14 A Healthy Mind

 

 

14 A Healthy Mind

 

Dr. Susan Davidson, Richie’s wife, is a specialist in high-risk obstetrics— and, like Richie, a longtime meditator. Some years back Susan and a few others decided to organize a meditation group for the doctors in her hospital in Madison. The group met Fridays, in the morning. Susan would send out regular emails to the hospital’s physicians reminding them of the opportunity. And very often she would be stopped in the hallway by one or another of them who said, in effect, “I’m so glad you’re doing this.”

 

And then add, “But I can’t come.”

 

To be sure, there were good reasons. The physicians at the time were even more busy than usual, trying to implement electronic record keeping before there were ready-made templates for it. And the medical specialty that trains “hospitalists”—in-house physicians and staff who deliver comprehensive care to inpatients, freeing up time for others from having to make rounds—did not yet exist. So the meditation group likely would have represented a boon for those harried physicians, a chance to restore themselves a bit.

 

But still, over the years only six or seven physicians showed up at any given session. Eventually Susan and the others ran out of steam; feeling the group never got real traction, they ended it.

 

That feeling of not having time may be the number one excuse among people who want to meditate but never get around to it.

 

Recognizing this, Richie and his team are developing a digital platform called Healthy Minds that teaches meditation-based strategies to cultivate well-being, even for those who say they “have no time.” If you insist you are too busy for formal meditation, Healthy Minds can be tailored so you can piggyback your practice on something you do anyway, like commuting or cleaning the house. As long as that activity does not demand your full attention, you can listen to practice instructions in the background. Since some of the main payoffs from meditation are in how they prepare us for everyday life anyway, the chance to practice in the midst of life could be a strength.

 

Healthy Minds, of course, adds to the ever longer list of apps that teach meditation. But while those many apps use the scientific findings on the benefits of meditation as a selling point, Healthy Minds will go one crucial step further: Richie’s lab will scientifically investigate its impacts to assess how well such piggybacked practice actually works.

 

For example, how does twenty minutes a day during commuting compare to twenty minutes a day sitting in a quiet place at home? We don’t know the answer to this simple question. And is it better to practice in a single twenty-minute period, two ten-minute periods, or four periods of five minutes each? These are among the many practical questions Richie and his team hope to answer.

 

We see this digital platform and the research evaluating it as a prototype of the next step in widening the path of access to the many benefits science finds from contemplative practice. Already MBSR, TM, and generic forms of mindfulness are in easy-to-access forms anyone might benefit from, without having to embrace, or even know about, their Asian roots.

 

Many companies, for instance, have deployed these approaches as beneficial both for their employees and for the bottom line, offering contemplative methods as part of their training and development menus; some even have meditation rooms where employees can spend quiet time focusing. (Of course, such offerings need a supportive work culture—at one company where workers pounded away at their terminals for exhausting hours on end, Dan was told in confidence that people seen using the meditation room there too often might be fired.)

 

Amishi Jha’s group at the University of Miami now offers mindfulness training to high-stress groups ranging from combat troops to football players, firefighters, and teachers. The Garrison Institute outside New York City offers a mindfulness-based program to help frontline trauma workers in Africa and the Middle East deal with their secondary trauma from, e.g., fighting the Ebola epidemic or helping desperate refugees. And Fleet Maull, while serving a fourteen-year sentence for drug smuggling, founded the Prison Mindfulness Institute, which now teaches inmates in close to eighty prisons across America.

 

We see contemplative science as a body of basic information about the many ways our minds, bodies, and brains can be molded toward health in its broadest sense. “Health,” as the World Health Organization defines it, goes beyond the absence of disease or disability to include “complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” Meditation and its derivatives can be an active ingredient in such well-being in several ways, and can have a long reach to far corners.

 

Findings from contemplative science can spawn innovative approaches that are soundly evidence-based, but which look nothing like meditation per se. These applications of meditation to help solve personal and social dilemmas are all to the good. But what the future might bring excites us, too.

 

Distancing these methods from their roots may be to the good—so long as what emerges stays grounded in science—making these solutions more readily available to the widest range of people who might benefit. Why, after all, should these methods and their benefits just be for meditators?

 

GUIDING NEUROPLASTICITY

 

“What do plants need to grow?” asked Laura Pinger, a curriculum specialist in Richie’s center who developed the Kindness Curriculum for preschool children.

 

That morning, many among the fifteen preschoolers learning to emphasize kindness eagerly waved their hands to answer.

 

“Sunlight,” said one.

 

“Water,” said another.

 

And a third, who had struggled with attention problems but benefited greatly from the kindness program, shot up his hand and blurted out, “Love.”

 

There was a palpable moment of appreciation for what became a teachable moment. The lesson this led to was about kindness as a form of

love.

 

The Kindness Curriculum begins with very basic, age-appropriate mindfulness exercises where the four-year-olds listen to the sound of a bell and pay attention to their breathing as they lie on their backs, small stones placed on their tummies rising and falling with each breath.

 

They then use that mindful attention to focus awareness on their body, learning how to pay close attention to those feelings while interacting with other kids—particularly if that other child has gotten upset. Such upsets become opportunities to have the children not only notice what is happening in their own bodies but also imagine what might be happening in the body of their upset classmate—a venture into empathy.

 

The children are encouraged to practice helping one another, and to express gratitude. When children appreciate the helpfulness of another, they can reward that act by telling the teacher, who will give the helpful child a sticker on a poster of a “kindness garden.”

 

To evaluate the impact of this program, the Davidson group invited children to share stickers (important currency for a toddler) with one of four children: their favorite person in the class; their least favorite classmate; a stranger—a kid they’ve never met—or a sick-looking child.

 

Toddlers in the kindness curriculum shared more with the least favorite and the sick children, compared to other kids in standard pre-K who gave most stickers to their favorite person.1 Another finding: unlike most children, the kindness kids did not become self-focused when they reached kindergarten.

 

Helping children develop kindness seems an obvious, good idea—but at present this valuable human capacity is left to chance in our educational system. Many families, of course, instill these values in their children—but many do not. Getting such programs into schools ensures that all children will have the lessons that will strengthen this muscle of the heart.2

 

Kindness, caring, and compassion all follow a line of development that our educational system largely ignores—along with attention, selfregulation, empathy, and a capacity for human connection. While we do a good enough job with the traditional academic skills like reading and math, why not expand what children learn to include such crucial skills for living a fulfilled life?

 

Developmental psychologists tell us that there are differing rates of maturation for attention, for empathy and kindness, for calmness and for social connection. The behavioral signs of this maturation—like the rambunctiousness of kindergartners versus better-behaved fourth graders— are outer signs of growth in underlying neural networks. And neuroplasticity tells us all such brain circuitry can be guided in the best direction through training like the Kindness Curriculum.

 

At present how our children develop these vital capacities has been left mainly to random forces. We can be smarter in how we help children cultivate them. For instance, all meditation methods at their root are practices in strengthening attention. Adapting these techniques in ways that bring attention-building exercise to children has an array of advantages. No attention, nothing learned.

 

It’s remarkable how little consideration goes to strengthening attention in children, especially because childhood offers a long period of opportunity for growth in the brain’s circuitry, and added help might strengthen those circuits. The science of cultivating attention is quite robust, so the path to accomplishing this aim is within our reach.

 

And we have all the more reason: our society suffers from an attention deficit. Today’s children grow up with a digital device at hand continuously, and those devices offer constant distractions (and a larger stream of information than for any generation in the past), so we consider boosting attention skills to be nothing short of an urgent public health need.

 

Dan was a cofounder of the movement called “social/emotional learning,” or SEL; today there are thousands of schools offering SEL around the world. Boosting attention and empathic concern, he has argued, are the next step.3 To be sure, a robust movement has emerged to bring mindfulness to schools and particularly to poor or troubled youth.4 But these are isolated efforts or pilots. We envision programs in focusing attention and kindness one day being part of the standard offerings for all children.

 

Given how much time school-age kids spend playing video games, that speaks to another route to delivering these lessons. The games, to be sure, are sometimes demonized as contributing to the attention deficit we collectively face in modern culture. But imagine a world in which their power can be harnessed for good, for cultivating wholesome states and traits. Richie’s group has collaborated with video game designers who specialize in educational games to create some for young teens.5

 

Tenacity is the name of a video game based on research in Richie’s lab on breath counting.6 It turns out that if you are asked to tap an iPad on each inbreath, most people can do this very accurately. However, if they are also asked to tap with two fingers every ninth breath, on this second task they make mistakes, indicating their mind has wandered.

 

Richie and his colleagues used this information as the core game mechanic in developing Tenacity. Kids tap the iPad with one finger on each in-breath and with two fingers every fifth breath. Since most kids are highly accurate in tapping with each in-breath, Richie’s team can determine if the double-finger taps correctly tracked each fifth breath. The more strings of five accurate counts, the higher the score on the game. And with every correct two-fingered tap, the iPad screen’s scenery gets more decoration; in one version, gorgeous flowers began to sprout in a desert landscape.

 

Playing the game for just twenty to thirty minutes daily over two weeks, Richie’s group found, increased connectivity between the brain’s executive center in the prefrontal cortex and circuitry for focused attention.7 And in other tests, the players were better able to focus on someone’s facial expression and ignore distractions—signs of increased empathy.

 

No one believes these changes will last without continued practice of some kind (ideally, without the game). But the fact that beneficial changes occurred both in the brain and in behavior is a proof of concept that video games can improve mindful attention and empathy.

 

THE MENTAL GYM

 

When Richie gave that high-profile lecture at the National Institutes of Health, the in-house notice of his talk offered this intriguing speculation: “What if we could exercise our minds like we exercise our bodies?”

 

The fitness industry thrives on our wish to be healthy; physical fitness is a goal most everyone espouses (whether or not we do much about it). And habits of personal hygiene like regular bathing and tooth brushing are second nature. So why not mental fitness?

 

Neuroplasticity—the shaping of the brain by repeated experiences—goes on unwittingly throughout our days, though we are typically unaware of these forces. We spend long hours ingesting what’s on the screen of our digital devices, or in countless other relatively mindless pursuits. Meanwhile our neurons are dutifully strengthening or weakening the relevant brain circuitry. Such a haphazard mental diet most likely leads to equally haphazard changes in the muscle of the mind.

 

 Contemplative science tells us we can take more responsibility for the care of our own minds. The benefits from shaping our minds more intentionally can come early, as we saw in the data on loving-kindness practices.

 

Consider work by Tracy Shors, a neuroscientist who developed a training program she hypothesized would increase neurogenesis—the growth of new brain cells—called Mental and Physical (MAP) Training.8 Participants did thirty minutes of focused attention meditation followed by thirty minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise two times a week for eight weeks. Benefits included improved executive function, supporting the notion that the brain was shaped positively.

 

While working out intensively produces more muscle and better endurance, if we stop exercising, we know that we are heading back toward more breathlessness and flab. The same goes for the changes in the mind and brain from that inner workout, meditation and its spinoffs.

 

And since the brain is like a muscle that improves with exercise, why not an equivalent of physical fitness programs—mental gyms? The mental gym would not be a physical space but rather a set of apps for inner exercises that can be performed anywhere.

 

Digital delivery systems can offer the benefits of contemplative practice to the very widest numbers. While meditation apps are already in wide use, there are no direct scientific evaluations of these methods. Instead the apps typically cite studies done elsewhere on some kind of meditation (and not necessarily the best such studies), while failing to be transparent about their own effectiveness. One such app, which supposedly enhanced mental functions, had to pay a large fine when government agencies challenged their claims, which proved unsupported.

 

On the other hand, the evidence so far suggests that were well-designed digital deliveries to be tested with rigor, they might do well. For example, there was that study of web-based instruction in loving-kindness (reviewed in chapter six, “Primed for Love”) that showed it made people both more relaxed and more generous.9

 

And Sona Dimidjian’s group reached out on the web to people who have low-level symptoms of depression—a group at a higher-than-average risk for a bout of full-blown depression. Sona’s team developed a web-based course, derived from MBCT, called Mindful Mood Balance; the eight sessions reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety such as constant worry and rumination.10

 

But these success stories do not automatically mean any and all online teaching of meditation or its derivatives will be beneficial. Are some more effective than others? If so, why? These are empirical questions.

 

To the best of our knowledge, there is not a single publication in the mainstream scientific literature that has directly evaluated the efficacy of any of the multitude of meditation apps that claim a basis in science. We hope one day such an evaluation would be standard for any such app, to show it works as promised.

 

Still, meditation research offers abundant support for the likely payoff from mind training. We envision a time when our culture treats the mind in the same way it treats the body, with exercises to care for our mind becoming part of our daily routine.

 

NEURAL HACKING

 

The New England snow was somewhere between icy and melting that March morning, and the living room of the Victorian house on the Amherst College campus contained a small Noah’s ark of disciplines. There were pairs of religious scholars, experimental psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers.

 

The group had gathered under the auspices of the Mind and Life Institute to explore the corner of the mind that begins with everyday desire. Sometimes that pathway runs through craving to addiction—be it to drugs, porn, or shopping.

 

The religious scholars there pinpointed the problem at the moment of grasping, the emotional impulse that makes us lean in toward pleasure, whatever form it might take. In the grip of grasping, particularly as it slides in intensity toward craving and addiction, there’s a sense of uneasiness that drives the clinging, seductive mental whispers that the particular object of our desires will relieve our dis-ease.

 

Moments of grasping can be so subtle they pass by unnoticed in the frenetic distractions of our usual state of mind. We are most likely, the research shows, to reach for that fattening treat in the moments we are most distracted—and addicts are likely to seek the next fix when they see small prompts, like the shirt they wore during a high, that flood them with memories of their last fix.

 

This state contrasts, philosopher Jake Davis noted, with the sense of utter ease we feel when we are free of compulsive motivations. A “mind of nongrasping” renders us immune to these impulses, content in ourselves as we are.

 

Mindfulness lets us observe what’s happening in the mind itself rather than simply be carried away by it. Those impulses to grab start to stand out. “You need to see it to let it go,” said Davis. While we are mindful we notice such impulses arising but regard them in the same way as other spontaneously arising thoughts.

 

The neural action here revolves around the PCC (postcingulate cortex), suggested psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson Brewer, who had just become director of research at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester—birthplace of MBSR. Mental activities where the PCC plays a part include being distracted, letting our mind wander, thinking about ourselves, liking a choice we’ve made even if we find it immoral, and feeling guilty. And, oh yes—craving.

 

Brewer’s group, as we saw in chapter eight, “Lightness of Being,” imaged the brains of people during mindfulness, finding the method quiets the PCC. The more effortless mindfulness becomes, the quieter the PCC.11 In Brewer’s lab, mindfulness has helped people addicted to cigarettes kick the habit.12 He has developed two apps—for overeating and for smoking— applying his PCC findings to breaking addictions.

 

Brewer went on to translate this neural finding into a practical approach using “neurofeedback,” which monitors the activity of a person’s brain and tells them instantly if a given region is getting more or less active. This allows the person to experiment with what their mind can do to make their PCC less active. Ordinarily we are oblivious to what goes on within our brain, particularly at the level read by brain scanners and the like. That’s a main reason neuroscience findings carry such weight. But neurofeedback pierces that mind-brain barrier, opening a window on the brain’s activity to allow a feedback loop. This lets us sense how a given mental maneuver impacts the goings-on within our brain. We envision a next generation of meditation-derived apps that use feedback from relevant biological or neural processes, with Brewer’s PCC neurofeedback as a prototype.

 

Another target for neurofeedback might be gamma waves, that EEG pattern that typifies the brain of advanced yogis. Still, while some gamma wave feedback simulation of a yogi’s vast openness might result, we do not see neurofeedback as a shortcut to the yogi’s realization of altered traits. Gamma oscillations, or any particular measure taken of the yogis’ state of mind, offers at best an arbitrary and thin slice of the rich fullness yogis seem to enjoy. While gamma wave feedback, or some other dip into such elements, may offer a contrast to our ordinary mind states, they by no means equate with the fruits of years of contemplative practice.

 

But there are other possible payoffs. Consider the meditating mice.

 

Meditating Mice?!? This ridiculous possibility—or a very vague parallel —has been explored by neuroscientists at the University of Oregon. Okay, the mice didn’t really meditate; researchers used a specialized strobe light to drive the mouse’s brain at specific frequencies, a method called photic driving, where the rhythm of EEG waves lock into that of a flashing bright light. The mice seemed to find this relaxing, judging from rodent signs of lessened anxiety.13 When other researchers drove the rodent brain into the gamma frequency with photic driving, they found it reduced the neural plaque associated with Alzheimer’s disease, at least in aged mice.14

 

Could feedback of gamma waves (that frequency abundant in yogis) slow or reverse Alzheimer’s disease? The annals of pharmaceutical research are rife with potential medications that seemed successful when used in mice, but failed once human trials began.15 Gamma wave neurofeedback for preventing Alzheimer’s disease in humans may (or may not) be a pipe dream.

 

But the basic model, that neurofeedback apps may make once rarefied states available to a wide swath of people, seems more promising. Here again we see caveats—not the least being that such devices are likely to produce temporary state effects, not lasting traits. Let alone the huge divide between years of intensive meditation and merely using a new app for a bit.

 

Still, we envision a next generation of helpful applications, all derived from the methods and insights unveiled by contemplative science. What shapes these will eventually take we just do not know.

 

OUR JOURNEY

 

The hard evidence for altered traits came slowly, over decades. We were graduate students when we started on the scent, and now, as we sum up what has, finally, become compelling evidence, have reached the era of life when people look toward retiring.

 

For much of this time we had to pursue a scientific hunch with few supporting data. But we were comforted by the dictum that “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The roots of our conviction lay in our own experiences in meditation retreats, the few rare beings we had met who seemed to embody altered traits, and our reading of meditation texts that pointed to these positive transformations of being.

 

Still, from an academic point of view, this amounted to an absence of evidence: there were no impartial empirical data. When we began this scientific journey there were scant methods available to explore altered traits. In the 1970s, we were stymied—we could only do studies that tangentially spoke to the idea. For one thing, we had no access to the appropriate subjects—instead of dedicated yogis from remote mountain hermitages, we had to settle for Harvard sophomores.

 

Most important, human neuroscience was in its tentative, beginning phase. The methods at hand for studying the brain were primitive by today’s standards; “state of the art” in those days meant vague or indirect measures of brain activity.

 

In the decade before our Harvard years philosopher Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, holding that science shifts abruptly from time to time as novel ideas and radically innovative paradigms force shifts in thinking. This idea had caught our fancy as we searched for paradigms that posited human possibilities undreamt of in our psychology. Kuhn’s ideas, hotly discussed in the scientific world, spurred us on despite opposition from our own faculty advisers.

 

Science needs its adventurers. That’s what we were as Richie sat on his zafu through that hour of not moving with Goenka-ji, and what Dan was as he hung out with yogis and lamas, and spent months poring over that fifthcentury guidebook for meditators, the Visuddhimagga.

 

Our conviction regarding altered traits made us vigilant for studies that might support our hunch. We filtered the findings through the lens of our experience, drawing out implications few others, if any, were seeing.

 

Sciences operate within a web of culture-bound assumptions that limit our view of what is possible, most powerfully for the behavioral sciences. Modern psychology had not known that Eastern systems offer means to transform a person’s very being. When we looked through that alternate Eastern lens, we saw fresh possibilities.

 

By now, mounting empirical studies confirm our early hunches: sustained mind training alters the brain both structurally and functionally, proof of concept for the neural basis of altered traits that practitioners’ texts have described for millennia. What’s more, we all can move along this spectrum, which seems to follow a rough dose-response algorithm, gaining benefits in accord with our efforts.

 

Contemplative neuroscience, the emerging specialty which supplies the science behind altered traits, has reached maturity.

CODA

 

“What if, by transforming our minds, we could improve not only our own health and well-being but also those of our communities and the wider world?”

 

That rhetorical question, too, comes from the internal notice at the National Institutes of Health about Richie’s talk there.

 

So, what if?

 

We envision a world where widespread mental fitness deeply alters society for the better. We hope the scientific case we make here shows the enormous potential for enduring well-being from caring for our minds and brains, and convinces you that a little daily mental exercise can go a long way toward the cultivation of that well-being.

 

Signs of such flourishing include increasing generosity, kindness and focus, and a less rigid division between “us” and “them.” In light of increases in empathy and perspective taking from various kinds of meditation, we think it likely that these practices will produce a greater sense of our interdependence on one another and with the planet.

 

When nurtured on a grand scale, these qualities—particularly kindness and compassion—would inevitably lead to changes for the better in our communities, our nations, and our societies. These positive altered traits have the potential for transforming our world in ways that will enhance not only our individual thriving but also the odds for our species’ survival.

 

We are inspired by the vision of the Dalai Lama as he reached eighty years of age. He encourages us all to do three things: gain composure, adopt a moral rudder of compassion, and act to better the world. The first, inner calm, and the second, navigating with compassion, can be products of meditation practice, as can executing the third, via skillful action. Exactly what action we take, though, remains up to each of us, and depends on our individual abilities and possibilities—we each can be agents in a force for good.16

 

We view this “curriculum” as one solution to an urgent public health need: reducing greed, selfishness, us/them thinking and impending ecocalamities, and promoting more kindness, clarity, and calm. Targeting and upgrading these human capacities directly could help break the cycle of some otherwise intractable social maladies, like ongoing poverty, intergroup hatreds, and mindlessness about our planet’s well-being.17

 

To be sure, there are still many, many questions about how altered traits occur, and much more research is needed. But the scientific data supporting altered traits have come together to the point that any reasonable scientist would agree that this inner shift seems possible. Yet too few of us at present realize this, let alone entertain the possibility for ourselves.

 

The scientific data, while necessary, are by no means sufficient for the change we envision. In a world growing more fractured and endangered, we need an alternative to mind-sets snarky and cynical, views fostered by focusing on the bad that happens each day rather than the far more numerous acts of goodness. In short, we have ever greater need for the human qualities altered traits foster.

 

We need more people of goodwill, who are more tolerant and patient, more kind and compassionate. And these can become qualities not just espoused but embodied.

 

We—along with legions of fellow journeyers—have been exploring altered traits, in the field, in the lab, and in our own minds, for more than forty years. So, why this book now?

 

Simple. We feel that the more these upgrades in the brain, mind, and being are pursued, the more they can change the world for the better. What sets this strategy for human betterment apart from the long history of failed utopian schemes comes down to the science.

 

We have shown the evidence that it is possible to cultivate these positive qualities in the depths of our being, and that any of us can begin this inner journey. Many of us may not be able to put forth the intense effort needed to walk the deep path. But the wider routes show that qualities like equanimity and compassion are learnable skills, ones we can teach our children and improve in ourselves.

 

Any steps we take in this direction are a positive offering to our lives and our world./.

 

Notes