be pretty small. Most days it's going to be bit by bit by bit. But there's a teaching also from the Dhammapada. It goes like this. Think not lightly of good, saying it will not come to me drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise one, gathering it little by little fills oneself with good. That's our opportunity. And you can tell immediately who is engaging that opportunity in a sincere way, when they can in their everyday life and who is not. And the key to all of that is, is, like you said, mindfulness. Because if you don't have that kind of mindful presence, if you're not really aware of what's going on, if you don't have some kind of breathing room from your own reactions, you're just swept away. I mean, it's one thing to feel your feelings, as you said earlier, but for many people, they can get sucked into their feelings, which just reinforces them in part because of the brain's negativity bias, making it like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones. As I say, ta da. But if we're able to get a little breathing room from our experiences, including very painful ones, then mindfulness is incredibly helpful. Oh yeah. And I would kind of challenge people. Can you give it a minute a day? That's sort of the threshold. Can you give it a minute a day of deliberate practice? What about five minutes a day, simple deliberate practice where you just kind of are aware of your breathing or you gather yourself and you just kind of let your mind settle, let your body settle. Maybe you open your heart deliberately. I mean, I have a simple three breaths practice. I teach people. First breath, breathing while feeling your chest as a whole second breath, breathing while feeling caring. Third breath, breathing while feeling cared about. And people can take obviously more than three breaths without that practice. Any kind of practice is really good. And then when the chips are down, return to your practice.

Well, I love that you pointed to that beginning line from the Dhammapada. The mind is the forerunner of all things, which, you know, really indicates that, you know, it makes sense to be a good guardian, a good steward of that mind. Because you talked before about how states become traits. And that can be. That can be through intentional practice, but it can also be through unintentional practice. We're always practicing questions. What are we practicing? So if we're allowing ourselves to dwell in anger and fear and anxiety and aggression all the time, those states can become traits, right?

Absolutely.

So, yeah, so important, I think, to have that, just have that awareness and then just generally begin to take a little more stewardship agency over how we're working with all that. So another thing you've written about a lot and talked about, I mean, well, being resilience, and then also happiness. And so I'm wondering what you mean by happiness. You know, there's the happiness of the moment, kind of hedonic happiness. Happy things are going my way at least for a few minutes. And then there's maybe more deeper, deeper kinds of happiness.

A dynamic well being, those kind of things. And so we see happiness out there in the world a lot. You've written books by happiness. You know, the Dalai Lama talks about happiness, Sharon Salzberg's written book, folks, about happiness. What do you mean by happiness?

Yeah, good question. So I use it as an umbrella term to include both hedonic well being and eudaimonic well being. In other words, hedonic well being is what you feel, you know, when your cat crawls into your lap or when you see your grandchild's picture on your refrigerator, or, you know, your favorite team wins a football game, go to the 49ers next year. And all the rest of that, you know, you feel that or you get something dead or you have a nice meal. Hedonic well being, there's a place for that. Eudaimonic, as you know, is more of a sense of fulfillment, purpose, and meaning in your life. Okay. The two together are what I mean by happiness. Broadly, it's important to appreciate that hedonic well being, ordinary moments feed eudaimonic well being. And both of them together are major factors of resilience. People who are chronically miserable tend to become less and less resilient over time. Happy warriors, and I'm using peaceful Warrior here, really, Dan Melman's book by that title, Happy Peaceful warriors are much more likely to sustain the journey over the long marathon of A career or a long commitment to social justice. And if physicians could give people a pill, that would be the happy pill in the broad sense that I'm meaning that we would see prescriptions for it every day. Because the kind of happiness I'm talking about is such a powerful factor for extending their lifespan, preventing all kinds of illnesses and drawing people into positive health practices, as well as the benefits for, for pro social behavior and justice seeking. All that's true now. It's also true that life contains suffering. So how do we put these two together? How do we put together an appreciation of happiness and the cultivation of the factors of happiness alongside the truth, the truth of suffering? It's not all of life, but it certainly is a feature of life. And in many lives it's a major, major feature for all kinds of reasons. And I think the way to reconcile those two is to appreciate first that there's a natural rhythm. There's a natural rhythm between enjoying a nice meal with friends and then checking your phone later that night and finding that Russia has invaded the Ukraine. And then a little later, you get ready for sleep, you meditate a few minutes with your wife. I'm talking about my day yesterday. And you keep on going. So there's a natural rhythm more deeply though, throughout, even while you're feeling normal sadness, anger, fear, concern, including for others. Underneath that all, there really can be this kind of level or field of resilient well being that ultimately taps into something universal and transpersonal. And that's the way in which that underlying ground of well being can be established, even while being utterly authentic and living in the real world, including all of its sorrows.

That seems like a wonderful place to complete our conversation. I would like to ask you if you'd be willing to lead us in a brief resilience practice of some kind. I know you have many of them. If there's something you'd like to lead.

Us in, I'll be a pleasure Fleet. One of the things I thoroughly enjoy about hanging out with you is just A, how smart you are and B, that we should, you know, have a common practice. For those listening or watching, just kind of gather yourself. I'll do this with you. I suspect Fleet will too. You can keep your eyes open or closed as you like.

If it's comfortable to do so. Start becoming aware of your body.

Scanning it.

Bringing it into your awareness from your feet, through your legs.

Up through your hips.

Torso.

Your arms.

Your neck and head.

Just coming home. There may be tension, there may be pain. See if you can Get a sense of your body as a whole.

A single field with many sensations. Your body as a whole.

With the sense of your body as a whole. You can be particularly aware of breathing.

Chest rising and falling, air flowing in and flowing out.

As you stay focused on the sense of your body and the feeling of breathing.

Other thoughts, sounds, feelings may pass through awareness. That's just fine.

Letting them arise and letting them go. While you stay in touch with your body.

And see if you can get a sense of opening your heart.

Even as you stay aware of breathing.

Finding a simple feeling of goodwill for others that you care about.

Perhaps feelings of gratitude for them.

Lovingness.

Flowing through your heart.

And see what it's like as we take a last minute or so.

To have a blended sense. A combined sense of grounding in your body.

With a sense of openness and spaciousness.

And warm heartedness.

Letting these qualities sink into you, becoming a part of you.

Groundedness, openness, warm heartedness.

You can have a sense of the world passing through.

These centered ways of being.

While in your core.

You remain at peace.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And that's another great pointer towards the value of practice. You know, if we develop a practice, then that profound state of well being, you just guided us into it just over there. It's always available. A little turn of the dial and we can be right there and we can develop that access through practice. And what a resource to have in our lives. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much Dr. Rick Hanson. And people can find out more about your work@rick hansen.net and I encourage people to really explore that because there's a wealth of resources there for people. And as I read in your bio, you offer scholarships to people and so forth to really make sure people have access to these wonderful and beneficial teachings and practices and resources.

So there.

Thank you very much for the work you do and thank you so much.

It's an honor fleet and much good wishes, much meta to you and to everyone who's participating. Thank you.

Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing? They were also playing Chumba Casino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino's home to hundreds of casino casino style games that you can play for free, anytime, anywhere. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's chumbacasino.com and live the Chumba life.

Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

No purchase necessary. VGW group Void where prohibited by law. 21/members and conditions apply.