PODCASTThe Greater Good Podcast

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Today’s Guests:

RICK HANSON, Ph.D., is a psychologist, senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN is the host of "The Greater Good Podcast."

Transcription:

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Welcome to the Greater Good Podcast. I'm Michael Bergeisen. Our guest today is Rick Hansen, a leading teacher and writer about neuroscience and contemplative practices. Hansen is a clinical psychologist and a teacher of Buddhist meditation who served for many years on the board of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, one of the oldest and most respected Buddhist meditation centers in the country.

His new book, Buddhist Brain, the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, love and Wisdom describes specific practices that can literally over time change our brains and nervous systems to promote joy, equanimity, and compassion. The book also describes how the evolution, structure, and functioning of the brain is related to our emotions and behavior, and identifies the latest science on these issues.

Rick Hansen, welcome to the Greater Good Podcast. Thank you, Rick. 

Most of us think of the human brain as either unchanging or actually. Losing power and strength as we get older. But the, the central theme of your new book is that we each have the capacity to change our brain for the better, to actually make ourselves happier and more peaceful and more kind.

How can we do that exactly?

RICK HANSON: We've all known as we've gone through life that our minds have changed. In other words, we've learned things as we go through life. We've picked up new skills, we've had experiences. We remember them. All that mental activity, uh, or change of the mind, including things that we've learned means that, uh, we've changed our brain.

So that's not breaking news. In other words, it's long been known that, uh, as the mind changes, the brain must be changing as well. What is breaking news? Is that in the last 20 years, the scientific understanding of the brain has literally doubled, and that has given us much more clarity, much more clarity about the linkages between the mind and the brain, and that then gives us this amazing possibility that with some precision we can use our mind to change our brain, to change our mind.

So that we feel better, we're happier, we're less prone to suffering, we're kinder, we're better to other people around us. We're more effective at home and work, and we have more sense of, uh, kind of inner peace and connectedness with all things. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Can you give us an example of a practice that has this effect on the mind and hence the brain.

RICK HANSON: Right. Um, so for example, uh, when you, um, are aware of your own body sensations. Uh, for example, if you pay attention to breathing or if you golf or if you're a dancer or if, uh, you do something like yoga or tai chi or if you meditate, uh, in all those cases, you're paying close attention to the internal sensations of your body.

Well, as it turns out, uh, a part of the brain called the insula, uh, there are two of them actually. They're in the interior area of your brain. Um, the insula track the internal state of the body, which means also that they're intimately involved in sensing your feelings. And research has shown that first, as people, uh, activate their insula more such as through meditation, the insula actually gets thicker.

You actually build cortical volume in the region of the, um, insula gray matter volume. In other words, neurons make more and more connections with each other, which actually measurably thickens your insular. So as a result, people then become more, a more in touch with themselves, which is good. But even beyond that, research has shown that the insula is also crucial for empathy because when we, uh, get a sense of the emotions of other people, we actually light up the same neural circuits in our own brain that light up when we are accessing those feelings ourself.

So the point is that. If you can strengthen the insula through sensing your own state of being internally, that will both make you more able to be aware of yourself and also help you be more empathic toward others. In other words, you'll have greater capacity to resonate with their feelings as well. And this has been demonstrated in studies.

The classics line in neuropsychology is, as neurons fire together, they wire together. In other words, the seemingly, you know, immaterial and ephemeral flow of thoughts and feelings through your mind, leaves behind traces in your brain. And the takeaway point of that is to be very thoughtful about what you think about all day long.

A lot of us think about a lot of crud all day long. We're worrying about this, we're planning that we're obsessing over something bad that might happen that hasn't yet happened, whatever, or we're, you know, thinking about what a loser we are, how we just never get anywhere in life where people don't love us or we get mistreated, or whatever that is.

And there's a place for that if it's productive. But much of the time we're just running those movies in the mental simulator. But the problem is, is we run those movies, they're leaving behind traces of neural structure that are negativistic, depressive, pessimistic, uh, and very self-critical. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: So we initially talked about the more positive aspects of the brain, but now you started talking about parts of the brain that have a more negative slant.

And indeed, in your book, you do talk about. A general negativity bias in our brain. Uh, can you describe that a bit more? And is that bias in your view, linked to certain parts of the brain? 

RICK HANSON: Our ancestors, the ones who lived to pass on their genes, got better and better at better at making a crucial decision many, many times a day, whether to approach something or avoid it.

And through the development. The sensing organs and the pleasure centers of the brain, and then especially with the breakthrough of emotion, which in evolution was an extraordinary breakthrough. Reptiles don't particularly have emotion. Uh, mammals do. Um, primates have a lot of emotion. Humans have tons of emotion.

Emotion is an amazingly useful survival guide, but the import of all that. Was to help our ancestors decide, as I said, whether to approach or avoid approach the pleasant, avoid the unpleasant approach, the carrot, duck, the stick. Alright. Now the problem is that sticks are much more important to pay attention to in the wild than carrots because if you miss a carrot today, you'll get another chance at one tomorrow.

But if you do not avoid a stick today, wham, you're not gonna get a crack at a carrot tomorrow. And so we've developed what's called in science a negativity bias. Which means that the brain to help us survive preferentially looks for, uh, reacts to embers and then recalls or rather stores, and then recalls negative information over positive information.

For example, there's a pretty famous finding in the realm of, um. Relationship psychology from John Gottman, university of Washington, that it takes at least five positive interactions to make up for just one negative one. In other words, in effect, a negative interaction and an important relationship is five times more powerful than a positive interaction.

That's an example of the negativity bias to work. Uh, think of it in your own life. At the end of the day, what do you tend to think about the, uh, 99? Good things that happened or the one thing that bothered you. Uh, and even though this is really, really good for passing on the genes, it really, really. Sucks for quality of life.

Uh, and that's the negativity bias of the brain. So that really interesting thing then becomes how can you overcome it? And that's where, for me, taking in the good, uh, is an absolutely crucial, uh, skill to develop and a wonderful way to balance, uh, this unfair, uh, tilt that's embedded in your own nervous system.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: What do you mean by taking in the good? 

RICK HANSON: Yeah, if you think about it, um, I was saying that the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but, but TEFL one for positive ones. The problem is, is that neutral to positive moments get remembered with standard memory systems, which is to say they're mostly in and out, but.

Negative experiences. For example, uh, a difficult interaction at work or a tough conversation with a family member or some news in the mail. You know, a letter from the IRS, whatever it is, those experiences are instantly registered and intensely focused on, based on the negativity bias of the brain. And then they get, uh, stored in what's called implicit memory.

Not so much memory for events like what I did on my summer vacation, but rather the feeling of being alive and that implicit memory bank, if you will, those memory banks get shaded increasingly, uh, in a darker and darker way by the slowly accumulating residue of negative experiences which get preferentially, uh, registered and stored.

To counteract that, we really need to actively build up positive implicit memories to balance this unfair accumulation of negative implicit memories. And the way to do that is three steps for sure. With an optional fourth step. Uh, the first step is to turn positive events into positive experiences. In other words, all kinds of good things happen in our daily life, but we often don't really know, feel it.

We hardly notice it at all. And if we do, we don't feel it. Someone pays us a compliment, we hardly pay attention to it. Or if we notice it internally, we think, eh, if you really knew who I really am, you wouldn't say that. And we deflect it. So instead of that. You know, turn positive events into positive experiences.

Second, really savor it. In other words, as every school teacher knows, and lots of other people as well, the way to remember something is to make it intense, felt in the body and lasting. And that's how we give those neurons lots and lots of time to fire together so they start wiring together. So in other words, rather than just noticing it and feeling good for a couple seconds and then Z onto the next thing, stay with it, relish it, enjoy it.

10 for 10, 20 or 30 seconds. So it really starts developing neural structure. And then the third step is sense and intend that this positive experience is sinking into you and becoming a part of you. In other words, it's becoming woven into the fabric of your brain and yourself. Those are the three fundamental steps.

And then for bonus points, if you're so inclined, it's often very powerful to take a current positive experience and have it kind of go down inside to an old place of pain, uh, healing and soothing, and ultimately filling a hole in your heart. Do not do this if you have a trauma history and you get flooded.

If you think about old pain, in other words, the method is to. Have the old painful material be in the background of awareness, kind of dim and mild in the background of awareness. While the current positive experience that is its antidote is prominent and strong in the foreground of awareness and that you have the capacity to hold both those things in mind for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds straight.

If you can't do that. Don't worry about this fourth step, but if you can do that, wow, this fourth step is really, really powerful. Honestly, over many, many years, it's how I filled my own hole in the heart. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about your own background and practice. Your book is filled with practices that people can use to boost their feelings of love and happiness and equanimity.

Do you personally use any of these practices on a regular basis? 

RICK HANSON: Yeah, my wife wishes I used more, but anyway. Oh yeah, sure. Totally. Yeah. Well, um. I'll mention two actually. Um, one is the importance of focusing on positive experiences because of the negativity bias of the brain, and also because positive experience has so many benefits.

Um, so you're getting a double benefit. You're both learning how to study your mind more, actually a triple benefit. A, you feel great. B, you steady your mind. C. You, um, deepen those neural pathways 'cause they're firing, therefore they're wiring, uh, of positive emotion so you can drop into a state of happiness or contentment or tranquility much, much more easily in daily life.

Second, uh, this whole thing about the negativity bias, I've really come to appreciate how extremely sensitive we are to threat. In other words, if you think about it in life, there are two big mistakes you can make. You can either think there is a tiger there when there is not. Or you can think there is no tiger, but there really is one of those two mistakes.

Which one do most people make? Most of the time it's the first one. We think there's a tiger there when there really is no tiger, or it's a baby tiger, or it's a paper tiger, or it's a tiger in chains. And we go through life feeling threatened all the time. So I've become very alert to needless threat. I don't wanna make the second mistake.

In other words, I wanna see clearly and be discerning about what, um, is truly a threat over there. But I don't want to be bamboozled or, um, misguided either by my own mental processes or by. External messages into thinking that there's a threat there when there really, really isn't. And related to that, I've also become much more thoughtful about, um, not being threatening to other people needlessly.

In other words, I don't mean. You know, walking on eggshells, um, you know, avoiding telling the truth when it's, you know, appropriate and useful and all the rest of that. But what I do mean is being thoughtful about how I, um, you know, um, give people an alarm signal, you know, sometimes when I don't really mean to.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: We've talked a bit about the fact that you maintain a Buddhist meditation practice and you're a Buddhist teacher. The Dalai Lama has said that if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding Buddhism must change accordingly. Have you encountered science conflicting with Buddhism?

RICK HANSON: Well, first let's distinguish between, uh, science conflicting with Buddhism and science, uh, being, uh, not, uh, providing evidence for various Buddhist views. I. And then second, let's also distinguish between what might be called Buddhist methods from Buddhist, um, theory. Okay, let's see here. So first of all, uh, Buddhism, you could say first and foremost is not based on propositions about, uh, the nature of reality or the nature of the mind, although the Buddha definitely said things about that and other Buddhist teachers have along the way.

Said a lot about that. But first and foremost, it's uh, it's a collection of methods that have one aim, which is to say liberation from suffering. So, um. Uh, how can I put this? What's primary in Buddhism are not claims of fact, but claims of efficacy. In other words, that these methods work to reduce human suffering.

So the question then we become, does science contradict those claims? That, uh, Buddhist methods are effective? I don't think so at all. I can't think of, um, I mean, Buddhist methods, it's a warehouse. 10,000 methods probably. I'm sure there's some method that some study somewhere has disproven, but the core methods of Buddhist, um, particularly given in the original teachings of the Buddha, um, and what's called the poly canon, uh, the core teachings that have to do with, uh, paying attention to your experience.

And living a virtuous life and accumulating insight over time. Those core methods have certainly not been disproven by science. If anything, uh, the recent neuroscience is substantiating them in terms of its findings about, you know, neuroplasticity and the impact of contemplative practice on the brain.

Uh, you know, there are. Claims in Buddhism, if you will, about, uh, reincarnation or the kind of large scale cosmology and science is neutral about that. Uh, there's no evidence for those things being true on the one hand. On the other hand, as every good scientist knows, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Lemme come back to another very concrete aspect of your book, and that's something you call the two darts of suffering. In your book, you describe how we humans experience, and this is using a Buddhist metaphor, the first dart of suffering, which occurs when a bad thing happens and we experience pain, physical or emotional.

But then you point out that we experience a second dart of suffering that comes from within ourselves, and that unnecessarily intensifies that first more objective pain. Can you talk a bit more about what that second dart is and whether it's tied to our brain and nervous system in any way? 

RICK HANSON: Sure. Well, the metaphor is the Buddhist.

Uh, he said that, uh, things happen in life that are painful and difficult. Uh, at a physical level. We're all exposed to aging and disease and death. And because we are intensely social animals who love, uh, we're also explained, exposed to sorrow there when. People we love die or are threatened or are in pain, uh, even at the most basic level of a child being, um, teased in preschool.

You know, that really moves our heart. Those are the first starts of life. You cannot escape them. You can arrange your life to some extent, to minimize them, and that's to the good generally. But ultimately, we're all gonna get hit by the first darts of life. Then the Buddha pointed out that we compound the pain through self-inflicted wounds.

In other words that we throw second darts, quote unquote ourselves. For example, we get upset that we're in pain. Or somebody, um, says something, uh, cruel to us, which is a first dart and it pierces us and it hurts, but then we brood over it for the rest of the day. Inflicting all kinds of, um, second darts upon ourselves, or often there's no first dart at all.

In other words, there's just an event that is not inherently painful. It's just an event. It's a situation to be dealt with, but we get all reactive about it or even. Really the worst of it is what's actually happened is positive. You know, someone tells us they love us and we get upset about it. Uh, for example, so those are examples of second darts, how they're constructed in the brain.

They're really constructed throughout the brain. Probably the ground zero for them is the limbic system because second dart reactions are at bottom emotional reactions. And they're, you know, they're based on reactive patterns, which are unfortunately, uh, intensified by the, uh, negativity bias of the brain.

That's why, uh, I think in terms of. Practical life. It's important to appreciate that when a first start lands and A, and then it's really important to try to automatically start activating the parasympathetic wing of the nervous system. 'cause first starts trigger the stress response, fight or flight wing of the nervous system.

So as much as you can start trying to get automatic around, taking deep breaths, calming yourself down. Imagining that you're safe or as safe as possible, bringing to mind other resources, reminding yourself you've gotten through these situations in the past, calling to mind positive emotions that are the antidote to whatever has happened right then and there, or whatever works for you.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: I'd like to go back to the issue I raised earlier about possible conflicts between Buddhism and science and ask about one. The sum have identified and, and it's this, in Buddhist belief, there's a central idea of no self. The notion that the self is just a, an illusor y concept, that the self doesn't actually exist, and that as we learn to see life as it truly is through meditation and other contemplative methods, this becomes clear to us yet.

As a psychologist who focuses on neuroscience, you are constantly working with the very complex selves of patients. Selves made up of patterns of psychological behavior, some of which may change, but others of which may remain pretty constant or resistant to change. Can you reconcile these two paradigms or approaches that is the, the no self of Buddhism and the self that you treat as a psychologist and that you acknowledge in your book.

RICK HANSON: Yeah, it's a good question. I, yeah. Um, let's see. First, like a lot of thorny questions, it really helps to define the terms carefully, and when you do, a lot of the question starts to resolve. So let's distinguish between a person and a quote unquote self. I. A person is a totality of a body mind. In other words, Michael, you're a person.

I'm a person. Dacker. Kelner is a person. Barack Obama's a person. My, uh, son and daughter are persons. My cat is probably a person as well in his own way. So in other words, and and persons have moral standing, they have moral responsibility, uh, they have needs. It's important to take care of them, and there's some stability to per to the person over time.

On the other hand, when the notion of a self, if you define that as a coherent and enduring center of volition, and um, the one who experiences life, there is no such apparent self and the brain. In other words, uh, it's an illusion of continuity. And coherence that is produced by the brain, and especially socially constructed in interactions with other people that generates this.

This idea that there really is a, there, there. In other words, and, and there isn't, in other words, for example, in neural studies, uh, the, um, many, many different aspects of selfing to use it, you know, as a jar because it's really an activity. In other words, selfing is an activity. Uh, it's not a per, it's not an entity.

And selfing activities in the brain are widely distributed. They're very transient and they're highly dependent on all kinds of other factors. I. The interesting neuroscience finds no place in the brain where self is located. It finds, um, highly distributed selfing activities and the parts of the brain that do selfing also do about 50 other things.

Selfing is not privileged in the brain from a practical standpoint. Maybe that's a way to kind of draw this to a close, if you will. From a practical standpoint, it's not a problem that thoughts of I arise in the mind. And it's not a problem that we reflect on our future self or our past self, using the word self loosely there.

Um, the problem comes when we privilege thoughts of eye. When we make them special and when we allow them to run the show, and that's when suffering begins. I think that's when people can see that, when they take things personally, when they get caught up in glorifying themselves or, or accumulating, um, goodies for themselves when they, um, go to extremes of protecting themself from life.

And other people, when they have a, a fantasy that their self will not change over time and ultimately die, um, then they suffer. And I think we can see that for ourselves. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Rick Hansen, thank you very much for being with us. 

RICK HANSON: Thank you. This is great.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: The Greater Good Podcast is a production of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California Berkeley. Jason Marsh is the producer of the Greater Good Podcast. Alton Doe is our intern. Special thanks to the university's graduate school of Journalism and Milt Wallace for production assistance.

You can listen to more Greater Good Podcasts and find articles, videos, and other material from Greater Good Magazine at www.greatergoodscience.org. I'm Michael Bergeisen.