This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Welcome. It's wonderful to see how popular neuroscience is. Only the interaction. As you know already, today's talk is going to be Philippe Golien and myself. And I was just, the Eno asked me, would we do the regular chant? For some reason, I thought, well, we're in irregular mode, so we won't. But I do want to say this. We come in, we offer incense, and we bow. we offer incense to the innate wisdom and compassion of all beings, including ourselves.

[01:05]

Somehow to touch back in with something that's always there, always available to support our life in the midst of all the challenges and difficulties we have as a human being. And then usually we do a chant to use our body, our breath, our mind, to tune in, to tune in to where we are, to embody that intention to accord with that innate wisdom and compassion. So today, instead of doing the chant, we talked about it. A truly deplorable proposition, but there you are. And I would like to just say it's a delight. It's been a delight to get to know Philippe as we prepared for this workshop and to talk about it.

[02:12]

His exuberance, his enthusiasm, his deep commitment to the path he has chosen, this wonderful combination of psychology, neuroscience, and practice. Philippe is a long-term practitioner. And so I'd like to offer him the opportunity to begin by talking a little bit about himself. Just in brief, I've had the great fortune to be able to do many things that I really, really love. MRI physics, the physics of MR, of magnetic resonance, is exquisitely elegant and beautiful, if you ever have a chance to study it. Being trained as a clinical psychologist, therapist, is an incredibly friend of people who hear who do that. You know, what an honor it is to have somebody walk in and to give you the opportunity to learn from them as a therapist. And then also as a neuroscientist, trying to understand this beautiful, complex thing called the brain.

[03:14]

So I'm currently at Stanford University. I got a PhD from Rutgers in psychology, spent a clinical internship at San Diego Veterans Hospital, UC San Diego. And now I'm at Stanford in the psychology department. And just incredibly fortunate to work with a wonderful team. And then pre all of that academic stuff, as I mentioned earlier, my mom sent me to Asia. when I was all of about 20, because she went there before me and thought I would benefit. So I've had the great fortune to live in Nepal and India and to live in the Dalai Lama's monastery, Namgyal Monastery, where I studied Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, dialectic debate, which is super fun, really, and to translate for many different teachers. And so public and private. So I've really had a great opportunity to serve as a conduit, a translator, a conduit for others. And I'm hoping that's what we do today, too. I hope whatever we discuss today will be of benefit to your mind, not just intellectually, but also in terms of your understanding of your own mind, brain, body, and specifically your practice.

[04:26]

May you reach clarity swiftly. Maybe you're already there, and so please teach me. So in his day, Shakyamuni Buddha went to all the sages, the teachers he could come across and learn from them what he could about the process of waking up. And then as the story goes, beyond that, he searched within his own experience entering beyond what he had been taught and trying to be as authentic, as real, as exact as he could be. And he woke up. Something happened within his experience that was of a radical quality that gave him an insight into human life that then

[05:28]

shaped who he was and how he lived for the rest of his life. And he did that in a pragmatic way. He just started to practice and saying, OK, I have this fundamental experience that redefines how I relate to being alive. And that's going to be my guide, the same way we offer incense, the same way we remind ourselves of what's intrinsic in our being and that we're going to live according to it. And then other people joined him. And as they joined, they behaved like people. And so he made up rules and said things like, you know, that wasn't such a good thing to be doing. We're going to have a little guideline about not doing that. And so some of those rules were about the surround, the relational quality of practice, of staying in touch, of living according to our intrinsic wisdom and compassion.

[06:45]

And then within that surround, within that container, that created a benign environment in which practice could occur, in which people could interact in a way that supports their practice. Just as we've gathered here today to do something similar. Within that, Shakyamuni set up a methodology, a way to work with consciousness, a way to work with the habits and the patterns and the impulses of being a person. And a way to use that as a teaching to overcome the way in which that can constrict our behavior, our mental patterns, our emotional patterns, our relations with others.

[07:46]

And as we do that, to literally become an expression of goodness. to enhance within us the capacity to live with everyone else and all other beings in a way that expresses harmony, mutual respect, integrity, compassion, and wisdom. And the point I'd like to, marvelous as that is, and every detail of it, I think, can be savored and taken in as a way to nourish, inspire, and guide our own being. But something of the pragmatism with which Shakyamuni approached the societal part. You know, it's always intrigued me that when he started off and people started to practice with him, he didn't have any preset rules. The rules came up, the behaviors came up, the way they behaved with each other came up

[08:55]

around the conditions they created themselves and the conditions within which they lived. When Suzuki Roshi came to United States, he offered the same proposition, that that's what he wanted to do in this very place. And I would say to you that part of our attraction to considerations like neuroscience is that they offer us another tool. This is what has arisen in our society and our heritage, our Zen heritage, our Buddhist heritage is to be pragmatic. How can this be an agent of good? How can this be an agent of insight? How can this guide us as to how to relate to each other, how to relate to ourselves and how to cultivate the consciousness that sees how to do that and starts to overcome the hindrances that inhibit that.

[09:57]

And now Philippe is going to tell us all about it. In a very deplorable manner. Wow. Okay. Sure. Just a little tiny piece. First of all, it's great that you're all here. And as I mentioned earlier, there's just... This is a very fascinating thing because essentially just know that each of you, us, our body, mind, brain, blood flow, this is our laboratory. And this is what I tell people that I work with. This is the laboratory. And let's just try tweaking a few parameters and explore and examine. So again, just to be clear, I'm coming both from as a neuroscientist who studies, looks at brains every day, else as a clinical psychologist who does clinical research. I do actual cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance commitment therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, aerobic exercise, my favorite. I'm looking at how those differentially affect anxiety, depression, stress, brain systems that have to do with emotion, attention, self-processing.

[11:07]

So we're only going to talk about a little bit of stuff here. And we're also going to do practice because what I'm hoping to do is actually introduce you, try a couple of practices and then show you what's happening in the brain. So... Oh, wrong button. There we go. So I'm very sorry that the screen is so small. This might have to go up. Hang on, hang on. There we go. I just have to do this like so. So the motivation really is that... There is angst, suffering, confusion, doubt in all of us. And the question is, are there methods of whatever means that fit who we are to be able to reach clarity, creativity, excitement, energy in the mind? Einstein, a great hero.

[12:10]

Note that he did not speak until he was four years old. So he said, a happy man is too satisfied, a happy person is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future. So that's a clue. It's nothing wrong with the future and the past, but there's a lot in the present to learn from. The goal here, just briefly, is to really talk a little bit about brain behavioral mechanisms, systems that we are beginning to understand... in the brain and how they function and how they relate to everyday experience and psychological capacities. In my case, in the context of both healthy adults, but also in people with mental distress, depression, anxiety, using different types of meditation techniques, all in the spirit of trying to reduce suffering and enhance well-being. And there's a huge interest in how to do this and how to examine this. So as we all know, A fly can get stuck on a sundew leaf, and this is my representation of sticky mind, my own sticky mind.

[13:13]

Where are the cul-de-sacs, the stickiness, the glue that my mind gets stuck on? To become familiar with that, that's a natural thing, so that we can actually try to transform into this mountain stream, fluidity, flexibility, spontaneity, bubbling, moving energy. And the question is, how much can we understand these? So in the context of clinical psychology specifically, but all of us, we all have this cascade of negative self-beliefs. They can be very subtle or they can be really deep core negative self-beliefs. And that's what we often work with in cognitive behavioral therapy, for example. But the question is, how do we go from these negative beliefs to psychological flexibility and freedom? One method is certain kinds of meditation practices. training the mind through discipline. I like to call it WD-40. In fact, that's the punchline. WD-40 is an analogy for the effects that I've been seeing in my lab on mindfulness, Vipassana, insight meditation, that it really, at least from the measures that we are examining, it's really leading to a more flexible state of mind that is more emotionally aware and more able to shift

[14:33]

And we're able to implement many different forms of emotion regulation, which is key to mental health and physical health. And how does this play out in the brain? Well, one neural model simply, and this is just a simple neural model on which to hang some of the ideas and practices we'll do today, which is that we are constantly bombarded with stimuli, external or internal, real or imagined. It would be interesting to measure how much imagined stuff is happening per day. And the idea is that in a given moment, in milliseconds, the brain in human animals has evolved to be super sensitive to pick up cues in the environment that indicate safe, unsafe. Scary, wonderful. Personally, really important. Personally salient, not important. And a lot of that is happening in a system of regions... that here is in red, emotional reactivity. The amygdala is one of those regions.

[15:36]

Highly important for emotional detection. This is important to me, and it generates emotions and arousal and energy. That quickly sends a signal upstream to other parts of the brain to say, hey, help. Help regulate. Not that there's anything wrong with emotions at all, but if they become a little too extreme, or too dramatic, are there ways to implement attention regulation, cognitive regulation, thinking strategies, attentional shifting strategies to help down-regulate different aspects of the emotion, the duration, the type of emotion, the intensity of the emotion, et cetera. In humans, human animals, us, what's unique are the two other bubbles, yellow and green. Here, self and language. Language, because as we know, we have a architecture, neural architecture dedicated to both verbal expression with others, but also internal dialogue that either can be neutral or harmful, like an internal critic.

[16:45]

And that very much mediates the effect of different stimuli that can either induce emotional reactivity or not. Additionally, there is no self in the brain. That has nothing to do with Buddhism. Neuroscience has found that. Totally. There's no place where the self exists in the brain. In fact, what does exist are concepts or ideas or different modes of self-processing. And this is something that no respectable neuroscientist would have talked about 10 years ago. Now, it's the rage. Truly. Because the brain, in some contexts, people's self-report about what they're experiencing can be extremely clear. In other contexts, the brain speaks more clearly than the mouth. It depends on the context and the question being asked and the specific dependent variables you're looking at. But there's really interesting research that I've published in another lab in Toronto has published on different modes of self-processing. So when you're focused on yourself, there's a very clear network.

[17:48]

And we will actually look at that. Well, we may not do it now, but we might do it later. But in any case, how we view ourself in a positive manner, a negative manner, conceptually embodied, physical, sensory sense of self that's not conceptual. These are all different modes of self-processing that we're constantly moving through that influences how we pay attention, what kind of emotions we might experience, and how skillful we are in working and regulating our emotions. And that can be either increasing or decreasing or just modifying. When this system is working well, you have the confidence to experience all kinds of emotions, thoughts, experiences, and learn from them. When it's not functioning well, it's dysfunctional, exaggerated emotional reactivity, deficits in top-down regulation. This is what leads to clinical disorders like major depression, anxiety disorders. suicidal ideation, etc. So this is really one of the core mechanisms that everyone is now implementing in both clinical research, be it brain-wise, but also in clinical practice.

[18:55]

Attention. Attention is the gateway to all other higher-order functions in the brain. So attention is like a door through which you get to this beautiful prefrontal cortex, language, emotion, etc., etc. So Anything that we do that impacts the quality of our attention has huge ramification, implication, influence on the rest of the brain, on the rest of our experience. So this is why I think Shakyamuni Buddha and neuroscientists now are really focusing initially on attention. And attention is not one thing. There are many forms of attention. Obviously, attention to other people, attention to my bodily sensation, attention to internal experience, thoughts, ideas, memories, attention to other people's language, etc. So there are many aspects of attention, multiple components. Attention is limited. And one of the key questions is, are there specific mental training practices that can begin to enhance...

[20:02]

aspects of our attention. Can I actually place more attention on an object? Can I hold more things in mind? Can I shift my attention willfully in situations where before I was stuck and I could not? And it's happening in the brain. So some wonderful, the gurus, Michael Posner. He's the guru of attention. He's up in Oregon. I bow to his feet. He's a beautiful, beautiful example of a scientist who has done incredible work on attention. So here, essentially, there are three attention networks. And what I'm going to do is represent them this way, because to me it's clearer. There are many aspects, but here there are three that he has focused on. Alerting, the ability to focus my attention willfully on an object. Vigilance. That's one capacity. Each of these capacities are instantiated in different and overlapping networks in the brain. And that's what's so cool about brain imaging, neuroimaging. So we can actually say, okay, so here we have to see the network. How much can you modify it?

[21:03]

If we all went into aerobic exercise, would that change our attention networks? If we all did an MBSR class or if we did a three-month silent retreat, how much of a dent or increase or change can you put in these networks? Another aspect is orienting. Right now you hear my voice and you're orienting your attention to the sound of my voice. There might be a cue or a fire alarm and we shift our attention. So the ability to shift and reorient our attention. And the third, super important, and develops the latest in development in humans, is executive control. Goal-oriented or top-down executive control of attention. So this is a willful... placing and directing of attention, often goal-oriented. I want to place my attention right here because I want to listen. So these are three aspects that we've been able to delineate the neural architecture for each of these. One study that I had published in Emotion was looking at mindfulness-based stress reduction in people with anxiety disorders.

[22:07]

And the point here is that the areas that you see in red and yellow colors in the brain are areas that map onto this attention network. And this is showing that compared to baseline, before the two and a half months of training, when asked to willfully direct their attention in the context of looking at their own negative self-beliefs, the ability to shift the attention while reading my own negative self-beliefs, I'm not okay the way I am, something is wrong with me, why am I so anxious, et cetera, et cetera, your own stuff, to redirect the attention to the sensation of the breath, at the tip of the nose, redirecting attention. And what we see, the neural evidence is that they were increased ability to recruit neural activity related to attention regulation. So that's cool, but it's only one study. In science, don't get too excited about any one study. We need replication across multiple labs. That's when it really becomes exciting.

[23:08]

Now here, I want you to pay attention because this is super important. This is from Tang and Posner. And here, essentially, in the black circle above the green bar, that's where we want to be. Optimal performance. That's related to attention. He called it attentional balance state. So the question is, in each of us, do I know, am I familiar with my own mind and body? Is there a certain attentional state that I know in my own self? That is the basis for optimal performance, be it listening to your partner when he or she is suffering, be it at work, be it somebody who's working in an airport or in an airplane or right this moment. What does that optimal, dynamic, balanced state of attention look like in me? And there's no one answer, but this is the question. And when I'm not at there, where am I? Well, here on your left is the wandering mind. And more research going on right now into mental wandering.

[24:10]

How can you identify it when a person's mentally wandering? Now, this is not necessarily bad. There's a lot of evidence showing that when the mind starts loosening up the associations, that's a place where creativity occurs. But when I want to be focused on something. The other side is fatigue. Am I really aware of when my attention is fatigued? And how can I bring it back? What are the methods that work for me to do that? So this is just laying out kind of a dynamic state of attention. Neuroimaging. So there are many different methods that we use for peering into the brain. Some are more or less invasive. And hopefully new methods are being created all the time. And there are many methods. One method that I use is... this machine, it's called an MRI, magnetic resonance imaging. And essentially it's kind of, it's not invasive because you're not using any radioactivity or dyes or et cetera, et cetera, but it is noisy.

[25:12]

So we have to use earplugs and it's not always the most pleasant. There are machines that have been made for monkeys where you can sit and we're hoping that to get that for humans, but they're really, really expensive because lying down on your back is not always the most comfortable position. But the beauty of this tool is is that it allows us to go under the skull and let the brain speak for itself in a non-invasive way, in the sense that it relies on neural activity. And I'll show you in a moment. This is actually an older graph. There are many, many different forms of brain imaging. Functional MRI is just one. And they all have pros and cons. And there's not one that's truly better than the other, per se. It depends on what your question is. But right here in orange, orange square, that's functional MRI, which is a little bit slow compared to like EEG or MEG. And all of these have different temporal resolution and spatial resolution, how small a space in the brain you can really look into. So just to make the point that there are many different methods, and sometimes scientists combine these methods in the same study.

[26:17]

One slide. to show you how in fMRI, functional brain imaging, how we do this. So you might be lying in the scanner and it might show you a belief. I'm not okay the way I am, for example, and I'll have you spin or ruminate on your own negative belief. That will cause certain neurons to start firing that trigger neural networks or circuits to start firing. And that then leads to glucose and oxygen being used up, the energy inside the brain. And it sends a signal to downstream saying, hey, Send more blood, send more fuel, send more oxygen, more glucose. And specifically, oxygenated hemoglobin is brought forth in cerebral blood flow to the areas where neurons are firing. So right this moment, if you're looking at my face, there's an area called the fusiform face area that's super active. And this is what we actually use as a basis for making, with a lot of stats, a lot of signal processing, images. And here it's shown just these red colors. And this is then where you need to understand functional neuroanatomy and how psychological abilities are instantiated in the brain.

[27:24]

So there's a lot of steps, but it's a very, very exciting tool. So that's one of the main tools we use in my lab. Another tool is EEG. And as you can see, what's nice, we're also doing a study with that right here in San Francisco. We just finished a two-month-long compassion meditation training. And if people are interested, we're going to be doing that again and again. So we use questionnaires, we use computer tasks, but we're also using EEG to see how attention networks shift over two and a half months of meditation training. And this is another method. You don't go into a machine, but you put this cap, and it's measuring electrical current on the surface or the scalp of the brain, super, super fast, milliseconds, but very poor spatial resolution compared to a femur eye. And you get these different patterns that are indicative of being alert or sleepy or awake, attentive, and you can begin to interpret people's mental states and their capacities through these electrical currents. So this is another method. So here's an image of a couple of monks. This has been used with meditation, specifically with attention, because attention is occurring in brain regions on the surface of the cortex that can be picked up with EEG.

[28:34]

Wonderful researcher, Antoine Lutz, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's done some fantastic work. And this is to point out that hardcore, really discriminating scientific journals are now beginning to publish meditation research. And again, 10 years ago or more, no respectable scientist would talk about this because it was not accepted. So this is really evidence that there's a shift in even hardcore neuroscience. And one of the things that a wonderful neurologist at Stanford said to me, he said, look, figuring out Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, it's not that difficult. It's just enough engineers and scientists cracking, they'll crack the code. But something that really transforms society that actually will help us bring world peace. How could neuroscience really contribute to that? And I think that why so many young scientists are interested in contemplative practices and integrating... their methods into the study of meditation is because this is really something that we see has an applied capacity.

[29:44]

And so a lot of young scientists really, really want to make a difference, not just stick around in a lab, but get out of the lab and do something that's meaningful to society before we destroy our planet. So here, focused attention on an object, open monitoring, object-less meditation. So we're going to try it. But here, focused attention, not only when you're sitting, but somebody like Michael Jordan, focusing attention with gentle intensity on an object in a sustained manner. Putting a ball in a hoop. Open monitoring, for lack of a better term, we don't have good vocabulary, or receptive awareness is another term. Monitoring the ebb and flow of of your own experience from moment to moment to moment in order to recognize the patterns, thoughts, images, memories, sensations that are occurring and flowing.

[30:46]

Okay, so if you can put everything down, I'm gonna guide you through this in the spirit of you working in your own research laboratory, your own mind, body. So I'm gonna guide you just briefly through these two different ways of training attention. So if it's helpful, you can let the spine be straight. See if you can relax the 42 muscles on the face. Relax the neck, the shoulders, relax your back. And begin just gently by letting the gravity of your attention settle down into awareness of your breath. No need to control how you're breathing at all. simply noticing the subtle sensation as you breathe in and as you breathe out. Literally noticing the sensations that arise and shift and dissolve with each inhalation and each exhalation.

[32:07]

If and when your attention drifts, just gently bring it back to the object of attention, focusing on the sensation of your own breath inside your nostrils. Literally feeling your breath You might even notice that at the end of the inhalation, there's a short pause before you begin to exhale.

[33:22]

See how subtle and focused you can make your mind, like a laser beam. you might notice the difference in the temperature of the breath during the inhalation versus the exhalation. Now what I'd like you to do is just lean back in your chair.

[34:50]

And now in your mind's eye, I'd like you to simply rest and to notice from moment to moment any thought, image, memory, sensation. Notice how it's arising. Without grasping, pushing away, or pulling towards, just let any experience, the content of the mind stream, simply pass through. Nothing to hold on to. No object to focus on. Simply resting in the moment. And receptively, Observing. Simply observing the mind stream.

[35:52]

Anything. All. Widening the field of view. No right or wrong. Nothing to do. And now take a deep, deep breath, and then gradually, slowly open your eyes.

[37:14]

Just notice whatever you're feeling in your laboratory, your own body-mind, right this moment. So these are two different kinds of practices. How many people felt more... at ease, comfortable doing the breath-focused, object-focused attention? How many people felt more comfortable or at ease doing the open monitoring? Okay. Often people, there are individual differences, and this is fascinating. Some people feel that when they're focused on their breath, they can really not be disturbed by anything else. Other people, just the opposite. Some people say when they do this more receptive awareness or open monitoring, that they're just noticing, and because there's nothing that is an object to be refuted, pushed away, or hold on to, anything can pass through the mind. These are different practices that train different aspects of the brain, the psychology.

[38:19]

Here's one really interesting study on focused attention. This was a Vipassana inside meditation retreat for three months, 12 hours of meditation per day, and they did... EEG, measuring electrical current on the scalp, pre and post. This was a dichotic listening task, so they had headphones on, and they were supposed to attend to sound on either the left or the right ear. This is one way to represent EEG data. There are many ways. Hot colors mean greater activity, and essentially the red colors are showing that from pre to post, There was an increase in neural signal in the red areas that have to do with, in the back, the parietal lobe, attention, and the midfrontal, and the right dorsolateral. This is an executive control component of attention regulation, greater from pre to post, specifically during this task.

[39:26]

The key thing here is to see that... I'm not going to go into the details, but the red line... shows that the blue were novices, people with no real meditation practices who did a couple of minutes, pre and post three months. The dotted red line were the people who did the Vipassana meditation retreat at baseline. And the solid red is post three months of Vipassana meditation. And essentially it's showing that when there is a deviant tone, their attention regulation network was able to stay focused. and required less cognitive effort, less recruitment of brain regions that would require effort to control their attention. So this is just one tiny little thing with just a tone, a deviant tone, but it's really interesting, clear evidence of one specific attention regulation capacity being enhanced three months. Elegant study. So here I'd like just to... Oh, I'm sorry.

[40:29]

This one showed Correct. From here, these were novices who did not have a meditation practice prior to the retreat and who had, I think, just a couple of minutes of training. So the red line, those are people who did 12 hours silent meditation for three months. But I want to make the point because, again, individual differences are so important because this always comes up. How many minutes, how many years of practice do you need to become a concert violinist? How many hours of practice? I don't know. Years and years. How many years of practice do you need to become a PhD? How many years of practice do you need to reach enlightenment? How many years do you need to actually enhance some of the muscles of the brain? Individual differences. So maybe for this person, if he gets the right practice, maybe in a year he can have huge changes. Maybe for another person it takes 30 years of practice. So... Individual differences are incredibly important in psychological research. All of us come with different propensities and capacities.

[41:31]

So it's not like we should be depressed, oh, I need to do three months of silent meditation retreat 15 times to develop my mind. No. In fact, we actually don't know. And that's a good thing. I only put this up because I was also helping educate myself in the correct terms, but just that there's here, and you can tell me if this is accurate, Susoku, meditation that's more similar to concentration meditation, where the practitioner counts their breaths in order to focus their attention. So that seems more like object-focused practice. Here, zazen, counting is omitted, and the meditators remain simply aware of the present moment experience. So I put this up just as kind of a framing for this object-focused and object-less. But the idea is to achieve a mental state of full awareness with reduced conceptual content, being stuck less.

[42:35]

I'm going to just show a little bit of Zen meditation research data. There's a lot going on now. The first historical study of using EEG with Zen practitioners, and they actually found that this decreased alpha... and decrease theta. So essentially, that this was showing that there is an increased ability to down-regulate neural signals that have to do with lots of cognitive effort. That's the take-home message. Quantitative EEG, another form of EEG, again with Zen meditations, but specifically Zazen. They also saw that there was a slowing down or reducing of alpha, and here they looked at 10 experienced monks, 10 moderately experienced monks, and 10 controls, no meditation experience. And again, they found this slowing down of alpha. But here, more importantly, there was an association with the amount of meditation experience. The more experience in meditation, the greater ability to downregulate specific electrical currents in the brain.

[43:38]

So that becomes yet more interesting. Another study, more recent, this has to do with looking at age effects. As we age, our brain shrinks. As we age, the connectivity across regions also changes. Here, this is the key point. Meditators in this particular part of the brain called putamen, as they got older, no decrease in gray matter. Their brain in that region did not shrink. Is some kind of contemplative practice a buffer against one of the normal effects of aging, which is that your brain begins to shrink? Normal people, controls, shrunk. Meditators, no. Actually, this is the whole brain. And here, even more convincingly, that was just for this one area. Controls, it got smaller as you got older. In meditators, it did not shrink. This has been found in Zen.

[44:41]

It's also been found in long-term Vipassana insight meditation practitioners, not monks. So this is a really interesting thing, and we have no idea about the mechanisms. Is it that people who meditate experience less stress, less oxidative degeneration of brain tissue? That's one possibility. But clearly, what needs to be done, this is a cross-sectional study. What you need is perspective, but that's very costly. You take 120-year-olds, half of them meditate, half don't, for the next 10 years, 20 years. and see what are the effects. That's a prospective study. That's a much better methodology. But be that as it may, this is very interesting across multiple forms of meditation practice. What's the significance of that area? Yeah, puteum is involved in many things. It's an area that has a lot of signal that's relaying from prefrontal cortex, higher order cognitive abilities, executive function control, all of our thinking, perspective taking.

[45:43]

Signals are relayed through putamen, striatum, down to lower subcortical regions. So it's a relay area. So you could imagine, I mean, one possible hypothesis is that as we get older, that begins to shrink, as does the whole brain. And there's less effective communication across brain regions. So that's one. Cortical and limbic. Cortical and subcortical. But it's involved in many things. No, this is cross-sectional. This is the age of the controls and meditators. These are just healthy adults. Some who are meditators and some who are... It's just their age. But only measured at one time point. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Just a correlation. Correct. We don't know yet.

[46:50]

We don't know yet. Don't know yet. Conceptual processing in Zen. So conceptual processing, this kind of thinking. So here, one of the ideas is that one study by a friend of mine, Pannoni, at Emory University, just two years ago, he found that Zen practitioners, long-term Zen practitioners, had reduced duration of neural responses that are linked to conceptual, thinking, processing, specifically in the left hemisphere, but in something called the default mode network. When we are just in a resting state, there's a clear network of brain regions that are coherently oscillating. And that's been thought as the internal chatter of the mind. That's one way to think about it. And he found that people who are long-term Zen meditators had reduced activity in that self-chatter part of the brain. which the inference is that that's less conceptual thinking mental chatter.

[47:51]

That's really cool. And greater ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations that were triggered by stimulus. So I say dog, you immediately think cat. So I say loved one, you get an image of a person. So there's automatic associations that we do, which is totally normal. But he found that there was greater ability to dampen down... those automatic associations, these prepotent responses in long-term Zen practitioners. Also, the ability to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation thoughts. So the ability to regulate, to either allow it to occur, spontaneous thinking, or to tone it down. They were able to actually titrate more effectively than non-meditators. So this is interesting, but again, one study. So take it with a grain of salt. Sorry, I think that's the same thing. Biological studies of Zen practitioners looking specifically at oxidative stress.

[48:57]

So we have these free radicals that occur in the body that seem to be corrosive and seem to be kind of harmful in general to health. Finding that people who are Zen meditators versus matched controls... higher serum nitric oxide, which is a naturally occurring anti... I always have problems pronouncing this word. Atherosclerotic agent in the vascular wall. This is really interesting because we're doing a study right now at Stanford with women who identify as having heart disease, who have not had a heart attack, but who have vascular walls or arteries that are rigid. And we're literally measuring non-invasively if mindfulness meditation reduces the rigidity of the walls of their vessels. It's an agent that reduces the buildup of plaque, so to speak.

[50:00]

Not in our mouth, but in our arteries. And that's a good thing because that leads to less heart conditions. So that's a really interesting specific biological finding. The idea is that maybe Zen meditation, by reducing psychological stress, could prevent stress-related diseases such as heart attacks, etc. So that's a really cool finding. Again, these things have to be replicated. Clinical studies, 59 long-term Zen studies. practitioners versus 24 college students. Why do we study college students? And those college students were... We always have debates about this at Stanford. And actually now I don't study college students because they're not normal. Or maybe they are normal, but I don't want to study them. The long-term Zen meditators... greater relaxation, mental quietness, sensation of timelessness, boundlessness, infinity.

[51:04]

I would probably add that leads to creativity. Greater love, thankfulness, prayfulness, reduced worry. So these are all obviously well-being measures, but it's a nice sample size, 59. Hypertension. I actually found that in a six-month Zen process, So this is pre-post versus a two-month Zen practice that also had progressive muscle relaxation, which is a method for working with the body. And they actually found these are people who self-reported as well, I'm sorry, who are identified as having heart disease and hypertension, high blood pressure. And it actually was shown to be helpful in reducing blood pressure. So that's very helpful. Another study. This is really fascinating for anybody. How many people here are working? as therapists or health workers or several. This is really cool. So they had 124 inpatients with mental problems, mental psychiatric problems. They were randomized to two sets of nine therapists.

[52:05]

Either there was nine Zen practitioners who were also psychotherapists or nine psychotherapists with no meditation training. And they looked at the effect on the client's treatment outcome. of the clients as a function of therapists with and without an ongoing Zen meditation practice. And they found that the clients reported higher or more positive evaluations for the individual therapy and problem-solving perspectives, greater symptom reduction in a whole bunch of things. So this is really interesting. So this is the more relational effect that a therapist who has an ongoing practice, he or she, perhaps unknowingly, actually conveys something that leads to greater effect of the individual psychotherapy. So I thought that was a very cool thing. I have much more, but I think that maybe... I'm not sure of the timing because I'm not wearing a watch. Just pause. Okay.

[53:06]

So just in summary, this was just a quick... Actually, that was just a quick review of some of the studies that are published. There are many more that are coming out. And I think the spirit is really to try to understand the effects of different practices, Zen and others, and how can this be harnessed in different arenas for people with different specific types of mental or physical sources of suffering. And then, of course, longer term... is really understanding how does a person who practices Zen, how does that transform their relationships and themselves long-term? But again, those are studies that will take a lot more money and energy. But the good thing is that the National Institutes of Health are beginning to support these types of studies because they're realizing that this is effective. There's a lot more, but we'll pause here. Wow. So let me see if I got this right. If you practice Zen, your brain works better, you're going to live forever, and you're a whole lot better at relating.

[54:13]

And what more do you want? And you're much more sexy. I didn't see that on the chart. I didn't put it there. It could be a problem. Don't wash. And dare I say it? Any questions? Right back there. Yeah, Lee. Yeah, Lee. Stand up, please. Thank you, Lee, for that shameless advert.

[55:51]

Please. If you could stand up so everyone can hear your question. Yes. Yeah, the answer is yes. One of the three gems, right? The Sangha. Just the group effect.

[57:04]

I mean, psychological research, that's huge. Being with like-minded people. One of the most successful programs has been mindfulness-based stress reduction. As many people know, it's now three decades old, and it's been brought right into medical settings. Actually, everything. Now, that's completely secularized, and that was done intentionally about 35 years ago by John Kabat-Zinn et al., to make it more palpable at a time when people would gawk at anything that was Buddhist. Depending where you live in the United States or in the world, that kind of stigma no longer exists. So now at Stanford, which is a pretty hardcore conservative... tough environment. There are a lot of people who self-identify as practitioners and scientists or Christian practitioners, meditators, and neuroscientists. So now the stigma pretty much has dropped. But specifically to your question, I totally agree. Context is important. And most people who do like a mindfulness-based introduction, that is just a two-month intro.

[58:07]

And if they really get ignited, they totally advance into... going off and doing retreats, coming to Dharma centers. Actually, we often provide a list of the Dharma centers so they can go much further. Because really, the things that are done in mental health settings or hospitals are just a little tiny two-month intro. If that serves as a platform that catapults people's interest to going into that Dharma, which provides much deeper, richer context, and much greater... variety of practices and people that you can talk to and be with, that's really a good thing. So I'm not worried about the medical. The medical setting is just trying to get whatever is helpful. But they're not trying to strive for enlightenment. But that's okay. That's okay. And if I could say, we can and do and will corrupt all of the different methods that we inherit. But also along with it always comes the challenge.

[59:10]

Can you authenticate this in your own being? Through your own personal experience, can you discover what really works? This is the heritage of Zen, this is the heritage of Shakyamuni Buddha. And then beyond that, will it get commercialized? Well, probably. But hopefully, Maybe in response to that or in counterbalance to that, those of us who hold practice dear and see more to life than just making a buck will also be a powerful influence in how it's developed, how it's spread out, disseminated into the world. That's why I think it's so important as practitioners that we also hold the aspirational aspects of the bodhisattva vow. You know, if you come across a good thing in practice, that you share it generously and authentically with others. You know, that's the nature of having a Zen center.

[60:12]

Please, Judith. Can you study grasping and aversion in the brain? Can you study grasping and aversion in the brain? Yes and no. Yes. I mean, it depends how you define it. So like there are, right here, there's a circuit. here, here, that has to do with inhibitory control. We're actually trying to block out things. So you can set up experiments where you can test how much a person is blocking. You can actually set up experiments where the idea is that you have to let go of a stimulus here to process something here. And the extent to which this is attractive and I can't let go, that gets it grasping. So it's all about how you set up your experimental design. And that's actually the real creativity in science is thinking hard, hard, hard, well before you do a study how to conceptualize, operationally define, and get an experiment that tightly, tightly matches the specific construct that you want to get at. So yes, it is definitely about – there are self-report questionnaires that get at this.

[61:18]

Self-report is dubious. Did I have a cup of coffee before? Did I just have a fight with my wife? Does that influence a self-report? But experimental tasks are usually a cleaner way to get at what you're asking. So yes, it can be, and it will be. Okay, one last question. Please. So that's a lot of stuff. So the question is, do any of these practices, will they be of benefit to a young person who's suffering from attention deficit disorder, anxiety, Asperger's, autism, etc.?

[62:26]

So UCLA, Sue Smalley, there's a mindful awareness research center. They're doing fantastic work and looking at the effect of mindfulness meditation training for attention deficit. So they're focusing on just one aspect. If you look at the research data, meta-analyses or reviews of the past 30 years of meditation research, in general, be it mindfulness, Vipassana, TM, et cetera, all of them definitely show consistently reduction in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress. So that definitely can be helpful. For Asperger's, you need something that's much more specific. I don't know of any study that says that meditation is good. And meditation is not necessarily good for everyone or for everything, per se. But again, the word meditation refers to many, many different kinds of practices. So one issue in the research is, okay, there are some practices that are about concentration, object-focused or attention training.

[63:28]

Some are analytic, thinking-focused. analysis. Some are conceptual, some are non-conceptual, some are image-based visualization, some are sound-based. And these are many different practices. And I would not stand here and say, who this would be beneficial for you. We don't have that clarity yet at all. So the developmental trajectory of training in different practices is extremely dependent on having a teacher who hopefully she or he can see you more clearly than you can see yourself at the moment. And you can say, give you guidance. That's part of the context in the Dharma that's so important. I just want to say in closing, part of the benefit I think this offers us, it shows us something about the conditioned relatedness of our experience. It helps us, it gives us at least a brief antidote to the endless chatter and involvement and concern about the world according to me, and will I survive, will I be happy, and will I suffer less?

[64:37]

So this offers us, in a way, a compelling perspective of conditioned existence. Experiences come in, they are processed, and a result happens. This is, of course, as you know, a fundamental Buddhist teaching. And I just want to really thank deeply and sincerely Philippe for coming and sharing passionately, enthusiastically, the wealth of knowledge that he has gained from working in this field. And as we were just finishing, I was thinking, well, how do we continue this? And certainly You can actually join the workshop. You'll have to pay, but you can join the workshop if you wish. We'll go through today and tomorrow morning, and you can sign up with Joan of the front office, according to that. Future things, future instantiations, or just come and sit and do some research on your own.

[65:40]

I mean, that's the best. Yes. And who knows, after 10 or 20 years, it might be. You never know. Or after three months. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[66:20]

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