In this episode of The Energy Blueprint, I’m speaking with neuroscientist and bestselling author Mark Waldman. Mark has been on the podcast multiple times, but I find his information so interesting that I’m excited to have him back today.
Mark is now working in a new field called network neuroscience. During our conversation, he explains the framework of this field and shares some very practical but very effective steps to reduce mind-wandering and improve psychotherapy outcomes.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Mark and I discuss:
- The new field of network neuroscience and the 3 key brain networks that control your perception of the world
- The science of memories and where (and how!) your memories are “stored” in your brain
- Why yawning (yes, yawning) is a crucial part of neuroscience research and mammalian behavior
- 2 powerful and easy steps to slow down your thoughts and reduce mind-wandering…that might be more effective than traditional psychotherapy
- The possible connection between awareness practices like meditation and structural changes in the brain
- Why some research seems to show that long-term meditators are more anxious than the general population
- An exciting form of meditation introduced to the field by Mark and Dr. Andrew Newberg that involves two people instead of just one
- Why your relationship with your therapist influences your outcomes more than meets the eye
Listen or download on iTunes
Listen outside iTunes
Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. In this episode, I’m speaking with my good friend and neuroscientist, Mark Waldman. He’s an internationally recognized business and personal development neurocoach. He’s authored 14 books, including the national bestseller, How God Changes Your Brain, which Oprah selected as one of the nine must-read books of 2012.
He’s considered one of the world’s leading experts on consciousness, communication, spirituality, and the brain, and he’s on the executive MBA faculty at Loyola Marymount University and teaches at Holmes Institute. His research has been published in journals throughout the world, and his work has been featured in Time Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Oprah Magazine.
He’s appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, including PBS and NPR, and he’s received the Distinguished Speaker Award from the MindScience Foundation. His latest books are How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain and NeuroWisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness, and Success. In this episode, which I believe is at least his third time on the show, he’s speaking all about the emerging new understanding of neuroscience through what’s being called network neuroscience.
We’re going to be talking a lot about that and how that changes our understanding of how our brain works. Enjoy this podcast with Mark Waldman. Mark, it is an absolute pleasure to have you back on the show.
Mark Waldman: I am delighted to be here.
Ari: It’s been too long. We were just catching up. I think it’s been a few years since we last spoke, but we’ve known each other for many years. It’s got to be, let’s see–
Mark: 2012, 2013.
Ari: Yes, I think it’s been about at least 12 years because I’ve been with my wife for 12 years, and I can recall an amazing experience that we shared together deep in the neuroscience realm, let’s say.
Mark: Profound experience. Definitely, all good states.
Ari: That was, I think, 13 years ago now. It’s been a joy knowing you, working with you, collaborating with you, and having you on the podcast at least two or three times before, and now 13 years into it, having you on for, I think, the third or fourth time.
Network Neuroscience
Mark: Now everything I can talk about is brand new because a new field called network neuroscience became popular or well-known within the neuroscience community about five years ago. It virtually transforms everything we thought we knew about the brain, how the brain functions, and the language has become so simple that we basically only need to talk about three or four or five key brain networks that pretty much control our entire ability to how we perceive the world, how we choose to take action in the world, what’s the best way we can choose.
It even has the blue area in here, the salience network, that grew out of our brain scan research on different meditation practices, and that any form of relaxed contemplative meditation stimulates these two structures that we call the anterior cingulate and the insula. When those two structures become highly active, it explained why all of these positive benefits would come from mindfulness and other forms of contemplative meditation practice.
Then right around the same time, because this was in 2006 when our book How God Changes Your Brain came out, Daniel Bassett was coming out with putting together a brand new way of using diffusion tensor imagery. Instead of looking at different parts of the brain or even a drawing like this, all of our new brain scan studies look more like this. Bassett called it the giant hairball in your brain. What we’re looking at is the neurons on the outer part of our cerebral cortex.
The axons, these things, can extend all the way. They can be two feet long and extend from one hemisphere into the other. Then the synapses where all of the magic communication magic communication takes place, sends that information on to the next set of neurons. Those bundles, when they come together, like the different colors in the hairball, would represent mind-wandering, awareness, values, the choice that we use to take action in the world.
It’s such a beautiful, simple model that the whole field has moved over to it. Yet, to this day, hardly anybody in the general public has ever heard of terms like the default network, the central executive network, the salience network.
Ari: You’re jumping ahead of me. First of all, let me ask the questions here because you’re already answering three questions that I have on my list to ask you.
Mark: That’s the intuitive part of the salience network, and I’m just reading your mind.
[laughter]
Ari: Let’s jump back. There’s network neuroscience, which is this new, emerging way of understanding how our brain works.
Mark: It’s basically how these networks, each one carrying out a specific function, and how they communicate with each other in an effective or an ineffective way.
Ari: Why is this a breakthrough? Describe the previous way of understanding the brain and how network neuroscience shifted things or is shifting things.
Mark: Let’s pick probably the most familiar part of the brain to most people, the amygdala. This grew out of rat experiments that Joseph LeDoux was creating to condition rats how to have an instinctual fear reaction. People began to think that the amygdala was the fear center of your brain, but it’s not. He was just studying one-third of it. Now, thanks to the network neuroscience where you could actually see how these different networks work, the amygdala plays the role of–
We basically experience the brain through emotional experiences, our senses, our smells. Then we respond to it with anger or rage or caring or playfulness is a core key emotion. This is Panksepp’s work. The amygdala pretty much is sitting there in the lower part of your brain, in the asterisk area of this particular drawing, because all these networks overlap. It’s working along with the value-oriented center of your brain, the salience network, to decide what’s important to pay attention to.
All kinds of things are happening to us all the time right now, but is it worth our brain’s energy to pay attention to it? It actually works to decide what to pay attention to. Then if the experience that we’re having in the present moment is important, it’s going to collaborate with your hippocampus. Now, people used to think that the amygdala and hippocampus were where memories are stored, but it turns out that memories aren’t stored anywhere else except in those synapses I was talking about before because when you’re learning something new, that hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens, your motivation center, releases all this dopamine.
That goes up to this big orange area here, which is imagination, creativity, predicting the future, all the possible things that could go right, all the possible things that could go wrong. It’s in that area that little protein molecules, memory protein molecules, are formed in that synapse. There are other molecules designed to make it stronger and others to dissolve it. Our memories are actually changing all the time because the brain could care less about the past.
Ari: Is the right way to conceptualize this that the memories are stored in the synapses, or is it more that memories are better conceptualized as patterns of connection in the brain? Patterns of activity.
Mark: They’re specific forms of memory proteins, and yes, they are there and they’re swirling around in the synapse. Then I have a current problem that I want to deal with, this imagination default network says, “Well, okay, let’s see if there’s any traces of memories associated with what I want to do to make it efficient. I’m hungry. Yes, I do have a refrigerator. Yes, it’s in the kitchen.” Those are the little traces of memory that it uses to get over there.
We open up the door, but now we’re in brand new territory because, “Oh, I forgot to go shopping.” It’s looking around, “What do I want to eat now?” If we trust and go along with this profoundly intuitive curiosity that takes place, then it helps us to stay more in the present moment and to decide, what is it that I could do that would have the most amount of value and meaning and pleasure in my life?” All of psychotherapy for the last 100 years has been focused on, “Let’s take a look at how you’re thinking, which is a process of your imagination–” there really aren’t words for thought processes and feeling processes, and “Oh, you’re thinking this way, let’s change the thinking to this way over here.”
All that’s doing is creating more excessive activity in this huge imagination center, and excessive activity in that imagination center is now pretty much even predictive of having psychological problems.
Ari: I feel like we need to go deeper into that. You probably don’t need to hold that up there the whole time. Let me also just be aware going forward for people who are listening to this instead of watching the video that try to just describe in words maybe where these areas are in the brain. Let’s go deeper into this issue of psychotherapy. Let’s conceptualize in terms of the functionality of the brain from the network neuroscience perspective, what is going on on the neurological level in terms of somebody who has a problem.
You could give an example of a particular problem that they’re seeing a psychotherapist for, and then the way you just framed it is what you’re doing in particular types of psychotherapy may be counterproductive in that it’s reinforcing overactivity in a particular network. Take people through that from start to finish. Build that whole idea out.
Yawning can lower anxiety
Mark: Let’s pick anxiety, that’s probably the most common psychological problem, and it’s such a huge category. Our worries, our fears, our doubts, ruminating on something, feeling stuck, driving ourselves nuts, feeling paralyzed. All of that is basically a form of anxiety, and what it means is that all of our thoughts and feelings are spinning around so fast up here that it’s chaos. If we try to focus in on that, this is going 30 times faster than our ability to pay attention to something.
Paying attention is like, “Well, I can only take two or three chunks of information, maybe five or 10 or 15 words, and focus on it,” but this is speeding around all the time. If a person tries to put their anxiety into words, it creates more busyness because it’s impossible to do. Just thinking about how you’re thinking is creating more thinking. What is the fastest way to lower that excessive activity? This is where the newest research is focusing on about two or three key areas. One is, yawning research has taken another giant leap forward so that mammals–
Ari: Is there such a thing as yawning research now? I know that you were instrumental in some of the earliest research on yawning if I remember correctly, and we talked about this maybe seven years ago or maybe even more.
Mark: We first talked about it in 2007 in our book, and there were 48 studies saying that yawning was a way to slow down excessive busyness in your mind. There was a little bit of research that people were wondering about, “Well, what’s going on in yawning? Why does your dog and cat and every mammal, when they wake up, the first thing they do is–” They do a down-dog stretch. You can go onto YouTube and see hippopotamuses and elephants doing this and everything else. Now, within the last couple of years, there are now over 400 studies on yawning.
With mammals, apparently, those mammals and those humans who yawn in response to somebody else yawning, it helps you to come more into the present moment instead of being lost in your thoughts. It makes you more aware of the present moment so that you can perceive if there’s any threats going on. With mammals, it turns out– it went from speculation to as close to a fact as you can get into in neuroscience, that yes, mammals and even fish will do group yawning together before they change a particular activity.
Ari: What explains the social contagion element of yawning? One person yawns and another person yawns, sometimes even if the other person doesn’t see it.
Mark: People who are more capable of doing contagious yawning, it turns out that they have less psychological problems, they have greater empathy, they can connect with other people better. I don’t know if we can, but we can train ourselves to always yawn when somebody else is yawning. Now the first piece of research that came out from Gallup & Gallup was that yawning was a thermoregulatory mechanism.
When you yawn, it increases cerebral blood flow. It’s like the radiator in your car, for those people who remember what a radiator used to be. It would circulate cool water, which would cool off overheated parts of the engine. It’s virtually the same for your brain. If there’s too much excessive activity going on in this default imagination center, if you’re worrying too much, if you’re anxious, if you’re just lost in your thoughts and feelings, all of that activity is literally generating a lot of excessive heat.
The yawning brings the cerebral blood flow to the area and it slows that activity down. I like to guide people through three mindful yawns to teach them that they can become aware that yawning will move you from a busy mind into being in a state of calmness where it’s hard for you to even come up with 10 words. Now that’s been confirmed, and there are several other new forms of yawning that are being researched now. Yawning is probably the simplest way to lower stress levels in your brain, to stop yourself from yawning, but not everybody can do it, and it always works better to do it with another person.
Meta-awareness – a new discovery
Ari: If we’re feeling anxiety, yawning versus psychotherapy?
Mark: Yes. We have to move into the other two major discoveries in the last couple of years, and it’s called meta-awareness. Now, meta-awareness is a brand new term that’s being used in research, and you don’t hear the word mindfulness being mentioned anymore, even though it grew out of the mindfulness research. In Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, the instructions were very simple. Just sit back and watch how your mind wanders when you’re not doing anything.
Anytime we’re not doing anything, that imagination default network becomes busier. It’s great because it’s basically using its creativity to think about all the things you might do in the very next moment. If it’s too busy, you get lost. “Well, maybe I should do this, maybe I should do that, maybe I shouldn’t do–” That’s anxiety. The interesting thing about mindfulness is that Jon’s recommendation was, sit back and just watch how your mind wanders.
Then when brain scan technology came in the 1990s and early 2000s, one could actually see that if I watch– here’s the top of that brain there, very, very busy. As I watch that busyness, which stimulates that salience network deeper in, this almost stops. Just the ability of being aware of your mind wandering slows down the mind wandering process. That’s one-half of the solution for virtually every psychological problem we have.
You have to do one other thing, too. You have to then shift your attention and to pull yourself away from paying attention to your mind wandering, to paying as full attention as you can to what is happening to us, to you and me, right now in the present moment. What are the sounds we are hearing? What does the tone of my voice sound like? What does it feel like for me to be moving my hands?
If we can fully immerse ourselves in a present-moment experience, and then go back and watch the mind wandering, pull ourselves back into the present-moment experience, the combination of those two things, if you add them to any form of psychotherapy, traditional or alternative, the psychotherapy becomes far more effective than placebo. Without it, the current research shows that all psychotherapies are equally effective and equally ineffective, meaning that they all tend to work, but not that much above placebo.
Here you have individuals who are going through whatever type of psychotherapy for eight weeks, is usually the test model, and you can see that their anxiety level has gone down. The people in the control group who are waiting to have that form of psychotherapy, their anxiety level hasn’t gone down at all. It’s all the way up here. Here’s what happens. Six months later, the people in the waiting room have the same amount of improvement as those who went through psychotherapy. Psychotherapy will speed up the process.
Ari: Is that a broad finding that’s been replicated?
Mark: Replicated, and re-replicated. Now the words that are coming up is that it’s causal and predictive. You know how rare that is.
Ari: What is causal and predictive?
Mark: That any form of paying attention to watching how your mind wanders and bringing your attention into the present moment, if you can master those skills even for a minute or less, that creates, in the moment, a more optimal balance between all those key brain networks, which is now considered your neurological model for what psychological health is. These three key brain networks are now– you’re moving back and forth between paying attention to what you’re doing, and then a brief moment where this takes over to think about what you might do in the next moment.
A deeper part of your brain saying, “Well, what’s the most valuable thing that’s going on in your imagination to latch onto?” Then it tells us what we should be doing next. The more we can fall into that type of flow situation, there’s no anxiety.
Even by doing two or three mindful yawns or super slow movement, which is a great way of pulling yourself back into the present moment or even stimulating your C afferent nerves, the pleasure nerves that nobody bothered to even study up until about a decade ago, that when you stimulate these nerves through self-nurturing, self-soothing touch, again, all of that worrisomeness and anxiety and excessive busyness in this network calms down and you’re more in the present moment.
Then for me, what I feel is the next essential step, because these awareness exercises, they’re stimulating that salience network that I mentioned earlier, the part of your brain that lights up when you’re engaged in mindfulness or meditation, when you’re fully in the present moment and you don’t have all these thoughts that are taking you off into there. It’s only going to last for maybe 10 or 20 or 30 seconds.
Our suggestion is during the workday, set a mindfulness clock on your cell phone, let it ring two or three times an hour. When you hear that bell, that’s why I use it in my work, just take a moment and close your eyes, and do one mindful yawn or one super slow stretch, or focus on a deep inner value and now I’m in a very different state than I was, and I can probably answer any of your questions briefer.
Ari: I want to zoom out for a moment and we’ll zoom back in. I always like to understand things through an evolutionary lens. I am of the opinion that most attempts to understand human health without that evolutionary lens generally end up in confusion or counterproductive strategies. I want to understand all of these dimensions that you’re describing through an evolutionary lens. Can you take me through–
Maybe I’ll ask the question this way. In the modern world for modern humans, how do you feel our brains are imbalanced or are in a non-optimal environment that shapes them in a negative direction, perhaps towards anxiety or depression or other issues, excessive rumination, relative to our ancestral environment? Our brains obviously evolved for hundreds of thousands of years for a particular environment
Presumably like so many other dimensions of our lives, we are mismatched for the current environment we are living in. How would you explain that mismatch from the perspective of neuroscience and network neuroscience? What brain regions are maybe overactive or underactive?
Mark: In the neuroscientific perspective– I presume if we boil it down to nature versus nurture, history genes versus environmental influence, I think everyone agrees that it’s really a combination of both, that focusing on a deep inner value like peace for 20 minutes over an eight-week period turns on 1000, stress-reducing genes and 12 on 1000 immune enhancing genes, that clearly our inner reality can influence the mechanisms that–
I don’t know if you could put genes on an evolutionary level or not. The newest neuroscience resources really just focus on what’s happening in the present moment. What can we do? You could be born for example with a certain type of imbalance where all of the axons in your default network aren’t communicating within that network very well, or that that network isn’t doing a good communication level here.
Part of that could be genetic or neurological or biological abnormality, or it could also be created through incredibly stressful situations, so people who are in war zones, for example. You’re under this constant form of stress. Most people, 95%, are able to get through it and to recover. It seems to be that we have an evolutionary built-in sense of resilience. Sometimes I like to think that mammals and lower creatures have a greater sense of resilience because their imagination doesn’t get in the way. Their thoughts don’t get in the way of how our brain is designed to function.
The cool thing about network neuroscience, like with PTSD, it shows on the axon that the myelin sheath is becoming unraveled. That neuron cannot communicate in an effective way to the other neurons. Then the question is really problematic when there’s been that type of neurological damage.
So far, there’s been no form of effective psychotherapy. It’s either going to heal by itself, built-in resilience, but from a network neuroscience perspective, if you learn how to just watch all the noise this is making rather than trying to identify it with something in the past, because there is no part of our brain that keeps track of the past, it’s trying to organize itself in the present moment to deal with what you need to do in the present moment, that watching that chaos slows that chaos down.
If you can teach that individual, “Okay, what’s happening right now? Is there any threat going on? What does this glass of water look like? What does it really taste like? What is the coolness in my hand?” always pulling the person as much as possible back into the present moment, that also turns off all of that anxiety that may be out of control. If there’s enough neurological damage, the most effective therapies that are coming out now is psychedelic therapy.
Ari: Two of the key elements that you were describing earlier and that you were just alluding to are awareness of mind-wandering and pulling one’s awareness fully into the present moment.
Mark: Correct.
Ari: We could describe these skills or functions of the brain as– one is metacognitive awareness or meta-awareness and the other one would be present moment-focused awareness. What’s the proper term for that?
Mark: That’s a great term.
Ari: What you’re advocating, and what lots of research supports, is that practicing those skills, practicing meta-awareness and present moment-focused awareness is beneficial for the brains of modern humans, correct?
Mark: Yes. One of my favorite research studies was done with sixth graders. They were basically given one hour of mindfulness practice geared down to a level for sixth graders. I don’t know for how many days they did that in a row, but in the brain scan studies, it showed that we focus our attention, and if we spend too much time just focusing our attention on what we’re doing, that’s a workaholic who’s going to have burnout.
We use up the neurochemicals necessary to stay focused. We have to go up here to the imagination network, let this rest, and it’s thinking about what to do in the next couple of seconds, that those people had smoother shifting back and forth between the executive network and the default network. We know in network neuroscience that your salience network has been activated by that one hour of mindfulness practice.
When the salience network is activated, one of its key roles is to create this smooth switching back and forth between these two. You have your salience network here, you have your executive network over here, you have your default network over here, and it’s just helping to– like a seesaw. You’re not doing too much, you’re not feeling or thinking too much, and that salience network, like a seesaw, is just finding that perfect place of balance, and the more it goes back and forth, that is, for that moment, peak performance, psychological health, that’s being in the flow.
Can you train pathways in your brain?
Ari: Is it accurate to conceptualize the ability to do that well as a skill that essentially the more you practice it, the more those pathways get reinforced, and the better you get at it?
Mark: That’s still an open question. Most of the research, and we began to know this out in the research, we were doing brain scan research all the way back in 2007, that a one-minute meditation during that one minute was creating the same type of optimal activity in the brain as somebody who was practicing for forty minutes. Our team had been–
Ari: That’s not really the comparison I’m asking about. I would be asking about somebody doing it for the first time or the first handful of times versus someone who has practiced it over many weeks, months, years.
Mark: If you practice it over many weeks, months, and years, two things happen. One is, yes, you’ll be strengthening that network of axons involved with that, where it becomes a habitual behavior. Any form of–
Ari: Even an automatic behavior, maybe?
Mark: Correct. All automatic behaviors have nothing to do with what’s going on in the present moment. Many of our problems is how do we interrupt our old beliefs or old behaviors. Even walking up and down the stairs requires you to be very fully present while your cerebellum and your motor cortex is calculating how to take the next step. Then if your mind is off wandering, you stumble.
Less and less attention is going on the value of building belief systems for automatic behaviors, but interrupting them to see if in the present moment a different form of thinking, a different form of awareness, might be more useful. Everything is about usefulness in the present moment as far as network neuroscience is concerned.
Ari: If it’s the case, as I was getting at with my question and what you described there, that practicing these things over time strengthens those pathways and makes them easier to access, makes them more automatic– I’m watching your facial expressions. You’re objecting to something I’m saying here.
Mark: You don’t need to strengthen them. The way I look at the research, if you can teach this to a bunch of naive people and give them a one-hour lesson, and you can see just from that one hour of practice, which is not enough to create any form of structural change in the brain, saying, “Well, maybe we don’t need to be forming these strong connective things.” Now in the past, all of our research was focused on, “Oh yes, advanced meditators would have structural changes that you could see. Maybe one part of some structure was thicker or whatever else.” Nobody has ever figured out what it means to have those structural changes.
Ari: What do you mean by that?
Mark: The structural changes that you see from meditation doesn’t convert into any form of positive behavior.
Ari: Why?
Mark: Why? Because you haven’t been able to create a study to do that and then to replicate it.
Ari: Just as an example of studies that I’ve read, let’s say– and I know You’re going to object to some of my phrasing here because it’s not network neuroscience phrasing.
Mark: If the study is more than five years old, I probably will, right or wrong. [laughs]
Ari: If I had five minutes, I could probably bring up a relevant study that’s within the last five years, probably bring up a few.
Mark: Absolutely.
Ari: Overlook whatever nitpicking that you’re going to do with how I’m phrasing it and just understand the principle of what I’m asking here. Let’s say through practice of meditation training, a group of humans was shown– I’m trying to remember the details of this particular study that was done with a group of meditators. They were exposed to essentially different colors of lights, and then they were measuring their startle response and how it corresponded to amygdala activity and amygdala size, the structure.
Mark: They would startle less.
Ari: Right. Over time, the amygdala size shrank, and this corresponded with startling less. There’s many other aspects. Let’s say you could look at the anterior cingulate cortex that corresponds with willpower and practices that involve willpower correspond to functional activity and over time, a structural robustness of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, and that corresponds with willpower. Why would you want to separate out the structural component of this?
Mark: If you go online and you want to go look at the cat-neck dome of the amygdala, for example, you’ll see that it’s not this complicated but those axons are going to all kinds of different parts of the brain. Here’s a question. Where does the amygdala begin and end? That’s why viewing it as an almond is one of the things that network neuroscience has tossed out of the window.
Instead of looking at the size, which is also just a guesswork anyway from blood platelets or with oxygen levels or whatever is being measured, what we’re looking at is the degree of activity. If that activity in the amygdala is going on and on and on all the time, that is probably what other people were assuming was making a larger amygdala. Again, it’s more function than structure.
Ari: Structure and function are interrelated in every dimension of the body. I can’t have structurally very small mitochondria and few of them and expect to have robust energy levels. I can’t have small muscles and expect to be extraordinarily strong. Structure and function are, at almost every level that you could imagine in the body, interdependent.
Mark: If we come back to the structure, yes, it’s more speculation that because we see that the front part of the default network, the prefrontal lobe, and the parietal lobe, they don’t seem to be communicating as well based upon these 10,000 studies of what’s supposed to be a healthy human being, there’s still no way of identifying exactly if the structure has changed or not. From the way I look at it, I don’t know if anybody has a way of really looking at the structure unless you cut the brain up.
Ari: Let me give you an analogy from exercise science. It’s a field that I’ve been studying since I was a kid. If I take a person to a gym and I ask them to do bicep curls, I can do the equivalent of fMRI or another type of– I don’t know what you call, network neuroscience imaging of the brain. I don’t know the technology that it refers to. Let’s say the muscle equivalent of that is EMG. Let’s say I have very sophisticated tools to analyze the muscle fiber recruitment in the muscle in response to exercise.
Mark: Yes, and I agree with you. You can measure the muscles.
Ari: Wait, hold on. Let’s say I take a bunch of exercise-naive people into the gym and I put this sensor on them and I have them do bicep curls and I can see clearly they are getting a lot of activity in those muscles.
Mark: Bigger muscle, yes?
Ari: No, not bigger muscle, but they’re firing a lot of the muscle, they’re recruiting a lot of the muscle fibers, they’re activating a lot of their motor units to do that exercise. I could similarly–
Mark: [crosstalk] Question to you. If you’re activating those nerves, those muscles, whatever else, what is the result of that activation? What does it produce? Is it producing a functional change or a structural change?
Ari: Right now, we’re not there yet. Let me just finish the framing. Right now, we’re just taking an exercise-naive person who doesn’t normally work out, seeing that when they do bicep curls, they activate lots of muscles in their motor units and their biceps. That’s not synonymous though with someone who has trained in the gym for 10 or 20 years and has the capability to not only activate motor units in their bicep, but lift a much heavier weight, or to perform that same load in a much more efficient and easy way. The functional activation is not synonymous with the adaptation built over time of strength and more robustness of the function and performance in that tissue.
Mark: Understand that if you brought 10 neuroscientists into this room and give them any one specific study–
Ari: You’d get 12 different opinions.
Mark: Right. I always like to say, when two neuroscientists disagree with each other, you know that one of them has to be wrong. If two neuroscientists agree with each other, you know that both of them have to be wrong. In many ways, our understanding of the brain, this is what Andy says all the time, is profoundly primitive. Even though network neuroscience is going from elementary school to graduate college, we still don’t have any way of directly knowing if the structural changes that are made in the brain– Nobody’s been able to even correlate that with an improvement or a disimprovement in some functional aspect.
There are people who can have an entire stroke where one half of their brain is not functioning, and they’re pretty ordinary in most of the activities they can carry out, and this person over here has a little pinpoint stroke and they lose their speech and they can’t move this side of their body. Andy, once said that he never wanted to go into the field of neurology because in the last 50 years, he didn’t feel that there was any improvement being made.
In terms of your question, I have to say, I don’t think anybody knows how to answer that question. We know more about the body than the brain.
Ari: I would agree with that, but still, I really object to the way you’re– Look, I’m not a neuroscience expert. I’m just having a conversation here.
Mark: I don’t mind that you think there has to be. I’m just saying, from my perspective, I’m going, “Well, I can’t figure out what that has to be is, but there’s some value over here for this function so I’m going to focus on something I can use. I’m more of a utilitarian.
Ari: Let’s say, going back to like the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and willpower, for example, there are studies in animal models where they ablate, they go into the brain with a hot probe, and they literally burn off that structure. It corresponds with the loss of willpower and impulse control. There are clearly structures of the brain that correspond to certain functions and capacities.
Mark: One could do the same thing with the hippocampus.
Ari: By practicing certain things, there is a corresponding structural change in those tissues, a functional change, and a structural change.
Mark: That’s the part that I don’t know anybody has been able to be very definitive about. Yes, you can go in with brat brains and you can alter the hippocampus, you can alter the amygdala, you can alter any of these other structures and clearly see that this particular behavior has been impaired, but I don’t think you can say the opposite, that there’s an exercise that you can do that you’ll be able to shrink the amygdala because we’re not looking at the structure.
There’s no way of looking at the structure in all of these brain scan studies being done. The best we can do is have a general idea of how much activity is going on in those neurons and axons. Some people will look at the action potential. Some people will guess at what the synaptic activity might be and when it comes to the neurochemicals, then it’s anybody’s guess what’s going on. They still haven’t figured out what serotonin does in the brain and it raises the question if all these antidepressants–
Ari: Yet we’ve had 30-something years of the general public being indoctrinated to believe that lack of serotonin makes them depressed.
Mark: Yes. None of the antidepressants beat placebo, but that doesn’t mean that this individual given Prozac, that brain responds to that particular thing, but this person over here, the brain won’t respond to Prozac, but it might respond to something with norepinephrine in it, or my favorite one would be bupropion, which is a dopamine enhancer, which isn’t included in any of these new drugs. I can’t tell you how much that has helped me to stay focused and attentive, but all my friends who tried it out after I told them all these incredible benefits, it didn’t happen to them.
It was like, “Oh, okay, I’m lucky.” It’s like going to Las Vegas and spinning the wheel, “I won, and because I won, I was thinking this particular way and then telling somebody, ‘If you go in there with a positive attitude, you’re actually going to win more often.'” Maybe yes, maybe no. To me, it’s a gamble.
Ari: I’m tempted to beat to death the structure and function issue, but I’m going to leave it alone. [crosstalk]
Mark: What I’m saying is that even if I hadn’t– Let me go with your perspective. You have a stronger, fill-in-the-blank. What is the value of it?
Ari: To me, as someone whose background is exercise science, your framing of how the brain works comes across as someone saying, “Well, we know that exercise will build stronger muscles and bigger muscles, but we’re not sure yet if the structure component is relevant to this discussion.” It’s obviously relevant.
Mark: No. I’m saying maybe yes, maybe no, nobody’s figured it out. Here’s my question. All these people who win, these built-out muscles, and whatever else, is their body healthy having all these giant muscles everywhere?
Ari: That’s an absolute separate question. The way to frame it is, is it an adaptation that facilitates doing the thing that they are subjecting their body to? The answer to that is absolutely yes. It is a physical, structural, and functional adaptation that is making them physically stronger and able to handle the demands that they’re subjecting their body to of lifting heavy objects. Now, can that activity be–
Mark: If they needed to be on ice skates to get off the mountain, will they be able to have that type of fluid coordination?
Ari: That’s a different skill set. Just the same as also that a ballet dancer who has fluid coordination can’t squat 500 pounds, right? They’re different physical skills.
Anxiety in experienced meditators
Mark: Let me bring that right back to what you asked earlier. All of these advanced meditators, they clearly have structural changes which seem to be rather similar. The person with 10,000 hours of mindfulness practice or Tibetan Buddhist practice or whatever else, you see that these structures have changed. They have certain skills that are definitely superior to others, like they can regulate their body temperature–
Ari: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, Mark.
Mark: — more. Here’s the flip side of the coin. When you try to measure advanced meditators, and you look at all the research, there’s a whole lot of the research that shows that those people are more anxious than those who didn’t do the meditation. Then I’m scratching my head and seeing–
Ari: Which ones? The experienced meditators?
Mark: Yes. On the tests and the studies, it turns out that the tests show that they have greater anxiety. Now as you know with tests, to me they’re rather meaningless and can be interpreted. One of my ways of thinking about that is the advanced meditators may be far more sensitive to stressful stimuli that’s anxiety. They’re aware of it, and if you are aware of your anxiety, some part of your brain is going to light up showing that awareness. This person might misinterpret that awareness as saying they’re just highly more anxious. I’m going to look at this other study and say, no, because they are aware of their anxiety, they actually are functioning better in the world when they’re in an anxious situation or a threatening situation. Does that make sense?
Ari: It does. I think just to clarify, do you think it’s the case that experienced meditators are actually more anxious?
Mark: No. Even though some of the research points it that way. That’s my opinion. What I try to do is I’m going to look at all these systematic studies. I’m going to throw away everything that’s five years old because all the new technologies have changed and everything else. What do the meta-analytic studies of the systematic studies show? I try to go with, well, there’s five of them that say this, and this one said they were able to replicate that and whatever else. I’m going with the general consensus as my choice of interpreting this, but anytime you look at– It’s the bell curve. The majority of people fall up here. What about all these people who didn’t have any benefit at all? All these people who had ecstatic experiences and all these people down here who went into a state of psychosis? It’s like okay.
My approach as a coach or a therapist is to say, hey, here’s some interesting exercises. It’s very easy to teach somebody how to watch how their mind wanders. That’s why I use the three mindful yawns, because most people will see that they end up not even being able to find words for this calm state of being. Then I’m leaving it up to the individual to decide, do you find this useful or valuable? When we taught this to the executive MBA students for eight years in a row, 90% of them showed that the yawning and the focusing on a deep inner value, after 10 days of doing it just for five minutes in the morning, because a busy executive isn’t going to give you– Lucky to get five minutes out of you. All of them, they say, “You only have to do this for 60 seconds.” When 90% consistently over eight years say, “Hey, my stress levels have gone down, my work performance has gone up,” we couldn’t get that published in a psychological journal because there was the yawning and the inner values exercise put together. They said, “Well, now you just have to do one on this one and one on that one.” The Journal of Executive Education said, “This is really amazing. They published it, and it became the second most downloaded article for a decade.
Ari: Wow. Congratulations.
Mark: Yes. Again, the psychologists thumb their noses at the business world because there’s no psychological insight, and the business world thumbs their noses at the psychologists because they’re not making as much money as they are. I’ve had to sit in these meetings with the head of the education department over here, the head of the psychology department over here, the head of the business department over here, and they all hate each other. There’s no agreement whatsoever. I’m going, “Yes, effort.”
The benefits of meditation and meta-awareness
Ari: What is your perception of the benefits of meditation? Do you think meditation and mindfulness practices are profoundly beneficial for the brain? If so, why?
Mark: I will say maybe yes or maybe no. I am convinced, right or wrong, that these simple meta-awareness strategies are showing the most profound changes in the widest range of individuals. Just take, 60 seconds, once an hour or two, learn how to watch your mind wandering without getting lost in it, which would be a mindfulness practice, and then pull yourself back into the present moment, which is secondarily emphasized in mindfulness. It puts aside a lot of other meditation practices, because if the meditation is associated with spirituality or religion, there’s usually a set of beliefs going on about what you need to be focused on. I’m focusing on becoming one with the universe. Neil and I, we use this being in the present moment to explore what is the nature of beingness? When you’re being, are you even aware that you are being?
We’re playing around with those types of experiences, and this brings in the third meta-awareness exercise, which is what Andy and I believe is a contribution to the meditation field. If you’re alone, and you’re doing all these meditations alone, the moment you come out of that meditation state, pretty much your brain has gone back to the way it was malfunctioning beforehand. What if you and I were to sit down, and both you and I put ourselves in that deep, relaxed state of mindful awareness, and simply describe to each other the mind-wandering that’s going on, and the present moment experience that you have, which is unique for each person.
We do so staying in the present moment. We’re more connected to each other, and there’s a whole bunch of brand new studies on the different words for it, neuro-resonance, different ways that when you’re really closely paying attention to the other person’s facial expressions and their tone of voice, the same area in your brain becomes activated as is going on in the person who is presenting the story to you. One can then measure that the empathy, the levels of mutual empathic rapport have really much increased.
Now we can go back to Norcross’s research on what makes effective psychotherapy, and number one, and number two, is if the person is self-initiating, in other words, they’re willing to experiment with whatever the therapist is suggesting, and then go out on their own and do it, but number two is mutual empathic rapport. In the world of therapy, we’re just taught as therapists. I’ll be empathic towards you. I’ll sit here and listen, but you’re mind-wandering all over the place. What if I taught you how to be in the present moment as well so that we feel connected to each other?
Ari: Me as the therapist in this case?
Mark: As the client. Client and therapist, or a teacher and student, or husband and wife, for example. To create this neurological profound sense of intimacy, but we each hold each other in the present moment, say a few words, pause, takes about 10 seconds for the other person’s brain to make sense out of my 10 words, and then you respond with 10 words or 20 words that feel essential and valuable for you. In that type of dialogue, back and forth, anxiety levels go down in both people, empathy increases, and there’s a type of mutual understanding that, at least anecdotally, most people say, “Wow, the problem I thought I was having with you just isn’t even existing right now. So why should we go back and talk about the problem we had yesterday? Maybe we can practice doing more of this and you and I really enjoy what we want to do in the very next present moment.”
Ari: Don’t worry, we’re not going to go back and talk about more structure and function stuff.
Mark: That would be meta-awareness and communication.
Ari: Yes, beautiful. I think there’s two interesting and controversial areas in what you’re saying. One is–
Mark: Just two?
Ari: Well, I’m going to leave the structure and function issue alone. We’ll have to talk–
Mark: I could think of plenty.
Ari: — about that after the podcast is over. You’ve talked about both meditation and psychotherapy. You’ve brought into question– You’ve said you’re not even sure if traditional meditation practice is especially beneficial. I don’t want to misrepresent–
Mark: What I feel certain about is that if you bring these meta-awareness strategies into those therapies or into any kind of meditation work, they seem to become more effective. The degrees of anxiety or depression seem to improve more than the current strategies that we’re using.
Ari: It’s two elements. Again, one is awareness of mind-wandering and pulling one’s awareness into the present moment. There are many types of meditation practices that are very much about those two things.
Mark: Yes. They’re the ones that seem to show the most amount of psychological benefit, the most amount of emotional regulation going on. Then in the network neuroscience field, you can see that there’s a certain type of areas, different parts of the brain are lighting up, whatever else, in a way that matches these tens of thousands of other brain scans that says, yes, that seems to be when the person has the least amount of anxiety or depression, is performing at their best, is feeling the most amount of satisfaction and pleasure with their life. It seems to be more of the gold standard now, but nobody knows about this.
Ari: With traditional psychotherapy, do you consider it sort of benign or counterproductive in many cases, to the extent that it is not doing these two things of addressing awareness of mind-wandering and pulling one’s awareness into the present moment?
Mark: Well, you certainly have all these studies showing that all these different forms of psychotherapy are just consistently barely above placebo. Whereas people who are practiced and trained in doing these meta-awareness exercises, it’s a lot larger than placebo. You’re hearing and seeing the words moderate to robust rather than mild to maybe moderate and usually just statistically significant, which to me is meaningless.
Ari: Do you think it’s counterproductive for people with, let’s take the example of trauma, somebody going into a psychotherapist and doing therapy ostensibly to try to heal the trauma, but mainly what they’re doing is talking about their past negative experiences, under the widespread assumption and belief that simply talking to a therapist, who is going to empathize and the therapist is going to engage in some therapeutic approach, but that exchange of them talking about and sharing their past traumatic experience is healing. Do you–
Mark: I offer all of my students a $500 reward to find one single study published in the last couple of years in a journal that’s reputable, that there is any value in going back and reviewing any aspect from the past. Freud and Aristotle both said the life unexamined is a life not worth living. I prefer Marcus Aurelius, who is more like Ram Dass, and he said, the present moment is all we have. Sit back and enjoy the stars. If a Roman emperor can say that, why not give that a try as well? No, I cannot find evidence saying that a reviewing of your past in any way helps you deal with the problems you’re having in the present moment.
Ari: That’s a– Sorry, go ahead.
Mark: The best therapists, the research is consistent about this, are those who have created the most amount of empathic rapport between them and the person they’re working with. My question has always been, okay, that’s what I’m saying. Awareness of how you and I are interacting is that mutual empathic rapport. That’s the one element I’d like to stick into the equation.
Ari: I remember many years ago when I was in my PhD program for clinical psychology, I remember encountering what I think was framed, the Dodo bird studies, or at least someone who I heard lecture on this topic referred to them as the Dodo bird studies. It’s a reference to Alice in Wonderland and the Dodo bird who says everyone wins a prize. It’s aligned with what you were just speaking about there, which is that all these radically different approaches to psychotherapy were shown to be equally effective. So everyone wins a prize. You’re adding the additional element, which is that it’s only a very slight degree of efficacy over placebo.
Mark: All the studies show that those therapies, so mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based trauma work, the studies are consistent that those are more effective than when the mindfulness component is not there.
Ari: . One element was that what they did show was that the correlation was less about the type of psychotherapy, the psychotherapeutic method, and more about the extent to which the patient and therapist agreed upon the framing over the problem and the extent to which the patient and therapist agreed on the solution to it. They both were operating in the same frame of agreement of, yes, we’ve identified your problem, it’s XYZ, and this is what we’re going to do to solve it. Then the extent to which the therapist is empathetic. Then basically the extent to which they are engaging in showing up and actually doing some sort of therapeutic practice in that frame of patient-therapist consensus about what the problem is and how to solve it.
Mark: How self-initiating is the client? How empathically engaged is the therapist? Can those two playfully interact in a way that’s hopefully mutually beneficial?
Ari: That’s basically the same idea.
Mark: Yes. I’ve gone in and have worked with some of the worst therapists and experiences in the world. You go in and roll up a towel and you beat your imaginary mother to death. I have left incredibly disturbed. Then I’ve always been a maverick, and I’m going, “What can I learn from that? What can I do? How can I improve that?” Instead of tapping, as EFT does, what would happen if you did stroking of your meridians instead? There’s some evidence to show that that’s far more effective than the tapping part. I think it would be even more effective if you ask the client, “Use your intuition. What part of your body does it feel like tapping on or stroking on?
Now watch what happens. I’ll guarantee you with any of these, on using a SUDS test, they’ll always see each time you do it, your anxiety level is coming down, your stress level is coming down, because you’re being distracted from your busy worrisomeness by doing something in the present moment that’s curious, playful, experimental, new and different, which is what your brain loves to do. That’s your whole motivation center. That’s the dopamine. That’s what forms the memories that are useful to your imagination.
Ari: What you said a minute ago about psychotherapy, your $500 challenge, is a pretty bold statement.
Mark: I wouldn’t offer it to you.
Ari: It’s not that I necessarily disagree with you. I definitely disagree–
Mark: No, because you are the kind of person who could find that study.
Ari: — on the structure of how to think and kind of–
Mark: If my student could find that study, I’m going to certify them for actually knowing how to do neuroscience research. It still will be a win-win.
Ari: Yes. The position that you’re making there is– Say the challenge again. You challenge them to find a study that says what? That says talking about past experiences is intrinsic.
Mark: Has any specific benefit. Even though all the therapies where you go back and look at the past is still saying, “Well, how are you going to reframe your current reaction?” I’m saying, “Well, do you need to look at the past for that?” Elizabeth Loftus’ work in the 1990s confirmed that and threw away, supposedly permanently, the notion there’s no such thing as a repressed memory. That’s now all re-emerged in today’s society, particularly with trauma work. The notion that memories are stored in the body, but there aren’t those types of memory proteins in the body. Those cells are really different from the muscle cells. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Maybe somebody will find that.
I always like to end my– I used to love doing it when I would talk in front of a large audience when I was in tour, I would have all my wonderful slides and show all this great stuff and everything else. I would get my standing ovation. I would start to walk off the stage. I would turn around and say, “Oh, by the way, everything I just said to you might be pseudoscience, and tomorrow, it probably will be pseudoscience.” They go, “Huh.” Again, that’s, to me, the most honest thing that any neuroscience researcher can say. This field keeps changing rapidly.
I’ll share with you these new ideas. You want to go out and experiment with three mindful yawns, watching your mind wandering, pulling yourself fully in the present moment, and then sharing that experience with somebody while you’re in that meditative state? I’m willing to bet that anyone who goes out and does it, they’ll do it differently from how I teach it or describe it. They’ll come back going, “Oh, wow,” because the one thing that the human brain is always looking for, the moment it does its weird, the creature wakes up and does its yawn and stretch, its eyes pop open, and it’s looking for something that is new and different that will be rewarding or pleasurable, that’s your motivation center. That’s the dopamine that needs to be released. It’s just that if too much dopamine gets released, that turns you into an addict. By all means, play with these things.
Ari: That’s a whole hour-long, maybe two-hour-long conversation in and of itself. I wanted to talk to you about dopamine circuitry. We’re pretty far into this, though, so maybe we’ll have to do a multi-part podcast series here.
Mark: I don’t know that much about dopamine, other than what I just said. The neurochemicals have not been my specialty. I simply know that’s the most interesting one rather than looking at these others.
Ari: I just read a fascinating book that really expanded my understanding of dopamine in a profound way. I would even go so far as to say changed my whole worldview profoundly, especially on human nature and human behavior. It’s written by a guy named Daniel Lieberman, not the Harvard evolutionary biologist, who I also think is excellent and who’s written the story of the human body, among other excellent books. He’s phenomenal. This is a different person by the same name who is, I believe, a psychiatrist by training. There are some aspects of the book that are a bit too conventional psychiatry for my taste. I think the overall understanding of dopamine and how it drives our lives in very profound ways was pretty mind-blowing for me. The book’s called The Molecule of More.
Mark: Yes, I like that. I have a sense, I think, of what he’s talking about. Even as you’re speaking, I’m getting that tingly sense of excitement, which I associate with the release of dopamine, since we can’t ever feel anything directly there. I’m going, “Oh, great, Ari.” I want to hear about everything that you read. Why don’t you consolidate that book for me?
Ari: Yes. Well, I don’t think I would do it justice. Maybe we’ll chat about it after. It would be interesting to get your thoughts on it as a neuroscientist, how you would read that book. Knowing you, I’m sure you’d nitpick things and say, “I disagree with that, and I disagree with that.” I think there’s a big picture framing in the book that’s very insightful.
Mark: You know me in the past for being nitpicking. After the experiences I’ve gone through this year about why I had to be fully in the present moment to deal with the passing of my wife and how it transformed my life in the most amazing way that I could never imagine, I don’t nitpick anymore. I’m more curious and just, “Hey, here’s what I discovered. What do you think about this? You want to go out and play with it with me?” That’s that curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity. Are we both having fun? If we’re both enjoying the fun, that’s all it matters to me.
Ari: Yes, beautiful. I love that. That’s a beautiful shift. Mark, to wrap up, well, one thing I want to say to listeners, if you guys want to hear another podcast episode with Mark, let me know. Email me, ari@ the energyblueprint.com. You can also comment in the YouTube video for this episode in the comments. Let me know what topics that you want to hear Mark talk about, if you want to delve deeper into certain things. He said a number of things which might be pretty shocking or controversial to many listeners.
Mark: That I’m still famous for doing.
Ari: I want to spend another two hours beating to death the structure and function thing. Probably that won’t be as interesting to the listeners as it is to me.
Mark: My imaginary child beating my imaginary parent to death.
Final thoughts
Ari: Yes, exactly. I’m sure people would be interested in the psychotherapy thing. Mark has some other thoughts on the vagus nerve and network neuroscience. I’m sure there’s many other aspects of network neuroscience. If you guys want to hear from him on more topics, reach out to me and let me know. Mark, to wrap up, what I would like you to do is, first of all, let listeners know where they can follow your work or get in touch with you, work with you, what are your offerings. Let people know whatever you want to let them know. Then I would love for you to maybe finish on the note of offering them something they can practice.
Mark: Ooh. I definitely have the perfect gift for everyone. It’s a video, 50 minutes long, basically saying how three mindful yawns balance the networks in your brain. A little tiny taste and introduction to all of that. If you go to www.markrobertwaldman.com, you’ll see all the different courses I’ve created. The several courses that I’m really the most proud of is one called Trauma-Centered Neuro-Coaching, because I was blown away a couple of years ago realizing that I had misinterpreted everything I thought I knew about memories, and that Eric Kandel had even had to change his perspective, that all memories are impermanent, which is still a mind-blowing concept to a lot of people. Why did I remember it with such detail, something from my childhood? Isn’t that permanent? It’s like, “Can you guys be a little clearer on this? I’m going to listen to Nobel Prize winners.”
The Trauma-Centered Neuro-Coaching program is both for personal development and psychological training. It has 53 incredible videos and slides with all of the newest research showing a very different way of approaching emotional distress. I also have a couple of very wonderful tiny programs for like $29, $39. Take my Balance Your Brain Network challenge. Take my trauma challenge. Just giving you bits and pieces and samplings of this new research in an experienceful way. I try to make all of my programs experiential. Here, I’ll walk you through this conversation that Ari and I, if I was to take our script and everything else, I could turn it into a six-hour monologue. I would take each part. Close your eyes, yawn, stretch, relax.
I’ll give you an example of one of the strategies that I find grows out of network neuroscience and all of our meditation research as well. Because that salience network, which is not only your social brain, it is what decides what is uniquely valuable for you. If I just lectured for five minutes, I do this all the time in my classes, and I’ll ring my bell and I ask everybody to just take a moment, and go ahead and do it along with me, and try a few experimental yawns and super slow stretches, just find the most pleasurable way to move your body, but do it super slow, slower and slower. The slower you go, the more aware you become. Even if you’re going to breathe in, notice what happens if you slow that breathing down and just become aware of all of the sensations.
If that movement, that spontaneous movement or yawning feels great, do it for as long as it feels pleasant, and then simply pause, and with eyes closed just become aware of the chair that you’re sitting in. Become aware of all the sounds, both inner and outer, that you hear. Open your eyes and just gaze at all the different objects surrounding you and see if they seem a little bit brighter or a little bit more interesting. The more you’re in the present moment, everything is brand new. Then forget about everything I’ve said, forget about everything that Ari has said, do another yawn and stretch and just anything you can, just be so fully present where it feels like your brain is just slowing down and it’s too hard to even think of anything.
Ask your intuition, not your mind, it’s your salience networks, the thing that regulates all the other networks, ask your intuition, what have you found to be the most interesting, useful or valuable in anything that has transpired between Ari and me? See what floats into your awareness. It’ll be different for everyone. Many times a person’s insight has nothing to do with what I said, and I tell my students, run with that. Because your intuition is your inner wisdom. It knows what is best for you to immerse yourself in, in this present moment, and it may be different tomorrow. You can do it many times. Bring yourself back into the present moment, yawn and stretch, to clear your mind, to slow that busy brain down, and ask for a brand new insight that you never thought about prior to this very moment. I’ll simply ask Ari to share what his most interesting, amazing insight is from our conversation. If it’s important, write it down.
Ari: I think for me, that I need to get back to the mindfulness bell practice. Interrupting my workflow, especially right now, I’m trying to meet a book deadline, I’m very out of balance, probably the most out of balance that I’ve maybe ever in my life. As far as my work to leisure ratio, is pretty awful right now. It’s all work and no play and very little family time for me in recent months. I need to help rebalance those brain centers and bring the work-mode function, go, go, go-mode function of my brain back into a more relaxed state as I work throughout the day.
Mark: You’re familiar with Panksepp’s research, right?
Ari: Yes, not to the degree you are but–
Mark: Well, just identifying the core emotional states that all mammals have. You have grief, you have sadness, you have rage, you have caring. The two most important ones that are so overlooked, he calls it seeking, another word for it is curiosity, to keep your curiosity open. Then the other one is playfulness. Playfulness is the best way to engage with anyone else in the world. You find a way, combining your curiosity and playfulness, it’s mutually enjoyable. The insights that you will gain from that will lower whatever anxiety you might be struggling with in the present moment.
Ari: Mark, thank you so much, my friend. It’s been a joy reconnecting with you. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. To everyone listening, you can go to his website, markrobertwaldman.com. Check out his work, follow him on social media. He’s a wonderful human being, in addition to being brilliant and having done lots of neuroscience research and being a wealth of knowledge and controversial opinions also. Mark, really a pleasure. Also, to everyone listening, let me know if you want to have Mark on again and what you would like him to talk about. See you guys next week. Mark, thank you very much.
Mark: Take care, everyone. I hope to meet you again soon.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:37 – Guest Intro, Mark Waldman
03:16 – Network Neuroscience
12:57 – Yawning can lower anxiety
17:59 – Meta-awareness – a new discovery
33:11 – Can you train pathways in your brain?
50:41 – Anxiety in experienced meditators
56:04 – The benefits of meditation and meta-awareness
1:17:08 – Final thoughts
Links
Learn more about Mark’s work here: https://www.markrobertwaldman.com/
Recommended Podcasts
