Awakening Joy - Love Yourself

so now it gives me a great pleasure to introduce our guest speaker for the evening who's been with the joy course for many years now five-six years and somebody who I make sure is on the line up because there's so much wisdom and clarity and depth and an interest as well and that's my good friend Rick Hansen who is a neuropsychologist therapist neuroscience expert author of buddha's brain and just one thing and very pragmatic ways of understanding how we're wired up and fun at the same time so please welcome brick counseling well I'm very pleased to be here really pleased and I consider it such a privilege to be able to participate in what James is created here I was saying to someone before we began that it's really quite extraordinary what he's done I mean literally well over 10,000 people at this point could well be tens of thousands of people worldwide known and unknown have taken this course and it's so generously offered it's so packed with content you really have been a source of this and it's seated so many ripples from it so I'm considerate completely an honor to be able to be here in terms of what I'd like to talk with you about in roughly half an hour I'd like to present first of all a kind of road map for who we are and what to do about it I want to ground this really cool stuff about loving yourself and all the rest of that in the body in the animal body what Mary Oliver is called the soft animal of the body so that's the first part little framework I'm going to move through that fairly briskly and then based on that offer two ways to actually practice and embody loving oneself and then hopefully have a few minutes at least at the end for some questions and discussion all right so you ready strap on the seatbelt I will be moving quickly through the first portion here so a little evolution right basically as you probably know the brain evolved like the three floors of a house stacked on top of each other we have brainstem subcortex cortex loosely associated with reptile mammalian and primate human stages of evolution loosely also relatively loosely we have three fundamental needs that were addressed by the evolving brain and somewhat in order our fundamental need for safety fundamental need for satisfaction for getting rewards and their fundamental need for connection relationships so we have the threat system the reward system in the social system okay so far got three things very loosely associated now today the whole brain works together to meet those needs but the ways in which the brain goes about meeting those needs are very shaped by the parts of the brain that particularly focus on meeting those needs now what happens when we experience that our core needs are met well in terms of our core need for safety which is managed by the avoiding harms system in the brain kind of an operating system if we've experienced that our needs for safety or Matt we default to a basic state of calm or peace if we experience that our basic needs for satisfaction for rewards are met we're getting enough carrots right we default to a basic sense of contempt in a single umbrella word and if we experience that our basic needs for connection for love for inclusion are met in terms of our attaching system attaching to others system we default to a basic sense of love in which we feel both loved and loving since love is love markedly whether it's flowing in or flowing out that's pretty good news right and in that condition the body repairs and refuse itself and can function in an ongoing homeostatic way it's an equilibrium condition it's a sustainable condition I think of it as the Green Zone the Green setting of the brain all right good news on the other hand what happens if we feel over challenged and we are not able to experience being fundamentally safe even if we're dealing with challenges or threats or danger we are native able to feel fundamentally satisfied if we're dealing with losses or opportunities just out of reach and we're not able let's say to feel fundamentally loved even as we grapple with issues in the relationship field then the brain has a second setting it moves out of the green zone which I call the responsive mode of the brain and it tips into the fight-or-flight red zone the reactive mode of the brain two settings of the brain and in that state in terms of the avoiding harm system we tip into a state of fear all right flight we want to withdraw from what's unpleasant or resisted or in terms of the reward seeking part of the brain the carrot seeking part of the brain we tip into a state of frustration driven us and grasping if you will and in terms of the attaching to others system of the brain why don't we experience that those basic needs for connection are not met we tip into a state of envy or shame or loneliness or in a word heartache this is the brain in the red zone the body kicks into gear the stress hormones flood through us including moving back up into the brain and we run from the lion or we chase the opportunity or we struggle with or cling to others all right bodily resources are burned faster than we can take them in long-term projects are put on hold and the mind in three basic words is colored by a state of fear frustration and heartache in terms of those three core systems and coordinates that's a brain that's colored strongly by qualities of resisting in terms of the avoiding system qualities of grasping terms of the approaching reward system and a quality of clinging in terms of the attaching to either system or in a single encompassing word a brain colored by craving and therefore suffering so for those of you are tracking what I'm doing I'm trying to naturalize the Dharma in other words I'm trying to ground this ancient Buddhist psychology that's profoundly penetrating in its analysis of human psychology without reference and the frame that I'm working in to anything supernatural or metaphysical high or transcendental in that frame the Buddha's analysis of course as you know is it forms of craving lead to suffering I'm asking myself you know we understand the causes the mental causes of suffering in there and what are the underlying biological evolutionary neural causes of the mental causes of suffering in its end so in this state in which we've moved into the redzone the spider flight reactive zone mother nature's plan for us is that we spike if you will in terms of the red zone the reactive mode but we get out of the red zone quickly because in the wild as our ancestors evolved most stressful episodes end quickly one way or another all right and the zebra one zebra gets nailed the rest of the zebra herd is fine and then go back to eating grass kind of looking over their shoulder right that's the natural template brief bursts of red hopefully ending well with a long recovery in green right that's mother nature's plan and if it goes like that is probably okay to have these red bursts if you will long green but is that our modern life for most of us today no we may not have the spikes of running in terror for our lives hopefully not on a daily basis of back in the Serengeti but on the other hand we experience chronic mild to moderate stress with no opportunity to recover so we have spiked partial down spiked partial down spiked partial down and then if we recover we do things like over II drugs and alcohol way too much television you know next thing you know then you're stressed out again on and on and on it goes all right well we crank ourselves up with coffee in the morning to kind of get back on the daily battlefield what to do about it well the problem is we're vulnerable to the redzone in three fundamental ways just built into the brain three aspects of its negativity bias is what scientists call it in the first place we're rapidly moved out of the green zone the responsive mode of the brain because survival threats or opportunities have a lot of urgency and a lot of impact if we don't deal with them immediately we're going to be in trouble second even if we feel relatively mellow Kyah in the green zone you know the internal dashboard is green green green in terms of our three needs still if you ever noticed how hard it is not to feel any anxiety whatsoever right mother nature wants us to be always a little anxious even if we're just kind of eating the grass and there's all bello she wants us to be a little uneasy correct same time she wants our brain to be constantly scanning for the next thing to want one more thing to want yeah my precious right and then she also wants us to be looking around you know like if we have any mates or partners like who are you flirting with okay or you know how much do you love me today I knew you loved me yesterday but do you love me today too you know we're looking for that right so I was a little edgy always a little uneasy it's hard to feel profoundly peaceful profoundly contented or profoundly loved and loving second vulnerability the third aspect of the negativity bias is that the brain over learns from pain in other words that over learns from negative reactive redzone experiences never forget once burned twice shy or as I put it the brain is like velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones the brain is very good by evolutionary design to learn from it's very good at learning from the bad and it's very bad at learning from the good all right and so you can see then the consequences we start to accumulate what's called a low static load because it's not the red zone is not really designed to be sustainable it's designed to be a very quick burst that's not a long-term plan so if we make it routine as we do in modern life with mild to moderate chronic stress with very little periods of fully Green recovery between these spikes right we start to accumulate wear and tear on our body terms the immune system digestion hormones and so forth we start depleting neurotransmitters like serotonin so we're vulnerably increasingly to stress to depression and mentally our mind is continually colored by this fundamental background sense of fresh air and anger in terms of the threat system background sense of frustration disappointment and driven us in terms of the approaching reward system and an ongoing background sounds of loneliness disconnection you know kind of covered over hole in the heart right and then because we experience this way we live we feel this way we start acting in various ways to other people toward other people they're great vicious cycles and then you can see this issue of the red brain as it were writ large globally so if you have groups or nations or religions or what-have-you that feel threatened well they're gonna you know that will cause the reactive mode of their brain to just go into high gear if they feel frustrated or desperate or greedy then they start gorging on the planet scarce resources in this kind of frenzy of appetite or if people feel at all uneasy and or personally you know we evolved in small bands that bred mainly internally they succeeded when they when their members were very cooperative internally and we're very aggressive externally so we have that very strong capability the two wolves in the heart is at work love and hate to love us and fear attack and hate them right so what do we do when we've got seven billion people shoved up close cheek-by-jowl you know like in Life of Pi the guy in the tiger and the lifeboat seven billion of us in one lifeboat you know vulnerable one planet earth and so we're very prone to cling tight to us and fear and attack them what did you write well can intervene in lots of levels you know I'm like a methods guy I'm a brain guy so I intervene in terms of them in the brain what can you do number one get out of reactive episodes as fast as you can get out of the red zone as quick as you can because your brain is over learning from the red zone every red zone episode makes you one smidge if not tense midges more vulnerable to a reactive spider flight stressful you know fear frustration and heartache experience alright get out of the red zone as fast as you can second do what you can outside yourself to prevent red zone experiences you know do what you can think about schedule think about not adding too many commitments I should think about that myself you know think about doing what you can to create more safety in your world you know we do what we can all right third and perhaps most important of all which will be my segue into the practice to do with you momentarily is to again and again and again help this vulnerable stone-age brain which is really older than Stone Age the nervous system is 600 million years old you know each of us has within us a kind of inner lizard inner mouse and inner monkey you know loosely associated with the three layers of their brain so very loosely that lizard needs a lot of padding your safe little lizard buddy it's okay you know the little mouse needs a lot of cheese you have enough it's okay you're full there's enough right and the monkey needs a lot of hugging yeah okay and especially is what's called neuroplasticity the capacity the brain to learn goes down as you move back in time the inner mouse but especially the inner lizard needs a lot of soothing and petting all right we need a lot of experiences of safety so the third way to deal with this fundamental issue this is a design feature in evolution and I've described that you know the three deeds the two fundamental settings of the brain that's a design feature but in the 21st century in many ways it's a kind of ISO kind of design flaw it's like a bug in the stone age brain so the third thing we can do about it yes again and again and again help it land inside seconds at a time safe fed enough connected part of seen liked maybe loved again and again and again and help this brain taking the good in other words again and again and again roughly ten seconds at a time help it really land because negative learning lands immediately the brain fast tracks negative experiences into storage right away positive experiences unless they're highly intense or novel million-dollar moments need to be held in awareness past some loose threshold that's on the order of five ten twenty seconds for them to have a chance of transferring from short-term memory buffers down into long-term storage so we need to help ourselves really register it when our safety needs are basically met when our reward seeking or satisfaction seeking needs are basically met and really help it land when our needs for connection are basically met not necessarily perfectly as jean-paul Sartre said hell is other people okay so but basically meant okay and that's an opportunity for us a hundred times over a thousand times over ten thousand times over to drill it into the brain through mother nature's well intended lives be afraid be hungry be lonely to drill it into the brain again and again and again that there's no basis for the craving that leads to suffering in harm there's no biological psychological deep basis for the craving that leads to suffering and harm because there's an internalized sense of needs already met abiding as an engaging life fully sometimes passionately on the basis of a prior deeply grounded unconditional state of fundamental peace contentment and love that's the opportunity for us a hundred times over a thousand times over ten thousand times over and I don't care who is in charge of the country or whose show is on TV not one being alive can prevent any one of us from doing this practice of registering it in the sanctuary and in the sanctity of our own mind brain system so you want to do a little practice of this so I'm gonna think of here or introduce two fundamental ways to be loving toward ourselves one is to help artists come home to green again and again and again knowing that every time we rest in the responsive mode of the brain and actually register actually take it in actually let it come in to us we deepen its neural traces and it becomes that much harder the next time to knock us out of the green zone when a challenge comes along in life because you can engage life on the basis of the responsive mode of the brain we just need to deepen our keel in the water as it were through experiencing again and again of what it feels like to be in the responsive mode with needs basically met and then much like a sailboat as the winds of the world blow with a deeper and deeper keel it's harder and harder to knock us out of our green zone it's harder and harder to capsize us okay so one way to love ourselves is to help us help ourselves come home again and again with a felt sense of basic safety basic satisfaction basic connection also in particular to kind of use a bit of a trick from evolution about how to activate qualities of warm heartedness toward ourselves which if you think about it are very unnatural it's natural to have feral driven to do what I need to do to survive that's natural but notice what's not present in that it's not nice it's not warm to ourselves we're not saying Oh sweetie you've been working really hard those nasty people kind of you know no right so raw survival that's pretty straightforward we know how to do that we also know how to be loving toward others because as mammals especially the most social mammal social animal on the planet in a profound way we know how to care for young we know how to care for our loved ones we even know how to care for the the village or tribe it takes to raise a child all right but to bring that quality of lovingness nurturance sweetness to ourselves that's not so natural is it so a good way to kind of help the brain learn this is to go through a couple of steps that I'll do with you momentarily okay so let's give it a try so we'll do this kind of quickly in terms of the first fundamental need for safety help yourself feel as safe as you can reasonably feel right now registering that they're strong walls around you we're going to protect it setting you can let your breathing slow and calm the basic sense of ease technically parasympathetic nervous system activation maybe through long exhaling maybe finding a sense of strength inside on the basis of which you can afford to feel safe and then I'll be quiet for about half a minute as you find you were your way into as much as you easily can right now a basic sense of peace with no basis for being at war no basis for fear anxiety fading away bracing passing away resting as peace and letting that sense of peace whatever has come for you move to the back of the mine and turning your attention now to the approaching rewards system of your brain your natural need for satisfaction bringing to mind for example some things you feel grateful for or glad about or if you just think about them they make you happy they make you smile opening to some positive emotion letting yourself have it understanding that this is a self loving act to let it land that there really is no basis for disappointment right now or frustration in the periphery of awareness or maybe losses or maybe sadness but they're held in a larger space of a sense of a fundamental enoughness so that you can open increasingly into a quality of contentment basic well-being with no where's for this moment to be anything else than what it is here - I'll be quiet for about half a minute as you open - and let yourself rest in quality of happiness gladness well-being and contentment and letting whatever qualities of contentment are here letting them move to the background and focusing now on the third system attaching to others or social needs needs for connection bringing to mind a sense of connection perhaps to others in this room friends and family thinking of someone that you know cares about you and opening to feeling cared about cared about is on a kind of range it includes a sense of belonging or being seen or being appreciated people who appreciate you or like you or love you also being aware of your own warm heart bringing to mind people that you feel loving toward compassionate toward kind toward the heart opening if you can't even finding your way perhaps kind of radically to a sense of being liked and loved enough it would be nice to have more but there's a fundamental kind of sufficiency liked and loved enough so that there's no basis for clinging can relax resting in love feeling loved and loving again for the next half minute then getting a sense of all three together kind of integrated somehow a basic sense of peace basic sense of contentment basic sense of love all together a kind of sense of home like wow this is my home undisturbed there's no deficit it's nothing fundamental lacking there's no basis for resisting anything or grasping after anything or clinging to anything there's no real basis for craving craving falling away abiding home letting it sink in this is what it feels like taking in this good okay and then coming back into the room while helping yourself stay home even as you engage language or thought more may get more active or vigorous while still being rested with all three lights on your dashboard blinking or steady green steady green all right then I want to introduce kind of briefly one last little practice and actually I think what I'll do is I'll just name it because I want to open up a little time for talk with each other a three step process that works the brain and overcomes or helps overcome this interesting challenge we have about being loving toward ourselves is step one start with feeling cared about help yourself really register it much as I touched on quite lightly really register it that you are loved let it sink in because research shows that feeling loved Prime's the attachment systems of the brain so that they're more capable of being loved in step two picks one person or more and could be different kinds of beings could be a pet animal companion could be a spiritual being whatever could be a group of people one or more beings that it's easy for you to feel loving to work especially qualities of compassion moved by suffering which is a very deep and ancient of mammalian emotion especially a primate human emotion moved by compassion move toward caring so now you're warming up your caring circuits as it were after having primed them by feeling cared about and then in the third step once you have that sense of caring going and you know what it feels like you know what it's like in your body would direct it to yourself okay before you have time to forget what it feels like he it's really powerful to start with yourself as a little kid because it's deeply natural to us to care about children as young or as vulnerable or as innocent as you can go and then see what that's like including the little child inside each one of us and the deeper layers of those psychic Prada if you will the down to bedrock even and then see if you can also bring that quality of caring for yourself and good wishes for yourself and you might help to use loving-kindness phrases like may I be happy or even something quite specific like may I find work or my chemotherapy go well whatever you know you you have that warmth through yourself in that three-step way start by feeling cared about second go for something easy to feel caring towards someone and third then apply that to yourself okay so maybe a question or comment and then we'll wrap up that was a hand that popped up quickly that the ground state of consciousness is joy or bliss and I wonder if from a neuroscience standpoint if you have any comments about that yeah okay so I think you all heard the questioner right in a comment so I'll be that that's a huge topic I'll I'll be very succinctly out it so first by consciousness I think here we're talking about sort of like basic baseline experiencing can we use it like that where there's awareness but there's an experiencing simultaneous okay so I would say absolutely the resting state it's really remarkable what are people like most people including us what do we like when we feel basically safe basically fulfilled or satisfied fed and there's and we feel basically cared about and doesn't even need to be perfect Boop we default to our resting state as our animal ancestors did I think there's an underlying unease that is continually generative of craving if you will if mother nature is lying to us she's deluding us for our own good from a survival standpoint you know you you're just a little threatened you're just a little shorted you're just a little dismissed right so we're always going to be trying and I think we need especially to taking the good a thousand times over to help that gradually quiet that internal whispering of the lie but I think definitely the resting state is this basic very rewarded quality of peacefulness contentment in love and what I'm saying is I just finished a book on this hardwiring happiness it'll be out in six months but I'm really up on the science of this and the interesting research is that these resting states are highly rewarded they feel good because they're good for you reactive modes don't feel good they're not good for us we're supposed to run from the fire or chase the food you know or mate with our partner whatever quickly and then require wow I need a cigarette nothing to her I need a red cover okay it doesn't feel like great you know now interestingly we can be activated but as long as there's positive emotion associated with it we can stay in the green zone we're passionate in the green zone we're engaged with life we're enthusiastic rue the word you probably know means God within you know in Dale's right enthusiasm we can be engaged fully we can also be very chill very tranquil very peaceful that's another way to be green all right but we don't have to tip into negative emotions to get the benefits of sympathetic nervous system activation or being revved up we can stay green as we do that the interesting thing for me is how to imagine given our vulnerabilities right as Stone Age animals with the you know the lizard the rat and the monkey inside I like rats I'm fond of them but anyway how do we handle our vulnerabilities you know and not tip in to the trouble of the red zone which we're so vulnerable to over learning from that's the art of it and then on the basis of the green zone and my personal fantasy is a billion brains on green I think that would be a tipping point in this world today and because we have a world that's unread we're definitely way too red you know aiming fast for the edge of the cliff with the bread with the red lights blinking and like you know greed and fear and you know various issues of us and them just driving the bus okay one more person I'm sorry your your final conclusion about whether the research about the brain supports or is in conflict with the basic Dharma you know the Four Noble Truths it sounds like you you believe that they're consistent but the idea of ending craving it sounds like our hardwiring isn't really set up for that so is there ultimately some tension between how the brain works and the basic Dharma yeah so to generalize your point if you think about it the poignant truth is that our brain the fundamental the most important organ in the body the brain being three pounds of tofu like tissue you know inside the coconut that that structure sometimes called the enchanted loom is the final common pathway of all the causes streaming through us to make this moment of conscious experience for better or worse right it's quite an extraordinary organ that brain evolved to crave and suffer in order to survive it also evolved a capacity to default to the resting state the home base if you will of the green responsive mode when we experience that our core needs are met because often people can have plenty of walls and guns they can have plenty of money and food and the larder and they can have plenty of love and they still are caught up in the red zone you're still caught out in in craving of various kinds alright so for me that the way the picture is kind of nuanced you know on the one hand our resting state when we experience needs are met we go to a place where there's no there's very little basis for craving there's an ongoing resting state whispering to us low-grade craving that's very interesting to practice with and I think there's an inherent suffering built in to the fundamental contradiction between the fact that for us to function in life we need two essential eyes perceptions we need to have that's a sound that's a sight that's a banana that's friend that's a foe that's an entity but the ongoing streaming of the underlying neural processing and which coalition's of synapses form very briefly to represent a sight a sound a taste a smell of you know the hedonic tone the Veda the feeling tones all the aggregates all that right even as those coalition's of neurons hook up to form that sound or that desire or that plan or that thought they're decaying underneath our feet even as we try to hold on to the unstable eyes the purse after the thought that they created which creates a fundamental tension inside us that's why practices that help us become increasingly at ease with falling apart you know actually are very powerful ways to undo that kind of hardwired engine of of tension and reaching continually for the essentialized stabilized something even as it decays underneath our feet but I think it's completely possible on the other hand to make ourselves accident prone to grace in other words 200 times a thousand times ten thousand times over in the ten seconds at a time in the days of our lives tip into enjoyable rewarding experiences a feeling basically safe basically satisfied basically connected experiences a fundamental peace contentment and love that are enjoyable experiences tip into them and gradually teach the brain in a macro sense that there's no basis for craving at that level your needs are fundamentally mad and then even go a step further and help drill it in again and again and again to this well intended delusion there were ought to be anxious and you know looking for something to want and fundamentally and easy relationally and then on the basis of that which feels more and more stabilizes profound mental health right and we're still engaged in life on the basis of that have the growing courage and capacity to completely fall apart and realize that in the very broadest sense us allness as james said quoting Dogen intimate with all things keep going on being and that's a beautiful way to live to function and to bring our whole planet as a whole home to green [Music]

Channel: Rick Hanson

Views: 64,973

Rating: 4.8719511 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Hanson, Just One Thing, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Self, Inner Peace

Id: 8l_vuqpbb7U

Length: 39min 33sec (2373 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2013