Dharma Lab

Dharma Lab
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Modern neuroscience meets ancient contemplative wisdom, with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl www.dharmalab.co

  1. -1 j

    Your brain builds reality like a dream; August AMA with Richie and Cort

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dharmalab.co How much of what we experience comes from the world itself, and how much comes from our expectations about it? In our latest AMA, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl explore how the brain constructs perception, why the gap between reality and expectation can amplify suffering, and what changes when we begin to notice that process as it happens. We had a few moments of technical issues with frozen screens or background noise, but they don’t last long. What’s inside * Why your brain constructs reality the way it builds a dream * Why controlling the mind backfires * TMS: is it cheating? * Why open awareness loosens pain * The neuroscience of grief and regret * A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Cort) * A preview of our upcoming November summit * The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording for paid members Companion Flashcards At Bottom Your brain builds reality like a dream A listener named Linda asked about acceptance, and about the idea, drawn from Anil Seth and Lisa Feldman Barrett, that reality is a construction of the mind. Cort answered first, and reframed where suffering actually comes from. It’s actually the gap between reality and our expectations of what should be happening. However big that gap is, that’s like the size of suffering in that moment. —Cortland Dahl Cort was clear it is not erasing expectations. It is seeing that they are there and that they are out of step with what is happening, bringing them into the light of conscious experience rather than letting them run under the hood. Then Richie discussed how the brain networks that build our beliefs and expectations are the very networks through which we perceive. He used the dream as proof. Just as in a dream, we can feel those emotions in our body, and there are documented changes in our heart rate and breathing, and yet there’s nothing out there. It’s all in our mind. It turns out that’s actually the way it works with the real world. That’s how our brains construct reality. —Richard Davidson His image for the practice came from Mingyur Rinpoche: caught in the middle of a river, you are swept along by the turbulent flow. Become aware of the thoughts and expectations driving your perception, and it is more like sitting on the bank, watching the water move without being pulled in. Cort added a pointer for anyone who wants the science firsthand, calling Anil Seth’s TED talk one of the best he has seen. The picnic and the four police officers Victoria asked why open awareness loosens physical pain. Richie described what his lab calls “stickiness,” the attachment or aversion that makes an emotion reverberate long after the thing that caused it is gone. In open awareness, the reverberation drops away. In some of our own research, the response in sensory regions is actually larger when you’re doing open awareness. It’s not diminished. But there’s no reverberation. It happens and comes back to baseline. We’re not creating emotional zombies.—Richard Davidson That fast return to baseline, he said, is a neural signature of resilience. Cort then told a story from the Tibetan tradition that ties to this. Imagine you drive to a park for a picnic, thrilled to be there. Then four police officers walk up and tell you that you are ordered to stay in this park all day, that they will block you if you try to leave. Even though you wanted to go there in the first place, suddenly everybody’s trying to think how they can get out. Life does not like to be constrained and controlled in any way.—Cortland Dahl The mind works the same way. The harder we clamp down on a feeling, the more it strains to escape. Open awareness runs the other direction. Cort called it a practice of trust, close to the opposite of control. FREE · 2-MINUTE PRACTICE LED BY CORT 2-minute practice: Wherever you are, settle into a comfortable posture. Let your eyes stay gently open or close them. Take a few moments to simply feel the breath moving in and out of the body. Notice the sounds around you, or the silence. Then open the heart a little by bringing to mind the many challenges in the world right now, the suffering so many are carrying, and form a quiet intention: that whatever good comes from your practice might ripple outward and ease the suffering of others. Rest there for a few breaths, then carry that motivation into whatever comes next. The full hour, mapped Read the gist below, then drop into the recording at any timestamp. 03:46 — “Grandpa!” and the end of the sitting. Twelve minutes into an early-morning practice, Richie’s two-and-a-half-year-old grandson opened the door. He let the formal session go and kept practicing as grandpa. Anywhere, anytime meditation; everywhere, all the time. 08:32 — Active practice is as powerful as the cushion. The Healthy Minds research finds the benefit of active practices comparable to formal sitting. Cort put his son down for nearly every nap for three years and came to see those as the real practice. 09:59 — Acceptance and the gap. Suffering tracks the gap between reality and our expectations. The shift is not dropping expectations but seeing them clearly. 13:54 — Your brain constructs reality like a dream. Anil Seth, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and the river metaphor. Perception is built by the same networks that build belief. 17:40 — So how do we share a reality at all? Rob from Toronto asks about controlled hallucination and shared social realities. Richie on entrainment, cooperation, and why it remains “a shared illusion of a sort”.” 20:18 — Why open awareness loosens pain. Stickiness, reverberation, and the larger-but-faster response that marks resilience. We are not creating emotional zombies. 27:00 — The picnic and the four police officers. Why control backfires in a park, in a relationship, and in the mind. Open awareness as trust. 29:40 — TMS and the urge to hack the mind. TMS stands for “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, and Richie explains that TMS belongs to a broader family of methods designed to modulate brain function relatively non-invasively. There is growing interest in whether these tools could affect meditation, but he emphasizes that we do not yet know whether they meaningfully support practice. The Center for Healthy Minds has also been exploring neuromodulation and meditation more broadly. Cort shares about neuromodulation as one more entry point into an interdependent system. 37:37 — Where does awareness live in the brain? Edith’s question. Visual cortex, anterior cingulate, and the honest answer: no single location, no single switch 40:24 — The unresponsive who were actually aware. Melanie Boly’s work: patients thought to be vegetative held more awareness than we credited, unable to communicate it. A communication problem, not an awareness problem. 45:18 — The neuroscience of grief that doesn’t fade. Amygdala and hippocampus jammed together, and reconsolidation: a memory is a reconstruction that changes each time it is recalled, not a photograph. 51:20 — When grief opened into gratitude.Cort on his father’s sudden death four years ago, holding the feeling fully in the body, and the sadness opening, unbidden, into gratitude. 57:38 — A free November summit.A free online gathering through ServiceSpace this November, with Sharon Salzberg, Jud Brewer, Robert Sapolsky, Martin Picard, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Laurie Santos. November 2026 Free Online Summit with Legends of Neuroscience and Practice

    Your brain builds reality like a dream; August AMA with Richie and Cort

  2. 20 août

    Free Guided Meditation Practice Hour (Recording)

    Dharma Lab’s First Guided Meditation Hour In Dharma Lab’s first guided practice hour, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson took us from talking about wellbeing to actually practicing it. Drawing on the Healthy Minds framework of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, shaped through years of research and practice connected with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Humin (formerly Healthy Minds Innovations), they led participants through four short practices designed to make each capacity directly experiential. The session explored a central idea running through their work: meditation is less about fixing ourselves than learning to recognize and cultivate qualities of wellbeing that are already present. Keep Practicing — Upcoming Events If you’d like to continue exploring these practices, the free Healthy Minds Program App offers guided practices and learning across awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, with Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson, and other teachers. Our next “Ask Me Anything”with Richie and Cort is live on Tuesday, August 25th, 8pm ET. Please send us questions in advance by replying to this email or dropping a comment. We have an exciting lineup of guest speakers for a free online summit in November to explore the restless mind. More details to come, but check out initial info at the bottom of this email and registration details here. Please share widely! Thank you for your support and we hope to see you at these future events. —The Dharma Lab Team This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dharmalab.co/subscribe

  3. 13 août

    Why Can't I Stay Focused?!

    In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson explore why attention feels harder to control than it used to, how modern technology exploits basic mechanisms in the brain, and what we can do to regain more choice over where our attention goes. They discuss why we may be more distracted than we were 50 years ago, how novelty and emotion capture attention, and why simple acts of intentionality can function like reps for the brain. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Wed Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here! Companion Flashcards In This Episode: 00:00 Taking Back Control of Attention 01:21 Why Focus Feels So Hard 02:51 Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago? 05:15 Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction 09:03 How Our Attention Gets Hijacked 13:20 Why Surprise Captures the Brain 16:35 The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling 17:44 How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control 21:24 Rebuilding Control Over Attention 25:53 Attention as a Practice of Intention 29:46 Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus Written transcript for those who prefer to read: 00:00 — Taking Back Control of Attention Richie: Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us, and it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from. There are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression. Cort: I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I noticed the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to You know, turn and look to see what was happening over there, like actually just making a choice. Like you were saying, the reps, you can do a thousand of those a day easily. 01:21 — Why Focus Feels So Hard Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, one of the co-hosts here, and of course I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson. Richie, to all of us who know him well, one of the preeminent neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re gonna discuss one of the most common problems that probably every human faces, which is how incredibly hard it is just to stay focused. Now, I must admit, maybe this is an embarrassing admission, given that I’m supposedly one of the experts who’s talking about this stuff. But there’s a lot of days where I’m sitting, getting stuff done, answering emails or focused on some project. And it’s just really hard to not get pulled in to other things. You know, I’m answering emails and suddenly I’m shopping online or I’m working on a report and then I’m checking my emails. It’s just it feels like There are so many things in our life that are just pulling us in a million different directions. And I thought today we could just answer two very simple questions. One, why is it so incredibly hard to stay focused? And two, what can we do about it given this chaotic world we’re living in? So maybe we can just I can just turn this over to you, Richie, and you can kick this off however you want to. But I’d love to hear specifically from a neuroscientific point of view at some point. But yeah, what does this spark for you? Richie: Yeah, well, first it sparks familiarity. 02:51 — Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago? Richie: So, you know, I think that it’s true. I often say we’re all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And that’s, of course, referring to the exposure that we all have to this extraordinary amount of information through Our online activities through social media, all of that. And that’s a huge source of distraction. And so, you know, I think that one, I certainly think that it’s inevitably true that one major reason why people experience more distraction perhaps today than they did And there are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression, but inevitably I think it’s at least in part true that it’s because of our exposure to this information that is so readily available. So we’re clearly not going to change that. We don’t have the power To influence the tech companies to do the kind of regulation that might be needed. So, you know, we’re left, I think, with the inevitable conclusion that really the only thing we can change is our own minds. And so that, I think, is an important opportunity. And so here’s another case where the kind of, quote, And us being so distracted can also be the opening for real change and transformation. And in the language that you and I have used, Cort, in our book, Born to Flourish, and at other times in Dharma Lab, we can think of distraction itself as an affordance, distraction itself as a moment of awakening, if you will, because the moment we recognize we’re distracted, That’s a moment of awakening and can really be helpful in the process of changing your mind. 05:15 — Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction Cort: I’m curious about the neural mechanisms for why we are so easily distracted. I think the experience is, it’s like our attention is like a restless puppy that just gets excited and is rushing off after any bright, shiny object. It sees a squirrel on a tree outside and it’s banging itself against the window and then hears something in the kitchen and goes racing off. And it feels like that sometimes. I mean, it feels like that, you know, even for me having 35 years of meditation under my belt and done all these long retreats where I’m very specifically training my attention. And I feel like in some respects have, you know, have developed A strong attentional skill set, so to speak. And yet I still feel that when I’m in a meeting like this, I could be talking to you and then I see a notification on my computer or something happens in my environment. It seems like the mind and brain are just... Really wired actually for that to happen. I mean, it clearly, you know, happened spontaneously and effortlessly countless times every single hour. So what’s going on in the brain? I mean, is it as it seems that this is sort of how we’re wired? I imagine there’s evolutionary reasons why this is this is likely to be the case. Richie: I think it is in part how we’re wired. We are wired to detect surprise, to detect discrepancies, to detect rare events, because those often are events that have more salience. For example, our Sensitivity to danger and to cues that may signal danger. Those are the kinds of things that are relatively rare, but they’re super important. So we want to be primed, if you will, to notice those. And the problem is that that machinery that evolution has provided us with can be harnessed or hijacked by all these other things around us. But I think I can pretty much guarantee based on everything we know that if you receive the identical information, say something surprised you that drew your attention, if that thing were repeated 10 times, by the 10th time, you’re no longer going to pay attention to it. And that process habituation is something we know very well. And so the masters of technology have very much figured out how to capture our attention. By providing us with, in many cases, more and more extreme examples of things that are of interest to us. And the increased extremity has all kinds of, I think, really unfortunate consequences. But one of them is that it will capture our attention. But it can also serve to further reinforce and reify certain kinds of extreme beliefs that we might have, which can of course be a key driver of divisiveness. 09:03 — How Our Attention Gets Hijacked Cort: I wonder if we translate this into a very practical tool. I could see this understanding of the way the brain works, and especially the things that tend to capture our attention, the things that can be easily hijacked, as you said, for people who want to... If the objective is to keep people in your app as long as possible, if you imagine a lot of social media platforms these days, that’s what they want. The product is actually not what we’re doing. Actually, we are the product. It’s our attention that’s being sold. And so in a way, what they want, you know, they’re harvesting our attention in a way is what’s going on. And so they’re designing for that. And it’s an interesting question, you know, in the, you know, the way you’re framing it, because it’s sort of the question is, What loopholes in our brains are they exploiting so they can get more of our attention? And for me, having studied this and explored this myself, I can see understanding that actually is very empowering because now I know the game. I can see what they’re doing. You know, for example, if I’m on social media, I can actually see the way the algorithms work like, oh, if I watch that video a little longer, and I swipe past this other one, I know in a few in a moment or two, two or three videos later, I’m going to see something So maybe we could just zero in on that for a moment because it is, as I said, quite empowering. What are some of the things that are exploited? If you could give a little mini class, w

  4. 4 août

    Strangers could tell who the meditators were — July AMA with Richie & Cort

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.dharmalab.co (The full AMA recording plays in the video pane above, for Dharma Lab members.) In our 11th AMA, Kim read your questions while Cort made his way back from a retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche. Richie spoke to a study where strangers could tell who the meditators were, from a photo alone. What’s inside * Full recording and transcript for paid members * The photo study: what strangers saw in the faces of long-term meditators * You are not your beliefs: a simple two-step practice to see them clearly * A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Dr. Richie Davidson) * The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording Strangers could tell who the meditators were This came up during a question about moods. Richie’s point was that one consequence of long-term practice is that people generally end up in a more positive mood. To show it, he described a study his lab published. Whenever they studied long-term meditators, they routinely took a picture of everyone, both the meditators and age- and gender-matched controls, without telling them what it was for. Then they gave all the pictures to random people who had no idea where they came from, and asked them to rate each face: how friendly the person is, how much you trust them, how happy they are. The long-term meditators were judged, in Richie’s words, “whoppingly more positively” than the controls. The raters had no idea where the pictures came from. He called it a powerful, unobtrusive measure that there is something about an enduring mood that gets expressed on the face and that people pick up on. The study: Goldberg, Hirshberg, Tello, Weng, Flook, Davidson (2019), “Still facial photographs of long-term meditators are perceived by naïve observers as less neurotic, more conscientious and more mindful.” You are not your beliefs Another listener asked about the difference between a belief and an ordinary thought. Cort put it this way: thoughts are the words and images moving through the mind, the inner commentary, and they are an expression of deeper beliefs about the world that are often not conscious. Richie added the distinction he and Cort work with: when we hold beliefs, especially about ourselves, we misconstrue them as a description of who we actually are. He calls it experiential fusion. Most of the time we are not even aware we hold the belief; it just feels like the narrative of our self. Meta-awareness, or metacognition, is having an awareness that we have these beliefs, which lets us recognize we are not necessarily the same as them. Cort framed the aim in the Tibetan approach he practices: we are not trying to fix ourselves, but to get in touch with the parts that were never broken. Then he gave a two-step practice. First, simply observe your thoughts, like watching a wild animal in its natural habitat, from behind a tree, just watching what it does. Then pause and ask what assumptions, beliefs, and expectations underlie the thought. The point is not to change anything, just to bring the unconscious up to the conscious level. “We’re not trying to fix ourselves. We’re really trying to get in touch with the parts that were never broken.” — Cortland Dahl Try this 2-minute practice from the AMA (free, led by Richie) Prefer to read it? Bring awareness into your body. Then bring to mind one person who first introduced you to practice, who opened this door and shined a light where you had not looked before. Hold them in your heart and let appreciation, gratitude, even love bubble up. Carry that glow into whatever comes next. The full hour AMA, mapped Read the gist, then drop into the recording. 04:39 — Is it only meditation that slows brain aging? Compared to athletes or chess players, we don’t yet know. But Richie’s informed conjecture: an altruistic motivation may add a biological benefit over and above the activity itself. 09:12 — What childhood trauma does to the brain. The well-replicated finding of reduced hippocampal volume, and the honest unknown of how far practice can reverse it. Cort on memory reconsolidation. 13:55 — Can practice move your brain’s asymmetry? Functional asymmetry can shift (the first randomized trial of MBSR, 2003), but temperament tends to persist. The masters keep their color; they are not emotional zombies. 20:27 — Belief vs. thought, and how to loosen a harmful one. Experiential fusion vs. meta-awareness, Mingyur Rinpoche’s burnt-rope image, and the two-step practice of watching thoughts and inquiring into the belief beneath. 30:59 — Moods, and the photo study. Why moods differ from emotions, why long-term practitioners carry a positive baseline, and the study where strangers read it off their faces. 38:33 — A stroke, and the beauty in the pauses. For a listener living with brain injury and stroke: being over doing, the sky that stays when the clouds go, and Ram Dass, whose long word-finding pauses Richie found beautiful. 47:28 — After an awakening, why the crash? The four families of retreat experience (body and energy, emotional upheaval, perception, sensing energy), and why to treat them all as passing clouds, not permanent, not the point. 56:16 — What happens in the brain at death. The flatline, why biology is analog and not digital, and the early reports of gamma oscillations near death, the same signature seen in long-term meditators. Plus how the traditions prepare. Upcoming Events Save the date: a free practice and meditation hour with Richie and Cort on August 19th at 7pm Central. Register free. events.dharmalab.co Episode Companion Flashcards:

    Strangers could tell who the meditators were — July AMA with Richie & Cort

  5. 30 juill.

    Does Meditation Really Change Your Brain?

    For years, headlines claimed that meditation could actually grow parts of the brain. But what if that’s not the most interesting question? As the science has evolved, researchers have shifted their focus. What changes in the brain? Which changes matter most? And why might some structural changes grow, then recede, as expertise develops? In this conversation, Richie and Cort explore what decades of neuroscience have taught us, what scientists have gotten right, what they’ve gotten wrong, and where the research is heading. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here! Episode Companion Flashcards! In This Episode: 00:00 Does Meditation Really Change the Brain? 03:16 Brain Function vs. Brain Structure 05:41 The Gray Matter Studies That Started It All 11:45 Why the Gray Matter Evidence Changed 15:20 White Matter and Brain Connectivity 18:01 What the Research Actually Means 21:40 Brain Health, Neuroplasticity, and Human Potential Transcript for those who prefer to read: Richie Davidson: There’s no question that meditation changes the brain. We’re talking here about both the function and the structure of the brain. There’s no question that meditation changes the brain, and there is overwhelming evidence for that. Structural changes, like increases in gray matter in specific regions of the brain after short amounts of meditation, however, are a different story. The evidence for those findings has really not held up. Even more interesting, some of the effects that have been reported are actually the opposite of what we might expect. Cortland Dahl: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with Richie Davidson, one of the pioneering neuroscientists who has helped us understand the relationship between the mind, the brain, emotions, and how we can train ourselves to flourish. Today we’re diving into one of the biggest scientific questions in meditation research: does meditation actually change the brain? When I think about my own life, I can point to experiences that feel like a clear before and after. When I started meditating more than thirty years ago, I had a genuine phobia of public speaking. It wasn’t just that I got nervous. I had a severe fear of speaking in front of people. Years later, not only do I no longer get anxious, I actually enjoy it. I’ve even measured my physiology with devices like my Oura Ring. My heart rate and other biometrics actually shift into a deeply relaxed state when I’m speaking in front of a crowd, something that would have been unimaginable twenty or thirty years ago. Whether or not my brain changed, it seems difficult to imagine that such a profound transformation could happen without the brain changing in some way. At the same time, we often see confusing headlines. One day the headline says, “Meditation changes your brain.” The next day another study appears suggesting the opposite. Even the phrase “changes your brain” can mean different things. Are we talking about how the brain functions? Are we talking about the physical wiring of the brain? Are we talking about changes in structure? Richie, you’ve done some of the most important work in this area, and I think this is one of those topics where the headlines often miss the nuance. How should we think about it? Richie Davidson: You set this up beautifully by distinguishing between functional changes in the brain and structural changes. Functional changes refer to differences in how the brain is operating. We can measure those by looking at patterns of activity in different brain regions. Structural changes are different. They refer to the physical characteristics of the brain itself. That includes gray matter, which consists of the cell bodies of neurons, and white matter, which consists of the axons that connect one region of the brain to another. It’s entirely possible for the brain to change functionally without changing structurally. If structural changes occur, they almost always imply changes in function as well. One of the reasons this field became so exciting was that, about twenty years ago, several early studies suggested that people who completed an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course showed increases in gray matter in regions such as the prefrontal cortex. Those findings generated enormous excitement and headlines claiming that meditation could literally grow your prefrontal cortex. Cortland Dahl: Before we go further, why would someone even want a larger prefrontal cortex? Richie Davidson: The prefrontal cortex is central to what we call the executive network. It’s involved in planning, goal-directed behavior, regulating attention, forming healthy habits, and inhibiting behaviors we want to change. If you’re making a grocery list, planning your route to the store, or intentionally directing your attention toward something important, the prefrontal cortex plays a major role. It also allows us to think about the future and reflect on the past. That’s incredibly useful, but it’s also one of the reasons humans worry so much. As Robert Sapolsky famously described in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, zebras don’t spend time worrying about tomorrow. Humans do, largely because we have this remarkable prefrontal cortex. So it’s an extraordinary gift, but it can also contribute to suffering. Returning to the research, those early studies suggested that relatively short periods of meditation increased gray matter in regions like the prefrontal cortex. Many additional studies followed. Then, in 2023, a meta-analysis concluded that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction produced structural brain changes. However, the story didn’t end there. The journal later retracted that meta-analysis because important data had been omitted. When those missing data were included, the reported effects disappeared. Around the same time, our own research published in Science Advances found no structural gray matter differences between people who completed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and carefully designed control groups. So when it comes to gray matter increases after relatively short periods of meditation, the evidence has simply not held up. There’s another finding that’s particularly intriguing. Some studies have examined whether people with more meditation experience show greater structural changes. Interestingly, the relationship appears to go in the opposite direction. The more meditation people have practiced, the smaller the structural differences often become. When you think about expertise, that actually makes sense. If gray matter simply kept increasing forever, eventually we’d have bumps sticking out of our heads. That’s obviously not how biology works. Instead, expertise in many domains appears to involve temporary structural changes that later become more efficient as skills mature. There may be a period where gray matter increases, but as expertise develops, those changes may naturally recede. Cortland Dahl: So the story is much more nuanced than simply saying meditation makes your brain bigger. Richie Davidson: Exactly. And that’s where white matter becomes especially interesting. White matter reflects the connections between different regions of the brain. Across many different kinds of learning, white matter appears to be much more responsive to experience than gray matter. For example, beginning jugglers can show measurable white matter changes after only about an hour and a half of training. Those changes are dynamic. If you stop practicing, they may recede. We’ve found similar results with meditation. In the same study where we found no gray matter changes, we did observe white matter changes in pathways related to self-regulation after roughly twenty to thirty hours of meditation practice. We also have new research, not yet published, suggesting that about five minutes of daily practice for a month is associated with white matter changes. These findings suggest that changes in brain connectivity may occur very early in meditation training and may be especially important. Cortland Dahl: One thing I’m hearing is that we often oversimplify what it means for the brain to change. We hear phrases like “meditation grows your brain,” but perhaps that’s not even the right way to think about it. If we compare meditation to physical exercise, we might expect some increase in muscle mass when someone first begins training. But muscles don’t simply continue getting larger forever. Nor would we necessarily want them to. Much of what matters is how efficiently the body functions. It sounds like the brain may be similar. The important changes may involve relationships between different brain regions, increased efficiency, and improved coordination rather than simply greater volume. Richie Davidson: That’s a very good way of putting it. There’s another aspect of brain health that’s becoming increasingly important, and that’s inflammation. We know that many forms of meditation reduce inflammation throughout the body. Evidence is beginning to suggest that meditation may also reduce inflammation within the brain itself. That’s especially important because neuroinflammation appears to contribute to neurodegeneration and forms of dementia. Researchers are only beginning to develop reliable ways to measure neuroinflammation using MRI, so this is likely to become an exciting area of research over the next several years. Stepping back, though, the most important point remains simple. There’s no question that meditation changes the brain. Wh

  6. 16 juill.

    You Don't Get Through The Day Alone - Sharon Salzberg on DL Ep. 36

    Sharon Salzberg joins Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl for a conversation about loving-kindness, connection, and the quiet ways our lives are supported by others. At a time when many people feel lonely, cut off, or pulled into habits of criticism and competition, Sharon offers a simple experiment: pause, notice who makes your life possible, and see what happens when appreciation becomes part of daily life. Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has written fifteen books, including Lovingkindness and Real Happiness. Her upcoming workbook, Living Lovingkindness, is available for pre-order and will be released in January 2027. 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 The full conversation is below, lightly edited for readability. Chapter List * (00:00) A true icon, and a first story * (03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches * (09:35) What actually trips people up * (13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection” * (18:30) A guided reflection * (21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person * (28:10) Attention, and what the science shows * (36:26) The obstacles, and where to start * (46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice * (52:00) Parting thoughts Try this 2-minute Micro-Practice from Sharon Now (00:00) A true icon, and a first story Cort Dahl Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m very honored and excited to be here with our two guests. Of course, I’m here with Richie Davidson, who many of you already know, one of the most well-known neuroscientists on the planet. And we’re here with a true icon of the world’s meditative tradition, Sharon Salzberg, who’s also a dear friend, and truly one of those people who, when the history books are written about the manifestation of these meditative traditions in the modern world, played an incredibly important role. Just before this started, we were all chatting, and Sharon, you were mentioning that this is the 50th anniversary of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS, as it’s commonly referred to, is certainly one of the first and one of the most important centers for Buddhist practice and meditation in the modern world. Sharon is one of the co-founders of IMS, back in the 1970s. It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years. She has written some of the most well-known books in the meditation world. Loving-Kindness — she literally wrote the book on loving-kindness, and has been the main proponent of it as one of the main forms of meditation coming out of the Buddhist tradition, traditionally known as metta. She also has a podcast, Metta Hour, which both Richie and I have been on. And she’s written many other books, including her first children’s book, Kind Carl. Richie Davidson I read it to my six-year-old granddaughter, who loved it, absolutely loved it, and wanted more copies to give to all her friends. Cort Dahl And many, many other books — Real Life, Real Love, Real Happiness, a whole series. Loving-Kindness, the book I mentioned first, is really a modern classic. It was one of the first books I read back in the nineties when I was starting to meditate. So, Sharon, you’ve been an inspiration to so many of us — through your writing, through co-founding IMS, through your endless teaching all over the world. It’s an honor to have you. I thought we could start with a story I’ve heard a few times and always found moving: His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting the United States for the first time, and your interactions with him. Let’s start there, and see where the conversation goes. (03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches Sharon Salzberg Sure. And I’m so happy and honored to be with the two of you, truly. We co-founded the retreat center — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and I — in 1976. It’s in Barre, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes from Amherst. In 1979 we heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Amherst, so, being young and bold, we wrote a letter to his private office and said, maybe you’d like to visit us too. And to our amazement, we got a letter back saying, yes, he’ll come. It was an incredibly zooey day. We had sheriffs and people patrolling the roof with guns, the street blockaded. A very intense day. And I’d been in a car accident a few weeks before — I had a broken bone in my foot and was using crutches, which I was not very skilled with. So I was standing way at the back of about a hundred people. His car pulled up, he got out, and he did something I’ve seen him do many times since, but it was the first time. It’s almost like he has a kind of radar for who in a crowd is suffering the most, and that was me. He cut through a hundred people, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, what happened? Standing there in the back, I’d been thinking, I’m so stuck back here, this is terrible — I helped start this place, and here I am at the back. But if I go up front I’ll fall on my face, because I’m so bad with the crutches, so I’d better stay in the back. And he just dissolved that with that one gesture. It sort of redefined compassion for me, because he certainly couldn’t have made the injury not happen, or made me any better with the crutches. But that horrible feeling of being so alone, so unseen, so stuck in the back — it just dissolved. There’s another story from that visit, and there are many. We had a retreat going, about two weeks in, and the Dalai Lama asked to go into the meditation hall and give a talk. Then he asked for questions. A young man raised his hand and said, I’ve been meditating for about two weeks and I realize it’s not going to work for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the capacity to grow or learn or get more loving or more mindful. I just can’t do it. And the Dalai Lama looked at him and said, well, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong. He went on to talk about buddha nature — one’s capacity, which it’s believed is never ever destroyed. A capacity for growth and understanding and change. It may be covered over, it may be hard to find, but it’s never ever destroyed. And the funny thing is, after the talk, all these people came up to me and said, the Dalai Lama shouldn’t have said that. That’s bad pedagogy. You should never tell anyone they’re wrong. But you know who got a huge amount out of it? The young man, for whom it was such an important message. You should have a little more faith in yourself, and in the possibility of change. Cort Dahl That’s so beautiful. The image of the Dalai Lama cutting through all those people — at a moment where most of us would be on autopilot, this is what you do in this situation, you shake hands and wave. And he didn’t. He was just utterly human, and could see beyond the dynamics. I’ve always found that story so beautiful. Richie Davidson I love that story too. I have this image of our detectors, our antenna, for suffering, that can actually be developed. And the Dalai Lama is such an extraordinary exemplar of that. Wherever suffering is occurring, he makes a beeline for it. Cort Dahl And the human element is something I really think about with you as a teacher. I was just having lunch with my wife, Kasumi. We’ve been together thirteen, fourteen years now. When we first met, she was about to go on a retreat with you — you were visiting Madison — one of her first retreats. You’ve been a huge influence in her life. Over lunch I said, I’m going to be talking to Sharon, what would you ask? And she said something that’s so true, something I’ve heard from many people and know from my own experience: you talk so candidly about your own experience, and the human experience, in a way that’s quite uncommon. Just being fully human and sharing your experience. Because it’s so easy to see someone at the front of the room teaching meditation and imagine, wow, they’ve got it all figured out, this perfect life — and here I am, a distracted, anxious mess. I think that’s one of the reasons your teachings resonate so deeply. With all these decades of working directly with people, hearing from thousands of them, what are the things that either trip us up — the common stumbling blocks early on — or the things that inspire and unlock us when we hear the right thing at the right time? (09:35) What actually trips people up Sharon Salzberg Well, I think we — including myself — bring some of our greatest patterns into the meditative process. Especially a kind of harsh self-criticism, which I’ve seen over and over. Even people in really difficult situations, really hard diagnoses, something hard to bear. Sometimes I listen and think, give yourself a break — this is hard, look what you’re going through. That’s one of the reasons I found loving-kindness practice, and the understanding that we can grow in other ways rather than punishing ourselves for our mistakes. We can move on. We can learn to begin again. There’s resilience there. I’ve found that a huge help for a lot of people. Somebody asked me the other day whether I wanted to teach Buddhism or better mental health. And I said, mental health is not that high right now. So many people feel broken and lonely and estranged and confused. Of course we always do to some degree, but it feels so exaggerated now, so emphasized. For people to have a sense of not being so alone, and caring about themselves and about one another, having a greater sense of community — that seems to be what we can offer these days. Cort Dahl That’s so helpful. Richie, any thoughts from you, having explored the same territory yourself, both personally and in your work? Richie Davidson In terms of the situation today, it really is true. I often say we’re all part of a grand experiment for whic

  7. 25 juin

    The Superpowers in Your Brain’s Wiring with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl (DL #35)

    Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore how stable differences in brain activity may shape personality and the ways we engage with the world. They discuss introversion, anxiety, approach and withdrawal styles, what meditation can change without erasing our natural dispositions, and how meta-awareness can help us find the strengths in our own brain style. This is the third part in a series on Brain Asymmetry: Part 1: Your Brain Is A Storyteller Part 2: The Left Brain / Right Brain Myth Part 3: The Superpowers in Your Brain's Wiring This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dharmalab.co/subscribe

  8. 11 juin

    Boredom is Where You Meet Your Mind; DL Ep.34 with Dr. Richie Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl

    We now live in a world where boredom is almost optional. The moment there is a gap in the day, we can reach for a device and instantly distract ourselves. 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 matters00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind00:04:19 – The default mode network00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle00:11:12 – Why kids need to move00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness00:18:44 – 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

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Modern neuroscience meets ancient contemplative wisdom, with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl www.dharmalab.co

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    Dharma Lab
  • Années d’activité
    2025 - 2026
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    46
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