>> My name is Helen Damon Moore,
and I am the director of service
and education at the
Tucker Foundation,
here at Dartmouth college.
I am honored to welcome you all
and to introduce John Cabotson
on behalf of the Dartmouth
Hitchcock Medical Center
Pailateive Care Service,
the Tucker Foundation,
the Rubin Committee
of Dartmouth College,
Alice Peck Day Hospital,
Dartmouth Medical School,
the Norris Cotton Cancer Center,
and the Valley Insight
Medication Society.
Special thanks to Ira
Biak and Yvonne Corbet,
and the Pailateive care service
for partnering on this project.
And to those at tucker
who have worked so hard,
and who are this week
celebrating the 60th anniversary
year Tucker Foundation,
Dartmouth's center for service,
spirituality, and
social justice.
We are pleased to
welcome Dr. John Cabotson
to Dartmouth college
today for the second time.
Cabotson first visited
Dartmouth in the summer of 1984
when the college and the
Connecticut river served
as the training camp for the
men's Olympic rowing team.
He was the meditation trainer
for the team, helping them
to optimize their
mental performance.
Today he is here to help
optimize our performance.
John Cabotson hold an a Ph.D.
in molecular biology from MIT.
He is professor of medicine
emeritus at the University
of Massachusetts Medical School
and founder of the Center
For Mindfulness and Medicine,
Healthcare, and Society
and its mindfulness-based
stress reduction clinic.
He is the author of
numerous best-selling books,
including Full Catastrophe
Living,
Wherever You Go There You
Are, Coming to Our Senses,
and the Mindful Way
Through Depression,
co-authors with Williams,
Tisdale, and Siegal.
Dr. Cabotson's research focuses
on mind-body interactions
for healing, and on the
clinical applications
and cost effectiveness of
mindfulness training for people
with chronic pain and
stress-related disorders,
including the effects
of mindfulness-based stress
reduction on the brain.
His current projects include
editing the Mind's Own
Physician, with Richard
Davidson, and guest co-editing
with Mark Williams
a special issue
of The Journal Contemporary
Buddhism.
Dr. Cabotson's work
has contributed hugely
to a growing movement
of mindfulness
in main stream institutions
such as medicine, psychology,
healthcare, schools and
colleges, corporations, prisons,
and professional sports.
Courtesy of Kerry Jo Grant
[Assumed spelling] here
in our health promotion
department, Dr. Cabotson
and his work have even made
their way to the inside
of our bathroom doors.
Featured as they are
in the current edition
of the Dartmouth College
Stall Street Journal.
Please join me in
welcoming John Cabotson back
to Dartmouth college.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
It's a delight to be here.
Do I have to have the light
this bright in my eyes?
Because maybe you could
tone it down a little bit
so people can still see me,
but I'd like to be
able to see you too.
It's a delight to be here.
It's nice to walk into a theater
where mindfulness
is on the marquee.
You know you've really made
it when it's on the marquee,
along with Frankenstein.
So -- it's like, you're part of
the main stream, so to speak,
however that goes from moment
to moment and from day-to-day.
But it's really a delight to be
here, and I am here basically
because of Helen Damon Moore and
her work, which I actually got
to see at University
of Iowa, when she was
at Iowa before coming here.
And also Dr. Ira
Biak, who I met in --
in Ireland about two years ago,
almost exactly two years ago.
And was just incredibly
impressed with what he's doing
with integrative medicine
and palliative care.
And so you know, it's
like I don't live that far
from this place, and got in the
car this morning and drove up.
And I'm really happy to be
here for the next three days.
And you know, so to have this
many people come out at 4:30
on a sunny afternoon after
the kind of winter we had,
to a talk about mindfulness is
really some kind of an indicator
that something has
shifted in the society.
You all have better
things to do, I'm sure,
this afternoon, than
to come here.
Unless you have some
kind of real intuition
about what the healing power
of mindfulness might be.
And then it might actually
be incredibly valuable
to spend the end of a nice
sunny Thursday afternoon
here together.
So this talk is not
about me or what I have
to say, it's about us.
It's about every
single one of us,
and in some sense what the
potential is, as the slide says,
for living your moments as
if they really mattered.
And I put a little
asterisk in there,
and the reason they too is
because we're only
alive when we're alive.
This seems kind of a no-brainer,
but you could say that a lot
of our lives we're walking
around with a no-brainer,
or just basically no brain,
or the brain is on auto pilot
or something like that.
And what mindfulness is really
about is bringing it back
on line, so to speak.
In the present moment,
because that turns
out to be the only moment
that any of us ever have.
But we're so good at thinking,
so incredibly good at thinking,
that we can spend enormous
amounts of our time
and energy absorbed in the past.
Have you noticed that?
Just incredible preoccupations
about who's to blame
about why it's like this.
Or how great it was
in the good old days,
and why can't it
be that way now.
So there's a tremendous
attraction to the past
and tremendous aversion,
but whether it's attraction
or aversion, we spend
a lot of time there.
Would you agree?
Have you noticed that a lot
of the time if you check
on what your mind is up
to, it's up to memory.
It's up to thinking about things
that are already over,
to a large degree.
The other favorite
preoccupation of the mind is
in the opposite direction.
The future.
And if again you check in every
once come a while just to,
you know, sometimes I
like to say you know,
you can call yourself up.
You may have to, you know,
because we're on 24-7,
we're just infinitely connected.
Probably every single person has
one of these in their pocket,
although I hope there
are some exceptions.
But -- and they're called
smart phones, you know?
But they're not.
But we actually -- but
they can really dumb us
down because we can be
infinitely connected everywhere
except here.
And so we may need
to call ourselves
up every once in a while.
John, are you actually here?
And the answer is no, I'm
off in the future thinking.
And one of our favorite
preoccupations --
and by the way, of course you'll
get a bill from AT&T or Verizon.
But seriously, what -- what
are our favorite preoccupations
in the future?
Well, one is worrying.
I don't know about
the north country,
maybe you've gone
beyond worrying.
The rest of the world a lot
of worry about things that --
that haven't happened
yet and may never happen.
In fact, Mark Twain is
famous for having said,
you've probably heard this
in a lot of different guises,
but he's famous for having
said there's been a huge amount
of tragedy in my life, and
some of it actually happened.
But -- but there is this
saying that you know, we die --
he died a thousand deaths.
I mean , we drive
ourselves crazy over things
that are not going
to be happening
because we're not smart enough
to actually forecast the future,
but that doesn't prevent us
from driving ourselves crazy,
and perseverating over and over
and over about what will happen.
And then something else happens
because we're not that smart.
So something else happens,
and we say we're blind-sided.
Now how many of you would like
the future to be different
from the way -- the way we
think it's going to turn out.
Anybody ever find yourself
wishing the future was going
to be like, majorly different,
that we'd make some kind
of change in the world?
Raise your hands, I want to
just feel in the audience.
Okay, I heard social justice
mentioned earlier, and you know,
this is after all a university
or I guess you call
yourself a college.
You know, a campus
kind of situation.
So it doesn't surprise me.
But this -- this kind
of engagement really
requires thinking about, like,
what it means to make
the future different.
How can we possibly
apply any leverage,
could we kind an Archimedes,
you know, fulcrum in which
to influence the future.
There's only one fulcrum
that I know for that,
and that is the present.
Because guess what, we're
living in the future
of every single moment
in all of our lives
that came before this one.
Do you remember back, I mean,
I see there's kind of a range
of ages, although
most of you don't look
like you're college
students, I've got to say.
And I'm a little disappointed.
I mean, I -- you know, not that
I'm disappointed that you came,
but I'd like to see a lot
more college students.
They look at -- they're going
to Frankenstein probably, later.
It's an awkward time of
day for the young people.
How many of you are
under 25, 25 and under.
Oh, so I'm wrong.
That's really nice to be wrong.
So -- really -- so I was going
to say to the older people,
but maybe you did it when
you were even younger.
Do you remember before
you got into college here,
and probably you got into
planning what the courses were
that you were going to take when
you got ahold of the catalog,
or you went on line
and began planning, oh,
in the freshman year
I'll take this,
and the sophomore year,
and the junior year.
And maybe you planned even
who you're going to meet
and who you're going to marry,
and what your children
are going to look like.
Does that sound familiar,
that sometimes we do
that when we're young.
And we think that it's all
going to turn out in the future.
So no matter what your age
is, I've got news for you.
This is it.
It already turned out.
How did it turn out?
It turned out just like this.
In any moment your
life is just like this.
Not happy with it , a
little bit sad or depressed
or wishing it was different
-- that's not a problem.
That's not a problem.
Because we can always sort of
feel like okay, how are we going
to be in relationship to this,
and of course life is not easy.
And a lot of times we're faced
with enormous challenges,
sometimes with enormous pain.
Sometimes with enormous threat.
And that's part of
the human condition.
But the real interesting
question when it concerns, say,
the future, and concerns living
as if life really mattered
is can we actually be
in the present moment
when things are not kind
of the way we thought
they would be.
Or sometimes the
shorthand for it is well,
I didn't sign up for this.
I mean, or another way
to put it, sometimes,
maybe no offense meant, but how
did I get born into this family,
or who are all these
crazy people,
why am I the only sane person.
And you know, when you're
in a family no one else can
know the kind of genetic disease
of that particular family,
that everybody suffers
from except you.
So if we hope for the
future to be different,
the only place we
have to stand is now.
Because first of
all, it's the --
it's the future of
all the moments
that have come before us.
So if you want to be in
the future, here you are.
This is actually non trivial,
it's not just oh yeah,
tell us something interesting.
Because -- because what it
invites is a kind of shift
in perception and a
shift in awareness,
a shift in consciousness,
that allows us
to actually live our lives
as if they really mattered,
and the only moment
we ever have.
And part of that
means being embodied.
Because a lot of the time you
know, we are lost in thought.
That's another thing
you'll notice, if you start
to pay attention to your mind,
is that it's all over the place.
It's all over the place.
You don't even have to
meditate for that to happen.
It's just default mode.
It's default mode.
You don't even have
to have a smart phone.
You don't even have
to have e-mail.
You don't even have
to have a computer.
It's the default mode of the
mind to be all over the place.
It thinks this, and thinks that.
And it likes this
and hates that.
And wants you to approach
this, but really wants
to stay away from that.
And it's like, wired
into our biology.
It's called approach avoidance.
And it's kind of, you know,
the hemispheres are actually
somewhat divided in terms
of left hemisphere and the
frontal cortical region,
is more approach-related.
And right acre vacation, more --
and that's one of the
fundamental biological,
you know, features
of living systems.
Move towards food,
move away from danger.
Perfectly natural.
But how we actually
modulate those impulses
and those reflexes,
and those, you know,
kinds of unconscious urges
that drive us and cause us
to be reactive a
lot of the time.
Is really an art form.
It's the art, if you
will, of living our lives
as if they really mattered.
And when we begin to
actually drop in on ourselves,
and I brought a few
-- a few props.
You know, so sometimes I
say when we begin to drop
in on ourselves, you know, we
can actually reclaim this moment
in this body with this heart,
with this mind, and shift --
begin to shift the
tea fault setting
on how we live ourselves.
Begin to actually move in a
direction of greater balance
of mind, greater groundedness
in the body, greater clarity
of sight, greater, if you will,
recognition of what's actually
unfolding moment by moment,
that's not so conditioned by
whether we like it or not.
Because the world, maybe you
haven't noticed this yet,
but it's not actually organized
around you being the
center of the universe.
I know that's really
disappointing.
Because you were, I'm guessing
now, don't take offense, again,
I'm guessing you are
entirely organized
around you being the
center of the universe.
Every single one of us is.
It's almost unavoidable.
It's almost unavoidable.
And that has representations
in the brain, it's turning out.
That there are medial -- medial
networks in the frontal cortex
and -- that are -- is actually
called the default mode.
And it's what we think
brains, neuro scientists think,
it's what's happening when
you're not doing anything.
Well, turns out when
you're not doing anything,
you're very busy.
You're very, very, very busy.
And one of the things
what's described is
that your mind wandering.
And now there's an entire field
in neuro science focused
on mind wandering.
How many of you have noticed
that your mind sometimes
just has a mind of its own.
It goes here, it goes there,
it likes to be entertained.
You know, it's very
entertaining.
So yeah, that's what's
called the default mode.
Now another name for it
is the narrative network.
So it's like we are continually
constructing narratives
about ourselves.
I mean, after all, it's
the favorite topic, right?
Me. What could be more
interesting than me?
The story of me, starring -- me.
And if you start
to pay attention,
because what we're talking
about, what mindfulness is,
it's actually weariness, okay?
And it's cultivated
by paying attention.
So just to get clear about this,
that doesn't sound very
Buddhist, does it, so far?
Or very Asian or mystical
or very -- anything.
I mean, it's just
paying attention.
How many teachers are
there in the audience,
whatever level you're
teaching at, raise your hand
so I can feel that --
okay, don't you want your
students to pay attention?
It's non trivial to get
them to pay attention.
First you might have
to be interesting.
That itself is a challenge.
Second, you might have to make
the subject matter interesting.
That's also a challenge.
But third, it's like,
I remember as a product
of the New York product schools
having teachers actually yell
at us to pay attention.
But that's not a very
effective way to get people
to pay attention, because turns
out that attending is something
that you need to learn.
It's a learnable skill.
But instead of being
taught to pay attention,
you're just told
who pay attention.
Get with the program,
pay attention.
And a lot of people pay
attention very differently.
Some pay attention auditorily,
they're really predominantly
auditory.
Some people can't
do auditory so well,
they've got to see it visually.
Other people's more
intuitive, they feel it
with their bodies,
in a certain way.
So this is incredibly important
in education at all levels,
because you know, as they
say about orchestras,
even the greatest of orchestras,
with the greatest musicians
with the greatest instruments
playing the greatest music,
before they perform
they get together
and they tune their instruments.
First to themselves.
Then with each other.
Until there's a kind
of dropping,
if you don't mind me
putting it that way,
into kind of resonance, call
it an A. Call it what you like,
but that kind of interconnected
feeling that we are
in some space together.
You could call it relationality.
And so mindfulness is
the awareness that arises
by paying attention on
purpose in the present moment.
Paying attention on purpose
in the present moment
and non judgmentally.
Now non judgmentally, that's
the kicker, because as I said,
the default network is
operating constantly ,
and the default network has
got ideas about everything.
It's judging constantly.
So non judgmental doesn't
mean that you won't be judging
when you actually start to pay
attention to what's on your mind
or what's going on in your life.
But you'll notice how much you
are judging, how much you want
to approach this
and push away that.
And you'll just allow that
whole thing to be there,
as if you just put out
the welcome mat for it.
Okay, I'm not going to have
an opinion about my opinions.
I'm just going to let it all
rain down for -- for a moment.
Can you feel how radical a shift
that would be in your life,
to just take one moment and
allow everything to be as it is,
instead of wishing it
was one way or another?
The Buddhists would
call that liberation.
It's a kind of freedom that
no one else can give you,
but allow us in some sense
to rotate in consciousness
so that we -- for one moment
we're stepping outside of time.
Because if you live
in the now, well,
maybe you've had
this experience.
Just check your watch and
take a look right now.
What time is it?
I'll tell you what
time it is, it's now.
And every time you
check your watch
or your phone, it's now again.
Now what -- why am I
even talking about this?
Why it I even come here?
It's always good to is it ask
those questions, you know,
it's like -- I don't
know, actually.
Because it's usually bigger
than whatever you think
your reasons are [Inaudible]
but it has a lot to do with
-- with the medical schools
and with what -- what
Ira's doing there.
And with what Helen is doing
in the undergraduate school.
It has to do with the fact that
the society has reached a point
where we're beginning
to understand
that the exponentially
increasing levels of stress,
in medicine, in our professional
lives, in our personal lives,
at every age, really require
some kind of shift that is not
in the form of taking
some pill to numb yourself
out to it or get it together.
But actually, we need to
cultivate what's often spoken
of as the domain of being in
order to not be so overwhelmed
by the doing and the performing.
And while it's true that with
the Olympic team we were using
mindfulness to actually
improve their performance,
it was kind of a Zen operation,
that you can't improve
performance by trying
to improve performance,
especially with the mind.
Because the kind of
mind that's grasping
for an outcome is exactly
the kind of mind that gets
in the way of any
desirable outcome.
Have you got that, did you
catch that as it went by?
Okay. So this means
we're in new territory.
One example, common example.
You can't get to sleep
by forcing yourself
to get to sleep.
By telling yourself how
important the meeting is you
have tomorrow.
In fact, that's probably
a very bad idea,
because that thought will
actually secrete one more
thought, secrete one more
thought or the meeting
or the stakes of it, or --
and then that will
lead to something else
in this default network of
mind wandering and pretty soon,
you are wide awake, desperately
wanting to be asleep.
And not knowing how
to get there.
So it's not trivial to
actually befriend our own minds
and our own lives in such
a way we can actually work
in these paradoxical ways
where striving won't do it.
Striving won't do it.
That doesn't mean that I'm
advocating that all of us, like,
abandon ambition or don't
care about anything.
Meditation is not
about becoming stupid.
Not even being non judgmental
is not about becoming stupid.
It's sounds like, oh
don't judge anything.
Maybe I'll just walk off
the stage and break my leg,
you know, no, I'm aware the
edge of the stage is here.
And if I do fall off the
stage and break my leg, yeah,
that will have been a moment
of mindlessness or out
of touch, if you will.
But -- walk across the street
without looking because,
you know, we have to sense
we're not going to judge
that that judge that
truck coming at me --
there's a big difference between
judgment and discernment.
So mindfulness is
all about discerning
with clarity what's
actually going on.
Now most of time now,
how many of you would say
that you are engaged
in some kind of a way
that doesn't feel
all that good a lot
of the time in multitasking.
Anybody find yourself
multitasking?
Confess. That when you're
on the phone you're
actually sending an e-mail
to somebody else.
Anybody ever do that?
Raise your hands, I want to see.
Confession time.
Okay, and you know, we
actually do it a lot.
Why? Part of it is really
because we're so stressed.
We don't have enough moments
in our day to get it all done,
so we like, start to
discombobulate a little bit,
and juggle and cut corners.
And there are wonderful studies
that that actually impede
or reduces or -- any kind of,
you know, objective measure
of performance, that doing
two things at once detracts
from the quality of either one.
Doing five things at once
or being that scattered
in your mind, you don't even
have to be doing anything,
but when you're at
the mercy of this kind
of mind wandering all the time.
And you're trying to get things
done is very, very challenging.
Very challenging.
So the question is, is
there a way to actually live
that will allow us to deal
with what Zorba the Greek
in Kasantzakis in the novel
says the full catastrophe
of the human condition; the
good, the bad, the ugly,
the unwanted , the feared,
the traumatic, the awful.
And to be able to hold
each moment in its fullness
and allow our attention faculty
and our awareness faculty
to actually hold
it in such a way
that we can then inhabit the
next moment with authenticity
and maybe even respond
appropriately to this vast range
of demands that we're
faced with all the time.
Now when I started the stress
reduction clinic back in --
at University of
Massachusetts back in 1979,
and I did bring some
slides, which I don't know
if I will show you, but I'll
just sort of take that moment
by moment, maybe I'll show
them to you, maybe I won't --
because I'm trying to actually
create more of an impression.
I don't want to just
leave you with things
in your head, just facts.
Okay? Because you'll
lose them immediately.
Okay? Because other facts will
come in, and you know, whatever.
If you spent time and energy
getting here and I've spent time
and energy getting here,
then what would make me feel
most satisfied is if one,
you had some kind of
inkling why you came today.
I'm sure you all do it, it's
a mystery though, I'm sure.
Hoping to maybe be
entertained or maybe connect
on some deeper level or maybe
you practice mindfulness
or maybe you've been to
a [Inaudible] program,
but if you peel back all those
layers there's some is really,
really, really,
really interesting
reason why you're here.
And I bet you don't
know what it is.
I'm not joking.
Because there's intelligences
at work that are just deeper
than the thought function.
And the thought function is
so smart that it sometimes
out smarts us completely,
have you noticed that?
And then it's like we're stupid.
We're so smart, we're stupid.
It's very hard to see that in
yourself but you can see it
in other people just
really easily.
Have you -- maybe
you've noticed that.
So I'm going to try to weave
together a whole bunch of things
that probably none of it is
going to make complete sense,
but what I'm doing
here is I'm trying
to in some sense plant seeds.
I'm trying to plant seeds in
the fertile ground or garden
of whatever it was that
brought you here so that
when you leave here
something has been touched
that will keep those seeds,
that actually I'm not planting,
they are already in you, keep
them being watered nurtured,
protected, privileged in a
certain way, so that it --
nurtures in some profound sense
some aspect of you that wants
to be as alive as you can be
while you have the chance.
We say to people coming to
our stress reduction clinic,
and they come with every
conceivable kind of ailment,
referred by every conceivable
sub specialty and specialty,
and generalist in medicine.
And we say -- and it's an
eight week long course,
designed to teach you how to
take better care of yourself
as a compliment to whatever
the healthcare system is,
I should call that a
disease care system
by the way, can do with you.
Can do for you.
And we say to them from
our perspective as long
as you're breathing, there's
more right with you than wrong
with you, no matter
what's wrong with you.
No matter what's wrong.
And we see people you would
not want to be in their body
or in their mind
or in their life.
And they probably wouldn't
want to be in yours either.
But you probably wouldn't
want to hear that.
Because after all, you're the
star of this movie, aren't you?
So -- so that there's more right
with you than wrong with you,
no matter what's wrong with you.
That's radical perspective
and very, very important.
Because you know, I started the
stress reduction clinic in 1979.
In 1979 the surgeon
general's report came
out Called Healthy People
and that it was saying,
forecasting into the
future, which here now,
we are in this future, that no
matter how much money America
spends at throwing money
at health and healthcare,
it will never be
enough to have health.
Because there's a missing
ingredient, and it's the humans
that healthcare is
supposed to care for.
And that there's not
enough money on the planet
to do all the various things
that would have to be done
with us when we don't
take care of ourselves,
when we don't know how to handle
stress, when we do not know how
to be in wise relationship with
ourselves and our lifestyle
and our diet and exercise
and our bodies and aging
and everything else, that if we
leave that all to the, you know,
auto mechanics model of
medicine, drive your car
around till it breaks down, then
you get the carburetor replaced
or the engine or
whatever, the tires.
But this is not a machine.
I know a lot of people,
even in biology,
love to use machine analogies
and even nano machine analogies
about the body, and to a
degree they're correct.
But there's another piece of it,
like no one understands
the construction
of the machine that's you.
I'll give you one example.
How many of you see
that slide up there,
and what's the color
of the background?
Blue. Everybody agree
that it's blue.
No one knows how you do that.
No one knowing how you
go from the wave length
of electro magnetic radiation,
the blue region, okay,
in the visible spectrum,
no one knowing how you go
from this wave length, which
is colorless, it's just energy,
to a subjective feeling of blue.
And we also really don't know,
we have a consensus reality
that agrees that the blue that
you're seeing and the blue
that I'm seeing are the same
blue, but it's not always true,
and it's not true for colorblind
people, the blue-green color.
Okay, so there's a lot of kind
of consensus agreement here.
But there's -- the brain weighs
approximately three pounds,
okay?
And it's all cells and cables
that are part, you know,
made up of cells, neurons.
And then all these gluteal cells
in there supporting the neurons.
And incredibly specialized.
I mean, it's really the most
complex assembly of matter
in the known by us universe,
right inside your
little old body.
And no one knows how senses,
how consciousness, how knowing,
how even thinking arises
in this three pounds
of what some neuro
scientists call meat.
It's a little distasteful.
But to just kind
of make it graphic,
so if you for get every once
in a while walking around in --
on the Dartmouth campus or in
Hanover or wherever you happen
to live that you're
a miraculous being.
Well, okay.
It's just one more mind
wandering, you know?
One more default sort of
not really being aware
of how amazing it is that
you can see, for instance.
That you can hear.
That you can taste.
How many of us eat food
and we don't bother
to taste it, we just devour it.
Or we taste the idea
of the food.
Yeah, that was really good.
Yeah, but you didn't
actually taste it.
Have you ever had a
mindless hug from somebody
who was really trying
to be friendly?
Sort of impulse to be
friendly, but not in one's body.
Okay? So all of these
things we take for granted.
But we can actually begin
a process of re-minding --
and I put a little
hyphen in there --
re-minding ourselves,
re-bodying ourselves.
When? Now.
Because this is the
only time you have.
And coming back into a certain
kind of vector or alignment
with the entire life trajectory,
and it doesn't matter
how old you are
when you begin this process.
The Native Americans,
actually, measured your age
from when you became -- they
started to measure your age
from when you became
a grand parent.
Before that, it was like
you were really too busy
to be human.
And the -- and in the Asian
Indians, measure your age
from when you start
practicing yoga.
So if you're 75 years old
and you've been into yoga
for three months, you're
three months old, I like that.
Isn't that nice?
What about new beginning?
Every moment a new beginning.
That's what mindfulness
is about.
Every moment fresh.
Now this is not a philosophy.
It's not a good idea,
it's not a concept.
It's a way of being.
It's not a technique.
It's not a technique and
it's not a special state.
Oh, I think I'll trot over
to the MBSR clinic, meditate.
[ Background noise ]
>> Maybe you're waiting for
something else to happen.
But nothing else happens.
Nothing else happens.
This is it.
You know, good-bye.
Maybe you're hoping for
something special to happen.
Some special meditative state.
Some kind of vision.
Some kind of alignment of
the, you know, spheres.
Some special bolt of lightening
out of the blue to wake you up.
It's a mistake.
A miss, hyphen, take,
on meditation.
On mindfulness, on reality.
Let's just pretend, okay, why
don't we just sit for a moment.
Ah, you're already sitting.
You don't even need
to shift your posture,
although I see some
people getting ready.
Okay, now we're going
to get into it.
It's going to be
somewhat experiential.
Thank God.
He could talk forever.
But you see, you know, you don't
even have to shift your posture
to be awake or to be aware.
You could do it like this.
And really be aware.
And by the way, I
can't see my hands.
But I know where they are.
How do I know?
A sense called proprioception.
Maybe you've heard of
it, maybe you haven't.
But there are a lot
more than five senses,
I just want to put
that out, okay?
When we're talking about
miraculous being or genius,
it's got lots of
different dimensions to it.
Many. If I ask you how are you
in the elevator and
you say fine.
How do you know?
Aside from the fact that you're
not fine but you just don't want
to go into it in the elevator,
with somebody you don't
want to tell anyway.
But when, you know, you're
sort of -- someone --
a friend asks you how our and
you say fine, how do you know?
That's another sense.
And you know very quickly.
And you know when
you're not, too.
What is that knowing called?
It's not called well,
let me think.
I don't know.
How am I. No, you
know instantly.
That sense is called
interoception.
There are ways that the organism
has, you know, using the brain
and nervous system,
which has lots of maps,
by the way the brain is
loaded with maps of the body.
Loaded with maps of the body.
And not just the
somatosensory cortises.
But the insula and the
cerebellum and the, you know,
the hippocampus, I mean, lots
and lots -- and again I stress,
we're beginning to understand
something about what lights
up when, when you meditate,
when you do this and do that,
when you go into depression.
All sorts of wonderful,
wonderful things happening.
Brain research in
neuro science nowadays.
But still, no one knowing
how it comes together.
In you, in this moment, in a way
that actually you don't
have to think about.
And even if there's something
going on, even if you're in,
say, pain from your lower
back and you've had it
for a long time, or even if
you have cancer at the moment
or you're a cancer
survivor or whatever it is.
Or you have, you
know, heart, you know,
issues of one kind or another.
Whatever it is.
The sum total of
this universe, of --
between 10 and 100
trillion cells,
the whole body now
we're talking about.
Is good enough to have
gotten you here today.
Hmm? It's good enough for now.
And the more energy
you pour into it,
the more that robustness,
whatever it is,
sometimes called homeostasis,
but it's a very dynamical
process that we call health,
as opposed to disease
or dis-ease.
When we start to pour attention,
energy in the form of attention
into what's already
right with us,
it turns out that the body
has its ear to the rail,
the brain has its ear to
the rail, the brain is part
of the rail, the --
the heart, every aspect
of our being is one
integrated whole.
It's not like different systems.
The immune system talks
to the nervous system.
And the nervous system
talks right back.
And everybody else is listening
in on the conversation.
And it's all cells.
And if you took your liver
-- if we all took our livers
and put them out
on the stage here,
that would be an
interesting exercise,
and then we shuffled them around
and then you were all encouraged
to just pick yours
up on the way out.
You wouldn't know
which was yours.
You can look at all hundred
trillion of these cells
in your body, and your
name isn't on any of it.
It's like, oh, here's my liver.
Here's my gal bladder.
The punctuation from the cell
phones is actually really --
if that was a cell phone
-- is really interesting.
But do you hear what I'm saying?
Even the question of who
we are, when you start
to actually ask it with
tremendous authenticity,
it might not be so feasible
to just say your name
or even describe what you
do, or even send in your CV.
If you've ever hired people,
you know that the
CV is not the person
and you hire the CV
a lot of the time.
Big mistake.
Because you can't work with
the person a lot of the time.
What you want it congruence,
you want integration.
So when we take our
seats, so to speak,
what we're actually
engaging in, is a recognition
of how integrated
we already are.
We don't need to,
oh, I'm such a wreck,
I've got to get integrated.
No, from this perspective
you are already as integrated
as you're going to
be in this moment.
Is it enough?
Is it good enough?
So let's actually take a moment.
I've even brought another prop.
I brought some bells.
We don't need the bells.
But I'll ring them.
And when I ring them
-- why don't --
just for fun, you don't
have to shift your posture,
but just for fun, why don't
you shift your posture and sit
in a posture that for
now embodies dignity,
whatever that means for you.
Look, the entire room is moving.
Not that dignified, I guess.
All right, but actually
it doesn't matter.
The posture is secondary.
What's important is
the inner orientation.
The willingness to open
to the present moment,
to put out the welcome
mat and to get --
and to let the idea
that oh, now we're going
to do something special, drop.
Because as soon as you sort of
plant that seed, now we're going
to do something special
and we're going experience
something special,
then you'll be on the look
out for something special.
But you see, nothing special.
There's a wonderful
cartoon in the New Yorker
that I actually mentioned
a long time ago
in Wherever You Go There You
Are, two Zen monks, you know,
one obviously elder,
the other young.
And the young one's looking up
quizzically at the older one.
And the caption underneath,
the old one's speaking,
nothing happens next.
This is it.
I just said that to you earlier.
But the this is it,
is really important.
Otherwise, you could spend
20 or 30 years or more,
and people do this, meditating,
trying to get some place else.
Trying to have some
special experience.
That's what it's all about.
Now I'm enlightened.
The problem is you're
already enlightened.
But the personal pronoun
that wants to grab it
and say I'm enlightened,
it's the personal pronoun
that's the problem,
not the enlightenment.
Your eyes are already
enlightened.
Your ears are already
enlightened.
Your feet actually do
what they're supposed
to do for the most part.
Your brain is doing
what it's supposed to.
Your liver is doing what
it's supposed to do.
Very famous scientist
and physician named Lewis
Thomas once said he'd rather be
at the controls of
a 747 trying to land
with no pilot training
whatsoever than at the controls
of his own liver for 30 seconds.
So you don't need
to find special.
This is good enough, okay?
So let's actually sit for a
moment, if you're sitting,
or stand if you're standing,
in a posture that for you
at this moment embodies
wakefulness and dignity.
You don't even have
to close your eyes.
But you can if you like, or let
them fall unfocused on the chair
in front of you or whatever.
And as I ring the bell, seeing
if you can just follow the sound
of the bells into
the space of the air.
[ Bell ringing ]
[ Background noise ]
>> And allowing the space of
the air to be co-extensive
with the space, you could
call it, of awareness.
So that there's simply
awareness.
Hearing what's here,
to be heard.
The sound of the bells are past,
and now there's just sound.
Whatever's arising.
And you could feature
hearing as a way
of anchoring our attention.
You can focus on
some object like --
or field of objects,
like hearing.
And just rest in being aware
of sounds and the stillness,
the silence in between,
inside, and underneath.
Any and all sounds,
including, of course, my voice.
Alternatively, because there's
more than one thing going on,
there's not just hearing
going on, there's also seeing
and smelling and you know,
all the senses are
actually operating.
Seeing if you can actually
instead of hearing,
feature for now a feeling,
a sense of the breath moving
in and out of your body.
Wherever it's most
vivid in the body.
Just allowing awareness to
inhabit the whole of the body
and be most vivid in the region
where the breath sensations
are arising and passing away.
In breath.
Up.
[ Background noise ]
>> And seeing if you can ride
on the waves of the breath
with full awareness,
moment by moment by moment.
And noticing any time the mind
goes off and gets involved
in anything else, including
judging how stupid this is.
We came for a talk and all
of a sudden we're doing
this stupid exercise.
Whatever is flitting through
the mind at the moment,
just making it so spacious
that you can see whatever's
unfolding, hear my guidance
as I'm speaking, and at the
same time ride on the wave
of the breath coming in,
and the breath going out.
With full awareness.
And a kind of interest,
the kind of, in some sense,
affectionate attention.
Even if the breath isn't all
that interesting to you or all
that boring, or your mind
says okay, I get that concept.
What else.
Just staying with the breath.
And then playing
with the possibility
of expanding the field of
awareness around the breath,
wherever you're experiencing
it most in the body
until it includes a sense of the
body as a whole, sitting here
or standing here, breathing.
And noticing you can do
that just easy as pie.
It's not really a
doing, but when I say it,
you can easily be --
the awareness can hold the whole
body to one degree or another.
And whatever degree you
can hold it, that's fine.
It's not like, oh,
if I practiced I'd
get better at this.
That's just the thought,
never mind.
Just letting the
thoughts come and go,
and staying with the awareness
of the body as a whole,
sitting and breathing.
And if possible, remembering
that this isn't some simple
little exercise that we're doing
in the middle of a talk.
That this is your life
unfolding in this very moment.
And this breath is
important to you.
You wouldn't want
to do without it.
So with that kind of quality
of attending, that it's not --
it's not really -- it's
like tuning a guitar string.
You know, too lose,
two-tone, too tight.
You know, two-tone, but if you
can just bring the lightest
of touches, the lightest
of touches of awareness
to the sense of the body
as a whole, breathing.
As if it mattered.
And of course it does.
Because it's your
body in this moment.
It's your life and
the breath is vital.
And then one more before we end.
Noticing any thoughts that may
be moving through your mind,
and noticing how easy
it is to self-distracts,
that the mind does wander.
That it wanders away from
the breath, if we did this
for any period of time.
Sooner or later your mind
would be someplace else.
Probably not even in the room.
Maybe not even in
the present moment.
Maybe having dinner in Paris.
Or Bangkok, or in an
argument three years ago.
In the shower with yourself.
So when you notice the mind has
self distracted, no problem,
no judging, just --
or if you judge it,
don't judge the judging, and
just see if you can come back
to this moment in awareness.
Featuring whatever object
of attention you care to.
It could be anything that's
in the field of awareness.
But the last little piece
to just underscore that none
of this is about the
sound of the bells.
None of this is about
the feeling
of the breath in the body.
None of this is about
the thoughts moving
through the mind.
Those are all important
and they're secondary,
but what it's really
about is the awareness
that knows the sound when it
comes to the ears that knows --
and I mean non conceptually
knows, not just conceptually --
knows the feeling of the
breath moving in the body.
Non conceptually inhabits the
body as a whole, in awareness,
sitting and breathing.
Non conceptually knows when
the mind self distracts,
or we get into an emotional
whirl pool or turbulence
of some kind or another.
And the awareness can just,
like allow it to just be here.
Feature it center stage,
let it calm, let it go,
and meanwhile we just
continue to rest.
To rest in awareness.
Outside of time, because the
present moment is time --
timeless in some profound way.
[ Background noise ]
>> And awareness and silence and
stillness are all different ways
of saying the same thing.
Of pointing to something
that's already yours,
that you don't have to get.
But has tremendous
healing potential.
Tremendous potential
for learning.
For seeing things in new
ways for that rotation
in consciousness that
I was speaking of.
Everything's the same,
only nothing's the same.
Why? Because you showed
up in your fullness.
So learning.
And out of that learning,
growing.
And out of that growing,
healing, which in my vocabulary,
the way I define healing
is coming to terms
with things as they are.
Coming to terms with
thing as they are.
Very different from curing.
There are very few cures in
medicine, but the opportunity
for healing as long
as there's breath,
it's in some sense already here.
All we need to do is see
it, feel it, live it.
And it's not about
denying pain and suffering.
It's about, in some sense,
befriending even that.
So resting for a final
few moments in stillness,
in silence, full wakefulness, in
full awareness, outside of time,
as if you had nothing
to do, no place to go.
Nothing to do.
And nothing to attain.
Because you're already whole.
The meaning, by the way, of
the words health and healing,
and even the word
holy , H-O-L-Y.
And by the same token,
the word medicine
and the word meditation, they
grow out of the same tree.
The same root, Indo-European
root.
Medicine and meditation
are joined at the hip.
It's not so radical to
actually bring them together
in main stream, clinical care.
In fact, it's essential
for caring.
So silent, wakefulness.
Attending to what is.
[ Background noise ]
[ Bell ringing ]
>> Somehow the real
meditation practice never stops.
Just because some
bell as got rung.
Just because we're going to
shift gears a little bit.
The real meditation is how you
live your life moment to moment.
It's not how good you are
sitting without moving.
Or what great yoga poses you do.
Because yoga is itself
a meditation.
A beautiful form of
meditation we use enormously
and to do good purpose in MBSR,
mindfulness-based
stress reduction.
I'd like to just say a few
things about stress and medicine
and then we'll open it up to --
and give you a little bit of
an expanse of how we work.
But I want you to have at
least this taste of it,
and I want to share a
couple of poems with you.
And it's not like all
of a sudden we've
gotten a little weird,
I'm going a little weird on you.
How many of you when you hear
the word poetry or poems,
you go yeah, I don't know.
Not a poem!
It's like I don't
understand those things.
That's not uncommon.
But -- but one of my colleagues,
John Tisdale, with whom I wrote
that book, The Mindful
Way Through Depression,
who is like one of the world's
great cognitive scientists,
is coming out with a -- several
papers, in which he's arguing
that the root cause of suffering
in human beings is not knowing
how to deal with our emotions
because we don't
know how to inhabit
and then shift our relationship
to what he calls
implicational meaning.
Implicational meaning is what
moves, say, in poetry, okay?
It's different from the
propositional meaning,
which is just the
kind of bear facts.
Okay? So if I -- I'll
recite a poem for you.
This is a poem by
Antonio Muchato,
who's a great Spanish
poet of the turn
of the 19th, 20th century.
And won the Nobel Prize.
It's very short.
But see if you can feel it.
The wind one brilliant
day called to my soul
with an odor of jasmine.
The wind one brilliant
day called to my soul
with an odor of jasmine.
In exchange for the
odor of my jasmine,
I would like the
odor of your Roses.
I have no roses.
All the flowers in
my garden are dead.
Can you feel that?
I -- how many times have we had
that feeling or a
similar feeling.
I have no roses.
There's nothing beautiful
about me.
All the flowers in
my garden are dead.
Well then, I'll take
the withered petals
and the withered
leaves, and the waters
in the fountain and
the wind left.
And I wept.
And I said to myself, what
have you done to the garden
that was entrusted to you.
Can you feel that?
This is a poem about
great sadness.
Could easily go into depression.
I actually -- just because he's
a noble laureate doesn't mean,
you know, I'd like to
actually change the last line.
And I would suggest
that for our purposes,
rather than what have you done
to the garden that was entrusted
to you, which is a kind of
a blaming, wouldn't you say?
I mean, it's like, stick
the knife in, oh, all right,
as long as I'm feeling down, why
not just go right over the edge?
And a lot of cultures
actually perpetrate
that kind of perspective.
But instead, why don't
we say what are we doing
with the gardens that
are entrusted to us.
Gardens plural, okay?
Because right now we have a lot
of gardens entrusted
to us, I would say.
The closest of, you know, to us,
is I would say the
garden of the body.
You know, better than an
American Express credit card,
you can't leave home without it.
But a lot of the time
we're not even in the body.
And a lot of the time our
feelings about the body are
so negative like, the
less said the better.
Just don't bother
me about the body.
I don't even want to
know it just exists.
If it doesn't -- is not
driving me crazy I feel lucky.
And William -- James Joyce
is famous for starting
out a short story in Dubliners
with the following sentence.
This is an approximation,
but it's Mr. Duffy lived a
short distance from his body.
And if you start
to pay attention
in the way I'm suggesting in the
present moment you'll discover
that that's your address
as well, a lot of the time.
We're in our heads,
lost in thought.
Some place else.
Not in the body.
That has biological
consequences, by the way.
Everything I've said tonight,
when I started the
stress reduction clinic
in 1979 it was like, there was
almost no science of the effects
of stress and the biology
of stress on the body
and on the mind and
on the heart.
Now the data is just
like, overwhelming.
Including, as I'll show
you in a minute, aging.
That it's turning out that
you know, stress is --
they used to say stress is not
a real factor for morbidity
or mortality because you
know, it's not like, you know,
high fat diet, it's not
like cigarette smoking,
it's not like hypertension.
High blood pressure.
But now it turns out, there's
incontrovertible evidence
that stress actually reduces --
increases the rate of
degradation of the ends of all
of our chromosomes, which
are called telomeres.
You're going to hear a
lot more about that word.
The woman Liz Blackburn at UCSF
who actually discovered
telomerase, which is the enzyme
that builds them back up,
won the Nobel Prize in 2008.
Okay? And her lab is studying
the effects of mindfulness
of telomeres and telomerase.
And the evidence is
moving in the direction
of meditation can actually
enhance telomerase,
and not just that, it's more
than meditation or mindfulness.
It's your attitude
towards what's happening.
It's not like these
people aren't
under a huge amount of stress.
But it's never the stress,
it's how you choose to be
in relationship to it.
And if you have really
exhausted your resources
for handling stress, then of
course, yeah, all bets are off.
But if you know how to
draw resources to yourself,
then even under very, very high
levels of stress you can dance
with the energy, sometimes
it's unbelievably painful.
But never the less, you're
much bigger even than the pain
or suffering, and liberate
yourself from that.
And guess what, the
telomeres get longer.
So every aspect of our biology
is what's now called plastic.
And that's a new terminology.
It's not like, you know,
Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
This is for the older people.
But it means that the --
our biology is miraculous
in another way.
It's constantly reorganizing
itself.
It's not just it's all
downhill from here.
Yes, there is aging.
Yes, we are all going to die,
unless somebody makes a
very important discovery
very quickly.
But you know, the question is
not is there life after death
or is there some
way to escape death.
But actually, can we live
while we have a chance.
Is there life before death.
That's the most interesting
question.
And right up to the
moment of death.
And a lot of time I think that
really, when we talk about fear
of death we're really
more afraid
of life than we are of death.
And there are two chapters.
I was going to say, actually,
tell you some stories,
but I don't think I will,
about my early days at MIT.
One of which was how
I got into meditation.
I got into meditation at
the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology as a graduate
student in molecular biology
with a noble laureate,
believe it or not.
Go figure.
Not in some monastery in Asia.
Because a Zen master came and
gave a talk, actually, at MIT.
And I was one of five people in
all of MIT that went to the talk
and took the head off --
took the top off my
head at the age of 22.
I was like, oh my God, there's
an entirely different way
of knowing.
Why didn't they tell us
this in kindergarten.
An entirely different way of
knowing, and no less beautiful,
no less profound, no less
transformative, than thought.
Just different.
And this should be part of
the repertoire, so to speak,
and part of the science
and investigation.
The other thing was the
story of my thesis defense,
because I wrote, you know, a
thesis on some arcane topic
in molecular biology
and I had, you know,
all these MIT noble
laureate types,
real hot-shot molecular
biologists.
And a few from Harvard who came
over because you always have
to have someone from
another institution.
And my thesis, you know, it was
an existential challenge for me.
How many of you are
graduate students here,
any of you a graduate student?
It's like, hard.
It's hard to be a
graduate student.
Because nobody cares.
And most of the time,
you don't either.
But it could be really
humiliating, and like --
then of course if
you're a scientist,
science is 99% failure.
Which doesn't do that much for
your self esteem, so to speak.
So you're looking for that 1%.
And so I finally got my
thesis together and I wrote
in the front page,
on a page by itself,
they let you have a little
dedication, little saying,
something like that, I wrote he
who dies before he dies
does not die when he dies.
I don't even know
where I got it.
You know, it's like some
Greek, very old Greek.
So I put that line in
the first, you know,
page by itself before
you get into the thesis.
And so I go into the -- the
room with all these scientists
who are going to decide whether
I get my doctorate or not,
after what's called
-- I don't know,
I forget what they even call
it, thesis review, or defence.
Right, defense.
It's a war term.
They're going to attack
and I'm going to defend.
And if I do it well enough,
then -- so I go in there,
and I knew them all because it's
a small community and everybody,
you know, sort of
likes each other.
And -- but I was of
course terrified.
You know, a lot hangs
in the balance.
And so somebody says
what's this he
who dies before he dies
does not die when he dies.
That's the first
question on my thesis.
So I worked five years on
this research and they want
to know he who dies
before he dies.
Of course they were pushing 50.
You know, I was 27 or
something like that.
They were in their 50's,
and like, thinking ahead?
Obviously piqued some interest.
You die before you die,
you don't die when you die.
I want that.
So I said do you
really want to know?
And they all said yeah.
I said well, it might
take some time.
We've got time.
So actually, I would say half
of my thesis defense was
actually unpacking what
mindfulness is about
to these guys.
This was in 1971, by the way.
And I wrote it up.
It's a chapter called
Dying Before You Die, duh,
because the first dying before
you die was the other story
that I told about, you know,
first encountering
meditation at MIT.
So that's just to say
that I didn't want
to continue a career
in molecular biology.
I wanted to bring my training
as a scientist together
with my training in meditation,
because it seemed like,
well everybody is
doing the science.
But nobody's paying attention to
thought and this other function
of our brains and
nervous system,
that no one's paying
attention to, called awareness,
that is painfully obviously
bigger than thought,
because whatever
thought you have
or whatever emotion you have,
you could embrace
it in awareness.
And not have to do anything
with it, but it would change
by virtue of simply
holding it in awareness
if you were patient
enough to do it.
Especially if it
didn't feel good.
And so that's what we teach now.
And it's come into the main
stream of medicine in ways
that are really astonishing.
The National Institute of Health
is funding hundreds of studies
of mindfulness to the tunes of
hundreds of millions of dollars.
And the idea that that would
have been the case in 1979 I
like to say more improbable
than that the big bang would all
of a sudden stop and
implode back on itself.
And yet it's happening.
And so mindfulness is in
the main stream of medicine.
And in the last -- I'll just
show you some pictures before we
go to questions, okay?
Would that be all
right with you?
Are you still awake?
Good. Because you don't
ever have to stop.
Even when you go to sleep.
You know, that --
it's being present.
That's all.
Being fully present.
Okay? Is anybody good at this?
No. Okay, so don't make,
oh, I'm no good at this.
Nobody's any good at it.
But all you need to do
is be a little better
than automatic pilot and
your life will rotate.
It will be very, very different.
And any time anger comes up,
the default mode comes up,
whether it's anger
or anything else,
Tecna Hans [Assumed spelling]
likes to say, you know,
the reason we have to practice
mindfulness, the reason we have
to cultivate it intentionally
is we're busy cultivating the
opposite all day long.
Cultivating anger, cultivating
jealousy, cultivating, you know,
sort of low self esteem,
cultivating, you know,
all sorts of negativity
in the emotional domain
or in the thought domain.
And the people who are doing
the telomere research are saying
their research is showing
that the real stress
comes from thinking.
So this is a biological
and molecular,
biological consequence
that accelerates aging,
accelerates a lot of -- heart
disease, I mean, it's a --
you know, you can't
interview people who die
of sudden cardiac death.
But if you could,
you'd find out, like,
probably it was a
thought that did it.
The wrong thought
at the wrong time.
Dead. I'm not -- I'm
actually not joking.
I mean, it's so serious
that we need to laugh.
And I want to say that
about meditation too.
It may seem like I'm not
taking this stuff seriously.
This stuff is so serious
that it's too serious
to take too seriously.
And I'm serious.
So this is, if any of
you were alive back then,
this is the cover of Time
Magazine back in 1983.
Four years after I started
the stress reduction clinic.
And it's just like, you know,
I look back on that
time and say stress?
What stress?
Compared to now.
I mean, there was no internet.
There was no e-mail.
There was no instant messaging.
I mean, you know, there were no
computers except main frames.
I used to say in the early
'80's that I could get --
once I had my first PC, you
know, which was like, gigantic,
that I could get more
work done in a month
than I could get done -- I could
get more work done in a day
than I used to be able
to get done in a month.
Well that was in the mid '80's.
Now it's like I can get
more work done in a day
than I could get done in a year.
That's not so good.
You know, we're always on.
You know, we're always on.
Not so good.
We're not computer
servers, we're human beings.
So here is the evidence from Liz
Blackburn's lab and Alyssa Epple
who is the mindfulness
researcher in her lab,
proceedings in National Academy
of Sciences is showing telomere
length as a function of years
of chronicity of care giving,
of children, this is parents
with children with
severe medical
and -- disabilities, okay?
So it's like an unavoidable
stress.
You can't just walk
out, I don't do stress,
sorry, good-bye, children.
No, you can't do that.
But look at this,
also in that study.
This is a perceived scale
-- perceived stress scale.
It's the perception of stress
that makes the difference.
If you are just dealing with
it because it's the way it is,
then you can be more
transparent to the stress.
Your telomeres are longer.
If you take everything
personally,
your telomeres degrade.
So if you want one
take-home message from this,
this turns out to be harder
to enact that it is to say,
don't take things personally
when they're not personal.
Then you might ask, when
are they not personal?
That's a good question
to keep asking yourself.
It may be they're
never personal.
It may be the you that you think
you are is not the real you.
That you're much bigger.
And now the neuro science
is actually showing that.
You want to be your
narrative self?
Fine. Then you're using
certain regions of the brain.
You want to be your moment by
moment, experiential self, in --
grounded in the body,
you're using lateral
networks in the brain.
A whole different brain profile.
So you choose.
One is related more
to happiness.
The left activation in
the prefrontal cortex,
if you could monks
in the scanners,
and I'll show you some
pictures of that, you know,
they have tremendous activation
in the left prefrontal cortex
in particular regions that have
to do with approach and have
to do with emotional balance.
And when we train
people in MBSR,
they shift from right activation
to left activation
in eight weeks.
Their brains actually change
structure in eight weeks.
Work out of Sara Lazar's
[Assumed spelling] lab,
German post doctoral fellow
who's training with us in MBSR
and has been our student,
Britta hisle [Assumed spelling]
for years from Germany,
young neuro scientist,
has demonstrated that major
regions of the brain change
with eight weeks of
mindfulness training in MBSR.
Including the hippocampus,
including the cerebellum,
including the posterior
singular cortex.
All of these are involved
in making meaning in --
in self-regulation,
in perception,
decoding, memory, and learning.
Not bad for eight weeks of what
looks a lot, if you were looking
in from the outside
on our patients,
looks a lot like nothing.
They do nothing lying down.
Then they do nothing sitting,
then they do nothing walking.
Like this.
Like the night of
the living dead.
You know, really slow,
meditative walking.
They're doing nothing.
And healthcare is paying for it.
Amazing. How did they pull
that off in and it turns
out the brains are changing,
not just in terms of activity,
in terms of structure.
Significant thickening in
those regions I mentioned,
significant thinning
in the amygdala,
which is the emotional
reaction -- reactivity center,
the threat center
that triggers --
fires off all the time whenever
we feel threatened or, you know,
accosted in one way or another.
So God, I've got a whole talk
here I'm not going to give.
How many of you see a triangle?
Raise your hand if you see
a triangle in this picture.
Okay, keep your hands up there.
Okay, now look around, so
you know you're not alone.
If you see a triangle
in that picture.
It's interesting, because
there's no triangle
in that picture.
The triangle is defined
by a three-sided figure.
And what your mind does
is it puts in the sides.
If we shifted that little
Pac-man the tiniest little bit,
so the mind can actually see
things that are not there.
The brain actually does that.
It's so good at that.
If I had time I would show
you this movie, which --
how many of you have
seen this image?
Yeah, you can't use it any more.
But I'll just play
it anyway -- oops.
Doesn't want to do that.
Let me see.
Anyway, it's a movie.
And they're passing
around basketballs.
And you ask the group, you
ask the room to sort of count
of number of times the people
in the white shirts
pass the basketballs.
And I could get it to work,
but it would take too long.
So -- and in the middle of
it, I'll try one more time,
in the middle of it,
because it's, you know, oh.
No. Okay, so you're counting
the number of times the people
in the white shirts are
passing the basketballs.
One basketball per each,
the whites and the blacks.
And in the middle
this gorilla comes out
and then goes off
to the other side.
But when you ask people,
well, to count the number
of times the people in the white
shirts pass the basketball,
they don't actually
see the gorilla.
If we did it and none of you
had seen it, 95% of people
who have counted the
number of times --
usually you get a
plus on distribution.
So you can't even
count correctly.
But then you don't
see the gorilla.
Why? Because the
mind has told itself,
the brain has told itself
the white shirts are
what's important.
Tune out everything
that's not white.
Well, the brain it turns
out is fantastic is --
I just showed you, it sees
things that aren't there,
and it doesn't see
things that are there.
Not very reliable.
Now does that apply to you?
I'll leave that for
you to decide.
Just ask your spouse or
your mother or your father.
Because that is part
of the default mode.
We are out of touch, seriously
out of touch with a lot
of different elements of this.
And this is just of a quote
from William James
that's basically saying
if we could learn how
to bring the mind back
when it was wandering,
that would be a good thing.
Turns out the Buddhists
have been doing
that for thousands of years.
So I'm going to stop,
actually, at this point.
And take a few questions.
We have some time for questions.
And then we'll stop
for the evening.
obviously, you can see that
I've just gotten started.
I hope you've just
gotten started.
I'm not joking.
Because this doesn't stop.
It's called your life.
And it's all really
more than magnificent.
And if you can get into
that implicational meaning
of the poems, the poetry,
then there's the potential
to actually live your life as
if it really mattered moment
by moment, and it turns
out that that's recruiting
and morphing brain pathways
that when you're depressed,
you're into a depressive
rumination,
it's not about shutting
that stuff off,
that kind of toxic
thought stream,
but actually learning how
to hold it differently.
And then you don't
take it personally
and then you actually
don't fall into depression.
You don't relapse
into depression.
And I'm talking major
depressive disorder.
And so -- and that
effects your telomeres,
and that effects actually
gene expression in the body
up regulating and
down regulating.
Hundreds of genes that have to
do with cancer and have to do
with inflammatory responses.
So if -- your whole
body is really plastic,
and the more you tune the mind
and the body together
the more you participate
in your own health
and well being.
I like to call the medicine
of the future or the medicine
of the present, actually,
participatory medicine.
That's what -- because
there's not enough money
to fund medicine if we just
use the auto mechanic's model.
So we need to all participate.
And isn't it interesting,
that in order
to participate the greatest
evidence is suggesting we need
to go back to ancient,
ancient practices from very,
very old traditions
that are mostly not
from this side of the planet.
But that turns out have
deep, deep connections
with our culture and
with our nervous system
and with your love.
So I'll leave it at that.
I want to thank you for
your attention, and I'm open
to having a few questions.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you for your attention.
And --
>> And if you need
to go we understand.
>> Yeah, obviously.
It's 6 o'clock.
>> There is a book signing
outside the auditorium
after the question
and answer period.
Just so people know.
>> And so why don't we
-- okay, you've got --
why don't you line up with
that microphone behind the guy
who has it, and we've got
another one over here.
So go ahead.
Oh, you're not actually
asking a question,
you're just offering --
well, give it to her.
>> Thank you so much.
I really appreciate that talk.
It was fascinating.
One question I had was
actually from your biography
that was provided, which
was just talking about you
and your wife's interest
in supporting initiatives
that further mindfulness
in K through 12 education.
And I wondered if you could
just provide some examples
of what exactly that can look
like in public education
and beyond?
>> Okay, thank you
for that question.
I alluded to it, but
obviously, you know,
the subject of mindfulness is
so vast and to do it in a way
that isn't just throwing facts
at you would take actually
multiple occasions.
Or you can remember what we
touch on today and then find
out more for yourself, which
is really the best part.
But in the book that my wife
and I, Myla, wrote together
on mindful parenting, which
is a while other story,
there's a chapter in there about
fourth and fifth grade teacher
from the Utah public school who
herself experienced mindfulness
in MBSR for medical
reasons, health reasons,
and then brought it into
her classroom against all
of my advice, in Mormon Utah
and it transformed
the entire school.
So you could start there.
You can also Google
mindfulness in education.
You'll find out there are
groups of teachers in lots
of different places
that are doing this.
And if you want to take a trip
up 89 to South Burlington,
Vermont, I was just there
a couple of weeks ago,
and they are doing amazing
things in that school system.
The superintendent and one of
the principals actually came
to a day-long mindfulness
retreat that I did
for the teachers and
there are hundreds
of teachers bringing mindfulness
into their curriculum
at every age.
So there's a lot to
be said about it.
I think it's one
of the best things
to happen in modern education.
And it's really inspiring the
teachers because nowadays it's
so challenging, and there's so
much stress in that profession.
And so many of the kids come
and they're not ready to learn.
So they need to learn
how to learn,
tuning the instrument before
you play it, so to speak.
And this is a way to
actually allow that to happen
and in a way that -- I've
been in classrooms like this
in Oakland, and in
Manhattan, in New York City,
public schools, unbelievable.
I mean, and one teacher in
South Burlington called it a
pin-drop moment.
You could hear a pin drop
in these classes where a lot
of the kids are like,
ordinarily all over the place.
But they have actually
learned how to drop in.
It's value for attention
deficit disorder,
attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and it's also valuable
for the teacher's sanity.
Thank you.
So --
>> Hello. I was just wondering
what your general advice would
be, when we're trying to, you
know, live it moment by moment,
but we're faced with moments
where we have to make decisions.
And I know we have to make
dozens of decisions every day.
And sometimes they are
big decisions regarding,
like our futures or
personal relationships,
and my friends are
always telling me,
like, don't overthink it.
>> Don't overthink it?
>> Yeah. But I know
it's really difficult.
So --
>> Well, it's a great question.
Now you want an answer?
>> Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
>> I realize that's the reason
why I decided to come today.
>> Oh. Wonderful.
Wonderful.
[ Laughter ]
>> You're probably
going to overthink it.
But you can hold that in
awareness, the overthinking.
And the awareness will
actually take care of you.
A lot of times -- let's
say it's relationships,
you mentioned relationships,
is that right?
And it's very complicated.
And you know, mindfulness
is all about relationships.
We start with the body.
What's my relationship
with my body?
It's pretty weird even to
say I have a relationship
with my body.
Who's talking?
You're not your body.
But you have a body.
Oh yeah? So something
even there,
that we don't know a
lot more than we let on.
Okay, then you have
a relationship
with your mind and your heart.
In all Asian languages, as you
may know, the word for mind
and the word for heart
is the same word.
So when you hear the
word mindfulness,
if you're not hearing
heartfullness,
you're not hearing -- you're
not really understanding.
It's got this tenor of
spaciousness of heart, okay?
So inside of that, a
certain kind of trust.
And trust in what?
How about your own beauty?
Okay, so when you start to
know yourself in that kind
of non conceptual way,
not with thinking,
but through embodied awareness
of sensation and of, you know,
hearing and smelling and
tasting, and stuff like --
and of your thoughts, that
are overthinking who to be
in a relationship with,
or who to break off
a relationship with,
or whatever it is, and you're
not judging that whole thing --
your deeper intuition and
wisdom is trustworthy.
And when you get into trouble,
that's trustworthy too.
Oh, I see, I made this kind
of decision, I overthought it
to this degree, and
I wound up, whamo,
in some place I didn't
want to be.
That's important information.
That's useful data.
Then you learn from that, an
the next time if you're really,
really, really, really mindful,
you won't repeat
the same pattern.
But mostly what we do is
repeat the same old pattern,
over and over and over again.
Because we're attracted
to just those people
who are not so healthy for us.
If you've read The Power of
Now, Ecarte Tole [Phonetic],
which I recommend you read
these kinds of things,
he talks about a kind of
construct called a pain body.
So a lot of, like, falling
in love is like if you start
to look at it, is by pain
body, what's all knotted up
and painful and hurt in me
recognizes what's all knotted up
and painful and hurt in you, and
those pain bodies fall in love.
Meanwhile -- not a good idea.
Because it's what you call
a dysfunctional relationship
from the start.
You know, but the awareness can
see that, and it can save you.
I have a friend at MIT,
one of the graduate
students with me in my lab.
And he said -- he decided
to get married at one point,
and I did -- the only
time I've ever done this,
I gave somebody advice about
who they wanted to marry.
And I said don't do it.
I was young.
And arrogant.
So I said don't do it.
He did it anyway, of course.
He got married.
Thee years later
they got divorced,
and he said to me
later, he said you know,
how come it took
you three seconds
to see what it took
me three years to see.
And I said well, it's because,
you know, I wasn't in it.
To see it when you're in it,
that requires a whole different
rotation in consciousness.
But it is trustworthy.
So there is no answer to your
question, it's life unfolding.
And whether it's your
relationship to another person
or with choosing courses or
a career path or anything
like that, trust your love.
And as what's his name, Joseph
Campbell said, and you know,
this is a really good piece
of advice, follow your bliss.
Follow your bliss.
And it will teach you
everything you need to know,
including how sometimes
following your bliss needs
to be modulated a little bit.
I hope that helps, because I
don't have anything else to say.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> People are saying that
life is more complicated
and more stressful now,
and I would believe it,
I don't have anything
to measure it against.
And also the same with war.
That people go to war and come
back having experienced things
that they might not have
lived through in other wars.
And there are scientists
working on PTSD and trying
to help people heal from those
things they might not have
lived through.
And so sometimes I
think about how we're --
like, if the world is becoming
for stressful or complicated
and our answer is
change yourself,
change your relationship
with that stress, it seems --
I'm not sure, it seems -- I
don't know how to say it --
>> I got it.
Thanks. That's the
other half of my talk.
>> All right.
>> So thank you for
bringing that up.
So let me just very
quickly say this isn't
about changing yourself.
It's about recognizing --
it's exactly the opposite
of changing yourself.
It's recognizing the
beauty in yourself already.
No change necessary.
Now imagine if the congress
actually were mindful.
Okay? Actually, there
is a congress man
in the congress now, Tim Ryan
from the 17 eighteenth district
in Ohio who is doing everything
he can to bring mindfulness
into the main stream in the
political and economic circles.
You'll see his name
around from time to time.
Fifth term congress man.
But the much longer thing,
and I wrote 100 pages
of mindful politics and
coming to our senses.
This is not about forgetting
about social change
or transformation.
But in order to really have
profound social change that's
in alignment with
humanity and with kindness,
we have to look at
our own minds.
Because even the social change
agents are driven by greed,
hatred, and delusion, just
like all the rest of us.
Okay, so until we
learn how to sort
of at least recognize the toxic
or the sort of inquisitive,
violent aspects in ourself,
then we can do all we want
to transform the
institutions and even the laws.
But human beings, being
what they are, what we need
to do is transform the species.
Or I wouldn't say
transform the species,
I would say have the
species come into its own.
Because we call ourselves
Homo sapiens sapiens.
In Latin, saperi [Phonetic] is
the verb to taste or to know.
Okay, K-N-O-W.
So Homo sapien sapien is
the species that knows.
And knows that it knows.
So in other words, awareness,
yes, and meta awareness,
awareness of awareness.
Now if we really --
that would be wisdom.
If we actually were wise,
then we would see what
war does to societies.
We would understand that we --
you know, with the kind
of preciosity and weapons
and fire power and everything,
we need to find other ways
of resolving human conflict.
But where's that
going to come from?
It's going to come out
of the same human heart,
the same human mind,
and corporations,
which after all mean
bodies, okay,
the corpus or the body politic.
And that's made up
of human beings.
So we do need to sort of
tune the instrument on lots
of different levels, including
the law and jurisprudence
to actually privilege awareness
over a kind of dualistic,
adversarial condition where
it's really winners and losers.
And a huge amount of harm and
social injustice gets done
and then we learn to sort of
tolerate it, thinking well,
a hundred years from
now it will be better.
So this is not going
to happen over night.
I have a very long time horizon.
Like -- I like to say, one
Zen master put it this way,
never forget the
thousand-year view.
I actually have pretty
much a thousand year view.
If it happens in 100,
so much the better.
Even where we would site
nuclear power plants,
if we were building nuclear
power plants in, say,
northern Japan, for instance.
Where would you site
them, knowing the geology
of the Pacific Rim
and northern Japan.
Oh, maybe not too
close to the water.
I don't know.
You need an awful lot of
mindfulness to actually,
you know, come up with
something like that.
So it has infinite
number of implications.
And I apologize for actually
not having spent more time
on this talk going there.
It is all in coming
to our senses,
and there's an awful
lot happening
in the world nowadays
around that.
So we'll take one more
and then we will stop.
Two more. If two people are
standing up, I'll take --
are you standing
up for a question?
You're just the microphone
holder?
Do you want to sing
or something,
or just like -- this
is your moment.
I mean, American Idol.
>> I can make --
>> This will be --
you want to sing?
>> I'm hoping -- I'm a
resident at the hospital here,
and I know you're getting
involved with trying
to bring this into, you know,
more main stream medicine.
And I'm hoping it's not going
to be like, a hundred --
>> Oh no, it's already -- it's
already in main stream medicine,
just -- just not here.
>> Right -- so I -- I mean, it's
definitely not encouraged for us
to take care of ourselves,
and the amount of stresses
and appointments and
phone calls and now EDH,
our new computer system --
>> I heard about that.
>> -- and 30 minute -- you
know, I'm in psychiatry,
and 30 minutes to like, adjust
meds, and also the person wants
to talk to me and all of that.
And it's completely
stressed me out.
But I can only imagine -- and
I'm pretty great [Inaudible]
and good, you know,
great faculty.
But if I were to say you
know what, I'm going to go
to Shimbala to meditate, because
I do meditation in Shimbala --
>> You mean the Shimbala
meditation center in Colorado?
>> Well, there's one in -- White
River Junction there's one.
>> Okay.
>> But I've, you
know, taken courses
and like, level 1 and level 2.
And -- but if I were to
say that, you know what,
I'm going to go for lunch, and
we're not really doing anything,
I'm going to go meditate for an
hour, and then I'm going to be
so much more there
for my patients.
It probably -- even with
these kind, you know,
good mentors, it's
not going fly.
And I advise my patients
on these things.
But still the medical
professionals are --
>> You see --
>> -- these superhuman
people that I'm not.
>> In a talk like this I
can only in some sense point
to how deeply the
penetration has gone.
However, what you're
saying is not deep enough,
by any stretch of
the imagination.
And it takes a long, long
time to shift a culture
that has its own self interest.
A long time.
So one --
>> Just like I'm sure it
takes a long time for people
to get to your clinic.
I know the chronic pain
patients we're seeing,
we're not advising, like,
any of the recommend --
you know, what you guys --
>> But you could
set up an M B S R --
maybe there is, is
there an MBSR --
>> Not even close.
>> Well, that's not
that radical to do.
Are you in psychiatry?
>> Yes.
>> Yeah, well, it's
not that radical to do.
Maybe medicine should do it,
if psychiatry has an aversion
to the mind-body connection.
[ Laughter ]
>> I even know
gastroenterologists
who are working with
veterans who have PTSD
and pulmonologists, I mean, this
goes -- transcends specialty.
>> There are some, and you would
hope psychiatry would the most
open to it.
>> Well, I don't
know if I would hope.
But you would hope.
If you hope it, then
make it happen.
You see, the psychiatry of
the future, where does it lie?
>> Not in medication.
>> Well, where does it lie?
I'm being serious with you now.
>> Well, I think in the
neuro sciences, and --
>> No, no, I'm looking for
something much simpler.
It lies with you.
>> Oh.
>> It lies with that impulse
to have come to this talk.
It lies with that impulse
to go to the Shambala center
and clear your mind and
then be more present.
If you want the medicine of
the future to be different
or the psychiatry of the
future to be different,
don't look around for
someone else to do it.
You do it.
When will you be good enough?
Never. Because part of
your mind will tell you,
you don't have enough power,
you don't have enough influence,
you don't have enough this.
You've got plenty.
As a medical resident,
as a psychiatry resident,
you've got plenty.
And if people don't want
to do it, that's too bad.
But you can take the initiative.
And I'm not joking.
I mean, we're really
talking about a rotation
in consciousness here.
And the institutions change
when people are willing
to actually own how you take it,
and you've had enough
medical training to be able
to make coherent
arguments that a lot
of the way the healthcare
system is set up, I'm guessing,
just from what you've said,
is toxic to the people
that you're most trying to help.
What kind of a set up is that?
Even if you have a better
medical records system.
[ Laughter ]
>> Okay, this will be
the last one, then.
>> There's somebody
really ahead of me.
I just wanted to let people
know we do have upper valley
[Inaudible] associates,
we're psycho therapists,
and we're in our sixth year
of offering mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy.
>> Another thing I didn't get
to really talk about too much,
mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy.
But yeah, I mean, there are --
I'm sure there are resources
in this area, lots of them,
like the Shambala center.
Are there any MBSR teachers
here, in the community?
There you go.
Say --
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> No, wait a minute, someone
just said no, there's another
at Dartmouth, Hitchcock.
But MBSR is at Dartmouth
Hitchcock?
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> Well, you see,
the doctor doesn't --
you know, so between the two of
you, you have an insurrection.
How many else -- how many other
people are here with that,
how many are -- oh, so
now you have a revolution.
I mean, you know, listen,
that's how institutions change.
And you can do it with
tremendous intelligence,
with tremendous propriety,
with tremendous intentionality.
And kindness.
So that it's not like you're
going to go and just sort
of be obnoxious and tell
everybody what they're
doing wrong.
But to actually offer a new
option that I'm not joking,
folks, people are dying for.
People are dying for it.
Metaphorically and literally.
And if -- there's never been
more scientific evidence
in favor of moving
in this direction.
So in some sense what I'm
saying is the responsibility
for the future of
not only medicine
but our society is a
distributive responsibility.
And as I like to say, the
world needs all its flowers
and you're one, whether
your mind says,
and it's like depressive
rumination,
he means everybody else
in the room but not me.
No, I mean you.
And see if you don't recognize
the flower that you are,
and the genus that you are,
and the beauty that you are,
and take it and -- someplace
where it can illuminate
some tiny little corner
that may be insignificant,
but isn't, you think it is
but it isn't, and just apply
what you care most deeply
about there.
That's how health -- that's
how the care gets back
into healthcare.
We're not talking about health
insurance reform, we're talking
about healthcare reform.
And we haven't seen the
beginning of healthcare reform.
And when we do, it will be
a participatory medicine.
It will be recruiting the
interior dimensionality
and resources that every
single human being by virtue
of being born a human being
has to one degree or another.
And that degree is huge.
And we need to learn
how to recruit it,
because anything else
will just be technology
and it will be all doing-based
and none of it being-based.
And we're not called
human doings,
we're called human beings.
So at that, I'm going to stop it
because again, the -- it's late.
But thank you very much
for your attention.
[ Applause ]
