• A placebo changed dopamine levels in a historic study, and Richie’s take

• Why the essence of meditation is simpler than you think

• A 2-minute guided practice (free, also below)

• The full Q&A, flashcards, and recording (members, very bottom)

Read more

That was the premise of the Big Joy Project, a citizen-science experiment led by our dear friend, the brilliant scientist Dr. Elissa Epel and her team at UCSF. Together with colleagues around the world, they invited people to try one tiny act of joy every day for a week. Over 17,000 people, from 169 countries, initially signed up. They weren’t monks on retreat or wellness influencers. They were everyday people, juggling families, jobs, stress, and uncertainty.

The results were striking.

After just seven days of micro-practices such as: writing a gratitude list, celebrating someone else’s joy, or pausing to watch something awe-inspiring; participants reported higher well-being, more positive emotions, greater agency over their happiness, and significantly less stress. They even slept better.

But what really surprised researchers: the people who gained the most were not necessarily those with the greatest social and economic advantages. It was the opposite. Those experiencing greater financial, social, or emotional strain often showed larger improvements.

One of the take-home message of this research is really inspiring: Joy is not only possible when things are going well. It’s within reach for all of us, even when we’re stressed out, overwhelmed, and struggling.

The Science of Small Acts

Most well-being programs are long, complicated, or designed for people who already have resources and time. This study was different. The Big Joy Project asked for only 5–10 minutes a day, for seven days.

The practices were simple, but not superficial:

• Celebrate another’s joy – ask someone to share a proud or happy moment, and celebrate with them.

• Shift your perspective – reflect on a recent challenge and write three unexpected positives that came from it.

• Do something kind – plan a small act of kindness for someone you’ll meet that day.

• Tune in to what matters – choose your core values and reflect on how they show up in your life.

• Make a gratitude list – name up to eight things or people you feel grateful for.

• Dwell in awe – watch a short awe-inspiring video and notice how it affects your body and mood.

• Be a force of good – reflect on how you can contribute to the well-being of others.

None of these require expensive apps or hours of meditation. They are reminders of what makes us most human: connection, perspective, kindness, and meaning.

Micro-Supports: A New Frontier

For us, this project is a powerful example of what we call micro-supports. You can think of them as micro-doses of well-being: short, tiny practices that take just a few minutes, or sometimes no extra time at all, that can have an outsized impact on our well-being.

Micro-supports are exciting because they don’t require us to stop life to feel better. They can be woven into the flow of our daily routines, gently shifting the emotional climate of our lives without feeling like another task on an endless list. The Big Joy Project shows just how potent these micro-doses of joy can be, especially for those carrying the heaviest burdens.

You’ll see in the data below from Dr. Epel’s lab that emotional well-being, positive emotions, happiness agency were up on a post-mean basis, and to a lesser degree self-reported health as well as sleep quality. While perceived stress was reduced.

Study results from the Big Joy Project:

Why This Matters

For decades, science has shown that emotional well-being is not just a nice-to-have. It protects against depression, lowers risk for chronic illness, and even extends lifespan. But many large-scale interventions have failed to reach people outside privileged circles.

This study flips the narrative. It suggests that joy is not a luxury, it is a public health tool. And it shows that micro-practices, or micro-supports, can ripple outward, improving not just moods but lives.

As we often say: well-being is a skill. Skills can be practiced. And even a few minutes a day can make a measurable difference.

An Invitation

If seven minutes could change the emotional baseline of 17,598 people across the world, what might it do for you?

This week, try one act of joy:

• Make a short gratitude list.

• Ask a friend what they’re celebrating and share their joy.

• Take a walk in nature and open up to the beauty of your surroundings.

• OR get creative and come up with your own micro-support.

Here are a few things on my personal gratitude list:

• I’m grateful for my wife Kasumi, who inspires me everyday with her fierce compassion.

• I’m grateful for my son CJ. I smile just thinking about him.

• I’m grateful for the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota (my favorite place on earth…where I’m sitting as I write this).

• I’m grateful for you and everyone else who is interested in making the world a better place.

What’s on your list?

When you add brief moments of joy, connection, and awareness to your day, make a mental note of how it affects you. Does it carry forward into whatever you do next? Does it shift how you relate to other people, or yourself? Get curious and explore what happens when you try different things.

And if you do, hit reply or leave a comment. Share what you tried, and what you noticed. We would love to hear from you.

Warmly,
Cort

Sources:
Guevarra DA, et al. Scaling a Brief Digital Well-Being Intervention (the Big Joy Project) and Sociodemographic Moderators: Single-Group Pre-Post Study

J Med Internet Res 2025;27:e72053

Got a question? Send it now (by responding here) and we’ll prioritize it on air.

You can’t stop your brain from aging. You may be able to change the rate of change. (From Dharma Lab May AMA)

A listener with early Alzheimer’s asked Dr. Richard J. Davidson whether decades of meditation had done anything measurable.

You can compute a person’s “brain age” from an MRI. Across a thousand people, brain age tracks chronological age closely, but not exactly. Some brains run younger than their owner. Some run older.

“There’s no evidence that there’s anything we can do to stop the brain from aging. It happens to all of us. But there is the possibility of influencing the rate at which our brain ages.” — Dr. Richie Davidson

Over many years, the lab took repeated scans of one meditator, Mingyur Rinpoche, (who has logged 30k+ hours of meditation) and measured how fast his brain was aging. It is aging as is everyone’s. But compared to a thousand peers his age, his brain was aging more slowly than all of them.

Some practices lower inflammation in the body, and probably the brain, and inflammation drives a lot of age-related decline. His view is that practice started early and kept up may be protective.

You can’t stop your brain from aging. The open question is whether you can slow the rate. The early evidence suggests you might.

Also in last month’s session

A few of the threads:

Multitasking is a myth. It doesn’t really exist. You’re switching, fast, and switching has a measurable cost. (The average adult opens their phone about 152 times a day.)

A psychedelic gives you a state. Meditation gives you a trait. Why “altered states” and “altered traits” are not the same thing, and what that means for healing trauma.

Healing yourself isn’t selfish. Plus a story about a dying friend who couldn’t move, and gave more than most healthy people do.

Can meditation help a brain recover from a stroke? An answer about neuroplasticity, and a study about matching intensity to injury.

Is awareness a sixth sense? What the contemplative traditions and the neuroscience each say.

Check out Richie’s Latest Science Post if you Missed it:

Prefer video?

The full episodes and shorter clips are on our YouTube channel. A good place to start is our episode on boredom, and why we’ve nearly lost the ability to be bored at all.

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dharmalabco

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore how stable differences in brain activity may shape the ways we engage with the world. Richie explains how early research on brain asymmetry revealed distinct styles associated with qualities such as optimism, introversion, social anxiety, and our tendency to approach or withdraw.

They also discuss what meditation can change without erasing the qualities that make us who we are, why one neurological style is not inherently better than another, and how meta-awareness can help us uncover the potential strengths within our natural disposition.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In this episode

00:00:00 – Finding the hidden superpower in your natural disposition
00:01:04 – Individual differences in brain asymmetry
00:02:07 – Why we compare ourselves to other people
00:05:32 – The early science of brain asymmetry
00:08:37 – What an EEG experiment is actually like
00:12:00 – A surprising discovery in the resting brain
00:13:41 – How stable are our neurological tendencies?
00:15:29 – Approach-oriented and more cautious styles
00:17:12 – Does one brain style lead to greater happiness?
00:18:08 – Seeing our perceived weaknesses as superpowers
00:20:45 – What does Richie’s own brain reveal?
00:22:20 – What meditation changes and what remains
00:24:56 – Richie on anxiety, anger, and transformation
00:27:07 – When neuroscientists were told to try marriage counseling
00:28:12 – Does meditation change your personality?
00:29:43 – “Exactly the same, only more so”
00:33:15 – Are differences in brain asymmetry inherited?
00:35:03 – Heritability does not determine whether we can change
00:35:18 – What handedness reveals about the brain
00:38:26 – Finding the strength in your natural predispositions
00:39:09 – Meta-awareness and experiential fusion
00:40:45 – The skill at the heart of flourishing

Earlier Posts on Brain Asymmetry:

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

00:00:00 – Finding the hidden superpower in your natural disposition

Cortland Dahl:

The fact that I have zero discomfort just locking myself in a room for weeks on end with a pile of books, and I’ll just be a happy camper.

At one point, I thought that was a curse. Now I feel like that actually has been such a blessing in my life.

It seems like one of the lessons here is that, within any of these styles or patterns, or even looking at brain asymmetry and whatever natural predispositions are going on in our brains, it’s about leaning into that and asking: Where is the hidden superpower in this particular configuration that I have?

Rather than saying, “I wish I could be more like that. I could be more optimistic, or less anxious, or more anything,” it’s leaning into these potential superpowers that are just waiting to be tapped into.

00:01:04 – Individual differences in brain asymmetry

Cortland:

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl. I’m here with Richie Davidson, one of the most respected and well-known neuroscientists on the planet.

We’ve been having an amazing series of discussions about Richie’s early work, going back to the late 1970s and proceeding through the ’80s and ’90s, which was really some of the most pioneering work on the neuroscience of emotions.

Specifically, we’ve been talking about what is known as asymmetry and how the different hemispheres of the brain have some really important and fascinating differences.

We’re going to continue that discussion. If you haven’t kept up with the previous discussions, that’s totally fine, but you can go back and catch up on them.

Today, we’re going to discuss a very interesting nuance, which is the individual differences we find when it comes to this topic of asymmetry.

00:02:07 – Why we compare ourselves to other people

Cortland:

To lead into this, Richie, I wanted to share a story because I think it highlights some of the key points we’re going to capture today.

As you know, we started Tergar, which is Mingyur Rinpoche’s meditation community, back in 2009. For those of you who don’t know, Mingyur Rinpoche is a meditation teacher whom both Richie and I have studied with.

I was kind of new to teaching meditation at that time. I had been teaching for a while, but not that much. I started teaching with a group of three other instructors.

One of them was Myoshin Kelly, whom you know well, a really brilliant meditation teacher. I started teaching with her, and I immediately noticed that she was so grounded and warm, just the embodiment of care and empathy.

I felt like I was maybe more conceptual. I had been coming from a very academic training, you might say. I was judging myself against her and feeling like I needed to be more like Myoshin. I needed to be somehow more empathetic and less heady and conceptual.

I was evaluating myself relative to what I saw as her strengths. That was going on in my mind for the first few years.

We talked together more and more, and at one point we had a kind of heart-to-heart. We were very close, almost like family. She told me that she was kind of doing the same thing. She appreciated my clarity and some of the precision I brought to the teachings.

I was shocked by that. I was like, “Why would you want to be more like me? You’re the perfect teacher.”

She was shocked that I was thinking that about her, and something really unlocked in that.

I started to see that it was wonderful that we were different. Rather than feeling like I needed to be more like her, or she needed to be more like me, I started to see that I was bringing something unique to this, and it was helpful.

I don’t need to be everything. She was obviously bringing something utterly unique and helpful. It was more of a complement.

It shifted me out of this mindset where I was constantly critiquing myself against any range of idealized versions that I thought I should be. Instead, I leaned into the natural skill set I had and where my mind, and in this case my teaching ability, naturally went.

I immediately remembered that when we were talking about asymmetry and some of what we’ll capture today.

Maybe I’ll turn it over to you. You can remind us a little bit about some of these key findings with asymmetry.

Then, specifically, we can talk about individual differences and how the default we have, which is usually to be very judgmental about ourselves, can be shifted. We can use these findings to have a very different perspective on our own brains, how they function, and even our own minds.

I’ll turn it over to you, and you can kick this off however you like.

Richie Davidson:

Thank you, Cort. It’s a beautiful story, and it particularly warms my heart because I know both of you very well. I experience each of you as amazing teachers who are very different and totally complementary.

Cortland:

You knew us at that time, too, so you were probably observing this whole thing.

Richie:

Yeah, so it was great.

00:05:32 – The early science of brain asymmetry

Richie:

For those of you who weren’t with us when we first started talking about this early work in brain asymmetry, I want to go back and review a couple of key points.

When we began this work, it was prior to the availability of MRI to probe the human brain noninvasively.

Pretty much the only way we had to probe the human brain noninvasively was with EEG. EEG stands for electroencephalography, and it involves electrodes. They’re little sensors that are temporarily glued to the scalp surface, not with superglue, but with a gel to make contact.

We can pick up electrical signals from the scalp surface that are generated within the brain.

This was really the only technique we had at the time, but it continues to be used, largely because there is generally a trade-off between the spatial and temporal resolution of methods used to interrogate human brain function.

Methods that tend to have really good spatial resolution have poor temporal resolution. Methods that have very good temporal resolution tend to have poor spatial resolution.

EEG has very good temporal resolution, but not such good spatial resolution. That was what we had available at the time, and it was certainly good enough to make inferences about the functioning of different hemispheres of the brain.

We were doing studies where we recorded electrical activity from people’s brains and gave them different emotion tasks that elicited emotion, including perceiving emotional faces.

One of the things we always did with EEG was record a baseline before people started and before we began to present the tasks.

In the early stages of this work, we used the baseline to make sure the instruments were calibrated and the signals looked as they should. If any electrodes needed to be fixed, we monitored that during the baseline period and corrected it.

We didn’t primarily collect this period for any scientific purpose. It was for the strictly methodological purpose of ensuring that the recordings were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

00:08:37 – What an EEG experiment is actually like

Cortland:

Richie, maybe you could share what the experience was actually like. Imagine somebody sitting in the chair.

I remember all the time it took to get the EEG net on the head. There was a whole process around that. Then you would sit there for the resting state and look at emotional faces.

What would the experience of somebody sitting there actually be like?

Richie:

That’s helpful.

We had this giant net with 256 electrodes. Some of you have probably seen pictures. There’s an iconic picture that was taken in our lab and appeared on the cover of National Geographic, showing a monk wearing this 256-channel EEG net.

It looks like something from outer space. Each of the sensors or electrodes has a wire connected to it, so there are 256 wires coming out of this thing. It looks like this mass of spaghetti wire coming off the net on the head.

As you’re alluding to, Cort, it takes a while to put this on.

Cortland:

I remember all this gel being all over my head. It was pretty funky.

Richie:

We would squirt the gel with a blunt syringe. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t piercing the skin. It was just a way to inject the gel into the electrode sitting on the scalp surface.

Doing that with 256 electrodes takes some time. It was at least 45 minutes of preparation before we were ready to begin recording.

The tasks we used in those days varied, but they included looking at emotional pictures.

In some of the work, particularly work we were using to probe positive and negative emotions, we would present positive pictures, like a parent hugging their child. There was a whole series of iconic pictures of that sort.

Correspondingly, there were negative pictures, which we often described as images of human suffering. For example, a burn victim with clear scars on the face, or an accident victim.

They’re the kinds of images we see in the media all the time. We’ve become a little overexposed and habituated to these images. Nevertheless, in the context of seeing both positive and negative images, they clearly elicited some emotion, and we monitored the changes that occurred in the brain.

In some of our work, we also used video clips. They weren’t just static images. The clips included sound in some of the work.

That was the kind of experimental setup we had.

00:12:00 – A surprising discovery in the resting brain

Richie:

Going back to the setup, we had this period where we were collecting data during the so-called resting baseline, when people were not exposed to any of these images or video clips.

Then we would present the video clips.

After a few years, and it really took us a few years of doing this work for reasons that were initially just methodological, we began looking at what was going on during the baseline.

We saw that some people started out at very different places.

If you look at a measure of asymmetry in the prefrontal region of the brain, which is the region where we found these variations associated with emotion, and you take a large group of participants and compute the asymmetry score, it is essentially the activation difference between the same region in the left prefrontal cortex and the corresponding region in the right prefrontal cortex.

You can express it as a difference score or a ratio.

It turned out that there was a bell-shaped curve. It was normally distributed.

Some people showed extreme right-prefrontal activation. Other people showed extreme left-prefrontal activation. There was a big hump in the middle.

Cortland:

Most people are in the middle, and then you have small groups that are out on these extremes.

Richie:

Exactly.

00:13:41 – How stable are our neurological tendencies?

Richie:

When we first saw that, we decided it was critical to determine whether this was actually a reliable difference, or whether it was associated with how much sleep people got that night, what they ate for breakfast, their mood, or other transient differences.

We began studies where we brought people back after a week and after a month. We tested them again by having them sit and rest without doing any task.

Sure enough, we found, quite remarkably, that this was incredibly stable. It was really more stable than most other physiological signals that people had studied. It was a big surprise to us.

Once we established that this was reliable in a statistical sense, it meant that if you showed strong left-prefrontal activation today and I brought you back a month from now, you would likely show strong left-prefrontal activation a month from now.

We then set out to explore what these variations were associated with.

Were there differences in personality associated with these variations in brain asymmetry?

It turned out that there was indeed a whole constellation of differences associated with these variations in brain asymmetry that were quite interesting.

00:15:29 – Approach-oriented and more cautious styles

Richie:

If I can succinctly summarize it, people with stronger left-prefrontal activation had more of an approach orientation to the world.

By that, we mean these are the kinds of people who are ready to jump out of bed in the morning and take on the world. They’re actively engaged. They’re more likely to be extroverted and optimistic. They have this active, engaged stance.

Others who were more right-prefrontally activated were more shy. They might be a little more socially anxious or introverted.

It’s not that one is better than the other. There are advantages and disadvantages to being extreme on either side.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind, as you mentioned earlier, Cort, is that most people are in the middle. Most people are not at one extreme or the other.

This was an important observation and led us to publish many papers associated with it.

We initially thought that left-prefrontal activation was somehow associated with greater happiness and well-being. But after many years of study, it turned out that this was simply not true.

00:17:12 – Does one brain style lead to greater happiness?

Richie:

It’s more associated with a style of interacting with the world.

Introverted people can be just as happy as extroverted people. Our well-being and flourishing probably have more to do with the match between our style and the environment in which we find ourselves than with the characteristics of the brain itself.

That’s a critical insight.

Each person would benefit from knowing more about their own style and not necessarily trying to change it so much as being aware of it and arranging their circumstances so that they’re most conducive to the kind of style they express.

00:18:08 – Seeing our perceived weaknesses as superpowers

Cortland:

I love this. To me, this feels like the key point.

It runs counter to what naturally happens in many of our minds. It’s similar to what I shared earlier with Myoshin, feeling like, “Why can’t I be more like that?”

We look at somebody else’s superpowers and wish we had them. Then we see whatever is going on in us as deficits rather than seeing those qualities as potential superpowers.

I very much feel like this has been the story of my life.

I’m very introverted and was very much on the shy side. On this spectrum, I don’t know how extreme I would be, but I would probably be somewhere toward one side.

Now I feel like those things have been incredible assets in my life.

My meditation practice, obviously, has benefited. I love solitude, and that has served me so well. I’ve done so much retreat, and it has brought so much to my life, my creative work, writing, and other things.

The fact that I have zero discomfort just locking myself in a room for weeks on end with a pile of books, and I’ll just be a happy camper.

At one point, I thought that was a curse. Now I feel like it has been such a blessing in my life.

It seems like one of the lessons here is that, within any of these styles or patterns, or even looking at brain asymmetry and whatever natural predispositions are going on in our brains, it’s about leaning into that and asking: Where is the hidden superpower in this particular configuration that I have?

Rather than saying, “I wish I could be more like that. I could be more optimistic, or less anxious, or more anything,” it’s leaning into these potential superpowers that are just waiting to be tapped into.

It seems like that might be one of the key points here.

Richie:

I think it very much is.

If we go back to our four key pillars of well-being, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, the dimension of asymmetry is, to use a technical term, orthogonal, which means independent.

It’s not directly associated with any one of those pillars.

You can have left-sided activation or right-sided activation and still cultivate all four pillars of flourishing. They will look different. They won’t look the same in a person with strong left-prefrontal activation and a person with strong right-prefrontal activation.

Nevertheless, both of those people might be truly flourishing.

00:20:45 – What does Richie’s own brain reveal?

Cortland:

I have a whole laundry list of questions here.

First, I might put you on the spot a little bit. Did you measure your own brain? Did you ever look?

Anybody who knows you might think it’s not hard to guess where you are on the spectrum, but I’m curious whether you did that.

Richie:

I’ve done it a few times. I’m left-sided, but not extremely left-sided. I’m in a place on the curve where there are a lot of people, so I’m not at the far extreme.

Cortland:

You’re clearly comfortable with solitude. You’re obviously very social by nature, but you’re also comfortable with solitude.

Richie:

I actually regard myself primarily as an introvert.

Compared to my wife, I’m much more introverted than she is. I’m quite comfortable with that.

I can be extroverted in certain circumstances, but I’m aware of activating that part of myself in a way that is not my default disposition.

00:22:20 – What meditation changes and what remains

Cortland:

One interesting thing we can both talk about at a personal level is what has changed over the course of our lives and what hasn’t.

If I think about my own life, anxiety was a huge theme in my early life, back in my 20s and the early 1990s, when I was in college and starting to meditate.

The thing that has changed dramatically for me is the discomfort in certain situations.

There were times in life when being at a party, even with people I really liked and knew well, was not only challenging but actually uncomfortable.

I would have this feeling that I immediately wanted to leave the moment I entered the situation. I had this impulse that I would rather be somewhere else. It was just not fun for me.

Things like public speaking were complete nightmares. There was a whole gradation of social experiences, some mildly unpleasant and some almost unbearable. I would have done anything to avoid them at that time.

If I look at what has changed, that discomfort element has almost disappeared.

There are very few social situations that make me uncomfortable. Even public speaking, which was among the most uncomfortable, causes almost zero discomfort now. In some cases, I actually enjoy it.

But the thing that has not changed is what I might think of as energizing and depleting.

I can be at a party with people I love and thoroughly enjoy being around, but I find it tiring. I find being on my own energizing and nourishing.

It’s like being in a video game where you can see the energy meter going up and down. My energy meter goes up when I’m alone. Even if I’m doing something I love with people I enjoy being with, it goes down in social settings.

It isn’t necessarily uncomfortable. I don’t dislike it, and I certainly don’t try to avoid it. But that part hasn’t changed at all.

Maybe it’s less intense because the emotional side of it can be extremely depleting. Then it’s like your energy meter enters the death zone very quickly. Perhaps the speed at which it goes down is different.

But it’s interesting that this hasn’t changed at all, while the discomfort has changed dramatically.

I’d be curious what your experience has been with this.

00:24:56 – Richie on anxiety, anger, and transformation

Richie:

I would say there are two dimensions that have noticeably changed for me.

One is also anxiety. I used to experience a lot of public-speaking anxiety, and that has completely dissipated. I don’t experience that anymore.

The other is a kind of volatility.

I used to get angry much more than I do now at work. If someone did something wrong, incompletely, or not as well as I thought it should be done, I had very high standards.

I still have high standards, but I recognize that we’re all human, and sometimes they’re not always going to be met.

I used to have a much stronger reaction to that than I do now.

People around me who have known me for decades would notice and comment on those two elements.

The things that haven’t changed are my vibrant commitment, energy, enthusiasm, and passion for what I do. Those have been consistent.

The way they are expressed is a little different now because they don’t have the same kind of volatility.

Cortland:

That’s so helpful.

I remember when you first told me you used to fly off the handle and get upset at times in a workplace setting. That was inconceivable to me.

I moved here in 2012. We knew each other for a few years before that, but we started working together very closely then.

It’s hard for me to imagine. It’s so night and day from how you are now that it’s almost hard to believe. Of course, I believe it, but it just shows that transformation.

00:27:07 – When neuroscientists were told to try marriage counseling

Richie:

One of the people I worked closely with in the early days was Cliff Saron. Some of you may know him.

He’s one of the neuroscientists who started the Shamatha Project with Alan Wallace. He’s done some important meditation research and is a Dharma brother.

I’ve known Cliff for more than 50 years, so we go back a very long way.

We used to scream at each other. Just scream at each other.

Cortland:

Wasn’t he your lab assistant? It’s amazing. He’s one of the most eminent researchers in the field now.

Richie:

A couple of people suggested that we go for marriage counseling just to work together.

Fortunately, we’re still very close friends, and we’ve been through a lot together. That was just this crazy style that we evolved.

Cortland:

It sounds like you were both pretty fiery at that time.

Richie:

Yes, we were both really fiery.

00:28:12 – Does meditation change your personality?

Cortland:

Another example of this, which we were discussing before we started recording, is the far extreme of people who are exemplars of the meditative traditions.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mingyur Rinpoche, Khandro Kunga Bhuma, and Khandro Tseringma are examples.

We were both just in Nepal a month ago with a female teacher who is like an alien in the best possible way. She is just a remarkable individual.

One of the things that is so fascinating about people who have taken their meditative training to depths we can’t even imagine is that they are completely different.

It’s not as though the training flattens things out and they all become peaceful and emotionally flat. They are dramatically different from one another.

00:29:43 – “Exactly the same, only more so”

Cortland:

What captures or summarizes this for me is what happened when Mingyur Rinpoche came out of retreat.

Several years ago, he did a five-year wandering retreat. In the middle of the night, he suddenly left his monastery in rural India.

I think many people knew he was going to do this at some point, but he didn’t tell anybody when. He literally jumped over the wall and left in the middle of the night.

He didn’t even tell his closest attendants. Then he disappeared for about five years. Nobody knew where he was.

When he came back, everybody was asking, “What is he like now? Is he different?”

Our friend Paul MacGowan, who is a documentary filmmaker, summed it up perfectly. He said, “He’s exactly the same, only more so.”

I thought that was the perfect distillation, because it was true.

You couldn’t say he wasn’t different, but somehow he was different in exactly the same way. It was as though what made him who he is had been amplified in a beautiful way.

These are examples of tapping into your superpowers rather than trying to self-correct toward some idealized version of a person.

Richie:

This little exercise you just laid out is a really important teaching for me.

You and I have talked about this offline periodically. Each of these people is an exemplar of the further reaches of human flourishing. They’ve all put in enormous amounts of practice and led remarkable lives.

Yet each of them is really different. They have distinctive personalities.

The idea that if you meditate long enough, your emotions will somehow subside is just not true.

Each of these people has meditated an enormous amount in their life, way more than even you have, and you’ve meditated an enormous amount, Cort.

Yet they are uniquely different. There are aspects of their personality and marks of their demeanor that remain similar, so you can recognize them even after, as with Mingyur Rinpoche, a five-year retreat.

They’re still there, except more so. That, to me, is really interesting.

At least to some extent, the asymmetries we talked about at the beginning are like that.

They do move around some. They may particularly move around with someone who is depressed and does certain things to improve their depression. But at more advanced levels, they don’t seem to move very much.

They may partly reflect relatively enduring qualities, aspects of demeanor that differ among people.

There’s a reason people are different and have different kinds of superpowers. We need those differences to be maximally helpful.

Different teachers have different styles, and they can appeal to different kinds of people. In other areas of life, those same differences would also be adaptive.

00:33:15 – Are differences in brain asymmetry inherited?

Cortland:

Around the time you were doing this work, there was a lot of amazing research on heritability, including twin studies.

At the University of Minnesota, where I did my undergraduate degree, one of my first classes was with Tom Bouchard. Some really interesting work was done there, and I got a bit of a front-row seat to it.

Was there ever any work that you or others did on the heritability of these individual differences in asymmetry?

Do we know how much is due to our genetic predispositions?

Richie:

There has been some work, and we did some twin studies.

Asymmetry with twins is actually a bit complicated. It would take us down a whole tangent to explore it deeply because there is a phenomenon in certain groups of twins called mirroring, where co-twins have opposite patterns of asymmetry.

It has even been expressed in systemic anatomy, where organs are on different sides of the body in co-twins. It has to do with how cell division works and basic issues in embryogenesis.

Cortland:

Really? This is even with identical twins?

Richie:

Yes, even with identical twins.

There is a lot of complexity, and you have to account for that complexity. But putting all of that aside, there is evidence for heritability.

This could be the subject of another Dharma Lab. We should pin this.

00:35:03 – Heritability does not determine whether we can change

Richie:

Just because something is heritable doesn’t say very much about its modifiability.

Cortland:

Usually, even if things are heritable, it’s 40 to 60 percent. There aren’t many things that are entirely determined that way.

Richie:

Exactly.

Typically, behavioral characteristics, or things related to behavioral characteristics like this, are influenced by many genes, even hundreds of genes.

It’s not a simple, single genetic contribution, as with a disorder like Huntington’s disease, which is due primarily to a single gene.

Because of that, it’s also more complicated.

00:35:18 – What handedness reveals about the brain

Richie:

One of the things we wanted to mention is handedness.

I noted in the previous Dharma Lab recording that all the work we’re talking about was done with right-handed people.

Right-handed people account for roughly 85 percent of the population.

Left-handed people are more variable than right-handed people. Among right-handed people, virtually all of them, 99-point-something percent, speak with their left hemispheres.

Among left-handed people, it’s not the case that the right hemisphere is always associated with language. It’s much more variable, and there is more bilateral representation of function among left-handed people.

There are many interesting things associated with that.

It may be that certain groups of left-handed people are actually better at tasks requiring integration between the two hemispheres because they have more bilateral representation.

Cortland:

Some left-handed people may have an increased ability in synthesis or things that are cross-hemispheric?

Richie:

Yes.

To give you an example, I looked at this a while ago, and I’m not sure it’s still true. But at one point, if you looked at the membership of the American Institute of Architects, there was a much higher percentage of left-handed architects than left-handed people in the general population.

That is an example of an occupation that may benefit from the cognitive style that is more prevalent among left-handed people.

Cortland:

Are there other professions or similar things where you see an overrepresentation of left-handed versus right-handed people?

Richie:

I don’t know the recent findings on this.

We can do another episode of Dharma Lab after I poke around in the most recent research. There might be, but I’m not sure.

00:38:26 – Finding the strength in your natural predispositions

Cortland:

As usual, every time we have one discussion, we somehow create five more discussions that we need to have.

Maybe we can round this one off by returning to the key point about how this insight can help us at a personal level.

It seems to be about identifying and leaning into the natural predispositions we have rather than viewing them as weaknesses.

It’s about finding the buried superpower within things we might otherwise think of as a problem or a deficit.

I know that has certainly been true in my life.

Do you have any final thoughts along those lines, Richie, or any practices that have helped you?

00:39:09 – Meta-awareness and experiential fusion

Richie:

One of the things we talked about earlier was what changed in our lives and what may not have changed and remained consistent.

One of the big things for me is the presence of meta-awareness. That is simply knowing what is going on in my mind.

I would say my earlier years were characterized by a term that Cort and I invented and wrote about in an earlier paper. We call it “experiential fusion.”

I was totally fused with the emotions I was experiencing. I didn’t have this background awareness that was a container for it all and provided an opportunity to look at it with curiosity.

That itself is a highly stabilizing and regulatory capacity that all of us have.

I think that is really important.

Whatever our style is, there is a lot of reason to respect different styles. We need people with different skill sets and different superpowers.

If we can cultivate meta-awareness so that we are aware of these differences rather than simply being in the river and carried away, I think that is really helpful.

00:40:45 – The skill at the heart of flourishing

Cortland:

It’s funny you say that.

If the question is how we tap into these latent superpowers, and I think back on my own life, I would say that was certainly the starting point and, in many ways, one of the key ingredients, especially in my early years of practice.

It was simply being more aware of what was going on within me: my mental and emotional habits, my thoughts and emotions, and how those played out in my life and relationships.

It was leaning into that and exploring it.

Meta-awareness is the vehicle for doing that. You can’t do it without meta-awareness.

That was profoundly transformative.

We talk about flourishing as a skill and well-being as a skill. In many ways, meta-awareness may be the critical linchpin for the whole thing.

Richie:

I would 100 percent agree with that.

Cortland:

Such a beautiful thing.

Hopefully, if you’re still with us, you found this dialogue enjoyable. Please tune in again. We will certainly continue this discussion and pick up some more of these threads.

Thank you, Richie. As always, it’s a joy.

For everyone who joined us, thank you for tuning in.

Richie:

Wonderful to be here. Thanks, Cort.

A Moment in the Lab

There are rare moments in science when the data do not merely confirm a hypothesis. They rearrange the boundaries of the imaginable.

One of those moments occurred in our laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the early 2000s. Antoine Lutz, then a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, and I were examining the raw EEG recordings from Mingyur Rinpoche during meditation. We were not looking at polished statistical summaries or averaged waveforms. We were looking directly at the ongoing electrical activity of the brain in real time.

What we saw made us pause and look again.

The traces revealed extraordinarily powerful high-frequency oscillations sweeping across the scalp with remarkable synchrony. The signal was so large that our first instinct was skepticism. Could this be artifact? Muscle contamination? A technical error?

But the deeper we looked, the clearer it became that we were observing something biologically real—and something profoundly important.

At that moment, we realized we might be seeing evidence that long-term contemplative practice could fundamentally alter large-scale brain dynamics.

That work would eventually become our 2004 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice.”

Looking back now, I believe this paper marked one of the founding moments of modern contemplative neuroscience.

Before Meditation Entered Mainstream Neuroscience

It is difficult to remember now how little was known about meditation and the brain twenty years ago.

Meditation research existed largely at the margins of mainstream neuroscience. A handful of studies had reported changes in slower brain rhythms such as alpha and theta activity, often associated with relaxation or concentration. But there was little persuasive evidence that intensive contemplative training could produce enduring changes in the brain’s intrinsic functioning.

More importantly, there was little serious engagement between first-person contemplative traditions and modern neuroscience.

The prevailing scientific assumption was still that most psychologically important traits were relatively fixed by adulthood. Attention. Emotional style. Compassion. Baseline wellbeing. These were often treated as stable characteristics rather than trainable capacities.

The contemplative traditions claimed otherwise.

For centuries, Buddhist practitioners had asserted that systematic mental training could transform the mind at its deepest levels—not temporarily, but enduringly. Yet neuroscience had no clear mechanism through which to understand such transformation.

Our 2004 study began to change that.

The Discovery of Gamma Synchrony

The paper made three major contributions.

1. The first clear neural signature of long-term meditation training

The practitioners in our study had accumulated between approximately 10,000 and 50,000 hours of meditation practice over decades of training. One of the practitioners included in our sample was Mingyur Rinpoche himself.

During the generation of what Tibetan traditions call nonreferential compassion—a state of unconditional loving-kindness and compassion without fixation on a specific object—we observed dramatic increases in high-frequency gamma oscillations and large-scale synchrony across distributed brain regions.

These effects were not subtle.

Indeed, in the paper we noted that the amplitude of these gamma oscillations was, to our knowledge, “the highest reported in the literature in a nonpathological context.” In other words, it was off the charts!

For the first time, we had compelling evidence that extensive contemplative training was associated with measurable alterations in brain function

2. The introduction of gamma oscillations into contemplative science

At the time, gamma oscillations were becoming increasingly important in neuroscience.

Researchers such as Francisco Varela, Wolf Singer, and Giulio Tononi were exploring the possibility that synchronized gamma activity helps bind distributed neural processes into coherent conscious experience. Gamma rhythms had been linked to attention, learning, working memory, perceptual integration, and awareness itself.

Our study suggested that meditation might directly engage these integrative mechanisms.

Read more

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore boredom and restlessness from both a scientific and contemplative perspective. Richie explains why boredom often brings us face to face with the “default mode” of the brain, the self-referential narrative we carry around about who we are. Cort reflects on the physical, restless energy of boredom, and how meditation can turn that discomfort into an object of curiosity. They also offer a simple and powerful tool to bring more awareness into our day: the next time we feel the urge to escape boredom, we can pause, notice the urge, and let that moment become a practice.

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In this episode

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?
00:00:58 – Why boredom matters
00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”
00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind
00:04:19 – The default mode network
00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first
00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness
00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle
00:11:12 – Why kids need to move
00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom
00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort
00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone
00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness
00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?
00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?
00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?

Cortland Dahl:
We’re now living in a world where we just have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored.

Richie Davidson:
Our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind. One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind.

00:00:58 – Why boredom matters

Cortland:
Hello everyone. Welcome to Dharma Lab. I’m here with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Davidson, one of the world’s eminent neuroscientists, and I’m Cortland Dahl.

Today we’re going to talk about something I think probably everybody experiences, and maybe experiences a lot, which is boredom and restlessness.

00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”

Cortland:
I have such vivid memories of this. If we had a normal distribution of where people fall and how easily bored they are, I’m pretty sure I would have been an outlier. I was so easily bored as a kid. I was one of those kids who just could not sit still.

I have vivid memories, especially of summer afternoons, sitting at home and desperately trying to call my friends to see if anybody wanted to hang out. There was nothing on TV. This was back in the days before you could get everything on demand, just boring daytime TV shows.

And I remember this feeling of crawling out of my skin. I literally could not sit there. We had no mobile phones. This was long before the iPhone and smartphones. But I would have done anything to have had something like that.

Now it’s kind of amazing. After years of meditation, I would say if one thing has changed in my life, it’s my relationship to boredom. I kind of feel like I’m immune to boredom now. There’s a whole long practice history with that.

But I thought we could start by talking about boredom because we’re now living in a world where we have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored, to just sit with that.

So maybe we could talk about it from a scientific perspective. We can both share our personal experiences. But let me kick it over to you, Richie, and see if you have any opening thoughts. Then we can dive into it more deeply.

00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind

Richie:
I think boredom is an interesting topic.

Cortland:
It is. That’s the weird thing. It’s strangely interesting. Boredom is not boring.

Richie:
Yeah, it is strangely interesting.

I think it’s a phenomenon that has been deeply impacted by changes in the fabric of our society, by the development of technology and so forth.

And I think boredom, our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind.

One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind. That is the one thing we can’t get rid of.

People try, with drugs and other ways to dull the mind, but under most circumstances we have our minds.

00:04:19 – The default mode network

Richie:
From a neuroscientific perspective, we know that when a person is not engaged in a demanding activity that really requires their mental resources, what is active is a mode of brain function that we call the default mode.

The default mode is mostly associated with self-referential thought. By self-referential thought, we mean the narrative we tell ourselves about who we are and all the things associated with that.

And for a lot of people, that’s uncomfortable.

00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first

Richie:
We have data from work we’ve done using our Healthy Minds program with beginning meditators who’ve never meditated before. We often see that after the first week or so of cultivating awareness, they actually become more anxious. They report more anxiety.

We think it’s not that they’re actually experiencing more anxiety, but that they’re noticing what’s going on in their mind. And what’s going on in their mind is often quite chaotic.

Simply becoming more aware of it makes them more anxious, or they perceive their anxiety more accurately for the first time. And so they report higher scores more accurately.

So I think one of the reasons people try to find strategies to get rid of boredom is because the chaotic nature of their own mind is uncomfortable.

I actually think this is why people engage in certain kinds of leisure activities that are cognitively demanding, but that don’t serve any other function other than being interesting leisure activities. For example, doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time doing those things, and people report that they enjoy it. I think they enjoy it because it temporarily blocks the default mode. It temporarily engages other parts of their mind, so they’re not aware of the self-referential activity. They’re not aware of the narrative going on in the background.

00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness

Cortland:
I’m curious about one thing I’d love to unpack from a scientific point of view: the relationship between these brain networks, specifically the default mode network that you talked about, and the rest of the nervous system.

If I think back to my teenage self sitting on the couch, which to me is the most intensely bored I can remember feeling in my life, I think at that time I was completely oblivious to what was going on in my mind.

When I remember that, I don’t remember the thought activity. Now, having meditated, I’m sure it was going on, but I just didn’t know how to attend to what was going on in my mind.

But what I do remember is the physicality. There was almost this charge of restless energy. I needed to release the energy, and it just had nowhere to go. You’re kind of just this ball of energy, and yet it’s like you’re trying to constrain a ball of energy that’s trying to get out, but there’s no release for it.

I’m imagining there are all sorts of things going on in the brain and the nervous system. It points to the relationship between thought activity, which can be completely subterranean at times. We’re not even really aware of all the thought activity, and yet it can have this bidirectional relationship with emotional experiences and physical experiences.

I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit too, because I think the felt experience of boredom is often a very physical experience.

00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle

Richie:
Yeah, that’s so interesting.

When I think back to my childhood, during those periods I got on my bicycle.

Cortland:
That’s what I should have done, probably.

Richie:
I developed a lifelong habit, which I still have, of riding my bicycle.

I grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn, and for me my bicycle was liberating. I rode all over Brooklyn. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan all the time. This was before I had permission to go on the subway by myself, but I could go on my bicycle. My parents didn’t really know where I was, and I just went. I explored all over.

That was important for me. I also felt a kind of somatic restlessness, but I was able to deal with it through physical activity.

00:09:38 – Restlessness, the body, and the brain

Richie:
Getting back to the essence of your question, I think it is certainly the case, and we’re learning more and more about this now, that there is bidirectional communication between the brain and the body.

We know there are certain networks in the brain that communicate with the body. Activity in the brain will be expressed in part through the body, through changes in both the autonomic nervous system and the skeletal muscular system, through muscle tension and things of that sort.

One of the signs of anxiety is increased muscle tension, and you can measure that with electromyography. It’s a way to measure the electrical activity of muscles noninvasively, in the same way we measure the electrical activity of the brain. We can put sensors on muscles in different parts of the body, and there is indeed activation in these muscles associated with anxiety.

When we’re bored, I think we notice this muscle activity more because there is no competing demand for our mind. Our awareness might be pulled to the places where the signal is strongest. And there may be a lot of signal in the body.

00:11:12 – Why kids need to move

Richie:
I think particularly for boys growing up, it never made sense to me that kids were expected to sit at desks for the majority of the day in school. It just seems so inconsistent.

Cortland:
Yeah. It’s like a recipe. It’s like a boredom inducement, as though you were designing a system to make kids restless.

Richie:
Right. Designing a system that seems inconsistent with their developmental stage. They need to move.

Cortland:
It certainly was for me. It was like torture having to sit for hours on end and not move.

Richie:
So I think that also plays into this.

When we begin to notice our body, it’s kind of the somatic parallel to noticing the chaotic nature of our mind. You were saying that you didn’t really notice a lot of anxious thoughts, but you did feel a lot of pent-up activity in your body.

I think for young kids, the somatic representation is particularly important.

00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom

Cortland:
Yeah, and it’s a great entry point too, because from a practice point of view, what do you do with that? What would be the inner skill set to shift that dynamic and work with it in a more healthy way?

A lot of it, I think, is the physicality and the somatic aspect of it. So maybe we could talk about how each of us has practiced with this.

One of the gifts of meditation practice is that I think it’s almost impossible to have a meditation practice in which you don’t have to really grapple with boredom. You’re literally sitting doing nothing for long periods of time. That is basically what you’re doing.

Sleepiness and lethargy are strangely painful when you really can’t escape them. Anybody who experiences jet lag knows that well. It’s almost physically painful when you’re exhausted, and yet there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do with it.

Boredom is similar when there’s no escape hatch, so to speak.

00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort

Cortland:
I noticed there’s a Gen Z meme going around. Younger generations these days have grown up with devices in their hands and have very little experience sitting with the discomfort of boredom. Equally, we could have a whole other topic on social discomfort. The fact that you can look at your phone is also an escape hatch for social discomfort.

In a way, it makes us less resilient because you don’t have to deal with that discomfort. Therefore, when it happens, you’re almost unprepared. You haven’t developed the muscle memory to do that.

But with boredom specifically, there’s this meme. I won’t use the term because it’s quite profane, but basically it’s just sitting and doing nothing. Put your phone down and just sit there. There’s discussion about the benefits of doing that as unfamiliar territory.

For us growing up, we had no choice but to sit and do nothing at times. But it’s interesting that there’s a recognition that unplugging and dealing with the discomfort of not being plugged in all the time is actually pretty helpful and important.

Let’s each share our practice experience with this. What have you found helpful, and how have you worked with that?

00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone

Richie:
Just riffing off what you said, Cort, there are times, and this happens virtually every day for me, when I might be waiting in line. I could be waiting to get coffee somewhere, or waiting for my wife when we’re going out together. Maybe I go downstairs and I’m just waiting a few minutes.

I’ll notice that I have a period, maybe as short as two or three minutes, where there’s nothing scheduled. I feel the urge to take out my phone.

And I notice the urge. I just say, “Okay, I’m not going to take out my phone. I’m just going to sit here and be aware. I’ll be aware of the urge. I’ll be aware of my body.”

I might be able to go outside and feel the fresh air and just enjoy this few minutes of awareness.

It’s an intentional choice. I have at least a couple of those every single day where I notice, during an interstitial period where there’s nothing and I’m just waiting for something, that there’s an urge to pull out the phone because that’s what we do during these times in our modern society.

And I make an intentional choice to let it stay in my pocket.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s a little moment of celebration that I still have enough residual self-control to resist this, and then enjoy that moment of awareness.

00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness

Cortland:
It’s very similar with me, to the point where it has become clear that you can actually train yourself so that the impulse and the urge spark awareness.

For me, awareness is the go-to practice. It’s the easiest entry point. It’s almost like you rewire yourself so that you feel that urge, and then immediately on the heels of that, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to. That’s not a fulfilling experience. I know what it feels like to always do that, and I’m going to do something else.”

Another thing I do is almost like a preemptive strike on the habit. Knowing there are certain times when that tends to happen, I intentionally leave my phone somewhere else.

When the space opens up, I don’t even have it next to me. I would literally have to go to a different room. The example I’ve given many times is the urge to pick it up first thing in the morning or to look at my phone when I go to bed.

I made a decision to leave my phone in my office. Often, when I finish work before dinner, I put my phone on its stand in my office, which is a room I don’t usually go into after dinner. Then it’s not even in my orbit.

I still notice those urges. It’s kind of like, “Where’s my phone?” And then I remember it’s in the office. I’m certainly not going to get up and go somewhere just for that purpose alone.

00:18:09 – Breathing with restless energy

Cortland:
There are two things I’ve found really helpful in terms of what to do in that space.

One is using the breath as a support for awareness. Mindful breathing has always been part of my practice since my early days as a meditator. With that kind of restless energy, sometimes I’ll just take a few deep breaths and it settles the mind. That’s really helpful.

Sometimes I love to pay attention to the restless energy itself, the energy of the urge, the energy of the impulse, and not even try to change it or dampen it.

00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?

Cortland:
As we started with, boredom is kind of interesting as an experience. It’s painful when we’re trying to avoid it. The pain is the impulse to escape the discomfort. But when you ask, “What actually is boredom? Where do you feel boredom?” it changes.

I can tell you exactly where I feel boredom. It feels like a buzzing energy. Then I notice it’s almost like a movement impulse. There’s something that feels like my premotor cortex is firing. It’s almost this feeling of, “I need to move in some way.” But it’s like the precursor to movement. It’s the impulse to move.

You can almost feel the body mobilizing. But somehow you’re not in a situation where you’re going to open the door and run down the street. It’s a mismatch between the context and the impulse to move. And that mismatch creates this weird discomfort, at least in my own experience.

When I pay attention to it, it’s weird because it’s the feeling of boredom, but the mind is interested.

Usually you would think those are mutually exclusive. You can’t feel bored and be interested. One is the absence of the other. But I can tell you, you can very much experience them at the same time. Maybe it ceases to be boredom at that time, but some elements are still there. It’s like the residue of boredom is still there, but you’re fascinated by it.

It’s very interesting when you look at it.

00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?

Richie:
I think the somatic residue is still there, but you change the mindset. You can also examine: who is it that’s feeling this boredom? That can be very helpful too.

Cortland:
Totally. That one I do in retreat every time there’s a hint of boredom. That’s my go-to practice.

Often it’s almost like: what is boredom, and who’s experiencing it?

Then I feel like I don’t find anything. It’s there one moment, and the moment I look, it’s like, “Where did that go?” It has a totally different effect. It seems like it’s there, and then it’s just ethereal. Suddenly it’s like, poof, somehow it changes.

Richie:
I experience that when I’m actually sitting meditating. If I have boredom, or something very similar with sleepiness, just really looking at it with curiosity, “Who is actually sleepy?” Then it changes without trying to fix it.

It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of sleepiness. No, I’m really interested in: what is sleepiness? How does it feel?

00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Cortland:
Okay, that’s it. We need to put a pin in sleepiness. We need to do an episode on sleepiness too, because that is another one that is so painful when you’re trying to avoid it.

As a meditator, it’s really painful to avoid sleepiness. It becomes a subtle spiral where you’re trying to avoid something you’re feeling, and it’s hard to get out of it. But when you turn toward it, it’s fascinating.

Boredom is the same.

I think we talked about awareness, and this last point is more of an insight practice. It’s getting curious and digging into either “What is boredom?” by unpacking the different dimensions of it, or, as you’re saying, Richie, “Who is it that’s experiencing this?”

This gets into a very Buddhist deconstruction of the self, which is incredibly interesting and powerful. It completely turns the table on boredom. Suddenly it’s fascinating.

You can use these little moments when you’re waiting for a cup of coffee, or you’re stuck somewhere, or you’re waiting for your friend or partner to go somewhere. There are just two minutes, and you’re sitting there. Suddenly all those moments become interesting and meaningful, rather than something you need to escape.

It becomes kind of a beautiful thing in life.

Any final thoughts before we sign off on this one?

Richie:
I think we covered this in a nice way. Thank you.

Cortland:
All right. To everyone watching, if you have not tried this for yourself, this may be less interesting theoretically, but super interesting experientially if you actually try some of these techniques.

I highly recommend a little inner exploration with this one if it’s not already on your inner roadmap.

Thank you again for joining us and tuning in. Hopefully you found something helpful here, and we’ll see you soon in another episode of Dharma Lab.

Thank you.

“We are all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent.”

Richie said that early in this month’s AMA, and he meant the experiment running on your attention right now (social media, modern technology). The average adult opens their phone about 152 times a day.…

Read more

He was known not only for the depth of his realization, but for his extraordinary compassion. He lived with almost nothing. People would travel from all over the world to meet him and make offerings, but he never used those resources for himself. Instead, he would save them and use them to free animals that were about to be killed. He bought goats destined for ritual slaughter. He traveled long distances to fishing ports near Calcutta, where he would purchase thousands of freshly caught fish and release them back into the ocean. He was a strict vegetarian and spoke constantly about the suffering of animals, insisting that compassion must extend beyond human life.

An Unlikely Meeting

One of the most striking stories I heard about him involves an unlikely connection with the Christian Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

Merton isn’t as widely known today, but in the 1950s and 60s, he was a towering figure in the modern spiritual landscape. He helped revive contemplative practice within Christianity and traveled extensively to meet teachers from other traditions. During his time in Asia, he met many of the great Tibetan masters who had fled their homeland.

After meeting a number of these teachers, he eventually connected with Chatral Rinpoche. By all accounts, this meeting was different. Merton felt he had found his teacher. He planned to return to Asia to study more deeply with him.

But he never got the chance. He died suddenly in Bangkok, electrocuted in a tragic accident.

Still, before his death, there was a series of conversations between these two men—two deeply committed contemplatives from very different traditions—sharing their inner experience. What an amazing conversation that must have been. Two masters of their respective traditions, two lifetimes of inner exploration, shared in a deep, intimate conversation.

We don’t know exactly what was said. But according to some accounts, Chatral Rinpoche gave Merton the name Rangjung Sangye, which translates roughly as “self-arisen Buddha.” However we interpret that, it suggests Chatral Rinpoche felt that Merton had reached levels of awakening described in the Buddhist tradition.

One Mountain or Many?

That story has stayed with me for years, because it points to a question that sits at the heart of meditation practice:

• Are there many paths up a single mountain? Or are there many mountains?

• Do the world’s contemplative traditions lead to the same realization, described in different languages? Or do they lead to fundamentally different insights into the nature of mind and reality?

This question shows up even within Buddhism.

• Are the different lineages and teachings pointing to the same awakening, or are they mapping distinct destinations?

To even begin answering these questions, we have to get clear on what we mean by awakening. At its most fundamental level, awakening suggests a radical shift in the way we experience ourselves, our minds, and the nature of reality. This isn’t about adopting a fresh set of beliefs or a new philosophy, but rather a profound transformation in perception—one that fundamentally alters our relationship to our thoughts, our emotions, and the landscape of human suffering. Yet, the moment we attempt to pin down this transformation, things get complicated, as various traditions map this inner terrain in strikingly different ways and some important questions emerge:

Is awakening something we already are, a matter of discovering qualities that have been there all along? Or is it something we become, the result of gradually purifying the mind and cultivating qualities like wisdom and compassion?

Is awakening about connecting to something beyond us? Does it somehow involve a divine force or higher reality? Or is it about recognizing something within our own experience?

I don’t have any definitive answers here. But I think these are questions worth exploring. And not just philosophically, but also experientially.

From a scientific perspective, we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of these age-old questions. There are early efforts to study advanced meditation states, but the terrain is vast, and the tools are still crude relative to the subtlety of the mind.

So for now, I’ll stay within the domain I know best: Buddhist contemplative traditions. Even here, the diversity is striking.

Pure Awareness

In certain strands of the Tibetan tradition, awakening centers on what is called rigpa, a Tibetan term pointing to pure nondual awareness. The idea is that there is a level of open, clear, luminous awareness present in every moment of experience, including sleep, dreaming, and states of apparent unconsciousness. Awakening, from this view, is not the achievement of some new state. It is what happens when you have recognized this awareness so thoroughly, and grown so familiar with it, that you never lose sight of it. Not just in meditation, but in the middle of a conversation, a strong emotion, or an ordinary afternoon.

One way this is described is as the union of samsara and nirvana. In some Buddhist frameworks, samsara, the cycle of suffering and dissatisfaction, stands opposite nirvana, its cessation. But from the rigpa view, they are not opposites. Nirvana is nothing more than being fully in touch with pure awareness, so completely that it pervades every experience without exception. You are in the world but not caught by it. The final state of awakening is not a particular state of mind. It is the recognition that pure awareness is the true nature of every state of mind.

Richie did some of the earliest research in this area, studying advanced meditators like Mingyur Rinpoche and looking for the neural correlates of what practitioners describe as open, effortless awareness. The science is young, but there are some fledgling efforts to study this form of meditation practice.

Cessation

A very different picture of awakening emerges from the Theravada tradition, common in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Southeast Asia. Here, the key term is cessation: a complete stoppage of ordinary experience, and even of refined meditative experience. There are no thoughts, no emotions, no sensory input, no meditative consciousness of the kind found in deep absorption states. It’s a complete gap.

The path that leads there involves refining attention to a high degree, combined with penetrating insight into the nature of experience. One description is that experience begins to pixelate. The normal flow breaks down into flickering moments, each one conditioning the next, and the whole process suffused with a sense of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness.

This is not the union of samsara and nirvana. Nirvana here is the end of samsara. Cessation is the moment when the stream of conditioned consciousness is severed for the first time. The point is not integration with everyday life. The goal is not to bridge this experience into the kitchen or the office. The path ends in the cessation of ordinary experience, not its transformation.

The felt quality of the path reflects this. Where rigpa practices emphasize space, openness, widening the aperture of awareness as wide as it can go, the Theravada insight path involves precise, penetrating attention to impermanence, change, and the conditioned nature of everything that arises. The practice is all about zooming in, not out.

There has been a small amount of research on cessation states in advanced meditators, attempting to locate neural correlates of these gaps in experience. It’s early work, but there are preliminary studies underway.

Stability and Absorption

A third domain worth mentioning is shamatha, sometimes translated as calm abiding or tranquility. This is the broad category of practice that includes contemporary mindfulness, where you rest attention on a focal point like the breath and return to it each time the mind wanders. Gradually, attention stabilizes. Periods of presence extend.

At the advanced end of the shamatha spectrum sits what is now a fairly popular topic in meditation circles: jhana practice. Jhanas are the deep states of absorption found in a number of Buddhist lineages, but most widely practiced in the Theravada tradition. In the early stages, the mind becomes highly concentrated on an object, often the breath. This shifts to absorption in a mental image or inner experience, sometimes described as inner light or sound. Eventually even these inner objects fall away, leaving refined states that are difficult to describe if you haven’t encountered them.

Both the Tibetan and Theravada traditions acknowledge these states without treating them as awakening. Some teachers are genuinely skeptical of them, since the bliss and tranquility of deep absorption can become an end in themselves, a pleasant cul-de-sac. Every tradition agrees that some degree of stability is necessary, but they disagree about whether advanced absorption states are required, helpful, or even counterproductive.

What’s especially striking is how different the phenomenology is across traditions. In the rigpa-oriented approach, shamatha involves widening awareness, not narrowing it. You might use the breath as a support, but the intention is not to restrict attention to a single point. The point is to let awareness become panoramic, open, effortless. Thoughts and emotions can move freely without disturbing the quality of presence. In this style of practice you hear a lot about “open awareness” and “effortless presence.”

In classical jhana practice, the movement is in the opposite direction. The field of attention narrows. Thoughts slow and stop. The senses recede. There is a stillness like being at the bottom of a deep ocean, knowing the surface is there but feeling entirely separate from it. Some describe a state where even the connection to inner experience eventually becomes very fine and subtle. And then, in some cases, even that drops away.

Cliff Saron and his team did important early work in this area, studying meditators over extended retreat periods in what became known as the Shamatha Project. More recent research has followed as well, but research on this fascinating body of practice is still very early.

At the Edge of Understanding

Science is just beginning to explore these differences. Early studies—some of Richie’s work with advanced practitioners, as well as projects like Cliff Saron’s Shamatha Project—offer hints, but we’re still at the edge of what can be measured.

So where does this leave us?

If we return to that original question — is there one mountain or many? — we’re left, at least for now, without a clear answer.

What we do see is a landscape of extraordinary richness. Different maps. Different paths. Different descriptions of what lies at the summit.

And then there are moments like the meeting between Merton and Chatral Rinpoche, an intimate dialogue between two practitioners from entirely different worlds, recognizing something in each other that transcends those differences.

What a wonderful and mysterious journey.

Warmly,

Cort

P.s. We would love to hear your reflections on these questions. What path resonates most with you? And what is it about this path that draws you in? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.

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CHECK OUT EPISODE COMPANION FLASHCARDS below!

This is the second part of our conversation on hemispheric specialization with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. For the first part, see Your Brain Is a Storyteller, where we explore what split-brain research reveals about consciousness and emotion. For more on the popular science misreadings Richie warns about here, see our recent episode on Why dopamine isn't your problem. Dr. Richard Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds and the Healthy Minds App. His new book with Dr. Cortland Dahl, Born to Flourish, was published by Simon & Schuster in March 2026.

Podcast Chapter List

00:00:00 – Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres
00:01:30 – Welcome to Dharma Lab
00:02:47 – Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture
00:04:00 – Where did these ideas come from?
00:05:11 – Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences
00:07:36 – The myth of the creative right brain
00:08:50 – The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres
00:10:38 – Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum
00:11:57 – What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?
00:13:10 – The resting brain data they almost threw away
00:15:15 – Stable patterns in the resting brain
00:16:04 – From “noise” to emotional style
00:18:23 – The prefrontal cortex and emotion
00:19:58 – Could you choose to use one side of the brain?
00:21:52 – A grain of truth, taken too far
00:22:55 – Sequential vs. parallel processing
00:23:50 – Why real creativity requires both hemispheres
00:24:51 – Interhemispheric coordination and creativity
00:26:08 – Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement
00:27:31 – Visualization, imagination, and creativity
00:28:34 – Closing

Earlier Post on Brain Asymmetry (Part 1)

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres

00:00

Richard Davidson:
One of the things that’s true about language, and especially about speech, is that it’s sequential. We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.

Cortland Dahl:
I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.

Richard Davidson:
Usually true. But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.

That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.

And of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.

This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together so they can work in an integrated way. I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.

Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain. It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.

Welcome to Dharma Lab

00:01:30

Cortland Dahl:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson, who we all affectionately call Richie, one of the great living neuroscientists on the planet.

Today we’re going to continue a discussion we’ve had previously about some of Richie’s most important early work.

Richie, I’m excited to ask you about this, partly because I myself have always wanted to geek out and hear more about these things. We always have a million things to talk about, but I never get to talk to you about this.

In a previous episode, we talked about your very early research when you were just at Harvard, coming out of grad school, and your early work that showed differences between the different hemispheres of the brain — what is most simply referred to as asymmetry between these different hemispheres.

We talked a lot about that, and we can put a link to that previous discussion.

Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture

00:02:47

This was back in the late seventies and into the eighties. Then something very interesting happened in the nineties.

I graduated from high school in 1992 and was just starting college. There was a book at that time, and there was all sorts of stuff in the popular media about asymmetry, although that word probably wasn’t used. I remember a lot of things about the left side and right side of the brain.

There was a book that I think was something like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It was pointing, in many ways, to your work, which you were very much at the forefront of and had been for many years at that point.

But I imagine, like many things, there was probably a lot of oversimplification and perhaps even misunderstanding about what the science really says and what’s really going on in the brain.

So maybe we could start there, going back to this discussion about asymmetry and what your research and other researchers were really finding about the different hemispheres of the brain — and how that relates to things like creativity, being more logical, and all the stuff that was at work in our popular conversations about the brain at that time.

Where did these ideas come from?

00:04:00

Richard Davidson:
Thank you for that great introduction. There’s so much to say. Just being primed with that brings back intense memories from that period. I was very much living this.

I published more than 100 papers on brain asymmetry in one way or another, and edited two books on brain asymmetry that were published by MIT Press. They were major compendiums at the time, with a scientist in Norway named Kenneth Hugdahl, one of my early collaborators.

So yes, there’s so much to say.

Let’s begin by asking where these ideas may have come from.

In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, where we began to introduce this topic, one of the things we talked about is that the left hemisphere can speak and has language much more so than the right hemisphere — at least in most people.

Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences

00:05:11

I should say that these broad generalizations about the left and right hemisphere are roughly true for right-handed people only. They are not necessarily true for people who write with their left hand.

That itself is a whole topic of really interesting conversation, and we’ll bracket it. We can come back to it today briefly. But for now — and I apologize to all you lefties out there — since the majority of people are right-handed, roughly 85%, we’ll just stick with that for now.

One of the questions scientists posed is this: if the left hemisphere can speak and really is the primary province of language, what is the right hemisphere doing?

It’s presumably not just an appendage. It’s not just there to structurally latch on to the left hemisphere and hold it in place. It has to be doing something.

Does it have some specialized role? If the left hemisphere is specialized more for language, is there some set of functions for which the right hemisphere may be better than the left hemisphere?

Scientists discovered that there are certain kinds of visual and spatial tasks that the right hemisphere seems to be better at.

Now, when we say “better,” what we mean is typically a little bit better. It’s not like there are absolute differences. It’s not like the right hemisphere can do this and the left hemisphere can’t do this.

Similarly for language, although for language, the lateralization seems to be more definitive, particularly for speaking. For right-handed people, it’s pretty much the case that the left hemisphere can speak and the right hemisphere cannot speak. That’s pretty clear, and there are various ways in which that has been demonstrated.

The myth of the creative right brain

00:07:36

Let me get back to the title of this popular book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. There was a lot of hype that the right hemisphere is the creative hemisphere and the left hemisphere is the analytic hemisphere.

When it got overgeneralized, it became something like: the right hemisphere is more interesting and the left hemisphere is boring.

Those kinds of generalizations, in my view, were taken way too far.

The other really important thing to keep in mind is that within a hemisphere, there is a lot of specialization as well. The anterior portions of the cerebral cortex, the prefrontal region, are doing something quite different from the back of the brain.

The visual areas and the parietal area are doing different things. The parietal area is where visual information, auditory information, and kinesthetic information are all integrated. It’s kind of a multi-sensory melting pot.

So these characterizations may apply to certain specific regions within a hemisphere, and not necessarily to the whole hemisphere.

The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres

00:08:50

The other thing that is so important to keep in mind is that in most of us who are neurologically “normal,” meaning we have basically intact brains, there are roughly 200 million neurons connecting one side of the brain to the other.

It’s a huge number. It’s the largest white matter fiber bundle in the brain. White matter refers to the axons that connect neurons together.

There are 200 million neurons connecting many different parts of the two hemispheres, virtually from the front to the back of the brain.

If I were to present information to one hemisphere — and you can do this by doing certain tricks — it would be presented initially to one hemisphere. If you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented on the left side of that fixation point, that information will be projected initially to the right side of the brain. The pathways are crossed.

Similarly, if you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented to the right of that fixation point, it goes to the left hemisphere of the brain.

But the moment it gets to one hemisphere, it is automatically transferred to the other hemisphere, so both hemispheres become recipients — unless, for some reason, there is damage to the fiber bundle connecting the two hemispheres.

Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum

00:10:38

In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, Cort, you brought up the case of split-brain patients whose corpus callosum — the main fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres of the brain — has been surgically severed.

That is not done very much anymore, but in patients who have very severe epilepsy that originates in one hemisphere and spreads to the other hemisphere, producing a huge grand mal seizure, it was found that if you surgically separate the hemispheres, you can dramatically reduce the severity of the epilepsy.

So that has been done. It’s not done very much anymore, but there was a time when that kind of neurosurgery was done.

There are patients walking around with two hemispheres that are relatively independent because the fiber bundle was severed. But in most of us, that’s not true.

Our two hemispheres are talking together all the time. Whatever specialization might exist, and it does exist to some extent, the two hemispheres are typically cooperating and sending information rapidly back and forth.

What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?

00:11:57

Cortland Dahl:
I’m curious. There are two big questions I want to ask. One goes back to the book and the stuff in popular culture, but maybe let’s set that aside for a moment.

You had been researching this for a long time. You started back in the seventies, and this was clearly a huge focus of yours in the eighties.

Amidst these hundreds of papers that you studied, plus hundreds more in the broader field with other colleagues and researchers, what were the things that were surprising?

When was your mind blown? When were you surprised? What were the big breakthroughs where you thought, “Whoa, I didn’t see that coming,” or that really shifted the understanding in some way?

Richard Davidson:
I would say the biggest breakthrough was that these were the days before MRI was available, before functional MRI was available.

Cortland Dahl:
So most of this was EEG, looking at electrical patterns in the brain?

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. We were looking at EEG, electrical patterns from scalp electrodes that were non-invasive. You’ve had that done to yourself. And we can make some inferences about how activation patterns are shifting and occurring using that method.

The resting brain data they almost threw away

00:13:10

The thing that was most mind-blowing to us from all this work is that when you put these electrodes on people and just ask them to sit and rest — before we gave them tasks — we would collect eight minutes of resting data.

They would alternate between one minute of eyes open and one minute of eyes closed. We would collect eight minutes of “resting” data.

Cortland Dahl:
So you were doing, as we do in brain imaging all the time now, an early resting-state analysis, essentially.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. But we typically did very little with that in the early days. Actually, in the very early days, the honest truth is we did nothing with it.

It was just a time to make sure our recordings were accurate. If there were any tweaks in calibration, or if an electrode was not making good contact, we would fix it at that time.

But we would throw out the data, because we were interested in what happens when we give people tasks and look at changes in the brain.

It turns out that we were throwing out the most interesting data.

What people were showing when they were just sitting and resting and not doing anything turned out to be fascinating. Some people had greater activation on the left side of their brain when they were sitting and resting. Other people had greater activation on the right side.

That differed depending on whether the electrodes were in the back of the head or the front of the head, so it wasn’t the same across the hemispheres.

Stable patterns in the resting brain

00:15:15

When we first started seeing this and paying attention to it, we thought, “It can’t really be stable. It can’t be a characteristic of people.”

So we brought people back a week later, a month later.

Cortland Dahl:
So you thought it was just random shifting. If you looked long enough, you would see that everybody was all over the place. You just got a snapshot, but you didn’t want to draw any conclusions.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly.

Then we brought people back several weeks later, several months later. Unbelievably, it was super stable.

If a person was showing left-sided activation today, if we tested them three months from now, we would almost certainly see a very similar pattern three months later.

Cortland Dahl:
So this is like a neural disposition, basically.

Richard Davidson:
A neural disposition.

It didn’t matter who the people were putting on the electrodes, who was testing them, or what day of the week it was. They were showing a very stable pattern. Remarkably stable.

That really blew our minds. We were not expecting that at all.

From “noise” to emotional style

00:16:04

Once we started discovering that, we thought: if this is really a stable characteristic, then it must be associated with some behavioral differences or experiential differences.

That’s when we started our whole journey into this domain of affective style, or emotional style, which refers to enduring ways in which people respond differently to emotional challenges.

We discovered a whole bunch of interesting things with that.

This is a great case of something we first thought of as noise turning out to be the most interesting part of our experiment. Fortunately, we were paying enough attention that it enabled us to discover something novel.

Cortland Dahl:
It’s funny that there’s such a parallel with how the default mode network was discovered later with imaging research. It was almost the exact same thing: accidentally noticing something in resting-state periods.

That seems like a natural segue into what eventually became this popular meme around the brain, the left side and right side. It’s funny how it becomes almost a caricature of the brain. We’ve talked elsewhere about dopamine or the amygdala. There may be some legitimate, genuine scientific insight, but then we draw all sorts of conclusions. It becomes good and bad, overly simplistic, and we lose the nuance.

The prefrontal cortex and emotion

00:18:23

If we translate that into what you actually learned, in this case it sounds like a lot about emotion. At some point we’re going to talk about the whole field of affective neuroscience, because I’m imagining that in those early days you weren’t necessarily thinking about emotion as a guiding principle, but it sounds like it led you into that realm.

Richard Davidson:
We were thinking about emotion early on. That was part of what we were trying to do. We were thinking particularly about what role the prefrontal cortex was playing in emotion.

In the last episode of Dharma Lab, I mentioned this obscure paper written by a very famous neuroanatomist at MIT.

Cortland Dahl:
The cult classic of scientific research, I remember.

Richard Davidson:
Right. This was a guy I studied neuroanatomy with, Walle Nauta. He wrote a paper published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, where he speculated for the first time, really by a mainstream scientist, about the role of the prefrontal cortex in emotion.

That is what got me started on this path to look at the prefrontal cortex and emotion.

But the hype about brain asymmetry was focused on the specializations in the back of the brain, not the front of the brain. We were really the first to introduce the notion of asymmetries in the front of the brain that may be related to emotion.

There was earlier work on asymmetries having to do with language and visual-spatial processes, more focused on what is going on in the back of the brain. The right-brain coloring book is really alluding to work focused on specialization of the two hemispheres in the back, not in the front.

Could you choose to use one side of the brain?

00:19:58

Cortland Dahl:
A lot of the stuff in popular culture gave the impression that you could kind of choose. Even the title of that book suggests, “I want to draw from the right side of my brain,” and somehow I’m going to shut off the left side.

To what degree is this under volitional control? I’m guessing some function or activity might be, but maybe not. To what degree is there any control?

Richard Davidson:
One of the very early papers I published — which I haven’t thought about in literally decades — was a biofeedback study where we gave people feedback, not based on activation in one hemisphere or the other, but based on the difference in activation.

We were giving them feedback to change their asymmetry. We found that people were able to do that to some extent with very little training, just using this kind of neurofeedback.

Cortland Dahl:
On the one hand, that makes sense to me. You could learn quite quickly what you’re doing that makes something go up or down.

But it’s a different thing to say that a given function, like drawing, can be shifted in that way. Language, for example, probably isn’t something you’re going to shift to the right side of the brain. Certain functions, processes, and activities are going to fall more to one side or the other.

When it came to all the stuff in popular culture, did that make sense to you? Did it feel like it was drawing on something legitimate, or did it feel like we were in hand-wavy territory?

A grain of truth, taken too far

00:21:52

Richard Davidson:
There was a grain of truth, but it was way overgeneralized.

To the extent that it is grounded, it is referring to what may be going on in posterior parts of the cortex, mostly the parietal and temporal regions of the brain.

It’s interesting to ask what fundamental dimension might actually be the basis of this lateralization. That was a question asked early on.

Why is language more specialized to the left hemisphere? Is there something about the left hemisphere in those regions that is more conducive or preferential for language? And what is going on in the right hemisphere that may be more conducive to certain kinds of visual and spatial functions?

Sequential vs. parallel processing

00:22:55

One of the core dimensions that has been studied — though I would not say it is definitive — is that language, especially speech, is sequential.

We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.

Cortland Dahl:
I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.

Richard Davidson:
Usually true.

But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.

That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.

Why real creativity requires both hemispheres

00:23:50

Of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.

This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together, so they can work in an integrated way and utilize whatever specialization might be in each hemisphere together, in a synergistic way, to accomplish something that may be greater than either hemisphere alone can accomplish.

I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.

Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain.

It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.

That is one of the really important take-home messages.

Interhemispheric coordination and creativity

00:24:51

One of the speculations that is super interesting — although there really has not been very much science around this — is that what may really stimulate creativity are tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination.

One class of tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination are certain kinds of motor tasks. For example, jugglers.

Juggling requires a lot of interhemispheric coordination. It’s not just hand-eye coordination, but coordinating what’s happening between the two hands.

One of the things we know is that pretty much the control of the right hand is in the left motor region of the brain, and the left hand is pretty much controlled by the right side of the brain.

If the hands are working together, it requires interaction between them. So one really interesting, untested hypothesis is whether exercises that facilitate this kind of interhemispheric coordination may be beneficial for certain kinds of creative activities that may have nothing to do with those motor tasks.

Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement

00:26:08

Cortland Dahl:
We talked about this Tibetan practice of mudras, where you’re doing things with your hands, but what’s going on with one hand is totally different from what’s going on with the other hand.

It’s like the whole thing where you pat your head and circle your stomach, but on steroids. They almost have to operate completely independently, but it goes against some biological wiring. You have to retrain something deep to do that.

That would be an example of something where you’re doing it physically, but the idea is that perhaps it is opening something up in the creative space, or in some other way.

Richard Davidson:
Yes. This was something that Cort and I talked about just before we started recording.

There are these mudras in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. They are hand gestures, and they can be very complex and quite different. They involve different motions of each hand, all occurring simultaneously in a kind of beautiful orchestration when done by an accomplished practitioner.

There may be some real side benefits that Tibetan yogis thousands of years ago had some experiential insight about, which may potentially be revealed in some future science.

Visualization, imagination, and creativity

00:27:31

Cortland Dahl:
There are so many interesting things there. That’s another little rabbit hole.

It’s interesting that at the time you do those physical gestures, you’re also doing very elaborate movements with your imagination. You’re visualizing whole worlds, essentially. It’s like you’re dreaming something into existence, but you’re doing these physical movements at the same time.

It really is all about creativity in some respect.

I’ve already cataloged a whole range of things to talk about. In a subsequent episode, I really want to dig deeper into the hemispheric differences in the resting state — not only that you found those hemispheric differences, but what they mapped onto in terms of experiential qualities.

What was different about those people aside from the electrical activity in their brain? Maybe that’s something we can dig into in a future episode.

Closing

00:28:34

Richard Davidson:
I’d love to do that.

Cortland Dahl:
Yet another great window into all the amazing work you’ve done, Richie. Thank you for sharing this.

And for everybody joining, thank you for sticking around and spending a little time with us. I can promise many more discussions like this. So if you found this interesting, there will be much more to come.

Thank you, Richie, and thank you everybody for tuning in.

Richard Davidson:
Thank you, Cort. Thank you all.

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

CHECK OUT EPISODE COMPANION FLASHCARDS!

Podcast Chapter List

(00:00:00) – Dopamine is not something we can turn off

(00:03:46) – What is a neurotransmitter?

(00:06:04) – Dopamine as neurotransmitter and neuromodulator

(00:08:20) – Why the brain is too complex for simple chemical stories

(00:12:02) – The awe and mystery of the brain

(00:15:51) – Dopamine, motivation, and the myth of dopamine detox

(00:17:04) – Wanting vs. liking

(00:19:24) – Doom scrolling and the loop of seeking

(00:22:32) – Does dopamine explain why we keep scrolling?

(00:24:21) – Experiential fusion and mindless behavior

(00:25:42) – Why one molecule is never the whole story

(00:26:57) – Novelty and reward prediction error

(00:29:00) – The Easter egg example: seeking, finding, and disappointment

(00:30:23) – Dopamine in different brain circuits

(00:35:37) – What actually helps with compulsive loops?

(00:37:47) – Savoring as a way out of wanting

(00:39:24) – Meditation, breath, and the practice of savoring

(00:43:20) – Letting go of seeking

(00:43:56) – Gratitude, bodhicitta, and the sweetness of connection

(00:45:28) – Renunciation as reorientation

(00:48:00) – Closing

Related Topics From the Archives:

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Dopamine Is Not Something We Can Turn Off (00:00:00)

Richard Davidson:
Dopamine is essential for human life.

Cortland Dahl:
There’s no turning dopamine off.

Richard Davidson:
No turning dopamine off. And anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.

Dopamine is essential in motivation, desire, seeking, and anything that is goal-directed. It has been described by the neuroscientist Kent Berridge as central to “wanting,” which he contrasts with something that it is often confused with: “liking.”

Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time. Sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking.

But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.

Welcome to Dharma Lab (00:01:45)

Cortland Dahl:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend Richie, Dr. Richard Davidson, who, as I’m sure most of you know, is one of the most eminent neuroscientists on the planet.

We’re incredibly fortunate to have him in discussion yet again, and for a topic that he is especially well suited to talk about, which is dopamine.

I never thought dopamine would be a hook for a conversation like this, but it has taken on almost mythic status in popular culture. It has almost become the bad boy of the brain, like the amygdala, which is one brain region that always gets a bad rap and is associated with all sorts of negative things.

These days, of course, we hear a lot about dopamine. You might have heard of things like a dopamine detox, which makes it sound like dopamine is some toxic thing in the brain that we want to get rid of or shut off or have less of in some way.

So we thought we could get into the science of neurotransmitters generally, and then specifically dopamine. What does the science really say? What function does dopamine actually play, not only in our brains but in our ability to thrive and flourish?

Richie, maybe we can start by zooming way out. I’m guessing people have heard the word dopamine. Some may have geeked out a little and learned more or even tried something like a dopamine detox. Other people may have heard about serotonin or other neurotransmitters, but my guess is that people’s understanding is still a little fuzzy.

Could we start with the idea of a neurotransmitter, and then zoom in and look at dopamine specifically?

What Is a Neurotransmitter? (00:03:46)

Richard Davidson:
Yes. Thank you so much. This is a juicy topic and very appropriate for Dharma Lab.

There is a constellation of molecules in the brain that play many different roles. One of those roles is what you mentioned: a neurotransmitter.

A neurotransmitter has a very specific role in mediating the interaction between two neurons. When one neuron fires, it sends an electric potential down the axon of that neuron. You can think of the axon as the wire extending from the cell body. The cell body is where the basic machinery is, and the axon extends from the neuron.

Those axons can be short, and they can also be very, very long. If I asked you right now to move the big toe in your right foot, all of you should be able to do that. That is actually a neuron that extends all the way from your brain to your big toe.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s a single neuron? That’s cool. I didn’t know that.

Richard Davidson:
Yes, it is a single neuron. Neurons have many different lengths.

At the end of the axon, there is machinery that releases a little packet of chemical. That packet binds to what is called a receptor on another neuron, and that initiates an electric change in the second neuron.

That is how communication works between two or more neurons. That is called a neurotransmitter.

Dopamine as Neurotransmitter and Neuromodulator (00:06:04)

There are also neurotransmitters and other molecules that act as neuromodulators. A neuromodulator is different from a neurotransmitter. Dopamine, which is the topic of our conversation today, can serve as both a neurotransmitter and a neuromodulator.

What is the difference?

A neuromodulator alters the threshold for the firing of a neuron. It is not directly involved in cell-to-cell communication in the same way. It is more like the molecular soup in which the neuron resides, and that changes the threshold for the firing of the subsequent neuron.

There are many molecules that serve as both neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, and dopamine is one of them.

I think most neuroscientists would agree that we have not yet discovered the full range of neuromodulators and neurotransmitters in the human brain. It is a vast number. In the popular press, we’ve heard about dopamine, serotonin, maybe norepinephrine, maybe GABA. But there are hundreds of these molecules playing complicated roles.

This is why, in general, it is extremely hazardous to pin a particular mental state on a single molecule. That is almost assuredly excessively simplistic and wrong.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no well-defined psychological state that can be pinned to one specific molecule. It is much more complex than that.

Why the Brain Is Too Complex for Simple Chemical Stories (00:08:20)

Cortland Dahl:
Just as a footnote, I think it’s mind-boggling when you hear how complex our brains are. Could you say a little about the estimates of how many neurons there are, and then beyond that, the connections between neurons?

Now we’re talking about neurons communicating with each other. It’s an order of magnitude we can’t even comprehend.

Richard Davidson:
The estimated number of neurons in the human brain is about 85 or 88 billion.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s a “b,” everyone.

Richard Davidson:
Yes, billion. And the estimated number of connections among those neurons is in the trillions.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s in your head, everyone. Trillions of interconnections, and all these little communications, neuromodulators and neurotransmitters. The number of times that is happening right now, as you’re listening, is beyond what we can actually think about.

Richard Davidson:
That’s very true. I often reflect on this as a humility induction, because it is so complicated and we really understand so little of it at this point in time.

If we pause to appreciate the complexity, and if we are honest with ourselves, it really is a humility induction.

It also exposes how gross our measures are. We’ve done a lot of research with EEG, including the first paper we published with long-term meditation practitioners. EEG involves putting electrodes on the scalp surface. We use it because it is non-invasive and has very fast time resolution.

But some people have likened EEG to taking a stethoscope, putting it on the hood of a car, and trying to understand how the car works by listening to the sounds from the stethoscope. That is what EEG is like.

Cortland Dahl:
So by “gross,” you mean it is such a coarse level of analysis for something that is so incredibly nuanced, beyond what our minds can comprehend. At some point in history, we’ll look back and it will seem like the Stone Age, the way we look at the brain now.

Richard Davidson:
Totally.

There is a whole class of research that goes on in animals, and there are serious ethical issues about this kind of research. That could be the subject of another Dharma Lab. We won’t talk about that right now.

Putting those ethical issues temporarily aside, those studies in animals are done because they use methods that cannot be used in humans. They are invasive methods that allow scientists to look at a much more granular level of analysis that cannot be examined with the methods we currently have in humans.

The Awe and Mystery of the Brain (00:12:02)

Cortland Dahl:
This was not where we were expecting to go, but I think this could be another episode too: the mystery of the brain.

You might come to somebody like Richie and think you’re going to get sophisticated knowledge, and in many ways you will. But in another way, you get a sense that even the world’s leading experts are barely knocking on the door of this universe that is so awe-inspiringly complex and nuanced.

It’s almost like looking up into the night sky and feeling the majesty of this incredible universe, and realizing that this is literally happening between our ears. It’s awe-inducing when you open up to that.

Richard Davidson:
It is. We are constantly forming new synapses, and even structural changes in the brain happen much more quickly than we ever thought they could.

One really interesting thing about the brain is that it has no receptors for feeling itself. When you touch your skin, you can feel that. If you put a vibrator on the skin, you would feel that. But if you opened the brain and put a little vibrator directly on the brain, you wouldn’t feel it.

There is probably an evolutionary reason for this. Our brains are active all the time. If we felt tingling every time our brains were active or new synapses were forming, it would disrupt our capacity to navigate everyday life. We wouldn’t be able to sleep. It would interfere with everything.

But I sometimes do a little practice where I envision all these changes occurring. It is majestic. It really is awe-inspiring. I’ve looked at enough images from studies that have taken samples of brain tissue, where you can see with an electron microscope at super-high resolution what we can’t see non-invasively. You see the extraordinary complexity and beauty that we simply do not have introspective access to.

Cortland Dahl:
Yet another topic to put a pin in for a future episode: the mystery of the brain, and beyond that the mystery of consciousness.

But let’s zoom back in to neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. One way to think about this is that neurotransmitters are how neurons are talking to each other, and neuromodulators influence the level of activity between neurons.

Dopamine is interesting because it has become so meme-worthy. What do we actually know about dopamine and the functions it serves in the brain?

Dopamine, Motivation, and the Myth of Dopamine Detox (00:15:51)

Richard Davidson:
Dopamine is essential for human life.

Cortland Dahl:
There’s no turning dopamine off.

Richard Davidson:
No turning dopamine off. Anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.

Dopamine is essential in what we can think of as motivation, desire, seeking, anything goal-directed where we have a plan. Even if it’s a pedestrian plan, like after this podcast we might go have dinner. It could be something as simple as that. There is an element of motivation involved in that, and it involves the dopamine systems in the brain.

Wanting vs. Liking (00:17:04)

Dopamine has been described by a very famous neuroscientist, Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan, who has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the dopamine system. He has labeled a key function of the dopamine system as “wanting,” and he contrasts that with something it is often confused with, which is “liking.”

Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time.

For Dharma Lab viewers, who likely have some appreciation for how the mind works, I think we all have some insight into recognizing that sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking. It is a kind of perseverative loop of wanting.

This is part of the reason why there are popular stereotypes about dopamine.

But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and then meditate, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.

If dopamine were completely blunted, it would be very difficult to get out of bed and do anything. You can think of dopamine as part of an approach-oriented, energetic stance.

Anytime we have an aspiration to do something, that is going to rely, at least to some extent, on the dopamine system. So this is not a system we want to get rid of.

Doom Scrolling and the Loop of Seeking (00:19:24)

Cortland Dahl:
Let me give you a real-world experience, and I’d love to ask how dopamine does or does not play a role in it.

I am very rarely on social media. It’s not something I spend much time on. But the other night I had an experience that a lot of people probably have all the time. Somebody forwarded me a link from one of these apps where you end up scrolling forever.

It was a video that made me laugh hysterically out loud. I was sitting by myself in a room, and if someone had looked in the window, they would have thought I was nuts.

It was a video where two friends were looking at themselves on the screen, and one had put on a filter that made it look like a bug was crawling across the other person’s face. So the person sees what looks like a spider on their face and starts slapping themselves. It was hilarious.

I watched that and was literally laughing hysterically. And the algorithms of these apps know when you watch the whole thing twice. So then it shows you more of the thing you clearly liked.

Then there was another one, and the next one was even funnier. It was wives playing a prank on their spouses, pretending to freak out like something was happening, just to see what the husband would do. And the husbands would start screaming and running around. Again, it was hilarious. I was laughing out loud.

But then I got into this loop where I was trying to find another one. It was so funny, and I had this little burst of joy. Then I literally wasted an hour of my time. After a few minutes I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was just scrolling mindlessly.

I wasn’t consciously thinking, “I have to find another funny video.” I was just in this inner loop, sucked into the endless scroll, until I finally thought, “I’ve got to go to bed.” Then I felt like, “What a waste of time.”

That first minute or two was actually funny. It was nice to laugh hysterically. And then it became a lot of mind-numbing scrolling that was utterly unsatisfying.

So let’s look at a moment like that from the perspective of what is going on in the brain, and specifically with dopamine. These are the moments where people demonize dopamine, as though that’s the thing that happened and we need to somehow extract it.

What would you say about that?

Does Dopamine Explain Why We Keep Scrolling? (00:22:32)

Richard Davidson:
Those are interesting experiences that I think all of us have occasionally.

I would say dopamine likely plays some role, at least in the initial entry into that scrolling perseveration. Whether it is sustaining that over the whole period of time, I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.

Part of it depends on the extent to which you feel a real strong urge to do it. If someone took away your phone at that point, how would you react? There are ways of probing whether the wanting cycle is really dominant.

There could be other reasons why people scroll. One of my theories is that people engage in this kind of behavior in part to block the default mode, because the scrolling is consuming.

I’m curious about your phenomenological report of when you are scrolling. But I think that at least in the initial stages of scrolling, when people are really into it, there is what we would call experiential fusion.

Experiential Fusion and Mindless Behavior (00:24:21)

Cortland Dahl:
For sure.

Richard Davidson:
Their whole awareness is fused with the activity they’re engaged in. There’s not a lot of meta-awareness. They’re just sucked in.

Cortland Dahl:
It’s almost like there’s no conscious doom scrolling, because if you were fully aware and conscious, you would just stop doing it.

I sometimes have the same experience drinking soda. You almost have to do it mindlessly, because if you really savor the taste, it’s actually kind of gross. I’ve noticed there are certain foods and certain things you consume that only work mindlessly.

Richard Davidson:
But that’s not true of French fries.

Cortland Dahl:
Richie, now you’re in sensitive territory. We’re not going to go there. I will concede soda. French fries, we’ll see. I’ll experiment with that.

But it’s true. Certain things only work mindlessly. When you consciously do them, you would not do them anymore because they don’t feel good. It’s interesting. It changes a lot.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. That is in part what sustains that kind of behavior as well. And I don’t think that is primarily a dopaminergic process.

Viewers may ask, “Okay, then what molecule is responsible for that?” And I would say, likely 500 molecules. Don’t even try to think about it that way. It’s not the right level of analysis.

Novelty and Reward Prediction Error (00:25:42)

Cortland Dahl:
Going back to Berridge’s work, we have a whole episode on the distinction between liking and wanting, and there’s a great paper where he summarizes a lot of the research in this area.

If you look at the experience I was having, there was a moment of genuine liking. I was having fun. I was laughing hysterically. Then there was a moment of seeking. I was just looking.

There are all sorts of interesting things in the way algorithms work. There is something around duration. There is something around novelty. If you really pay attention, it’s not just that everything is the same. The algorithm gives you things that are different intentionally, and then you get something you like and it feels new again.

If you got the exact same thing 10 times in a row, even if you liked it at first, you would grow accustomed to it. It would lose the novelty factor. So there is something around duration, novelty, and emotion. There are all sorts of things mixed into it.

Richard Davidson:
The novelty piece you’re mentioning is really important. It is a very important aspect of dopamine function that has been studied.

There is this idea of a reward prediction error, as it is called in the technical scientific lingo.

What is a reward prediction error?

In this case, you have a certain class of video that you’re looking at. You saw one, so you have a mental model of what these videos are like.

Cortland Dahl:
So now that’s what I want. That’s the wanting. I’m looking for that.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. You’re looking for that.

Let’s say the next video you encounter is even more hysterical. That is a reward prediction error. You would actually see a larger dopamine spike than you saw previously.

If you saw a video that was comparable to what you just saw, there wouldn’t be any change in the dopamine signal. If you saw a video that was much less interesting and less compelling, there would be a decline, a decrement in dopamine.

Dopamine signaling is very dynamic and responsive to the information to which you are being exposed. It plays an important role in certain aspects of learning, and it informs your future seeking.

The Easter Egg Example: Seeking, Finding, and Disappointment (00:29:00)

Cortland Dahl:
Let’s unpack that.

We just had Easter in the U.S., and I had this image of a little kid running around looking for an Easter egg. They have the model. They know what they want. They’re looking, they’re not finding, then they find something. Sometimes they find something beyond what they expected, maybe an extra big piece of candy or the basket with all the candy.

That seems like a good example because the seeking is very clear. The mental model is very clear. The not finding, and then the finding more, has all the dimensions you talked about.

But it’s interesting. You’re saying that when the kid is looking for the Easter egg and doesn’t find it, say they lift up the cushion of the couch and there’s nothing there, dopamine levels will actually drop in that moment?

Richard Davidson:
Yes.

Cortland Dahl:
Because if you forget about the neurotransmitters and just look at behavior, of course the seeking doesn’t stop. They immediately shift and think, “Where do I need to go next?”

So there’s something still driving the seeking. But if dopamine is dropping, and if dopamine is that motivational, goal-directed impulse in the brain, how does that work?

Dopamine in Different Brain Circuits (00:30:23)

Richard Davidson:
Those are excellent questions. It’s an opportunity to speak about another piece of complexity: dopamine is found in a number of different parts of the brain. It’s not just in one isolated location.

Its function in different parts of the brain is different. It is the same molecule, but the location is different, the receptors are different, the connections are different, and the function is different.

The dopamine that is part of the wanting circuit is found primarily in an area of the brain called the ventral striatum, a subcortical area that is rich in dopamine.

We know that if there is brain damage to that area, based mostly on animal studies, animals will not seek in the ways we’ve been talking about. But it doesn’t affect their enjoyment of a reward.

Let’s say bananas are their favorite food. They can smell the banana. They know it’s six feet away. If they walk, they can get the banana. But they will not go and get it, even though they can smell it.

But if you put the banana in their mouth, they will enjoy it. Scientists know they enjoy it because they make certain sounds and facial expressions when they are enjoying it. If you video them, you can see it.

There are other molecules that seem much more associated with pleasure. The two major classes of molecules associated with pleasure in the brain are endogenous opiates and endogenous cannabinoids. Endocannabinoids are related to the active ingredient in marijuana, and they are found endogenously in the human brain. Those molecules are active in response to pleasure.

The reward prediction error signaling I was talking about is mediated in a different but adjacent part of the brain that is also rich in dopamine. The caudate nucleus is critically important for prediction error signaling. There is also prediction error signaling in other areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex.

So these dopamine-related functions occur in different areas of the brain.

Cortland Dahl:
So going back to the Easter egg example, the child is looking for something, wanting something, and not finding it where they expect it to be. Is it in the caudate that the levels would drop, but in the ventral striatum they might still be high because the child is still seeking?

Richard Davidson:
I’m not sure what would happen in that specific case. If the child is still seeking, you would expect dopamine levels to be high in the ventral striatum.

The prediction error changes we’re talking about are phasic changes. They are extremely short-lived, very dynamic, up and down. They are like an evoked potential, an electrical signal that goes down and then up very quickly.

These are changes that we cannot see in the human brain because we do not have methods to look at changes on that time course non-invasively.

What Actually Helps with Compulsive Loops? (00:35:37)

Cortland Dahl:
Zooming out, with memes like dopamine detox, I think what people are trying to understand and intervene in are these cycles that are essentially unfulfilling but become almost compulsive behavior. Doom scrolling is maybe the classic example.

You’re doing something inherently unfulfilling, and yet you do it compulsively and for long periods of time.

One key takeaway is that this is likely much more complex than we normally think. Even with one chemical, one neurotransmitter or neuromodulator, it depends on which part of the brain you’re looking at, which network you’re looking at, and the time course from one moment to the next.

So you can’t just say, “That’s the thing we want to stop happening,” because it is way more complex than that.

But what could we say? In my mind, disentangling liking and wanting is one of the most helpful things for understanding how this is processed in the brain. What would you want people to know that could help them navigate some of these compulsive behaviors that we get stuck in?

Savoring as a Way Out of Wanting (00:37:47)

Richard Davidson:
The knowledge we’re providing in this discussion can be helpful as background. But locking onto it in an excessively concrete way may not be that helpful.

Getting stuck in doom scrolling may involve dopamine initially, but it has to be much more complicated than that. It clearly involves other things too.

I think the distinction between wanting and liking is very important. Creating the causes and conditions that help us appreciate the liking, and really tune in to the events or stimuli associated with liking, can be enormously helpful.

Some psychologists have called this savoring. We can really savor these positive moments, and that can help us get unstuck from the loop of wanting.

The dopamine story is interesting, and at a very high level there is truth to the fact that dopamine is primarily associated with wanting and seeking. To the extent that this kind of behavior is causing problems, we can do our best to change it.

But one of the best ways to change it may be simply to focus more on liking.

Meditation, Breath, and the Practice of Savoring (00:39:24)

Cortland Dahl:
That is such an important point, and it reminds me of key insights from meditation and my own practice.

Even with something like mindful breathing, which was the first practice I learned and one I still do, there are practices where the orientation is almost neutral. You step back and orient to awareness itself. You are not worrying so much about what is happening within the field of awareness. Whatever is happening is just a neutral phenomenon, and orienting to awareness itself is the focus.

But there is another kind of practice that is very different, and it is all about savoring.

You can practice breathing with awareness in many different ways. One way is where awareness is the main point and the breath is just a support or anchor. But another way is to breathe as a process of savoring. You really tune into the felt sense of the nourishing, even healing quality of the breath.

Because I’ve done both forms of practice, and a lot of the savoring aspect, even now as I do this I have goosebumps. I can feel this chemical reaction in my body. My whole body is feeling this just because the moment you remember it, it starts happening.

At the beginning, it uses the imagination. Then at a certain point, it elicits a visceral response. You feel this pleasant energy, and you immerse yourself in the healing energy of your own breath. It is there every moment.

That is different from stepping back and being aware. Both are helpful and profound, but they do different things.

The key is that you can do this with anything. Loving-kindness and compassion practices are like savoring connection. You first elicit the feeling of connectedness.

I can do this right now. We’re talking, and I can say, “This is Richie. I love Richie.” Immediately I feel that. I do love you. And then you can immerse yourself in that.

It is a skill to stay tuned in. It’s like finding the frequency. Habit energy pulls you off course, but you learn to keep it dialed in, and you can get good at it.

When you’re around the Dalai Lama, he is always in that frequency. He is never not in that frequency. You can feel it when you’re with him. He is radiating that because he is completely dialed into that frequency.

In a way, this quality of savoring is a skill you can learn and deploy in different ways. It could be eating an orange. It could be connecting with somebody else. It could be how you relate to your own breath.

There is no chasing in it. It is just tuning into something that is already there.

Letting Go of Seeking (00:43:20)

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. I love that description. You don’t need to seek it because it’s right there.

You can let go of seeking completely and tune right into the delicious nectar that is always there.

Cortland Dahl:
I feel like if people just knew this, it would change so much. There is so much chasing in our lives. Even meditation can become another place where we bring chasing energy and seeking energy, which almost never works out very well.

Maybe we can end here. Are there any practical things from your own practice that help you stay with the savoring side of things, and notice the pull toward chasing and seeking?

Gratitude, Bodhicitta, and the Sweetness of Connection (00:43:56)

Richard Davidson:
For me, appreciation and gratitude are really important.

Also, the kind of practice that you and I do before each Dharma Lab episode, bodhicitta practice, is very important. Reflecting on how our actions can be of benefit to others has a sweetness associated with it.

Really leaning in and connecting to that sweet quality of connection is heart-opening for me. It naturally allows the wanting piece to subside on its own.

There is not an active pushing down of wanting. It is more about leaning into and connecting with this sweetness.

If you do find that wanting is rearing its head, then to use a strategy we’ve been taught by Mingyur Rinpoche, you can become aware of it. Really just be aware of your wanting. If you stay aware of it and do not get totally sucked into it, it will subside on its own.

Renunciation as Reorientation (00:45:28)

Cortland Dahl:
That’s beautiful. There are some helpful things here, especially if we zoom out to the detox idea.

A lot of the meme around dopamine detox is almost an abstinence mentality. You just need to stop all stimulation, anything that is creating problems. It can feel like a retreat-from-the-world mentality.

This reminds me of one of the most misunderstood words in Buddhist psychology and meditation practice. There is a Tibetan term, ngé jung, which we often translate as renunciation. But renunciation conjures up exactly the detox mentality, as though it is all about letting go, distancing yourself from the bad stuff or the things that create problems.

But what that term really means, and what I think is a more accurate and helpful translation, is reorientation.

It is more about what you are turning toward than what you are letting go of or turning away from. If you forget that, it is not sustainable. It is depleting. You have nothing bringing you joy or motivating you. You have taken something away, but there is nothing there to sustain you.

This is about orienting toward something nourishing, fulfilling, and wholesome. Then the letting go becomes natural, because you are tasting an alternative that is obviously superior to the thing you let go of.

Doom scrolling versus connecting with a friend, or savoring something meaningful. Of course that feels better. You have that contrast in your mind, rather than just saying, “I’m going to let go of that,” and then what?

So maybe it is not just about letting go of endless wanting and craving. It is perhaps even more about what you like, what you savor, and what you find fulfilling.

It feels like you are giving the brain analysis of that.

Richard Davidson:
That’s beautiful.

Closing (00:48:00)

Cortland Dahl:
We could clearly talk a lot more about this. It feels like we just scratched the surface. We introduced a whole cast of characters with other neurotransmitters and other things, so maybe we can do more of this in future episodes.

As always, thank you so much, Richie. I learned a lot. This is super interesting, and I’m sure everybody came away with something helpful in their lives.

Thank you for everything you shared.

Richard Davidson:
Thank you. Wonderful to be here.

Cortland Dahl:
Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations like this. If you’re still with us, thank you for watching, and we’ll see you again soon. Take care.

During one experiment, we recorded brain activity using EEG while participants engaged in an open awareness meditation infused with compassion.

Then we looked at the raw data from one practitioner in particular: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

As the signal streamed across the screen in the lab, something extraordinary appeared. Electrical traces from dozens of electrodes spread across the cortex suddenly rose and fell together in rapid synchrony.

For a moment we wondered if it was an artifact.

But it wasn’t.

We realized we were seeing something momentous—patterns of brain activity that had never been observed before.

The brain was generating extraordinarily strong gamma oscillations—fast neural rhythms around 30–80 Hz—synchronized across widely distributed regions of the cortex. Even more striking, this synchrony emerged almost immediately when Mingyur Rinpoche entered the meditative state.

Gamma synchrony has long been associated with moments when the brain integrates information across distributed neural systems—periods of perceptual binding, learning, and insight.

Seeing such powerful, large-scale synchrony suggested something profound: through training, the brain may become more capable of integrating information across neural networks. In other words, the capacity for insight itself may be trainable (Lutz et al., 2004).

Over the past two decades, neuroscience has begun to explore this possibility. A fascinating new study published recently in Nature Communications now provides fresh evidence about what happens in the brain during the moment of insight, revealing how sudden understanding reorganizes neural representations across the brain.

What the researchers discovered reinforces something contemplative traditions have suggested for centuries:

Insight is not merely intellectual.

It is a reorganization in how the mind represents reality.

When the Brain Reorganizes Perception

In the study, participants viewed ambiguous black-and-white images known as Mooney images. At first glance these pictures appear to be meaningless patterns of light and shadow.

The brain struggles to interpret them.

Then suddenly the image resolves.

A dog.

A face.

A spider.

What moments earlier looked like random shapes becomes instantly recognizable.

Using neuroimaging, the researchers observed a striking neural shift during this moment. Activity patterns in visual regions—particularly the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, which plays a key role in object recognition—reorganized dramatically.

Before insight, the brain encoded the image as disconnected fragments.

After insight, the same sensory input was represented as a coherent object.

The researchers describe this transformation as representational change.

What is especially cool about this experiment is that nothing about the external stimulus had changed.

But the brain had changed how it interpreted what it was seeing.

The world remained the same.

The mind reorganized.

The Emotional Spark of the “Aha”

Insight is not purely cognitive.

When participants experienced the sudden realization that revealed the hidden object, activity increased in the amygdala, which processes emotional salience, and the hippocampus, which detects novelty and supports memory formation.

This helps explain why insight feels so distinctive.

An “Aha!” moment carries a sense of surprise and emotional resonance. The brain registers that something important has happened.

And this matters for learning.

When participants were tested days later, problems solved through insight were far more likely to be remembered than those solved gradually.

Insight is therefore not simply a flash of understanding.

It is a powerful learning event.

The Brain as a Prediction Engine

To understand why insight can be transformative, it helps to recognize something fundamental about how the brain operates.

The brain is not a passive recorder of reality. Increasingly, neuroscience views perception as a process of prediction. The brain continuously generates models of the world and updates those models using incoming sensory information (Friston, 2010; Clark, 2013).

Most of the time these predictive models allow us to navigate the world efficiently.

But they can also become rigid.

We interpret ambiguous situations through habitual narratives about ourselves or others. These interpretations can become so familiar that they feel like reality itself.

Insight occurs when these predictive models are suddenly updated or reorganized. The brain recognizes that its previous interpretation was incomplete. A new representation emerges. And the same situation now appears in a different light. In this sense, insight may represent a moment of rapid neuroplasticity—when the brain abruptly reorganizes its internal models and begins to perceive the same world in a fundamentally different way.

This capacity for cognitive reorganization may also play an important role in trauma recovery, where healing often involves loosening rigid threat predictions and restoring the brain’s flexibility to interpret experience in new ways.

This figure beautifully illustrates the central thesis of the essay: insight is literally a reorganization of how the brain represents reality.

Brain activity during the moment of insight. When participants suddenly recognized the hidden object in an ambiguous image, patterns of neural activity in visual cortex reorganized dramatically. The same stimulus remained unchanged—but the brain’s internal representation shifted.

Insight in Contemplative Practice

Contemplative traditions have long emphasized this process.

In Buddhist psychology, insight involves seeing clearly the mental processes that construct our experience.

Through careful observation of the mind, practitioners come to recognize that:

• thoughts are mental events rather than facts

• emotions are dynamic processes rather than fixed states

• the sense of self is a continually evolving construction

From a neuroscientific perspective, these realizations may reflect transformations in the brain’s predictive models of identity and experience.

The same principle that allows a Mooney image to suddenly resolve into a recognizable object may also allow our understanding of ourselves to shift.

When that shift occurs, patterns of suffering that once seemed inevitable can begin to loosen.

The brain is literally seeing differently.

Read more

See below for FLASHCARDS, Full Transcript Below

Watch on Youtube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

FLASHCARDS / EPISODE COMPANION HERE

Podcast Chapter List

(00:00:00) – The brain is a storyteller

(00:01:03) – Welcome to Dharma Lab

(00:04:05) – Norman Geschwind and behavioral neurology

(00:06:31) – The thumbtack story: emotional memory without conscious memory

(00:12:12) – Language, the left hemisphere, and the corpus callosum

(00:19:04) – Brain asymmetry and emotion

(00:22:54) – Why emotion was so understudied

(00:29:26) – Brain asymmetry, attachment, and aversion

(00:31:19) – The prefrontal cortex and the old divide between thought and feeling

(00:37:07) – Studying emotion in newborn infants

(00:42:37) – Meditation, brain asymmetry, and the immune system

(00:47:04) – Why “it’s not so simple”

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

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The Brain Is a Storyteller (00:00:00)

Cortland Dahl:
The example you gave earlier, with Broca’s area and the split-brain findings, points to something fascinating. Parts of the brain are not always talking to each other. One part of the brain clearly knows something, but the part that communicates doesn’t. And it doesn’t stay silent. It makes something up.

That’s the funny thing. In the absence of information, we don’t just stay silent. When we don’t know something, we are not comfortable with not knowing. Some instinctual part of us fills in the blanks almost all the time.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. The human mind and brain is a storyteller. This is how we make sense of our world. We create these narratives.

Welcome to Dharma Lab (00:01:03)

Cortland Dahl:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson, who we all lovingly call Richie.

As many of you know, Richie is one of the most pioneering and widely studied neuroscientists on the planet. It’s a gift to be in conversation with him.

Today we’re going to have a conversation I’ve wanted to have for a long time. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 2012 to study with Richie, and over the years I’ve heard many conversations at the Center for Healthy Minds about neuroscience, meditation, and the mind. But one thing that has never really happened, even for those of us who work closely with Richie, is a kind of broad “download” from him about the amazing body of work he has contributed to over the decades.

Many people know Richie as a pioneer of contemplative science and contemplative neuroscience, the scientific study of how practices like meditation affect the mind, the brain, and our biology. But he is also a pioneer of affective neuroscience, which you might think of as the neuroscience of emotion.

To be a pioneer in one field is extraordinary. To be a pioneer in two is kind of mind-boggling.

So today I want to dig into some of those key insights, especially around neural asymmetry, which was a huge part of Richie’s early career and a central theme in affective neuroscience.

Norman Geschwind and Behavioral Neurology (00:04:05)

Richard Davidson:
This topic is near and dear to my heart. It still is something I’m extremely interested in. It really began when I was a graduate student and had the opportunity to study with Norman Geschwind at Harvard Medical School.

Geschwind was one of the great towering figures in what we now call behavioral neurology. I took a course with him on functional neuroanatomy, which is basically how different parts of the brain are connected to different behavioral functions.

He was a neurologist, so he looked at people’s behavior as an external reflection of what was going on in the brain. He was an extremely keen observer of behavior, and he was also very demanding. He was what we would now call a localizationist, someone who believed in the specific localization of different functions in different parts of the brain.

He used to say that if you don’t believe in localization, it’s because you don’t know neuroanatomy well enough. That pushed me to learn neuroanatomy deeply, including doing a human brain dissection.

I also went on rounds with him, where he would visit neurological patients in the hospital. He would do these bedside exams that were incredible, using clever ways of interacting with patients to reveal what might be different about their brains.

The Thumbtack Story: Emotional Memory Without Conscious Memory (00:06:31)

Richard Davidson:
One of the most famous demonstrations I saw involved a technique associated with Korsakoff, who described a syndrome of dementia related to alcoholism.

Korsakoff showed that there can be a separation between memory for declarative information and memory for emotional information.

A person with severe dementia might not recognize you if you came back the day after seeing them. They may have no conscious memory of who you are. But the question was whether the same was true for emotional information.

The demonstration was this: a doctor would put a thumbtack in his hand and shake the patient’s hand. The patient would feel the prick and withdraw. The next day, the doctor would return and ask, “Do you know who I am?” The patient would say no. The doctor would identify himself and offer his hand again.

But the patient refused to shake his hand.

When asked why, the patient confabulated. He said something like, “I think your hand is dirty, and I don’t want to shake your hand.”

That’s a beautiful demonstration of the dissociation between declarative memory and emotional memory. The declarative memory was gone. The patient did not recognize the doctor’s face or name and had no conscious memory of having seen him. But the emotional memory remained.

Cortland Dahl:
That one point has huge implications for life. We often have an interpretation of something and we are completely convinced of it. It seems so real that it doesn’t occur to us that it’s an interpretation.

And yet the mind may have limited information, or may not be conscious of something, and it creates a whole story. In some cases, the story is flat-out wrong. But in the moment, it feels like reality.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. And this is not just occurring in patients with frank brain damage. This is happening in all of us all the time. This is how our minds work. The mind creates a story about the world, and it’s from that story that we operate.

It is not from some veridical perception of things in the world. There is no such thing as that. Our minds are constantly creating these stories.

This relates directly to our insight pillar of well-being, which is about the narratives we are constantly creating about ourselves.

Language, the Left Hemisphere, and the Corpus Callosum (00:12:12)

Richard Davidson:
One of Geschwind’s great contributions was his work on language-related lateralization in the human brain.

In virtually all right-handed people, which is about 85 to 90 percent of the population, it is the left hemisphere that can speak, while the right hemisphere cannot.

There is a key region called Broca’s area, named after Paul Broca. Damage to this area, often through stroke, can impair a person’s ability to speak. What is interesting is that this is one of the most clearly lateralized functions in the human brain. If this area in the left hemisphere is damaged, the corresponding area in the right hemisphere does not simply take over.

The two hemispheres of the brain are very similar in many ways, but they have important differences. They are connected by the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of white matter that connects neurons in one hemisphere to corresponding neurons in the other. It is the largest pathway of connection in the human brain.

In the past, for some patients with severe epilepsy, surgeons would cut the corpus callosum to prevent seizures from spreading from one hemisphere to the other. This left people with two disconnected hemispheres.

When that happens, you can demonstrate strange dissociations. For example, if a split-brain patient is blindfolded and holds a glass in the left hand, the sensory information goes to the right hemisphere. But because the right hemisphere cannot speak, and the information cannot cross to the left hemisphere, the person may not be able to verbally identify the object. If you give them multiple-choice pictures, though, they can point to the glass.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s the same basic finding. One part of the brain clearly knows something, but the part that communicates doesn’t. And it doesn’t stay silent. It makes something up.

Brain Asymmetry and Emotion (00:19:04)

Richard Davidson:
Most early research on brain asymmetry focused on the back of the brain, where language and some perceptual differences were located. The left hemisphere was specialized for speech and language. The right hemisphere seemed better at certain visual-spatial skills.

But another early observation was especially interesting: when patients had damage to the left hemisphere, especially including the left prefrontal region, they were more likely to show depression after the brain damage. Two people could have comparable amounts of damage, but if the damage was in different hemispheres, the emotional consequences could be different.

That led to the conjecture that the left hemisphere might play some role in emotions that are antithetical to depression. These patients often seemed anhedonic, meaning they were not experiencing much pleasure.

There were also clinical reports of patients with right-hemisphere damage, whose left hemisphere was intact, showing inappropriate laughter or joy in situations where that would not normally occur.

These were early clues that there might be interesting emotional differences between the hemispheres.

Why Emotion Was So Understudied (00:22:54)

Richard Davidson:
In those days, emotion was very understudied. Almost all the research on the brain and emotion was done in rats. It was focused mostly on the hypothalamus and basic drives like hunger and sex.

But these neurological patients were showing emotional changes from cortical damage, without frank damage to subcortical structures. That was fascinating to me.

I began thinking about ways to frame this theoretically. One important point is that asymmetries are not restricted to humans. You see asymmetries in other species. So maybe asymmetry is not fundamentally tied to language. Maybe language is one component of a deeper biological system.

There was a famous but obscure paper from 1959 by an ethologist, someone who studies animal behavior in natural environments. The paper traced approach and withdrawal behavior across the whole span of evolution, even in single-cell organisms.

The basic claim was that if an organism behaves at all, it will approach and withdraw. That is the fundamental behavioral decision an organism makes with respect to its environment.

In a moment of loose but creative insight, it occurred to me that asymmetry is a fundamental property of nervous systems, and approach and withdrawal are fundamental behavioral patterns. Maybe they are connected. Maybe the observations about depression and euphoria in brain-damaged patients had something to do with this.

Brain Asymmetry, Attachment, and Aversion (00:29:26)

Cortland Dahl:
That’s fascinating from a Buddhist perspective. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is not the same kind of biological mapping, but there is an incredibly sophisticated understanding of the mind, psychology, and what is called the subtle body. Asymmetry shows up all over the place. And while the terms approach and avoidance are not used in the same way, attachment and aversion are central terms. You can see the correlation.

Richard Davidson:
Yes. I’ve thought about that too. There are breathing practices, such as unilateral nostril breathing, that may differentially activate each hemisphere. There is research on that as well.

This was the beginning of my theory of brain asymmetry and its relation to approach and withdrawal, or perhaps attachment and aversion.

The Prefrontal Cortex and the Old Divide Between Thought and Feeling (00:31:19)

Richard Davidson:
This was happening in the late 1970s. I became especially interested in the prefrontal cortex.

Another major influence on me was Walle Nauta, one of the great neuroanatomists of the 20th century. He was at MIT, and I took his neuroanatomy course while I was a graduate student at Harvard. His area of focus was the prefrontal cortex.

He wrote a paper called “The Frontal Lobes and the Regulation of Mood.” It was the first time I had read someone speculating that the prefrontal cortex had something to do with emotion, not just cognition.

Historically, the prefrontal cortex was thought of as part of the brain’s cognitive machinery. Emotion and cognition were often seen as separate. This was really a byproduct of a philosophical dogma: rational thought on one side, emotion and feeling on the other, with the two considered independent and often at war.

The idea that thought and feeling could be working synergistically together was not in the lexicon or imagination of scientists in those days.

Studying Emotion in Newborn Infants (00:37:07)

Richard Davidson:
When we began, the only noninvasive way to study the human brain was EEG, which records electrical activity from the scalp. We began recording brain electrical activity in the prefrontal regions while trying to activate emotions associated with approach and withdrawal.

We thought that if these patterns were truly fundamental, they should appear very early in life. So we studied babies, including newborn infants.

How do you elicit emotional responses in newborns? It turns out to be pretty easy. We gave them a small squirt of sugar water, which they loved, and a small squirt of lemon juice, which produced a very different facial response.

Charles Darwin had written about facial expressions of emotion in humans and animals, and he claimed that expressions of pleasure and disgust were innate and present from birth. We tested this by recording the infants’ facial expressions and brain activity.

Even 72 hours after birth, you could clearly see different facial responses to sugar water and lemon juice. We also saw differences in brain asymmetry in the predicted direction.

There were big individual differences. People differ in their asymmetry at baseline, before you do anything.

People with greater left-sided prefrontal activation tend to be more approach-oriented. They tend to be more optimistic and ready to go when an opportunity presents itself. People with greater activation in the same regions of the right hemisphere tend to be more avoidant and shy.

Meditation, Brain Asymmetry, and the Immune System (00:42:37)

Cortland Dahl:
What are the takeaways from this research? Beyond just being interesting neuroscience, how does this help us understand our own minds and navigate our inner terrain?

Richard Davidson:
There are many things to say, but one concrete project led to my most highly cited scientific publication. It was published in 2003, and to the best of our knowledge, it was the first randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR, that had ever been done.

MBSR was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn as an eight-week intervention to give people initial training in awareness practices. We studied MBSR in a group of very stressed employees at a tech company in Madison, Wisconsin.

We brought participants into the lab before and after the eight-week program and measured asymmetry in their brain. We wondered whether beginning meditators might show a shift toward more left-sided activation, which we associated with a more optimistic, approach-oriented style.

The study also happened to end around Thanksgiving, which is when many people receive flu vaccines. We asked participants not to get a flu vaccine before the study ended. Instead, we gave them the flu vaccine ourselves and took blood samples before and after, which allowed us to measure antibody response.

We hypothesized that people who went through the meditation training might show a more robust response to the vaccine.

That is what we found. People showed a greater increase in left-sided activation over the course of training, and they also showed a more robust antibody response to the flu vaccine compared to untreated controls.

At the time, these were very novel findings. The study has limitations. It was not a large sample, and the methodology was not perfect. But it was the first study of its kind.

Why “It’s Not So Simple” (00:47:04)

Richard Davidson:
There is a lot more to say about asymmetry. I’ll conclude with a puzzle.

We measured brain electrical activity in very long-term practitioners who had been meditating for decades and had tens of thousands of hours of practice. They did not show extreme left prefrontal activation.

So it is not so simple.

That raised all kinds of questions about what this metric is actually reflecting. It is clearly reflecting something interesting, and it seems to be associated with early stages of meditation practice. But there may be an inverted U-shaped function, and the story is more complicated than we originally thought.

We originally thought about this in terms of approach and withdrawal, positive and negative emotion. But deeper reflection on Buddhist psychology suggests that the way we parse emotion may be imperfect.

There may be a better way to think about emotion: not simply positive versus negative, but virtuous or unvirtuous. In other words, some emotions lead us toward greater awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, while others detract from those qualities.

That gives the framework much more nuance and complexity. It became clear to us that this complexity had to be taken into account.

Closing (00:49:17)

Cortland Dahl:
I think we just mapped out about ten future Dharma Lab episodes. This was fantastic.

I’ve wanted to have this conversation for a long time, just to geek out on these questions and these lines of research, because they are so fascinating and have so many implications.

I have even more questions now than when we began. I especially want to talk about the 1990s, when asymmetry caught the popular imagination through ideas like “left brain” and “right brain.” As one of the pioneers of that field, I’d love to hear how you think about the ways it was popularized, simplified, and maybe misrepresented.

But that’s another conversation.

Thank you, Richie. And thank you everyone for listening. This will not be the last conversation of this kind. Take care, and see you soon.

But something else happened in that moment. As he flew through the air, before he knew whether he would live or die, his mind opened into a state of awareness unlike anything he had ever experienced. No pain. No fear. No past or future. Just a radiant clarity so complete and compelling, so foreign to anything in his life up to that point, that it completely reorganized his identity.

He couldn’t make sense of it afterward. He had no framework for what had happened. No spiritual vocabulary, no philosophical context. All he knew was that his understanding of his own mind, and of what was possible for a human being, had been permanently altered. And he had no idea where to look.

He spent more than three decades searching.

The Inner Sky

His search took him in many directions. Eventually it brought him to a meditation retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan teacher that Richie and I have both studied with for many years. Sitting in that retreat, something clicked. He had finally found the language for what had happened to him on that battlefield.

The word in Tibetan is rigpa.

Translated literally, rigpa just means awareness. But this translation misses something. This is not ordinary awareness, the kind we operate from most of the time, which is filtered through layers of identity, habit, memory, assumption, and reaction. It isn’t the awareness shaped and narrowed by who we think we are, by our personal history, by the million small lenses we’ve accumulated over a lifetime without realizing it.

Rigpa is not that. It’s the nature of awareness itself. The open, knowing quality of mind that underlies all of our ordinary experiences of self, while being completely beyond them. The classic image is sky and weather. Clouds, storms, clear days, all of it arises within the sky and passes through it. The sky is never touched.

This is what my friend had glimpsed. The shock of being so suddenly at the precipice of death stripped away everything ordinary, and for a few seconds he saw what was underneath.

Mingyur Rinpoche calls rigpa our “inner sky.”

The Most Direct Path

Within the Tibetan tradition, this recognition of rigpa is considered the most direct path to awakening. It doesn’t require a gradual transformation through meditation or a slow refinement of character. Rather, it’s a recognition, available right now, of something already present and already complete. The “fruitional approach,” as it’s sometimes called, begins from the premise that you are not a broken thing that needs to be fixed. You are already in this moment, as awake as you will ever be. The work is to see that clearly, to stop overlooking it.

But of course, that’s harder than it sounds.

Rigpa is so simple that we don’t believe it. It’s so close that we look right past it. Like the air you breathe, or, if you’re a fish, the water you swim in. The very immediacy of it makes it invisible.

Getting in touch with rigpa involves two parallel streams of practice.

One is the direct method: learning to glimpse this pure awareness, growing familiar with it through repeated recognition, until what was once a rare flash becomes something more continuous. In the Tibetan tradition, this typically happens through so-called “pointing out instructions.” These are experiential instructions given by deeply experienced teachers that guide students to explore different states of consciousness, and eventually helping them see beyond all these shifting states to the underlying “essence” of mind that has been there all along. This is described as “meeting your own mind face to face.” But you’re not meeting the busy, reactive mind crowded with thoughts and reactions and memories. It’s a direct encounter with the very nature of consciousness.

There are many ways to get a glimpse of awareness: Being in nature, moments of joy and celebration, experiences of awe and wonder. But most of these experiences come and go without us recognizing what just happened. They’re just memorable experiences that quickly pass by. To nurture them, we need to recognize what they are and learn how to find our way back to them. This is what “pointing out instructions” are for.

The other stream is slower and less glamorous. It works with everything that blocks this encounter from happening. It unearths our mental and emotional habits and loosens the rigidity of our unconscious beliefs. It illuminates the places where we’re stuck, the patterns we return to compulsively even knowing they don’t serve us. This stream of practice is known as “ngöndro” in Tibetan, which translates as “foundational practices.” This path includes a whole series of meditations and contemplations:

• Reflections on the unique opportunity we have as human beings

• Contemplations of the fragility of the circumstances we take for granted

• Meditations on how easily we get caught in cycles that don’t serve us

• Practices that reorient the heart toward compassion

• Imagination-based practices that help us to let go of old mental and emotional baggage

• Meditations on generosity and giving that upend the feeling of inner impoverishment that many of us carry through life

Most people spend years with these practices, doing the unglamorous work of loosening up the mind so that a glimpse of pure awareness becomes possible.

A New Frontier in Contemplative Science

Almost none of this has been studied.

Richie has spent decades studying some of the most advanced meditators alive, including Mingyur Rinpoche. He documented brain states that are genuinely extraordinary, both during meditation and at baseline. But that research captures the outcome of decades of training. It doesn’t show the before and after, or what happens to an ordinary person when they have their first glimpse of pure awareness.

There are so many interesting questions we have yet to explore: What actually happens in the mind and brain when someone recognizes pure awareness for the first time? What do the foundational practices do as they slowly loosen the hardened layers of self? What shifts in someone who has been caught in cycles of suffering and begins, for the first time, to see through them?

We don’t know. We haven’t looked.

The process of recognizing and growing familiar with rigpa reflects the far reaches of human potential, an area of inner exploration almost entirely unmapped by modern research. Richie and I talk about this often. There’s an unwritten assumption running through most of the scientific literature on mental health that simply being free from psychological disorders is the best we can reasonably hope for. That being “okay” is as good as it gets.

These teachings point in a completely different direction. They describe a dimension of the human mind that isn’t damaged or in need of repair. A source of clarity, care, and creativity that isn’t something you build toward but something that’s already here, already whole. Many wisdom traditions point to this same territory. The Tibetan tradition does it with particular precision and depth, but it isn’t alone. The mountain has more than one path, and people have been finding their way up it for a long time.

Finding Your Way Home

My friend’s story from Vietnam has stayed with me since he shared it so many years ago. He didn’t arrive at an experience of pure awareness after decades of meditation practice. He stumbled into it in the worst possible circumstances, and had spent thirty years trying to understand what it was. He wasn’t looking and searching simply to understand what he’d experienced. He was lost and he wanted to find his way back home. He just needed a map.

Most of us are not going to have a dramatic beginning to our journey like my friend did. There are many ways to get a glimpse of pure awareness. But his story captures something important about the human condition: We spend much of our lives looking and searching. We don’t always know what we’re looking for, but there’s a vague sense that something more is possible than whatever it is we’ve got going right now. But we’re looking outside ourselves. It usually never occurs to us that what we’re looking for might already be here, and that the place to find it is not outside, but within.

My friend found that out on a battlefield in Vietnam. He spent thirty years finding his way back. But the path doesn’t have to take that long, and it doesn’t have to start with a mortar shell. It is right here, waiting to be recognized.

Warmly,

Cort

Podcast Chapter List

0:00 Relationships are rough: using partnership as a spiritual path
1:11 Introducing Devin and Nico Hase and This Messy, Gorgeous Love
5:36 What can a monastic tradition teach us about relationships?
7:05 Devin on translating Buddhist teachings into modern lay life
9:53 Nico on bringing Dharma into the gritty reality of family and partnership
11:29 Richie on family, feedback, and why Dharma must matter in real life
15:23 Retreat, relationship, and why we can’t hide from ourselves
18:04 Partners as teachers: what relationships reveal about us
19:34 Nico on monastic ideals, friction, and freedom
21:29 Richie on being exposed, seen, and changed by relationship
22:16 Self-knowledge, co-regulation, and the dance of partnership
23:36 Writing the book together and relationship as mirror
25:07 Cort on intimacy, fear, and what love uncovered
28:40 Relationships are rough: the myth of smooth sailing
30:04 Vulnerability, exposure, and becoming resilient together
31:21 Dukkha and the “bumpy ride” of partnership
34:24 Appreciation, gratitude, and learning to see the good
42:42 Conflict styles: volcanoes, diplomats, and dodgers
52:19 The trance of nice: kindness, emotion, and authenticity
55:12 Practical takeaways: check-ins, fun, and daily connection
57:43 Final reflections on relationships, friendship, and the book’s wider relevance

Some of you may have caught the live session we did shortly after we got back. If not, here’s a bit of context.

We traveled with a small group of scientists and friends—including our colleagues Sona Dimidjian, Elena Antonova, Nirosha Murugan and Martin Picard (whose Substack we highly recommend), along with Adam Weissman and Christina Glavas.

The purpose of the trip was to meet an eminent Tibetan lama, Khandro Tseringma Rinpoche.

Khandro-la, as she is often called, is one of the great living exemplars of the Tibetan tradition. And she is completely unique.

Why We Went

We were there for dialogue, but more than anything, we were there to listen.

The central theme of our time together was the possibility of enduring well-being—a kind of inner flourishing that isn’t fragile or dependent on circumstances, and doesn’t rise and fall with the constant movement of thoughts and emotions.

From a scientific perspective, this is almost unexplored territory. We have a growing body of research on happiness, stress, resilience, and even meaning and purpose. But the idea that well-being could be stable and enduring—that it could remain even as conditions change—is barely on the map.

So we went in with a very simple intention: to learn from her experience. Not to translate it too quickly into scientific frameworks, but to really listen, and see whether her perspective might help us begin asking better questions. Questions that could eventually shape research, but also speak more directly to the human condition—how we live, how we suffer, and what might actually be possible for us.

A Rare Opportunity

We had two full days with Khandro-la.

Our group of scientists was joined by an extraordinary group of Tibetan teachers, including Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, along with scholars and a global audience of several hundred people who were simply there to observe.

And for those two days, we did something that is almost never done.

We listened to Khandro-la speak openly about her inner experience.

In the Tibetan tradition, especially among accomplished meditation masters, there is a strong norm, almost a prohibition, against sharing personal realizations in public. Typically, these kinds of experiences are only discussed with one’s teacher, or with a very small circle of close practitioners.

In fact, when someone speaks openly about their realization, it’s often taken as a sign that something is off.

But this was different.

At the direct request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (who personally trained her), she agreed to share her experience openly.

That made this an incredibly rare opportunity: a chance to hear, firsthand, how a deeply realized practitioner understands her own mind.

A Childhood Unlike Any Other

Khandro-la was born in an extremely remote region of eastern Tibet.

To get a sense of what that means, imagine the most remote place you’ve ever visited—and then multiply that by a thousand. Tibet is remote to begin with, and this was an especially isolated area.

She grew up in a nomadic family. She had no formal education and no access to healthcare. None of the basic structures most of us rely on.

And yet, despite what might have looked like an impoverished upbringing, from a very early age her inner life was incredibly rich.

On the first morning, we asked her to describe her childhood, especially her inner experience.

She spoke for nearly three hours, covering the period from around age two or three up to seven.

What struck me immediately was the level of detail. The specificity of her memory was astonishing. It felt less like someone recalling early childhood and more like someone describing what they had done the previous day.

I could barely believe what I was hearing. I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, let alone what I was doing at age three.

A Child Exploring Consciousness

But that wasn’t even the most striking part. What stood out most wasn’t the visionary or mystical content—though there was plenty of that. It was her curiosity. She came into this world with an intense, almost relentless interest in consciousness itself.

As a small child, she was already noticing things most adults overlook entirely. She was fascinated by how consciousness changes across the day—waking, falling asleep, dreaming, deep sleep—and she wanted to understand what was actually happening. For example, she wondered: what happens to visual consciousness when we fall asleep? Does it stop? Or is it still functioning in some way?

And she didn’t leave it at that. She ran experiments. At one point, she described sneaking up to her sleeping parents and holding a needle in front of their eyes, thinking that if visual consciousness were still active, they would react. We all had a good laugh imagining how badly that could have gone.

When nothing happened, she refined her thinking. Maybe visual consciousness is still present, but dormant behind closed eyelids. So she found someone who slept with their eyes slightly open and tried again. Still no reaction. From that, she concluded that visual consciousness doesn’t function at all during sleep, even if the eyes are open.

It’s both hilarious and kind of remarkable. A small child in a nomadic tent, running controlled experiments on consciousness.

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Turning the Experiment Inward

But what came next was even more remarkable.

She shifted from observing others to observing her own mind.

Instead of testing what was happening in other people, she began closely tracking her own experience as she fell asleep.

This is not easy to do. Even experienced meditators often struggle to maintain awareness through that transition.

But she described it in detail.

She could see the gradual shutting down of the senses. The fading of sensory input. Then the emergence of more subtle mental activity—images, thoughts, dreamlike fragments.

And then, eventually, the disappearance of even those.

What remained was what she described as a kind of bare awareness—knowing, but without any object.

No sights. No sounds. No thoughts. Just awareness itself.

In the Tibetan tradition, this is often referred to as luminosity—pure awareness, or the most fundamental level of mind.

This is something that, in traditional settings, people spend years training to recognize, often in strict retreat.

And here she was, around six years old, accessing it directly, without any formal training or conceptual framework.

Just curiosity.

What This Points To

For us as scientists, this raises some important questions.

If this account is even partially accurate, it suggests that there may be aspects of consciousness—and potentially well-being—that are far more accessible than we tend to assume.

It also suggests that what we think of as well-being might be limited. We tend to define it in terms of emotional states—feeling good, reducing stress, increasing positive affect.

But what she was pointing to is something much deeper.

A form of well-being that isn’t dependent on emotional states at all.

Something stable. Something that doesn’t come and go.

And just as important was the method.

She didn’t arrive there through theory or belief.

She got there by looking.

Two Takeaways

If I had to distill this down, two things stand out.

1. The Far Reaches of Flourishing

Most of us are looking in the wrong place for well-being.

We spend our lives chasing experiences, trying to hold onto the good ones and avoid the difficult ones.

Even when we start meditating or engaging in some kind of spiritual practice, that pattern often continues. We just shift to chasing more refined or subtle experiences.

But it’s still chasing.

We’re still oriented toward something that isn’t here yet.

What Khandro-la was pointing to is a very different approach.

Instead of trying to improve our experience, we can examine the mind itself.

We can look directly at consciousness—at the process through which all experiences arise.

At a deeper level, there may already be a kind of stability and well-being that isn’t dependent on anything else.

The traditions talk about this—especially in practices like Mahamudra and Dzogchen—but what struck me here was how direct it was. How little it depended on elaborate methods.

2. Curiosity as a Practice

The second takeaway is more practical.

Curiosity, not as an abstract quality, but as a way of engaging experience, may be one of the key ingredients.

This isn’t curiosity in the sense of collecting information or developing theories.

It’s curiosity as direct observation.

Looking at experience as it unfolds:

• Noticing how the mind shifts in different contexts

• Paying attention to transitions—falling asleep, waking up, shifting between activities

• Observing thoughts and emotions as they arise and dissolve

In that sense, we become investigators of our own experience.

Not in a detached, analytical way, but in a very immediate, experiential way.

Over time, this kind of observation can start to reveal layers of experience that we usually miss entirely.

A Personal Reflection

After that first day, something shifted for me.

Even after years of practice, I felt a renewed sense of interest.

There’s something surprisingly compelling about just watching the mind:

How different it feels in a social setting versus being alone.
How it changes when focused versus relaxed.
What happens in those in-between moments—falling asleep, waking up, switching contexts.

It’s all there, constantly changing, constantly revealing something—if you pay attention.

An Invitation

We can all explore our own minds in this way.

And this kind of exploration isn’t just interesting. It may actually change how we relate to our experience. It may help loosen some of the patterns that drive stress and dissatisfaction. And it may point us toward a deeper kind of well-being, something that isn’t dependent on getting the right conditions in place.

It’s only been a few weeks since we returned from Kathmandu, and I imagine I’ll be reflecting on this experience for a long time.

But I wanted to write some of this down while it’s still fresh, partly for myself, and partly in case something here resonates with you.

With appreciation,

Cort

P.s. If you’d like to read another account about our trip, check out this post by Martin and Nirosha, who accompanied us on the journey.

Thanks to those who attended the AMA Tuesday night, and if you missed it we are sharing the recording here. We covered a lot of ground, from the science of what keeps the brain changing across a lifetime, to what appears to happen in the bodies of advanced practitioners after clinical death. And don’t miss the 2 minute micro-pra…

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Years ago, when Fortnite went viral, my son was obsessed. Like most kids his age, he was glued to his computer. I hated it. I remembered my own childhood, roaming the neighborhood until dark. It felt wrong to watch him spend hour after hour indoors.

So I used the one leverage point I had. When he got into trouble, I took away Fortnite.

It seemed like the perfect solution. No game meant he would go outside and do what kids are supposed to do, right?

Wrong.

One afternoon I looked out the window after sending him out to play. He was riding his bike in circles. Alone. There were no other kids. They were all inside, on their own screens.

That was the moment it hit me. I wasn’t teaching him anything. I was trying to recreate a world that no longer existed.

My son is now twenty. He attends the same university I did. Many of the same buildings are still there. He’s taking some of the same courses. On the surface, he’s going through the same transition that I did when I was his age.

But psychologically, he’s living in a different world.

When I stepped onto campus as a freshman, I was paralyzed by social anxiety. Public speaking terrified me. I felt exposed and unsure of myself. But my insecurity lived mostly in my own mind.

Today’s young adults live inside systems that amplify insecurity and monetize attention. They wake up and fall asleep in a web of social comparison. Identity is curated. Attention is harvested. They are always visible, always being evaluated, or always wondering why no one is paying attention.

Even after thirty years of meditation, I still feel the reflex to grab my phone when I have a free moment. I feel the pull of the endless scroll. If we struggle with these forces as adults, imagine encountering them at twelve. Or ten. Or six.

And now we are entering something even more destabilizing with the rise of AI.

A college student today can generate an essay in seconds. They can brainstorm ideas, write code, summarize research, draft emotional messages, even simulate therapeutic conversations. The friction that once forced struggle, confusion, and original thought is quietly dissolving.

I do not say this as a critic of innovation. These tools are extraordinary.

But development matters.

Frustration tolerance matters.

Wrestling with a blank page matters.

Sitting with frustration…with boredom…with loneliness. It all matters.

When we have infinite intelligence at our fingertips, what happens to authorship? When answers arrive instantly, what happens to inquiry? When artificial systems can mirror empathy, what happens to the slow, messy work of learning how to sit with another human being’s pain?

We do not know.

The pace of technological change is far outstripping the pace of research. As Richie — my co-conspirator here on Dharma Lab — often says, we are all unwitting participants in a massive experiment for which none of us has given informed consent.

So what am I supposed to tell my son?

He is headstrong, as I was. He is navigating forces I did not face. And he needs to find his own path.

There are days when I feel powerless to help him.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I woke before dawn to catch up on email and Slack. Meetings ran back to back. By evening, my body was tight and buzzing. I was drained.

My son was having a rough day too. I wanted so badly to talk to him and comfort him, knowing full well that my attempts to express my care usually come out as a clueless parental lecture. He just needed space.

So I went upstairs, lay down, and did something very simple. I brought awareness into my body. I wasn’t trying to fix anything. I just noticed the tightness in my chest, the residue of a dozen conversations still echoing in my nervous system. I didn’t try to release it or change it. I just held space for it, the way you might sit with a friend who needed to be heard.

Within a few minutes, something shifted. Not because I figured anything out. Because I stopped trying to figure anything out. I was being, amidst all the doing.

For me, time like this is no longer optional. It is oxygen. It is water. It feels as vital to me as air.

But it does not appear on its own. I have to make time for it. If I don’t, it disappears.

This is where I return to a simple idea from Buddhist psychology: We are not reducible to our roles, our achievements, our online identities, or even to our memories and personal histories. All of those shape us. But none of them define the deepest layer of who we are.

Beneath the noise, there are currents moving through our inner landscape that are always present. Awareness. The capacity to know experience. Compassion. The capacity to care. Wisdom. The capacity to discern what leads to suffering and what leads to freedom.

These are not beliefs. They are capacities. And they strengthen with practice.

I still think about that image of my son riding in circles. It was horrifying and sad at the same time. But looking back, I can see that the loneliness I was witnessing wasn’t just his. It was mine too. I was alone in my confusion, my fear, my sense that the world had shifted beneath my feet and I had no idea how to respond.

Meditation hasn’t given me a map. But it has given me ground to stand on. And from that ground, I can be present with my son even when I can’t guide him. I can be present with my own uncertainty instead of running from it. I can keep returning to those deeper currents that don’t depend on having everything figured out.

We cannot control the world our children are growing up in. We cannot shield them from forces we barely understand ourselves. But we can practice being here. We can keep showing up. We can offer something that algorithms and platforms will never provide.

The sidewalk may be empty. But we don’t have to be.

Warmly,

Cort

Reminders:

• Our week-long pod on the science and practice of flourishing with our friends at ServiceSpace starts this Sunday, in addition to an Awakin call with Cort today at 10am ET. We hope to see you there!

• Our next live Ask Me Anything with Richie and Cort is on April 14th at 8pm ET (for paid subscribers). Please send us your questions in advance via chat, email, or in comments!

The Dalai Lama has told Richie Davidson on several occasions that when he sits down to meditate, he thinks about his brain changing. Based on decades of interaction with Richie’s research, he finds it inspiring to know that his practice is altering the structure of his brain.

When Mingyur Rinpoche is asked by beginners what the essence of meditation is, he gives a disarmingly simple answer:

“The essence of meditation is awareness.” — Mingyur Rinpoche

It sounds straightforward. But as discussed on Dharma Lab, this single quality opens the door to a vast inner universe. In a landmark paper published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Cort, Antoine Lutz, and Richie mapped the terrain of contemplative practice, categorizing the full range of meditation into three families based on their cognitive mechanisms. The goal was to give scientists a common language and a deeper understanding of the biology behind these practices. To move beyond the general term “mindfulness” and understand the full range of contemplative tools available to us.

The practices fall into three families: Attentional, Constructive, and Deconstructive. The categories are not hard and fast. Most practices have attentional elements. But the primary emphasis of each offers a fundamentally different path to well-being, and they activate entirely different networks in the brain.

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The Attentional Family: The Foundation

The attentional family is the fundamental family. It is about training your capacity to pay attention. As Richie puts it:

“We all have this quality of awareness. And what we do in the attentional family of meditation is we connect to that quality.” — Richie Davidson

You can connect to awareness through sound, bodily feelings, thoughts, or emotions. You can recognize awareness itself. You can recognize the spacious qualities of awareness. And you can recognize something Richie calls the “aperture” of awareness: the narrowness or wideness of what you are attending to.

As discussed on Dharma Lab, there are two key elements of any attentional practice. The first and most fundamental is presence itself: learning to be more fully tuned in to what is happening versus being on autopilot, absorbed, or distracted. The second is the attentional component: the aperture, meaning how wide, how narrow, and where you are shining the spotlight of attention.

Cort describes this spectrum from direct experience. During a month-long retreat in Myanmar, Cort spent weeks doing body scan practice and found he could get his attentional focus down to an almost atomic level, a high-powered laser beam of concentration. On the other end of the spectrum are practices where you widen focus until it is all-encompassing, almost without boundary. Effortless and expansive versus narrowly focused and fine-tuned. Different practices on the same attentional spectrum, all doing different things in the mind.

“It’s kind of like being an explorer out in the world, exploring new terrain that nobody’s been to. We’re doing the same thing. We’re just exploring the inner universe of our own minds.” — Cortland Dahl

Cort also spent years delivering pizzas in college, using those drives to practice awareness. Everywhere, all the time. He found that moments that would normally be filled with boredom or autopilot became moments of practice. What was once dead time became alive. This is what Mingyur Rinpoche built an entire program around, called Anywhere, Anytime Meditation: the idea that we can harness this quality of awareness anywhere, anytime.

47%

The typical person is not paying attention to what they are doing for nearly half of their waking life. (As discussed on Dharma Lab HERE referencing the 2010 Killingsworth Study)

By strengthening our capacity to connect with awareness, it becomes more spontaneously available in daily life. Standing in an airport security line, you might notice the sounds of the x-ray machines, the sensations in your body, the people around you. Not because you forced yourself to pay attention, but because awareness showed up on its own.

That is what practice does. It makes awareness available anywhere, anytime.

The Constructive Family: Nurturing What Is Already There

While attentional practices are about observing, constructive practices are about generating. Compassion, loving-kindness, gratitude. We call them “constructive” because we are strengthening, developing, or nurturing qualities that we believe are innate. In Born to Flourish, we detail the research showing that kindness and prosocial behavior are built into our biology.

This family also includes practices centered on devotion, like the Tibetan practice of Guru Yoga, where the emphasis is on constructing a specific state of mind through relationship and imagination. And it includes reappraisal: changing the story you tell yourself about an experience. From the constructive view, reappraisal shifts your interpretation from anxiety to compassion. From the insight view, it is less about changing the story and more about seeing it clearly.

The Deconstructive Family: Who Is Asking the Question?

The third family is deconstructive. This focuses on a curiosity-driven interrogation of the narratives we carry about ourselves. This is the kind of practice the Dalai Lama primarily engages in. He really doesn’t do much in terms of traditional mindfulness practice as we think about it in the West. A major portion of his practice is focused on this kind of investigation.

When we say “I am anxious,” who is this “I”? Is it all of me? Is there any part of me that is not anxious? Who is the “I” that is asking this question?

“It’s really investigating what we mean when we use a term like ‘I’ or ‘me.’” — Richie Davidson

By probing these questions, we deconstruct the rigid sense of self that often causes suffering. These practices fall under the “Insight” pillar of our framework (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose) and are essential for understanding the very nature of reality and consciousness.

Seeing clearly is the key mechanism. Not trying to stop or change or alter. Just seeing.

Things You Can Do

The best practice is the one you actually do. We encourage you to experiment in a playful way. Here are three starting points.

The “Airport Security” Practice

Next time you are in a mundane situation, a waiting room, a grocery line, a red light, tune in. Notice the sounds. The sights. The sensations in your body. See what it feels like to let awareness find you rather than forcing your attention somewhere.

Explore Your Aperture

Spend one minute with a narrow focus, like your breath, then one minute with a wide focus: all sounds in the room, all sensations at once. Notice the difference. Notice how each feels in the body. This is the attentional spectrum Cort and Richie describe, from atom-level to all-encompassing.

Ask “Who Am I?”

When a strong emotion arises, gently ask yourself who is experiencing it. Not to answer the question, but to notice what happens when you ask. Can you find the “I” that is doing the asking? This is deconstructive practice in its simplest form.

Final Thoughts

Our purpose at Dharma Lab is to give you insight into the real science coming out of the Center for Healthy Minds. As an interdisciplinary research center that has been at this since 2010, when the Dalai Lama inaugurated the center, we are in a unique position to share not just the findings, but the backstory. The seminal papers. The behind-the-scenes conversations.

The three families framework maps the full terrain of contemplative practice. Different brain networks. Different paths to well-being. One shared quality at the foundation of all of it: awareness.

We hope this framework helps you understand not just how to practice, but why it works. And we hope you will bring that understanding into your own life, everywhere, all the time.

This is the first in a series where we will go deeper into the science behind these practices. Was this helpful? Is there anything you would like us to explore further? Let us know in the comments or reply to this email. We read every response.

Key Quotes

On the Essence of Meditation: “The essence of meditation is awareness.” — Mingyur Rinpoche

On Neuroplasticity and the Dalai Lama: “He actually thinks about his brain changing based on the interactions he’s had with us. And he said he’s really inspired by that, inspired to know that the practices that he’s doing are actually changing his brain.” — Richie Davidson

On Compassion vs. Empathy: “Empathy is really about feeling the emotions of another person, whereas compassion is more about preparing to relieve the suffering of another person.” — Richie Davidson

On Exploring the Inner Universe: “It’s kind of like being an explorer out in the world, exploring new terrain. We’re doing the same thing. We’re just exploring the inner universe of our own minds.” — Cortland Dahl

On Deconstructive Practice: “It’s really investigating what we mean when we use a term like ‘I’ or ‘me.’” — Richie Davidson

Key Stat: 47% of our waking lives, the typical person is not paying attention to what they are doing.

Show Notes and Resources

Papers Cited

• Dahl, C.J., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R.J. (2015). “Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(9), 515–523.

• Killingsworth, M.A. & Gilbert, D.T. (2010). “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” Science, 330(6006), 932.

Book

• Born to Flourish by Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl. Explores the four pillars of well-being: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose.

Apps and Programs

• Center for Healthy Minds

• Healthy Minds Program (free app)

• Joy of Living program with Mingyur Rinpoche

Community

• Free week-long learning experience with Service Space (starting 4/12)

Related Dharma Lab Posts

• Previous post: Summary of the three families framework from the TICS paper

• Mingyur Rinpoche on awareness (link to tagged post)

• Dharma Lab Meditation Library

Join us for Live with Richie & Cort AMA #8 on April 14 at 8pm ET HERE

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