Rick Hanson Speaking on The Not-Craving Brain

I want to talk about what in the world might be going on inside the brain of someone who's not craving and therefore not suffering I asked myself what is the nature of the brain of a Buddha or a saint or the nature of anyone who's in a very peak performing peak functioning joyful creative flow state or even what's going on in the brain of someone or oneself when one is being you know a quantum asyndeton sub underlying fulfillment and satisfaction even when one is disappointed or is holding on to a felt sense of being included and of worth and cared about even if one was you know rejected in love or didn't get the job one wanted how do we actually do this how do we actually promote those states of brain of the not craving brain so that's what this section is going to be about okay so I'm going to go through these topics here I'm going to go through the first several the first three actually fairly briskly and then I want to really preserve time for several practices and methods we can do for strengthening the natural state of the brain it's responsive mode which is characterized as we'll see by calm contentment and caring all right so that's my general plan and I'll slow down for questions and discussion I had one or two points during the first three bullets all right so let's dive in evolution okay what a long strange trip it's been you know three and a half billion years of life you know 600 million years or so of evolution of the nervous system which arose when multi-celled creatures became complex enough that their sensory systems and motor systems needed to communicate with each other those communications were of course information thus the beginnings of the nervous system to convey information back and forth in efficient ways between sensory motor systems or and within sensory motor systems and upon that very primal architecture of things like sponges you know in the ancient seas then developed the nervous systems of you know little crabs or tryla bites you know 500 or 300 million years ago and then early you know complex fish land creatures mammals 200 or so million years ago primates 60 million or so years ago hominids who could manufacture stone tools about two and a half million years ago with brains a third our size then modern humans about a hundred fifty thousand years ago and then ultra modern humans around fifty thousand years ago biological evolution keeps going how many of you have blue green or hazel eyes don't be ashamed you are mutants you are all x-men and women you know no one had blue eyes really literally DNA studies have shown no one who at least passed on their genes had blue eyes until about four or five thousand years ago roughly in the area of Denmark some little boy or little girl was born with bright blue eyes who was very popular and had a lot of grandchildren who were popular themselves and you're sitting here in the room today so evolution keeps on going as the brain evolved down that long strange trip it did so roughly and simplistically and yet I think usefully to consider in three basic stages the so-called reptilian brain a million brain and then primate human brain ok in terms of this development which evolved essentially like a tree kind of up and out the brain developed three fundamental motivational systems that are that originated in these different parts of the brain the first system avoids harm as I said earlier rule one and you know the wild is eat lunch don't be lunch right so you know and the primal emotion is of course fear so early creatures they were very good at avoiding harm which include the exercise of the of the primal original parasympathetic nervous system to freeze alright if you know Stephen Porges and his brilliant polyvagal theory the evolution of the vagus nerve occurred in three major stages that related to its three major branches that also correlate with those three stages in terms of motivational system and the original stage of the vagus nerve has to do with parasympathetic activation which also involves freezing okay that's avoiding harm then layered on top of it came the later reptilian brain and the early mammalian brain with structures that sit on top of the brainstem and then took on a life of their own in the limbic system that's very focused on approaching reward you know instead of avoiding sticks we approach carrots and we can do so in more nuanced ways that control breathing and accelerating the heart rate that's where the sympathetic wing of the autonomic nervous system evolved so that we can pursue those rewards and frankly fight or flee in a more successful sophisticated and nuanced way and then layer it on top of that comes the primate and human brain which is very very focused on attaching to us yes early mammals like mice let's say and also birds as well as other species like octopuses certain kinds of cephalopods are called are quite social really social behavior and it's related experiences of bonding love altruism cooperation and related functions like language and sharing of food really evolved and developed in primates and then in particular in humans okay so that's the overarching structure in which the brain evolved and this framework this way of thinking about the operation of the brain has been for me very useful the crux is function in other words the function of avoiding hazard approaching reward or attaching to us not Anatomy although these three systems have been very shaped by the anatomy in which they originated in terms of the avoiding system being shaped by brain stem activation in nature it has probably not escaped your attention that the avoiding system is rooted in anatomies that are slow to learn right that is a lot of clinical implications right and yeah so I'll leave it at that here's a little cartoon and it kind of summarizes these three functions I like this kind of thing you know even though it's a simplification I think it's a useful fiction to think about the inner iguana I think of it in a rat I have a lot of nice feeling for rats I don't know my mom is no longer alive less phobic about rats we inadvertently sent her a photograph of our daughter with our pet rat this wonderful sweet rat sitting on her daughter's chest or shoulder rather my mom nearly threw up when she's out of the photograph alone but anyway I like rats I think back the days of the dinosaurs you know the ruled the earth and Jurassic Park they thought they were so special didn't they but those little rat like ancestors hiding in the bushes coming out especially at night because they were warm-blooded that's an advantage you know they lived on after you know the comet asteroid hit the earth you know around 65 million years ago and the dinosaurs disappeared so I I like rats anyway and then there's the you know I think of the inner monkey inner caveman cavewoman that's the more cerebral stuff all right so now what's the thing we can't turn these off actually I'll stay here for the moment we cannot get rid of the lizard brain we cannot get rid of the you know rat brain we cannot get rid of monkey mind all right but what we can do is alter or shape the mode of activation that we're in in terms of these three fundamental systems and when we do that then we're moving into a different frame we're moving into a frame that's not focused around survival activation but a frame that's more focused on well-being on the reduction of suffering and and the increase in happiness and benefit for ourselves and others how do we do it that's what I want to talk about here so the natural state of the brain when a person is not disturbed is actually as we'll see momentarily a really good place basically when people are not disturbed the avoiding system naturally defaults to a state of relative calm characterized by lots of parasympathetic activation not in the reactive mode of freezing but in the ordinary parasympathetic Li dominated in some sense of that word mode of mellow relaxed easygoing we're okay all right second in terms of the approaching system when people are not frustrated not disappointed not worded in their goals they tend to default to a state of basic contentment ease and well-being I should also say when they're not disturbed biochemically alright people worldwide generally report then when they're not rattled it kind of feels sort of okay it's mild on the 0 to 10 scale of positive effect you know it's a 1 or a 2 but it's pervading there's a basic sense of contentment and third when people again are not disturbed they tend to default to a state of caring altruism taking good care of strangers jumping into rivers to rescue dogs you know they don't know or who's human pets I think humans or pets of dogs but anyway you know the human pets do not know they'll jump into the river altruistically risking their own life to save those others you know we tend to pay a lot of attention to departures from these 3 we pay attention to angry fearful activations or acts of war genocide gross unkindness and conflict okay but that's a little bit like the clouds moving through the sky they draw our attention but the sky itself Dwarfs those clouds so this is the brain in its responsive mode including I think a kind of creativity a generativity using Erik Erikson's term for a life in which we're producing whether it's producing a new garden or a loaf of bread or the generativity of learning a new skill there's a kind of fundamental creativity or generativity a contribution that emerges when the brain is in its natural responsive mode here's a little graphic here our daughter did this who's now 21 we have two kids my wife and I 23 and 21 let's see and I use the word affiliate for the attaching system I've chosen to use the attaching word for my model here even though it has potentially negative connotations pretending in a Buddhist world I think there's a lot to be said about attachment healthy attachment and so forth obviously okay so that's a picture here I think it's helpful to appreciate that behind the obscurations to use the tibetan phrase behind the obscurations there is a naturally positive state of being and as a Lord of the Rings junkie I'm quoting here in the darkest moment pretty much in the trilogy as Sam who's helping Frodo who's bearing the Ring of Power crawl up the slopes of the exploding volcano Mount Doom while evil forces are trying to find them they're broken down weary and hungry their friends outside of Mordor are being slaughtered by overwhelming forces it's the darkest hour nonetheless through the clouds that are the symbol of Mordor through the obstacles the obscurations of confusion ignorance or delusion Sam sees through them the light that was always already there I'd like that quote a lot all right I'm a sucker for that all right the responsive mode is very important for one it fuels us it tops us our tanks for necessary reactive mode which I'll get to momentarily reactive mode mobilizations also the responsive mode is how we recover from pouring out the problem of course the first book I wrote was called mother nurture penguin published it in O - it was about taking good care of mothers and all couples with kids for the long haul not just the first few months postpartum after which mother's fall off the radar of the healthcare system as if they've stopped pouring out and one of the notions I develop was of a depleted mother syndrome that I think some a lot a significant fraction of mothers transit through very often two three four years out or after something particularly draining happens you know it's important to appreciate that if we're pouring out and pouring out and we're not refueling after a while we start running on fumes whether we're a mother or whether we're a father or whether we're just doing anything that involves lots and lots of demands upon us as you probably know from what's called the stress bioethicists model in health care you know course is pretty much determined by its a equation with three variables you know challenges or demand stressors upon a person off you know hitting vulnerabilities diathesis are called vulnerabilities offset by resources so as stresses or as demands go up or as vulnerabilities go up or as both go up it's very important for resources to go up as well and that's where the responsive mode comes in it's also the case that the responsive mode fuels positive outlook fuels positive behaviors those create positive cycles and also the responsive mode fuels virtue and benevolence you know two key attributes write those words by the way I had a client of mine who quoted them to me she was a high tech person very dynamic we're very organized but she had heard those words from some Zen talk at one point virtue and benevolence which then has no monopoly on obviously and you know those words have been in her mind there have been in my mind as well kind of if in doubt virtue and benevolence it's hard to go wrong I throw in mindfulness as well and there we are in any case it's helpful to appreciate that the responsive mode which feels good usually is good for other people sometimes people are afraid to take in the good or feel good as if it's selfish or vain or somehow you know just a kind of trivial cherry on the frosting on the cake but actually it's the because as many studies have shown people are more inclined to be pro-social they're more inclined to be patient to be generous to be able to work cooperatively when their own cup runneth over you know as you can see in the quote here from Bertrand Russell good people are happy people not because so much happiness inclined army goodness makes you happy but rather happiness inclines us to be good that's the good news now here's the bad news the reactive mode as it were to cope with urgent needs we leave home we leave our home base and we kick into the reactive mode there's a place for the reactive mode but let's be clear about what it is and what its costs are that need to be netted against its benefits so for example in terms of the avoiding system if we feel unsafe or threatened either based on something happening right now or something coming up in ourselves it's important to appreciate I think that the majority the great majority actually of inputs into the brain into the central nervous system and then up through the central nervous system into the brain I've come from within the organism itself come within the body itself all right so if any kind of you know threat message comes up which could include the longing for love which historically is associated with pain and therefore is threatening could trigger the avoiding system into gear all right or for example what if we're frustrated we can't approach a goal we can't get that character right we're disappointed we're frustrated we rewarded we're blocked or maybe we have an internalized sense of learned helplessness which humans as I'll talk about momentarily are very vulnerable to mammals in general are very vulnerable to learn helplessness if that comes up as well bump the reactive mode of the approaching system kicks into gear or let's say we feel separated we feel cast out we feel dissed we come home you know watch my eyes and our teenager does this to us you know rolls our eyes whatever you know something comes up we're on the receiving end of disdain or maybe we feel ashamed which is a social emotion we're guilty then too laboum you know the attaching system kicks in to its reactive mode it's a kind of inner homelessness the problem is for many people reactive mode functioning becomes the new normal it's the water they swim in like the veritable you know proverbial fish that doesn't realize it's wet right this is the reactive triangle have to have a graphic here alright see again a little detail here if how many of you know something of Buddhist psychology or Buddhism in general okay great yield this will be a familiar term in in that frame which I named not to push it but to kick its tires to see what might be might be relevant or useful there for us today you know as the Buddha himself famously said see for yourself alright so it's in that frame of course that I'm talking here in Buddhism there are the so called three poisons greed hatred and delusion alright if you think about it greed maps to the approaching system hatred maps to the avoiding system and delusion or ignorant kind of surrounds them all the ignorant that doesn't realize that everything is continually changing and everything is connected to everything else so that nothing arises on its own and the ignorance that fails to realize that if we resist those two facts of impermanence and interdependence we create suffering and harm all right that's the fundamental essence of the Four Noble Truths so in any case it's interesting though that the Buddha left out heartache if you pick a single word for a disturbance of the approaching system I myself would add heartache it's implicit in some of his teaching but I think that the approaching system which if you think about it as the brain tripled in size the last two and a half million years which it did from the time our ancestors first began manufacturing tools much of the build out of the brain that 2/3 of cortex largely that's been evolved in the last two-and-a-half million years which is pretty short if you think about 600 million years of evolution of a nervous much of that build-out is dedicated as social functions to love broadly defined because the reproductive advantages love that phrase of bite which are the engine of biological evolution the reproductive advantages within hunter-gatherer bands that were better at love broadly defined stitched those advantages into DNA and into the human brain fundamentally this is the social brain theory it's called and very arguably certainly over the last several million years have not even longer love broadly defined has been the primary driver of the evolution of the brain you know so it's in that context here that I think that the attaching system stands at its own feet it is functionally distinct it draws on the other two for its functions to be sure but it's functionally distinct it's certainly neurologically neural anatomically distinct and that's why I think it's important to talk about the four poisons you know greed hatred heartache and delusion okay my two cents so here's the deal though the problem is is that the reactive mode is very powerful in terms of urgency and intensity and particularly to the extent that it's embedded in ancient brainstem and limbic system functions it is quite inflexible in its activations now I think it's important to appreciate that the reactive mode is necessary it's normal sometimes there are reactive mode activations that have associations to positive effect like jumping up and down when forgive me if it's not your team the San Francisco Giants won the World Series last year that was you be all right some hands here good you know that is reactive mode activation all right but on we have to be careful because as soon as we go into reactive mode even if it's effectively positive we're vulnerable to get tipped into more primal threat response or stress response activations you ever noticed that when you're really excited it's easy to tip into anger because you're just already really close in terms of biological activation all right it's also the case that certain that extremes of reactive mode activation are found in the psychiatric psychological classification of mental disorders and here's a an interest I think interesting clustering of some not all but some well-known diagnoses don't you know this is how and this is insurance classifications here we get paid for sometimes diagnoses clustered in terms of these three systems for example if you think of it you know it's a disorders of the avoiding system or anxiety disorders or disorders of anger or PTSD disorders often in the attachment system include things like narcissistic personality disorder borderline conditions or more general you know murkier more common messes like simply looking for love in all the wrong places okay now I want to talk about in particular a subset or aspect of the avoiding system that has to do with the negativity bias and threat reactivity which I alluded to very briefly you know in my first talk here in other words a key component of the reactive mode is to scan for threat it looks for bad news to keep us alive and then when it finds it reacts intensely stores it immediately once burned twice shy and then stores it in such a way that it can be reactivated at anything that remotely resembles bad news whether that signal that resembles bad news comes from outside us or frankly more commonly from inside us why did we develop a negativity bias and that's where I think it's quite helpful and I've by the way found this very helpful to clients it normalizes the negativity bias it helps them understand it in a sense it de pathologies --is it and yet shines the spotlight on it as yeah Houston we've got a problem you know we got to deal with this sort of thing because it affects us routinely and also affects those around us so while it's important in evolution to get those carrots right and avoid those sticks it's more important generally to avoid sticks because if you fail to get a carrot today you'll probably have a chance at a carrot tomorrow but if you fail to avoid a stick today what no more carrots forever sticks have an urgency and a survival impact that carrots usually lack all right with the negativity bias in effect the avoiding system takes over rule one don't be lunch you know it takes over and it coops the approaching and attaching systems to its purposes either inhibiting them or using them for its ends this has a lot of consequences this list here is just a kind of summary by the way I should have mentioned in the back of the first slide set our five slides worth of references one slide on I think really good books and then four slides on papers so various kinds I think kind of greatest hits in a way in this area of self-directed neuroplasticity in that list of references or two papers that summarize a lot of the research on the negativity bias you I don't think you have them in your handout I'm off to mail them to you one of those papers is called the negativity bias the others called bad is stronger than good not that bad is better than good but bad is stronger than good I mean if you're interested you can see more about this stuff there okay just some highlights one is that as I said it's easy to learn helplessness you know studies on on animals and humans have shown that you can train mammals very quickly in half-a-dozen trials in a sense of helplessness and futility and despair you know trapped and can't do anything trapped and defeated right and which is the hallmark basis for depression and yet unfortunately even though it might take only a handful of trials to train a human or another animal in helplessness it takes many dozens of sometimes over 100 trials to the point of absurdity sounds like therapy right that's why Freud called it the impossible profession to have a person realize that they can do something you know that they're the cue ball instead of the 8-ball in in certain key areas of their life that's why I think it's so important to pay attention to where we do have some efficacy even if it's only inside our mind you know I think about the famous writing a Viktor Frankl the founder of logotherapy I hold a cost survivor out of Auschwitz to paraphrase II said even there in the worst places on earth for me at least tied for last place is hell on earth you know the concentration camps even there were people who through offering a bit of a smile or the last crusts of bread or the way their their attitude about being there demonstrated that most fundamental and irreducible of human freedoms the freedom to choose how we will respond to our circumstances right if only inside our mind you know sometimes I think frankly when I watch the news i watch politics I think to myself sometimes you may have my body you may have my tax dollars but you do know you may have my White House or whatever but you do not have my mind all right okay that's where I think all often people of opportunities for efficacy greater opportunities than in their body or out there in the world which of course are also important places to intervene in but we typically have less power there in the body or in the world and we usually don't take the benefits with us wherever we go which is what we do you know the title of John kabat-zinn classic book on mindfulness wherever you go there you are you know so we take these results wherever we go couple more examples that we'll move on one that strikes me as John Gottman's finding you know great researcher on couples counseling that in happy long-term couples there's almost always at least a five to one ratio of positive interactions to negative ones implying that positive interact that an egg a single negative act interaction is more powerful than five positive ones all right that's a cautionary tale isn't it another detail at the very bottom is that as I said earlier negative experiences go right in um plus memory but positive experiences unless their million-dollar moments have plain-vanilla systems and that means they have to be held in awareness 10 20 30 seconds in a row ideally with repetition and some intensity to transfer from short-term memory buffers to long-term storage how often do we actually do that that means as I said positive experiences flow through like water through a sieve but negative experiences are caught every time unfortunately building up a pile of negative experiences an implicit memory you know in effect the brain is like velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones another key example of the negativity bias is threat reactivity if you think about it in the wild there two mistakes you can make you can think there's a tiger in the bushes about to pounce but really the coast is clear all right or you could think everything's fine feeling groovy by the tigers about to get you what's the cost of the first mistake anxiety right phobias okay suffering what's the cost of the second mistake let's all make the sound together forget it you live so mother nature wants us to make the first mistake hundreds thousands of times over to avoid making the second mistake even once and this evolutionary tendency shows up at individuals organizations Nations the last 12 years or a great teaching and threat reactivity and what I call paper tiger paranoia and this tendency can be exacerbated by temperament life experiences culture and frankly politics in a story that's been told 10,000 times where groups play on fear to gain or hold on to political power what are the results one we make a lot of we make cognitive errors our appraisals are wrong people routinely as a default setting on overestimate threats and underestimate opportunities and underestimate resources inside themselves or in their life to capture or fulfill opportunities or deal with threats some people go the other way with them we're trying say there's a real tiger there be careful wake up okay but the default setting of the brain is to make this mistake and then we update these appraisals with information and confirms them and end up with a view of the world that is selective and fundamentally biased this has a lot of cause I'll be wrapping up momentarily so we can talk about this and anything else you like and then we'll go into some practices you know this is not an exhaustive list it's easy to go political here I'm not going to do that to try to bring it down to person and and clinical practice but it's easy to see for example even in our own life that if we feel particularly threatened we're going to put resources into walls you know piling of gold and guns metaphorically or perhaps even literally we we invest there rather than in exploratory reward seeking approaching behaviors we also do things that create self-fulfilling innocence prophecies for example in the fourth bullet down if we feel threatened and you see this in couples counseling you see this in where people talk about their life in a work or at home outside of the therapy our if we feel threatened we tend to act threatened and we tend to act you know in various ways we throw up walls we go on the counter-attack we do preemptive strikes etc and then the person on the receiving end of our feeling threatened may or looks at us and goes whoa and now suddenly we're a threat to them so they act in ways that then tell us yeah I knew you were a jerk all along right that's the vicious cycle part also the avoiding system inhibits the approaching system so we play small dream small dreams muzzle ourselves don't you know speak truth to power don't have the courage it takes to open our heart also in terms of the attaching system typically when we feel threatened we tend to hold fast to our tribe you know our particular group and tend to fear and attack them bottom-line it we cannot choose whether we have avoiding approaching and attaching systems but what we can do is a fact what fundamental mode of operation we're in I think often in therapy and I've definitely done this a ton you know we tend to work with people literally as if we're trying to build a house on a shaky foundation you know we're trying to address symptoms or surface factors that rest on underlying chronic reactive mode activation with little sense in the person of the responsive mode or capacity to center there all right that's why I think that it's really important obviously deal with pressing clinical concerns but also keep in mind the more global contextual reactive mode activation in which those you know clinical concerns or issues present themselves and also be active in stimulating and therefore strengthening the neural substrates of you know the responsive mode otherwise we're addressing the frosting but not dealing with the cake okay questions or comments so far I'm a little confused about the terminology using four systems the affiliation system and attachments is to make sense to me and I understand how you're using that but avoid as a system and approach as a system I don't completely understand so I'm wondering if you could give synonyms or other things we're more familiar with in psychology or even in Buddhism okay sure so I think we all heard the question by System I mean basically a collection a basket of skills triggers behaviors perceptions and often related motivations and the reason I use the word system in part is to appreciate the fact that let's suppose you know we are faced with a situation where we feel threatened we're driving in traffic and we're stuck between two large trucks on the freeway which is my wife's worse worst nightmare all right so how do we deal with that well we can mount different kinds of responses you know for example in the reactive mode the heart might start beating faster we also might curiously which is not very healthy when you're driving between two trucks start feeling sleepy and kind of dissociative and frozen with intense parasympathetic activation you know freezing we might have that happen we also might activate the functions that are more language-based or more prefrontal cortex based where we talked to ourselves we talked ourselves off the ledge we remind ourselves that those trucks are driving we tell ourselves that we can speed up or slow down you know there are many many different ways to deal with that particular issue so the trigger is threat something to avoid right the trigger could be pain in the body right anything that feels threatening or potentially harmful the trigger could be a memory a traumatic memory from childhood or the trigger could be a fear of some loss let's say and then we have a whole basket of ways of dealing with I just think of that basket in a way that's kind of commonly used in neuroscience more like a system sort of loosely what's been helpful for me is not to over localize these three functions on different word would be function you know the function that served are we avoiding harm are we approaching reward are we attaching to us certain situations integrate all of them for example maybe we avoid harm by approaching building walls you know or fixing the roof you know we have a leak in our roof that's harming our home right we avoid that harm by approaching good contractors to approach to repair the roof or we avoid that harm by attaching to a friend who had a similar problem and reminds us that it doesn't need to be a big deal and here's a good referral for someone who can fix it see that's what I mean hey thanks I just wanted to ask how you think something like socioeconomic status plays into all of this I mean especially given like you've already said how cortisol can really you know be very destructive to overall health and even affect lifespan and things like that but in terms of whether is somebody is for example primarily functioning out of a more responsive motor out of a more reactive mode yeah thank you well I appreciate that in its own right and you know larger sense to so first specifically oh yeah I think real life matters a ton I think often sometimes as a therapist I'm just patching people up who are staggering off the battlefield of unemployment economic stress sexism discrimination on you know sexual orientation ageism whatever you know lots of those sorts of things and those are very real factors you know I think basically if we want to make things better there are three basic domains to intervene on which I alluded to previously out there in the world here in the body here in the mind and of course the intertwine all three are really important one is not more important than the other I'm talking here about the mind obviously because that's my focus in work and what most of us do professionally not all of us but all three are very important places to intervene in and I think it's respectful and people clients appreciate it when we acknowledge those real factors those really matter that said you know I think it's a saying from shantideva a great tibetan teacher in eighth century he said essentially to paraphrase you know we encounter a world that's full of thorns and brambles and sharp rocks etc you know and we basically have two choices either we cover the world with or we put on a pair of shoes and that's where personal practice comes in yes we do what we can to make the world a better place you know and I think that's incredibly important particularly as you know Humanity kind of you know proceeds at a breakneck pace to the brink but meanwhile it really also helps to do personal practices that gradually train the mind and therefore the brain for the better over time you know but it really helps people I am I found to acknowledge the impact on real physical material factors both here and now and in their history the other thing I wanted to say that I appreciate in what you brought up there is the way that it brings in another view and you know this is then saying nothing left out but one of the things you you should not leave out is that you're always going to leave things out every view is partial you know a middle-aged male middle-class heterosexual kind of a nerd I'm a certain person you know and I'm gonna leave stuff out inevitably that's why I particularly appreciate people bringing in other views okay how about a little practice here all right so how do we do it ambitious see you know it's Buddhist psychology there are three basic types greed hatred and delusion types there's probably a fourth type heartache types but anyway I'm kind of a greed type so I like I like to cover a lot so hopefully I'll be able to get through most of these even maybe all of them in a meaningful way so this is not an exact exhaustive list I just want to explore some to me low-hanging fruit of ways to as she brought up really encouraged the responsive mode both during the counseling or therapy or whatever group work what have you time or coaching work or and in addition outside of you know formal times with us okay so first parasympathetic activation the parasympathetic wing of the nervous system essentially is the antidote to stress based activations of the sympathetic fight-or-flight wing of the autonomic nervous system they're connected like on a seesaw when one goes up it pushes the other one down modern life what is a chronic activation of sympathetic systems that's why I think it's particularly helpful to have various methods a number of which are listed in the slide various methods for nurturing sympathetic activation both as a resting state so we have you know a deeper keel in the water as it were but when you know when the storms come along and also to be able situationally to mount a parasympathetic response when we're getting triggered it's helpful to appreciate that the same neural and hormonal systems that evolve to get us away from charging lions and aggression between and within primate brands those same systems are locked and loaded today when we get upset when we feel frustrated or anxious or encounter a frown across the dinner table and they have the same consequences in terms of the impact of cortisol's as well as two other pathways in on our physical and mental health so you want to do a few practices for parasympathetic couple quick ones one is long exhalation so if you could for the next 30 seconds or so inhale normally or even a little briskly and then try to have your exhalation be at least twice as long maybe count the inhalation and then double the count or even longer as you exhale and we'll do that for about half a minute you might try this with your eyes open because often we need to do this one we've got to have our eyes open and then adding one more thing as you continue the long exhalation z' relax your tongue the parasympathetic system is sometimes called the rest and digest system distinct from fight-or-flight sympathetic activation well where does digesting begin in the mouth which is full of parasympathetic fibers the long exhaling while relaxing the tongue okay I want to call out anything you noticed you know is it relaxing a little bit it's really hard to be uptight about something we're really upset after a 3 to 10 long exhalation may the stress needle may not come back down to zero but it usually moves from a 7 back down to a 4 at least one nice thing I like about these methods is a guy who has done business consulting been in the business world a lot it's great to be able to do things like this privately no one can need to notice you're doing long exhalations or clients are obviously people need to not get triggered by attending to the breath but that's what it does you know because the parasympathetic system handles exhaling and the sympathetic system handles inhaling that's why the heart speeds up slightly when we inhale and exhale slightly when we exhale all right I think it's also helpful to have physical pleasure physical pleasure tends to be parasympathetic ly arousing because it satisfies the needs in the moment of the approaching reward seeking system I have worked with people very depressed sometimes when all else fails and there's no guarantee of the strategy but I think one way in is through physical pleasure because you have to destroy a brain basically to eliminate its capacity to feel physical pleasure even if a person is severely depressed they will say that you know roses smell good it if it feels good to take a drink of water on a hot and muggy day leaving this room and finding air conditioning in a bed will feel good you know these things feel good even if one is severely depressed all right and then if you're really into it you know this is more Buddhist at the bottom although doesn't have to be Buddhist just looking at bodily activation as one more mental content even with language like there is fear rather than I am afraid you know sure sometimes we want to help people own their experience there's a place for that there very often I think it's helpful so people can distance from their experience so they can be with it and then start to release it and replace it when it's problematic so the language of there is anger there is stress there is upset there is tension in the belly there is feeling awful rather than I feel awful and then one can regard fertility with practice those contents of mind as just one more cloud yes a dark and stormy one but just one more cloud moving through the sky like space of a worms okay and obviously there are lots and lots of other ways to build up parasympathetic activation both as resting state and situationally but to me this is kind of a nice way in that I've used with clients that I think is very accessible okay all right next one taking in the good critical way to move into the responsive mode for one it forces us to notice what's good that itself can relieve the disturbance the frustration the loss the sense of threat that drives reactive activation all right but to truly take in the good to truly weave positive experiences into the fabric of the brain and therefore the self we have to stay with them and so these are the three steps of taking in their good if you want to see more about this particular method which for me is not a therapy but it's a key function of good or key component rather of good therapy or other paths of practice or even spiritual life you can look on my website which is listed in this first slide I'll just tell you now you can find it easily Buddhist brain calm that website is very full of freely offered resources including the slide sets from almost all the workshops I've ever taught you including workshops that do for therapists on taking in the good including a lot of specific clinical applications and twists and turns so you can find out more there if you want okay and feel free to use that material in your own training or with other people freely offered all right so these are the three steps you want to try it so let's just do it pick a good fact it could be something you feel grateful for and life altogether it could be even a sense of something good in yourself which is a kind of fact I think is so important to pay attention to or maybe recently you've got something done or maybe recently you just got away from something that was gonna be a problem all right recently I my wife and I thought we're gonna have to pay a lot more in taxes but looks like kind of okay so far so that's a good fact then in the first step let yourself have a good experience related to the good fact you're deliberately trying to have a good experience here let's see what that's life like all together to deliberately try to activate a good experience probably mild and yet still good and then move into the second and third steps of staying with savoring and relishing the positive experience as you can helping it become as big as possible in your body and heart and mind as a meditation practice almost stay with it and then all the while in the third step sense and intent that it's sinking into you like water into a sponge like a soothing golden ball going down into you soothing and healing maybe ultimately even replacing old bruises or injuries or Lacs or when I talk with kids coming into you like a jewel going into the treasure chest in your heart because I'm seeing some people do you can use the power of what's called embodied cognition maybe a little half-smile or if what if the good you're taking in is a sense of strength may be sitting up a little straighter many studies have shown that if we incline the body appropriately a little bit in a positive direction very often emotions and cognitions will follow okay so that was a little moment one little moment of taking in the good usually will not change a person's life but I have personally come to really appreciate this method for myself but certainly also for the people I work with because so many people in therapy are out of therapy are having good experiences they're realizing maybe they're realizing something or good events are happening but they have no experience of it it doesn't move the needle right or it moves the needle they feel good momentarily or they get some gain or some lessen let's say in therapy broadly to find and yet it doesn't stick to their ribs right they come back the next day or the next week it's as if they didn't learn anything how do we help learning especially emotional and somatic learning and that's where taking in the good really comes in I'll run through a couple more methods and then I'll open it up for discussion and then we'll wrap up okay all right great personally I look for many opportunities each days to take in the good little moments you know the truth is if you start looking for the good you realize that life is strewn you know the path of life the road of life is strewn with pearls there are all these little good experiences you know flowers bloom coffee tastes good people are nice and he dead yet like I said you know we're in Santa Fe air is good I grew up in LA smog City especially when I grew up this is great air here I love the air here you know not you know chocolate cupcakes yummy alright whatever it is you know go through life with like a vacuum cleaner you know sucking those pearls into oneself stitching them into the fabric of the brain of the cell okay next one feeling cared about do you think about it exile in the Serengeti was a death sentence you know it's interesting when I did research for my book on mothers I looked I saw this chart in one of the things I looked at it was a figure and it showed that until shortly after World War one there were no single mothers in America there was a base rate of about 4% who were basically women in transition but basically because a woman could not raise a child alone you know it takes a village to raise a child for example and there many other examples of ways in which exile would be a death sentence in the Serengeti so we evolved very very strong needs to feel included to feel cared about to feel wanted and loved alright and there's a lot of research as you've seen about the power of social support to dampen stress to reduce pain and increase increased recovery from stressful experiences or even health challenges for example you probably know the the study where people in an MRI that are about to get an unpleasant not horrible of an unpleasant electrical shock have less activation of the pain networks in their brain if they are allowed to hold the hand of a loved one they don't get the same benefit if they hold the hand of a nice experiment in a white lab coat but they do get the benefit if they hold the hand of someone they know loves them that's why I've come to really appreciate more and more how feeling cared about and growing and increasingly ending and growing an internalized sense of those who care about us is really foundational in psychotherapy so you want to do a little practice for this one okay feeling cared about now interestingly sometimes opening to feeling cared about naturally enough and the neural networks just goes right there of not feeling cared about I'm feeling abandoned rejected found wanting dismissed what happened okay it's normal when we try to do a positive practice to hit an obstruction perfectly normal to me both are valuable you either get the positive result when we do a practice or we get we surface an obstruction which then is an opportunity to work through those three phases be with it initially explore it discover it you know hang out with it look for its more softer vulnerable and younger layers sink down observe it you know get to know it and then at that Goldilocks moment move on to the second phase of helping it out the door and the third phase then of replacing taking in you know in six words for the three phases let be let go let in that's what those three phases are all about alright then we go back to the positive practice in this case feeling cared about so let's try it here all right so studies have shown neuroscience of studies have shown that if you start by feeling cared about that also Prime's the neural circuits of being caring toward others including toward the other who wears your own name tag so even though I won't get into it here self-compassion studies have shown increasingly is a very important thing books are coming on about self compassion you may have done trainings about it I'm gonna do a face this conference that will have Christopher Germer they're doing a two-day workshop in advance in La Jolla and 2012 on self compassion be there or be square or something anyway but it's hard for people to be self compassionate a great way to wide out those neural networks and warm them up for self compassion is to start with feeling cared about okay so if you could bring to mind a being that you know cares about you it need not be a perfect relationship but at least that there is a slice of the pie of the relationship all together in which you matter to that person perhaps they simply like you honestly I could bring to mind these guys in the deli across the street from where I work I've known him for about five six years now we talk of sports we say hi we joke I know they care about me you know they throw me a life preserver they'd me and even jump in after me right it's not perfect love but they care about it or you might even think of someone that you know truly cherishes here maybe it being in your life today or in your history it could be a human a spiritual force or being could be an animal companion and then on the basis of being with that one see if you can open to feeling cared about you might put a hand on the heart or on your cheek as if a very caring grandmother or guardian angel or your pet has crawled into your lap or you're riding your favorite horse you feel cared about you feel connected maybe you're part of a group that cares about you okay come on back now this was an example of deliberately trying to activate a positive experience and there's a place for that yet most of the time we have the opportunity for key positive experiences as we go through the flow of everyday life and that's where those opportunities are that's where those pearls are in the pathway of life you know to take them in to ourselves including experiences often modest experiences of being included seen liked respected mattering to others or even cherished and loved and to help our clients you know look for those experience those opportunities and then allow themselves to have the experience of being cared about and then in particular stay with the experience of being cared about 10 20 30 seconds in a row to really get those neurons to fire together to wire together experiences are being cared about into the brain to me that's a very important practice and clients often will bring up the obstruction Freud would call it resistance I prefer the less pejorative term obstruction of that it's an imperfect relationship and they're sometimes honestly I'll tell the story of my own relationship with my mother who was a very loving person and yet had by pretty much everyone's admission including her own a fairly large and sometimes difficult personality so her personality put me off for some time until I finally realized that wasn't good for me or anybody including her and I started seeing her love or imagining her love as like a warm campfire behind a latticework with vines and brambles all right and instead of getting preoccupied with the vines and their thorns I saw through them too and felt the warmth and light of the fire that was always there in her heart that always truly loved me behind the personality behind her eyes you know for my own good not to let her off the hook although that did in some sense do so but for my own enlightened self-interest you know I would zero in on what was there you know I know clients will not drop their grievance their reproach which is a word I've come to use a lot in therapy because I think it's so central to so many people reproach a kind of clinging complaint though it's hard for them to drop that or they fear that they're waiving their rights if they acknowledge the ways that they have been cared about know the caring that's come to you is just one more tile in the mosaic you know if ignorance is the fundamental root of suffering and harm you know wisdom is seeing the homeless mosaic including the tiles that contain some caring okay one more and two more actually and then we'll live a little discussion here and I'll move to a rap feeling stronger and safer obviously this relates to the avoiding system in particular people often have opportunities to feel stronger and safer and yet they don't take advantage of them so I think that doing you know practices either deliberately like ed meals or just before bed when the brain is very receptive or in especially in daily life when their opportunities to feel stronger and safer again that's a very strong resource for activating the responsive mode which first and foremost gets hijacked by the reactive mode and any kind of perceived threat and feeling stronger and safer is a key aspect of dealing with threat so just for a moment if you like two little things first bring to mind if you can the body memory of feeling strong maybe it was in a physical challenge environment or that last repetition of weight in the gym or maybe it was a time you really stood up for somebody see if you can in your body get a sense of that strength again with embodied cognition you might sit a little straighter take a little deeper breath you might even play with keeping your eyes open because that's so often when we need to feel strong we'll need to have our eyes open maybe there's a steel enos in your gaze there's an intent a resolve in you that goes with feeling strong nothing macho no posturing about it but strength see what that's like to call it the sense of strength and notice how it's easier to imagine dealing with you know the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in daily life based on an internalized and activated sense of strength and then building on the sense of strength imagine you can reasons to feel as safe as you reasonably can not perfectly safe you know there's no perfect safety in this life a life that contains inevitably old age disease and death but there can be much greater safety most people are much more anxious than they need to be they're afflicted with paper tiger paranoia they think life is always threat level Orange it's not you know soap for example right now bring to mind if you can the sense of being in a protected setting among good people feeling strong yourself and play around with if you can being less guarded less braced or less anxious here and now see what that's like to deliberately help yourself feel less anxious safer stronger Mort peace not at war with anything including anything in your own experience to finish up on this particular point with clients in general you know as I said fear was the first emotion it's the one that is behind so much else you know mother nature produces an ongoing trickle of anxiety in us to keep us vigilant even when there's nothing to be afraid of right you know keep looking around for those Tigers even though in psychology it's called signal anxiety truly it's usually noise you know and so appreciating the ways in which we're continually lied to by mother nature in effect to preserve our to promote our physical survival a little bit like to use Lord of the Rings again Wormtongue you know whispering in our ear you know the time to feel really afraid is what you're not afraid right you know don't let worm tongue trick last one liking and wanting it's interesting that there are different neural systems for liking and wanting we like what's pleasant we dislike what's unpleasant that's natural we can't change that in the brain particularly in the moment over time we congratulate condition well we find enjoyable and pleasant or what we find unpleasant but generally speaking in the moment we can this sense of pleasant and pleasant or neutral is what's called in Western psychology the hedonic tone of experience or if you know Buddhist psychology it's called a feeling tone or the Veda and in reaction to the feeling tone or hedonic tone of pleasant or unpleasant then often typically we kick into gear wanting we want the pleasant to contain we want those carrots and we also want the unpleasant to end we want those sticks to go away right there's a place I think for wholesome wants but it's a yellow flag condition because it's so easy to tip into problematic levels of wanting that's why learning to practice with the tipping point between liking and wanting is so helpful especially frankly if we're dealing with people who are grappling with one kind of addiction or other so how to do it there are a variety of ways you could argue that much of spiritual psychology is about practicing with wanting certainly Buddhism is and it's not alone in that as well as a lot of course of recovery practices which I have enormous respect for are about practicing with wanting I'll just mention a couple here and then I'll move on to some few questions then we'll wrap up so one thing to do is to surround the the pleasant or unpleasant with a kind of shock absorber that's where panoramic awareness comes in that's where languaging can come in studies have shown for example when people simply note their experience you know like for example fear pain happiness lust wanting to smoke some dope did that just know ding not changing anything we're still in the first of the three phases we're just mindful just noting it activates prefrontal cortex and deactivates the amygdala just noting alone so we can bring noting to bear to our once or to the simple hedonic tone of pleasant or unpleasant and that's a very deep practice I think it's quite interesting that in Buddhism just to take that as a point of departure the Buddha allocated one of the four fundamental foundations of mindfulness to mindfulness of the hedonic tone mindfulness of pleasant and pleasant or neutral because that's the shock absorber that breaks the chain of suffering that typically moves from stimulus to hedonic tone to craving clinging and suffer all right mindfulness of the hedonic tone itself creates space around it like a big shock absorber another key thing to do that I've really come to appreciate is to be skeptical of the promised pleasures or pains it's interesting that in the kind of simulator which is mainly localized in midline networks you know the brain is continually generating you know potential rewards or potential penalties but isn't it interesting that usually what we actually experience is not as great as promised where usually the pain we suffer is not as great as what's promised and I think that's because those presumed rewards or penalties are produced by limbic systems in the brain that are ancient and primitive and simplistic and very powerful that's why standing back from really asking ourselves are our expectations valid with regard to reward you know truly accurate or are our expectations with regard to pain truly accurate in tibet they have this great phrase i think great phrase take the fruit as the path in other words take the goal as the method and that's where this responsive reactive mode distinction really comes in because if the goal is responsive mode activation in its basic form in terms of calm contentment and caring and then developed and even perhaps raised to a sublime level at the upper reaches of human potential in terms of calm contentment and caring as we do that every moment we spend in a relative state of inner peace or a state of love or state of gladness these are three synonyms gladness for contentment love for caring peace for calm you know every moment we spend there guess what good news we are stimulating and therefore strengthening in the neural substrates of the responsive mode and I Venus fantastic news so thanks for your attention time to break lunch thank you you

Channel: FACESConferences

Views: 38,935

Keywords: mindfulness, Brain, Mindfulness (psychology), Psychology, Human Brain, Stress

Id: HYgt2L48Ksk

Length: 70min 56sec (4256 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2012