Dharma Lab

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!
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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, what would you look for so you can be conscious of it versus unconsciously, unwittingly pulled in by it? What would you look for, like the things that are going to capture your attention?
Richie: Yeah, so you’re asking what would we look for in the brain itself? Yeah,
Cort: what are the brain mechanisms that are being hijacked and how might we be conscious of what’s happening versus it just happening to us and we’re unconscious of it?
Richie: Yeah, that’s super important. So the hijacking of attention can happen in a number of different ways. One of the most fundamental ways in which it happens Is that there’s an interaction between the brainstem and specifically a part of the brainstem that is rich in norepinephrine and it’s called the locus cerulein. And it has projections that are very widespread to many different regions of the cortex. And basically what happens is that when something captures our attention, as opposed to us directing our attention to it voluntarily, but being captured unwillingly, if you will, or unintentionally. It just grabs our attention whether we like it or not. Right. What’s happening is that there is a transient increase in activation the locus coeruleus, which is this site rich in norepinephrine. And then there are these very widespread projections to the entire cortex. And so there’s a transient increase in cortical arousal that’s pretty broad, even if the The event that occurred, the stimulus was, say, just the sound. It would be broader than just the auditory part of the brain, just broader than just the auditory cortex. It would really be all over the brain. And this is the kind of thing that would capture our attention. But if it’s repeated, if the identical event is repeated a few times, It would show what we call habituation, where you would not respond to that. And so, you know, that’s one of the most basic mechanisms for attention capture is this kind of rare or surprising event.
13:20 — Why Surprise Captures the Brain
Cort: And so is sorry, just to to pause for a second there. If I’m uh building some new product and I want to harvest people’s attention and I come to you as one of the world’s leading experts in this area and I just say okay richie I want I want to hijack this exact neural loop that you just talked about like what are the best strategies like what could I design like what could I build into this new app or this new product whatever it is what would be the most effective ways to hijack this system surprise you kind of mentioned one is surprise something that’s Shocking or surprising or unexpected.
Richie: That sounds like that’s one of the... Yeah, and so to create that kind of unexpected burst, if you will, the most effective way of doing it is presenting a set of events which are all repetitive and very similar and then follow it by something totally novel and surprising. It’s the oddball. Yeah. And so there’s a very famous experimental paradigm in neuroscience and psychology called the mismatch negativity, which is a version of this. And basically what a mismatch negativity is, is if I present a series of tones of a certain pitch, and then it’s followed by a tone of a different pitch. So if we do something like this, Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, boop, beep, beep. Your response to the boop would be totally, your brain would just automatically... Um, detect that and it would be, uh, and there’s a very well characterized signal in the brain that displays that. Um, and it’s, it’s very difficult, even I should say in long-term meditators, um, Although we do have some evidence to suggest that there are some alterations, but at least in moderate term meditators, this is so basic, it’s very hard to override. So it doesn’t change.
Cort: We still, no matter how much you’ve meditated, your mind still gets... Yeah, although there are,
Richie: you know, if I did it instead of with simple tones, if I did it with words, for example, where I presented words of a certain category like zebra, tiger, monkey, elephant, flower, rabbit. Where the discrepancy is semantic in that case and not the auditory features themselves, that’s much more likely to be something that can be overridden, if you will.
16:35 — The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling
Cort: So it seems like one of the takeaways, this is super interesting, and actually I can already see this in the endless swiping of social media, that if you’re advising, you would say, okay, what you don’t want to do is have too much repetition. You don’t want For example, if I watch a cat video and I watch the whole thing and the algorithm is like, okay, this guy clearly likes these cute cat videos. You don’t want to just show me 10 cat videos at that point because you’re just going to get habituation. What you want, and I think this is exactly what it does, is you want at random intervals, like maybe you have to swipe through five things to get a cat video and then you don’t see one for 10 videos and then it’s after two. It’s sort of unexpected and you get it, but you never know when you’re going to get it. Is that right? Like if you’re advising like that... I think this is actually how it is. If you pay attention, you’ll actually start seeing these patterns, especially in social media.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in the psychological literature, that’s called the variable interval reinforcement schedule. And, you know, that’s extremely addicting in terms of its attentional capture.
17:44 — How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control
Cort: And what about emotion? I mean, you talked about surprise, obviously. Another very interesting thing, again, I’m sort of fixating on social media here, but I think you could look at other forms of distraction as well. But it’s very interesting to look at What’s pulling attention in relationship to the emotions it provokes and the strength, both the kind of emotion and the valence, whether it feels more uplifting or a fear or more negative. What would you say about that? Again, if you’re our key neuroscientific wizard architecting how to distract us.
Richie: Yeah, I mean, certainly emotion and different kinds of emotion are going to be absolutely key in producing distraction. We know that emotion can disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is a key zone for the central executive network, for the network that is guiding behavior.
Cort: So it’s the opposite of the hijacked. It’s the part that’s saying, here’s where I want to go and I’m going there.
Richie: Right, self-control. And emotions will disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so there’s a continuous dance between the emotional centers of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. And there’s bi-directional communication. So there is communication about emotion from subcortical regions up to the prefrontal cortex. There’s also... Top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex to these subcortical emotional regions that can help regulate them. But this is actually the role of the prefrontal cortex and all this is super important because, and this is speculative, but in our evolutionary past where we had many fewer Episodic, phasic influences on our behavior like we do today. The prefrontal cortex can put into operation a plan which then gets executed over some long period of time. Where there were many fewer at least external distractors. And I think that it’s, and here’s the speculative part. I think that the conditions of modern life today are such that we’re starting from a much lower baseline in terms of our prefrontal skills. In our evolutionary past with many fewer distractors Sort of external stimuli that were bombarding us. We relied on the prefrontal cortex more to guide our behavior. 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.
21:24 — Rebuilding Control Over Attention
Cort: That’s a good segue. Maybe we could have our concluding part of this discussion to put our actual hats on. I guess we’ve been playing a role that we would never normally play because, of course, we want to do the opposite of hijacking attention. We want to do what you’re talking about now, which is how can we re-energize and build up the skill set with the prefrontal cortex. And our ability to manage and consciously be in the driver’s seat with our attention versus it being hijacked. So let’s kind of shift gears and now share some of the strategies that put us back in the driver’s seat. So what would you say there? We certainly can talk about our Experiences meditators, but from a brain and from a neuroscientific point of view, anything that you think is some key insights about the brain that would guide how we should view this and how we can do it in daily life?
Richie: Yeah, I mean, I think that some of this is both from knowledge of the brain, but also from kind of practical everyday experience. And that is that I think that just as we do physical exercise and benefit from reps, so to speak, we can benefit from reps with our mental health. And neural capacities. And so, you know, one way to do this is, and we’ve talked about this at various points in the past in different ways on Dharma Lab, but every time you feel an urge to take out your phone, instead of immediately taking out your phone and looking at it, simply be aware of the urge. And make a decision about whether this is actually a time when you need the phone and you should take it out, or whether it’s a time to simply acknowledge the urge and let it rise and fall away like the clouds in the sky. And so there actually is a choice that we can make at that point. But we need to be aware to begin with. That really is a necessary condition for this. If you’re not aware of the urge in the first place, it will immediately hijack your behavior and you’ll just automatically pull out your phone. That’s what we do most of the time. And the invitation in this path that we are talking about and promoting here on Dharma Lab is that there is another way to operate in the world And it’s a way that is infused with this gift of awareness that we all have. And so this is really a way to strengthen the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to self-regulate. Really simple. And we know from some really fantastic longitudinal research that learning to self-regulate early in life is a huge predictor of later adult life outcomes that are beneficial. And kids who have a hard time with self-control early on end up, if there’s no intervention, end up worse off than kids who are better at self-control.
Cort: And there’s, you know, that particular research is super interesting. And it’s also, there’s a whole body of research, which of course, Richie, you’re well aware, just to paint out kind of the other side of the picture, which is that if you’re the kind of person who—I would have been a kid for sure, you know, if we had had the marshmallow test, which is one of these classical tests, like, you know, you imagine putting a marshmallow in front of a kid and say, don’t eat it. For me, I would have, you know, two seconds, that marshmallow would have been down the hatch. I would have for sure been one of those kids. And yet, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing that skill. And so there’s a lot of hope, even if even if we’re the kind of person who might be starting out more on the deficit side of things.
25:53 — Attention as a Practice of Intention
Cort: So I wonder if maybe we could talk about some of the practical things, because I when I think about my life and things I do, 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. And it was funny because actually, as you were explaining this, I had a practical example of this. I’m, I’m actually sitting in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota in an Incredibly remote location and there’s a lake very within, you know, basically I could throw a rock into the lake from where I am right now, but it’s very remote and there’s very few boats. There’s not many people. And a boat went by actually as we were, as you were speaking, Richie, and as I was listening to you and you were actively talking about, you know, like how attention gets pulled away and noticing that. And it was, that was like literally happening to me there. I could feel the pull to look at the boat. And it’s a rare occurrence and, you know, and there’s not many people, so I might know those people. But and then I was consciously aware of that, just like you were talking about the cell phone, like you’re aware of it before you follow the impulse. And so I could actually feel the impulse literally as you were talking about this and just choose exercise the intention muscle and just say, I’m going to resist that impulse or just stay with my focus here on what Richie is saying. Noticing the pull of distraction and releasing attention. We could have a whole episode just on releasing attention. That’s kind of its own thing. But just the directing of attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I’m going to choose to bring my attention to my email inbox or I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I notice 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. Just that intentionality to me is kind of the heart of the practice. And you can just do that, like you were saying, the reps. You can do a thousand of those a day easily.
Richie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, you know, to our viewers, this is something that would be, I think, interesting and fun to tinker with in your own life. And one of the things that I often do is I have an Apple Watch. And so when I get certain kinds of messages, it will give me a haptic signal. And I’m very aware that in certain kinds of meetings, like if it happened right now, I would notice the haptic signal and I would not look at my watch. I would be focused on our conversation here. And there are many times in meetings where I will do the same thing. I feel the haptic signal, but I’m making a conscious choice to Keep my attention focused on the meeting. There are other times if I’m in something that’s not in a meeting or something really casual where it would be okay if I looked at it for some reason, if I was expecting something, I might look at it. But there is the distinct opportunity to see it as an opportunity to make a choice.
29:46 — Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus
Cort: And that, and to me, it seems like the intention, intentional aspect, and these are great example of the kinds of things that pull our attention away so many times. One of the areas I would say, which is just a very rich area to practice because it’s happening all the time is like what happens when the distractor is happening, like the haptic signal happens or the sound happens, or in my case, you see something unexpected, it’s happening. And then there’s kind of what you do in that space and being intentional. In some cases, you can choose to go with it. Or in many cases, it’s just noticing that your mind is pulled elsewhere and you just choose to stay with whatever you’re doing, which I think is in most cases that kind of the healthier thing to do. But I think there’s another realm of intentionality, which is actually preemptive. And you can be intentional about what’s going on in your environment so less of those things are happening. I mean, to some degree you can’t control these things, but sometimes you can. I mean, we all have phones, or almost everybody does. I, for example, have just deleted apps from my phone. There’s certain apps that I just felt like these are just not I don’t ever feel good coming away from using this app. And I just remove the app. In some cases, I actually change the settings. So I have no notifications like my phone. As much as it annoys all my family members and anybody tries to contact me, my phone is always muted. My phone is almost never on. And so I check my messages and I have the notifications off on almost every single app. So I go check the things when I want to check them, not because it grabbed my attention. So in that case, it’s almost preemptive. Like I know the things that can and have in the past pulled my attention. And I’m almost architecting my life. So I’m just not going to be, you know, as exposed to those. So it seems like we could almost we can both when it happens, what do we do, but also preemptively, you know, build your life to the degree that you can so that you’re not just constantly exposed to these things, which which just simply can be overwhelming at times.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that all fits in a category that I would call digital hygiene. And I’ve been an advocate for creating a curriculum for digital hygiene that would include contemplative practices to help us actually regulate our attention and have that curriculum start with kids. I think it’s really important.
Cort: Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, this has been a great conversation, Richie. I think we would love to hear, for those of you watching this in the comments, we’d love to hear what you do. What are the things that you find distracting? What are the strategies and the methods you found that help you find a little more balance? And maybe we can have a little dialogue offline as you reflect on your own life. But in any case, thank you, Richie, for sharing your insights as always and for you for listening. We hope to see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.
Richie: Thank you so much.


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(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.
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Episode Companion Flashcards:

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.
Whether those changes are functional, structural, or both is still being actively explored, but the overall conclusion is remarkably clear.
Many years ago, the Dalai Lama told me that he sometimes reflects during meditation on the fact that his own brain is changing because of his practice.
I think that’s a beautiful reflection.
The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that our brains can change through intentional mental training.
That means we have tremendous potential for transformation.
In fact, humans may have a greater capacity to intentionally reshape the brain than any other species.
That’s an extraordinary gift.
The invitation is to use that gift wisely.
Cortland Dahl:
What a hopeful message.
For many years, people thought the brain was essentially fixed.
Now we understand that change and transformation are built into our biology.
As the science continues to evolve, we’ll undoubtedly return to this topic with new discoveries.
Richie, thank you for another fascinating conversation, and thank you for all the pioneering research you’ve contributed to this field.
And thank you to everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time on Dharma Lab.


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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.
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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 which none of us have provided our informed consent. It’s a challenging time, and a lot of it is simply outside of our control. The one thing we have at least the possibility of exerting a little more control over is our own mind. So that’s a great place to start.
One of the things I love about your work, Sharon, and would love to hear more about, is that — at least I’ve found, being with different kinds of public audiences — giving them a simple taste of very ordinary but really nourishing connection, like a little hit of appreciation. Bring someone into your mind and your heart who’s been helpful to you, and just observe what happens. Being able to taste that little hit is really an elixir for the soul. And it’s very accessible. We don’t have to go to any special place or be in any special posture. We can do it anywhere, anytime — a phrase Mingyur Rinpoche uses for one of his programs. I’ve renamed it, everywhere, all the time, why not. I’d love to hear your reflections.
(13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”
Sharon Salzberg
There are many layers I want to respond to. One is that I’ve so appreciated your work and your use of the word connection. I’ve been struggling to translate metta, the Pali word for loving-kindness, because loving-kindness is such an odd term. You wouldn’t necessarily be in a coffee shop and hear the people at the next table talking about loving-kindness, except maybe in a hyper-religious context. My concern is that it makes the quality seem somewhat arcane and removed from day-to-day life, precious in the negative sense.
Translators and scholars have said to me, stop being so cutesy, just say love — that’s what you mean. And that of course is a complicated term. What do we mean when we say love? How often is it a medium of exchange, or, I’ll love myself as long as I never make a mistake — something so fragile and breakable. My favorite translation is connection. There’s a classical translation as friendship, but my concern with friendship is that the development of qualities like loving-kindness or compassion doesn’t mandate a certain kind of action. When I think of friendship, I think, let’s go to the movies, let’s spend time together. And it may be that your heart is genuinely full of loving-kindness or compassion for someone, and discernment, wisdom, understanding is saying, don’t go there — it’s not safe, or it’s not appropriate. There’s such a great fear that if I develop more metta, more loving-kindness, I’ll have to say yes, I have to smile, I have to give in. And we don’t have to do anything. So I really prefer the word connection to any other word.
I love the idea of appreciation, just for a moment. It’s part of what I like to teach if I’m going into a company or an organization. There are two reflections. One is, can you express appreciation to somebody, anybody? Because we’re also culturally tuned to feel we’ll feel better about ourselves if we can put other people down — a kind of culture of degradation.
Richie Davidson
And that’s particularly true in the university, by the way.
Sharon Salzberg
That’s scary and sad. People get into that, and there’s a lot of loneliness right there — hyper-competitive, constantly putting other people down. So I see all of Dharma practice as an experiment. Are you willing to step out of those familiar ruts — go into work and express some appreciation for somebody? The other reflection is interconnection. My favorite question in a group of people who work together: how many other people have to do their job well for you to do your job well? Sometimes that doesn’t resonate, so I say, do you commute? Do you ever think about the bus driver, the engineer, the car mechanic? And if you don’t commute, there’s certainly some technology involved. And if that doesn’t resonate — have you eaten today? You don’t grow all your own food. Just think about that: our lives, truly, realistically, are part of a network. We can feel so alone and cut off, but the truth is we’re connected. So let’s make an experiment, do these reflections, and see what happens.
Cort Dahl
I realize I skipped a step that Richie and I do every single time. Usually before we hit record, we do a little practice to set our motivation — to be of benefit, wanting whatever comes of the work to help people. Richie talked about having a little taste. Sharon, would you be willing to lead a little practice, just to give us an experiential taste of what we’re talking about, and then we can keep going?
(18:30) A guided reflection
Sharon Salzberg
Sure. I’ll do a reflection based on what I just said. You can sit comfortably, close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. We’re just going to spend a few moments bringing to mind anyone who has somehow had a role in your being here right now. Somebody told you about their meditation practice, or the science, or this podcast. Somebody read you a poem or played you a piece of music. There was some opening somewhere. Maybe you’ve never met these people who come to mind. Maybe you were inspired from afar. Just see who comes up.
Every time I do this reflection, I think about the Board of Regents of the State of New York, which gave me a scholarship, which was how I was able to go to college, which is how I ended up in India as an independent study project, which is a big reason I’m here now.
Sometimes I do this reflection and think about those people whose actions have really hurt me — not the ones I just found annoying, but the times I felt I was at an edge and had to find a different way to live or think. Because they’re part of why I’m here right now too.
Just who comes to mind.
And you can extend a sense of recognition to all of these different beings, because this moment in time is a confluence of connection, relationship, influence, interaction. However alone we sometimes feel or cut off, this is the truth of our experience.
And you can open your eyes, or lift your gaze, and we can end that reflection.
(21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person
Cort Dahl
So beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. When I first started these practices, I’d been doing mindfulness for probably seven or eight years. Then I encountered some teachers, and for me the first practice more in this heart-connection space was sending and taking, often referred to as tonglen, very much in the space of loving-kindness and compassion. It was very interesting what it did. One of the first things I noticed was that it brought up an intense feeling of vulnerability. The way it manifested was, I’d be having a conversation with somebody, and out of the blue I’d start blushing. And I come from a long line of Olympic-level blushers — Scandinavian complexion, maybe. It’s very visible, there’s no hiding. This went on for months. Almost every interaction, for no reason at all, I’d feel this naked vulnerability. And it was just connecting with people, actually. I didn’t see it at all until that moment. But when I started these practices, I started to see how guarded I was a lot of the time — a weird protective mechanism I hadn’t even been aware of. That feeling of vulnerability, which weirdly manifested as blushing, was just genuine connection with people, but in a raw way I wasn’t used to. It was actually hard. Not easy for me. Inspiring, and I was seeing things about myself I hadn’t seen before, but challenging territory, and totally unexpected. So I’m wondering if you could talk about vulnerability, and the power of working with it in practice despite the discomfort.
Sharon Salzberg
It’s a really fascinating thing to explore — the components. I don’t know that this was your experience at all, but it’s common for people to feel somehow responsible for fixing a situation if someone else is expressing pain. Not only do we feel it with the kind of sensitivity you’re describing, but it enters us in some strange way, things get distorted, and we get this hyper-sense of responsibility — I’ve got to fix it. We’d call that a real imbalance. Maybe there’s a lot more compassion for someone else than there is for us, or maybe there’s not enough wisdom for correct boundaries or discernment. The combination of the sensitivity with the wisdom, we’d call equanimity. It’s a kind of balance.
We are conditioned, by and large, to look the other way in terms of other people’s situations. And my favorite part of loving-kindness practice, actually, is loving-kindness for a neutral person — someone we don’t especially like or dislike, someone we feel kind of neutral toward. Usually people pick somebody like the checkout person at the grocery store, someone they see but have no real sense of connection to. I love it, because over time, here’s someone we usually objectify, overlook, look through instead of look at — and as we do the practice, offering them attention, may you be happy, may you be peaceful, something actually grows inside us. People come back with incredible stories. Like, I fell in love with my dry cleaner. I said to this woman — well, I didn’t say it, she could see it on my face — I thought they were dating. And she said, no, no, not romantically. He’s my neutral person in my practice. Every day I call him to mind and wish him well. And now I go into the store and it’s like we’re on the same team. So you’re also confronting all that conditioning of, look the other way, they’re not really people, they’re just utilities — not to mention bias or prejudice, which fits in there too, the other who doesn’t count. The more we tune into people and realize they do count, that we’re part of this whole, we’ll have the effect of that. But that effect needs to be balanced.
Richie Davidson
The piece about neutral people is so powerful. One of the greatest teachings for me has been being with the Dalai Lama at major formal events, where there are, quote, lots of important people around. And then he’ll go out through a side entrance, and he’ll stop and greet all the custodians, all the kitchen people, the security people, and he treats them exactly the same as the important people. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. When you see that in practice — when you see him stopping and holding them and asking how they’re doing — it’s such a powerful reminder that this really is accessible, and it can totally change our life. Our everyday life becomes all of these really nourishing moments of connection.
(28:10) Attention, and what the science shows
Sharon Salzberg
You’re reminding me that so many times we can understand connection, or loving-kindness, or compassion, as an emergent property of paying attention. If we’re more present and listening, that’s where the connection is born — which is a nicer way of realizing it, rather than thinking I’ve got to drum up some feeling I don’t really have, and manufacture it.
Cort Dahl
That’s what stands out to me about the story of you on the crutches — it wasn’t as though he’d memorized some rulebook of elevated compassion. He was totally tuned in to what was going on in the moment, and who was in front of him. And conversely, the vulnerability I felt was seeing how many of my interactions are governed by a script — this is what I say or do in this situation — rather than being fully there, authentic and spontaneous. There was something in that Dalai Lama story that felt like that spontaneity of really being there and seeing what’s actually happening. You don’t have to have some feeling or thought or impulse; it’s just a natural response, because you’re fully tuned in. It’s so beautiful. But getting there, from where a lot of us live, is kind of awkward, honestly. We’re relearning how to be human and connected without that rawness where we feel threatened or awkward.
Sharon Salzberg
That’s another reason it’s reassuring to have a sense of community. You’re not the only one making this experiment. And I’m curious — do you still blush, or is that over?
Cort Dahl
Occasionally I do. One of the few times I blush these days is actually when I tell that story. But it was a great practice, because it went on for months and was so inescapable. It was very clear: I could either go lock myself in my room and isolate, which clearly wasn’t healthy, or I was going to have to apply the practice I was learning. It was two things. One was to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, and, as you said, go easy on myself — I’d had a lot of social anxiety and thought I was past it, and then here it was again. So, not beating myself up, and really just feeling it fully. And then staying in that space of connection where the vulnerability was almost a practice of staying in the rawness of it — being human, being my messy self, and not having to fix anything. That was the practice, rather than, I will transcend this and no longer feel it. It was, no, okay, maybe this is the rest of my life, I’m just going to have this. So it was less about whether I blush anymore and more a comfort with the whole cascade — okay, I can let this play out, and it’s fine. But that took practice. The universe gave me a lot of opportunities.
I wonder if we could shift gears a little. You wrote Loving-Kindness and started teaching this back in the nineties, when mindfulness wasn’t even a thing yet — it became the big thing decades later. This was a pretty new practice coming into the more secular meditation world, and even in Buddhist circles it wasn’t nearly as well known as it is now. For a lot of traditions, it feels like there’s a sequence — you start with awareness or mindfulness practices, then move on to these. Richie, maybe you could tee this up, since it’s also a scientific question.
Richie Davidson
Sure, and thank you for teeing it up, Cort. Some of this emerged in the context of the book Danny Goleman and I wrote, Altered Traits, published in 2017. When we wrote it, we reviewed the scientific literature on meditation. There were, and still are, many more studies on mindfulness-type practices than on loving-kindness and compassion practices, but a scientific literature was beginning — and Sharon, I know you yourself have contributed to that, in work you’ve done with various scientists. One of the things we observed was that there was evidence of benefits measured with very short periods of practice. And it seemed then, and I believe it’s still the case, that on a variety of standardized measures — some of which you might think of as objective measures, meaning they don’t depend on a person’s own self-report — benefits emerge with loving-kindness and compassion practices pretty quickly. At least there’s some evidence for that.
In the work Cort and I have been doing, in developing our Healthy Minds Program, which includes practices of awareness as well as connection and others, one of the things we notice is that some people prefer to start with connection. In the standard sequence, as Cort mentioned, we typically invite people to do awareness or mindfulness practices first. And the last piece — then I’ll stop and love to hear your thoughts — is just to acknowledge that one size does not fit all. There are many different paths, and it’s probably a bit of hubris to think there’s a single path that’s best for everyone. So I wonder what your thoughts are, given the range of your teaching experience — if there are essential insights you can share.
(36:26) The obstacles, and where to start
Sharon Salzberg
I often think one of the greatest obstacles to practicing loving-kindness — and I teach it in a pretty classical way, repeating phrases, making that offering to yourself and to others — is even believing it’s not stupid. Having some sense that it’s a powerful way of being, rather than the doormat endlessly smiling at nothing. That’s a particularly Western problem, I’ve found — people think it’s a gift: you’ve either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’re out of luck. Whereas in the East it certainly can be trained, because it’s an emergent property of how we pay attention, and we know attention can be trained. That’s exactly what meditation practice does. If people don’t get stuck on those issues, many find it an easier practice to begin with. It’s meaningful, it’s opening, and it’s often easier to concentrate — the breath can be a bit of a soporific and then you’re asleep, but here you’re making an offering, there’s imagery, something very alive about that sense of connection. People may come from a faith tradition that has the principles, if not the practices, embedded in it, so it feels like coming home to something precious. And they say the Buddha taught it as the antidote to fear. As a remedy for anxiety, it’s the exact parallel for our time, which is a pretty anxious time. So I’ve found many people do find it easier, if they can only trust it.
Cort Dahl
Do you have a sense of the easiest entry point? These days there’s a lot of talk about self-compassion, and it’s even, I wouldn’t say controversial, but in more traditional formulations sometimes it’s not a thing at all. In the Tibetan tradition you go to a loved one, a neutral person, difficult people, all beings — and you sort of bypass the self. And these days so many of us have so much self-hatred or fear toward ourselves. In all your years teaching, what have you found to be the easiest entry point for people just getting going, if this is new territory?
Sharon Salzberg
Funny that you say that about neutral people. I’ve always wondered about the social etiquette of telling somebody after a retreat, you were my neutral person — I found you totally neutral, really kind of indifferent to you. Anyway. Some of it is a sense of — which is hard if you’re teaching via an app, reaching a large number of people — sensing the person, and also receiving feedback. I was once doing a program with Barbara Fredrickson, who had done research into loving-kindness meditation. We were on stage, and she said she felt it was very important for people within a couple of weeks to have some sense of the effect of the practice, or they’d get too discouraged and stop. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself — which, in the Burmese or Theravada tradition, you do; you start with the offering of loving-kindness to yourself, then move on to someone who’s helped you. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself, and that’s so hard for so many people. So I said, why don’t you change the order? Just change the order. And she said she felt at the time — though I know she’s changed her mind since — that she couldn’t, because of scientific research needs for things to be in the same sequence. I realized at that point we had two different goals. I’d change the order in ten seconds if someone was in front of me and it was too much of a struggle. You do start classically with yourself, offering loving-kindness to yourself, but you don’t have to.
I find there are problems all along the way, truly. It takes a sense of investigation and experimentation, and not feeling so alone in your practice. People have said to me, I don’t have any benefactors — that’s the classical term for those who’ve helped us — I don’t have anybody. Somebody said, I had an unprotected childhood, I’ve never had people on my side. And you think, well, that’s a problem too. Even though we say, just move to the benefactor, it’ll be all shiny and you’ll feel there’s love in the universe — not always. So it’s a process of figuring out where that entry point is. As a growth experiment, it takes time and repetition. And the openings, which are genuine and real and liberating, may not be evidenced in your formal meditation practice. They’re shown in your life, which is where it counts — because that’s where we actually need it, but we don’t always think to look there. People think, I still don’t have these great waves of loving feeling. And it really doesn’t matter, because when we’re interacting with a stranger, or we’ve made a mistake and see how we speak to ourselves, we start to see the shadings of difference. That takes great patience too. How do you know if it’s working? It depends on where you look to see the effect.
It’s a practice that isn’t formulaic, even though you’re repeating phrases. It’s very creative. The principle I was taught when I did it intensively in Burma was that it needs to be done in the easiest way possible. And that’s hard. If it’s too hard to offer loving-kindness to yourself, move on to someone else. There’s another category in the sequence, over time — a difficult person. And it’s said to best be a mildly difficult person, not the person at first, not the one who’s harmed us horrifically or behaved so terribly on the world stage — that’s nearly impossible. Start with someone who’s just a little bit of unease, and over time move on. But I’ve found this is often a place — it certainly was in me — where people don’t like it. They say, don’t you think I can do the real thing? Why, do you think I’m a coward? What about this horrible person? That tendency to do something in the hardest way possible doesn’t really fit this approach. So that’s a whole concept of learning as well.
Cort Dahl
I love the playful experimentation. That’s the challenge — you read a book or hear a teaching, it’s presented in some way, and there’s a sense of, I should fit myself into that progression. What you’re saying, which I can see — not necessarily in the way the Tibetan approach is presented, but you can intuit how it evolved — is that they found something that worked for them culturally. In Tibet, the way it’s often presented, they start with a loved one, and specifically your mother. In Tibet, mothers are like deities, revered like no other culture I’ve seen. So it makes perfect sense to start there — there’s a natural sense of gratitude and connection and nurturing. And of course, whatever you want to say about other cultures, certainly here in the US we have some complexity in our experiences with our parents. I think that’s the first thing the Tibetans learned — that people aren’t responding in that intuitive way. But what you’re saying is, you look for the in, the connection point. Where is it easy? Where is it natural? And you nurture that. Where can you get the spark? If it’s not happening, you don’t just keep doing something that’s clearly not working. Once you have the spark, you keep it alive and extend it to something gradually more challenging. Most of us hear a teaching and think, that’s the right way, now I need to do it that way, and if it’s not working, somehow it’s my fault. It’s not easy. Richie, do you remember your early experiences with these practices, and what resonated with you?
(46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice
Richie Davidson
First, I think this last bit of conversation is so important — this theme of not fighting with your mind, approaching it with curiosity and openness, and exploring what might be the natural opening, the natural door you can go through. It’s not going to be the same for each person, and that’s fine. That’s the nature of being human. We’re different. I really love that, and it resonates deeply with the approach we often take.
For me, when I first discovered these practices of loving-kindness and compassion — I’m just naturally a touchy-feely guy, and I needed this. I needed my heart to be nourished.
Cort Dahl
For the record, that is an understatement. In the best possible way.
Richie Davidson
So it was really important to me. One of the things that’s been such a blessing is developing little rituals I bring to my everyday life, where these practices are so much a part of what I do every day. From making tea in the morning for my wife, to — when we had cats; our kitty recently passed away, so it’s no longer a ritual — but I used to scoop the cat litter every night and do it as a practice. It’s just a little shift of mindset, and what might ordinarily be a yucky chore became something I actually looked forward to. It was beautiful — done as an offering, an appreciation.
You alluded to this earlier, Sharon. One of the things we humans do pretty much every day is eat. And it doesn’t take much reflection to recognize how unbelievably interdependent we are. To get food on our plate requires this extraordinary village. That sense of appreciation for interdependence — we talk about this in our book; there’s a chapter on developing daily habits by piggybacking them onto activities of daily living, like eating. To use a bit of psychological jargon that conveys something important — the term is affordance. Eating is an affordance for the expression of appreciation and the recognition of interdependence. The very moment you’re sitting down to eat, it automatically arises. And being able to do this in your everyday life, a few times a day, every day — it changes you. It’s why we’ve come to the view, and we actually have evidence now to support this, that it’s easier than you think. It doesn’t take much to get these circuits of the mind going, or circuits of the heart, because this is who we are. This is our nature. We’re just recognizing it.
Sharon Salzberg
It’s beautiful. One of my students, to my eternal amusement, coined the phrase micro-dosing loving-kindness — for exactly that. You sit down to a meal and spend a few moments. Or I have a friend who looks at all the little faces in the boxes of a Zoom meeting and thinks, may you be happy. You have to be silent in a lot of those circumstances, but you make that offering, and then you start the meeting.
(52:00) Parting thoughts
Cort Dahl
I can’t believe we’re already at the end of our time. It feels like we could go for a few more hours. Maybe to end — if you have any parting thoughts. To state the obvious, we’re in an era pervaded by a feeling of division and a lack of connection. We might have connection with our close circle, but so much division outside of that. Any parting thoughts, individually or collectively, on how we can bring more of this into our lives, wherever we are on the path?
Sharon Salzberg
I love what Richie was just saying. We can do it, and we don’t have to think of it as this monumental task. It’s just, okay, this meal, this moment. It really makes a difference.
Cort Dahl
On that note, we’ll end with a note of gratitude to you, Sharon, for all the incredible work, the tireless effort to share these practices and ideas with so many people. I know it’s made a huge impact on our lives, even our scientific work, and on so many others. It’s been an honor to have you on for this conversation. I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done and continue to do.
Sharon Salzberg
Well, thank you so much.
Richie Davidson
Deep bows, deep bows. One of the things we didn’t mention is that Sharon taught the very first meditation retreat for scientists at IMS, sponsored by Mind and Life. That was a pivotal moment for sharing these practices with the scientific community. I’m just so grateful for your dedication, and your indefatigable effort to bring the Dharma to the West. So thank you.
Sharon Salzberg
Thank you. Thank you both.
Cortland Dahl
To be continued. We hope to have you on again sometime. Thank you, Sharon.


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

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