Modern Wisdom - #318 - Steven Laureys - The Neuroscience Of Meditation

Episode Date: May 8, 2021

Steven Laureys is a neurologist, Professor of Neurology & Director at Coma Science Group and an author. Meditation and mindfulness practise has gained a lot of popularity over the last few decades. But the effects are inherently difficult to observe because they're internal, thankfully Steven is one of the leading clinicians and researchers in the field of neurology and has scanned the brains of some of the world's heavyweight meditators. Expect to learn what structural changes occur in the brain after consistent meditation practise, why meditation impacts happiness, what Steven learned from "the happiest man alive", what neuroscience can tell us about happiness from deep sea divers and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://puresportcbd.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW20) Reclaim your fitness and book a Free Consultation Call with ActiveLifeRX at http://bit.ly/rxwisdom Extra Stuff: Buy Steven's Book - https://amzn.to/3xGNM4m Follow Steven on Twitter - https://twitter.com/DrStevenLaureys   Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to this show. My guest today is Steven Larris. He's a neurologist, professor of neurology and director at Coma Science Group and an author. We're talking about the neuroscience of meditation. Meditation and mindfulness practice has gained a lot of popularity over the last few decades, but the effects are inherently difficult to observe because they're internal. Thankfully, Stephen is one of the leading clinicians and researchers in the field of neurology and has scanned the brains of some of the world's heavyweight meditators. So, today, expect to learn what structural changes occur in the brain after consistent meditation practice, why meditation impacts happiness, what Stephen learned from the happiest man alive, what neuroscience can tell us about happiness from deep-sea divers and much more.

One of the problems that we encounter with meditation is that the trait changes, the long-term effects to your day-to-day existence, they take a while to accumulate. You need to actually get some time and attention doing the practice to be able to see that change in your daily experience. And inevitably, that causes people to lose faith or motivation with their daily practice. Thankfully, seeing the physical changes in the brain from someone who gets to look at these things on a screen, like Stephen, hopefully should give those of you who are maybe wobbling with your meditation practice a big kick up the ass that this is one of the most important things that you can do to benefit your mental health and Steven has this lovely Belgian accent, so yeah, enjoy that. But now it is time for the wise and wonderful Steven Loris. Why are you studying something as fluffy as meditation as a neuroscientist?

It's very good. First question, actually, I never ever thought. I would be giving a podcast interview like this one on a subject that I considered indeed as fluffy, esoteric, whatever. Definitely not evidence-based. Remember a journalist, as a medical medical doctor specializing in the study of consciousness and the damage brain I did my PhD thesis and that was in 2000 and shortly after a journalist asked me, well what do you think about mindfulness? And I remember at the time that the scientist in me checking quickly what's been published and I wasn't convinced. So I really a lot has happened since then and here I am now as a neurologist prescribing

meditation in my consultation as a scientist studying what's happening in the mind of these guys who are experts in meditation, and also personally, I think I enjoyed the benefits, even if definitely I'm not a Zen master at all. Why? Why what's drawn you to this interest? Well, as often the case, I think, and I also see it in the patients, I see in the outpatient clinic. It was a personal crisis.

So the details are in the book. Very shortly 2012, I suddenly was dead alone with the three young kids. And not feeling well, feeling anxious about how I would deal with that, feeling also guilty, how could this happen? You have this little voice in your head, probably sounds familiar. And so, of course, you can't change the past and you're worrying about the future. And then other things are happening. I was smoking a lot. I was drinking the psychiatrist, prescribed me sleeping pills and the depressants. And it was clear that this wasn't the inspiring

that I wanted to be. So I started doing yoga. But then it was meeting Buddhist monk in Paris, where I gave a TEDx 2013 about my area of expertise, which is the damage brain and changes in consciousness and maturikach translator of the Dalai Lama, talked about his area of expertise, meditation, compassion. And I still don't know why, but very quickly, we got along well. And he said, well, obviously, I felt I wasn't well and said, come with me. I'm going on this retreat. And that was the first retreat organized by Mind and Life Europe, beautiful German monastery, and that was for me in New Worlds. And so I said to him, well, you come to my lab in Belgium, yes, as a guinea pig, and so it happens. And yeah, a new area of research

Yeah, a new area of research started. What does the quote, it is not reality that matters, it is the way you experience reality, mean to you? It's, of course, somehow learn to, you need to realize that indeed it's your mind, giving you these perceptions, thoughts, emotions. That's what's really important. And so I, of course, knew that as a neurologist, seeing all these families who lost their loved one. And so our expertise is traumatic brain injuries. So from one moment to the other,

life is different. And so then you understand what's truly important. But to me, this is really an important lesson that of course you can't change everything and it's very clear also now we'd go you know, there's a couple of things just happening to us. And then there's things where we can, of course, you know, have an influence and change and work on those things. And the rest we just can somehow learn to accept them. And for me, that was a personal discovery and still working on that. So definitely, I think it's a powerful truth.

It seems to have, it's the epicenter of a lot of other different modes of thinking, right? So you have the dichotomy of control or the stoic fork from stoicism, the CBT as well, I suppose, reminds you where the boundaries lie with regards to what you can and can't control. Then you look at who wrote man's search for meaning, Victor Frankl, he talked about Victor Frankl, man's final bastion, his ability to respond however he chooses to in any given situation. Yeah, realizing that the problem is not the problem, your thoughts about the problem of the problem, realizing that and fully internalizing that is a life-changing moment, I think, but one that we constantly want to try and resist for some reason. Yeah. And maybe also, so of course, sometimes I just see patients where I think, well, I don't know what to say,

because they lost a child, and then I discuss with them, and they say, well, our other daughter committed suicide, and then this happened. There's so many things that you say, how is this possible? Okay, so of course, it is important and we need to acknowledge, you know, things that are thrown at us professionally personally. But then truly we can have an impact. Okay, what do I do with with all of this? And somehow it's a bit strange that we we need to find it out. And it's a trial and error thing. Why not talk about this at school? I mean, it's so important. It's something, again, I see in consultation people with anxiety,

depression, burnout. And how come we kind of neglect our emotional well-being, how we can deal with everything that's happening to us. We have teachers working on our physical well-being and gymnastics, and it's part of the curriculum. To me, it's possible to have something similar, but teachers who can help us to deal with our emotional well-being. And so I think meditation should be taught at school. It's an interesting thing to think about that we are thrust into the world as adults, having to deal with the vicissitudes of life and the inevitable challenges, the death of ourselves, and everyone that we love if that doesn't happen before us. And we are given essentially zero tools by the formal education system

to be able to deal with that. Nothing. Nothing. All of the mindfulness practices, any semblance of rationality that I have managed to develop have been completely self-taught or learned outside of that form of education system. And I was in full-time education for 18 years up to a master's level, not once, did anyone teach me about how emotions work, about what the nature of consciousness is, about how to look at the texture of my own mind, about how to separate what is happening from what I am feeling and so on and so forth. So yeah, I, um, this is an entire other branch to go down, but I think that there is so much dissatisfaction with the education system wholesale at the moment that it's a matter of time before that becomes the majority and that pressure is going to cause. I know that mindfulness is already being taught in many schools,

but even more so than that, talking about time management skills, talking about to-do list management and productivity skills, general life skills, communication, relationship management, sex education that doesn't teach you things like the vulva. I don't even know what a vulva is, but you know, things that actually matter. So yes, I'm confident for that. But today, I want to go through the neuroscience of meditation. You were a man who's had some of the equivalent of the heavyweight world champions of meditation in your lab, and you've strapped them into those strange looking sort of skull cap things that are behind you on

the shelf. Yeah. For the people that are listening, it looks like what you would imagine a peasant from sort of the middle ages wearing, but that's been thrown into machines. So to start off with, how would you characterize the state of the brain in a non-meditator as they just go about their day? So somehow this is what we've been studying for the past 25 years, right? So our every expertise is the damaged brain and we're confronted with people who are comatose and who survive these very severe brain damages and then asking questions, well, are there any thoughts or perceptions or emotions? But meditation is really all about that. It's about the little voice in your head, if I would shut up now, and people listening would experience these thoughts, the continuous stream of consciousness, jumping from one thing to the other.

And we start to understand it a little bit better. So with the team, we identified two networks of consciousness. One is sensory perceptual awareness. That's everything that you hear and see right now. Everything coming through your senses would basically depend on a front-to-prightle what we call neuronal workspace. And then there's the other component

internal awareness, the little voice in your head that permits you to do mental imagery, the brain is a prediction machine, it's very powerful, you can anticipate. So that's another network more in the middle of the brain front and back, also called the default mode network. So important for these thoughts, that can of course also spin out of control, making you anxious sometimes, drive you crazy, keep you from having good sleep. So yeah, that's what the brain does.

And actually we know it even is the case in the damaged brain after coma. We've seen with these brain scans there is still some workings of the mind and brain even in journal and aesthetics when you're sleeping. So you need to be brain dead really to have it completely silent. That's the only way to be brain dead is the only way to finally escape my thoughts. Well, I discuss this with the Daila Lama. So thanks to Matju Riccach, my good friend, I had an opportunity to spend a day and meet a couple of times Daila Lama who's incredibly inspiring, right? But even these top athletes, as you call them, they have thoughts, yet they have learned

through tens of thousands of hours of meditation to kind of observe them. And I think that's the trick. So you just learn to focus your attention. And meditation to me is about training your mind, it's mental gymnastics, there's different ways to do it. Attention is a key word, you can have your attention focused, your breathing, an object, whatever, your mantra. And that's very powerful. You can also do it, not just with thoughts, with emotions, that's the favorite meditation exercise of maturicarid, it's training empathy, compassion.

So the brain, of course, we now know in neuroscience is not fixed. You know, there is the whole field of neuroplasticity. It's permanently changing. And so we can, and maybe we should play a more active role there. I discovered upon reading your book that it was only until recently ago that we knew, or recently in relative terms, scientists thought that all of the neurons that you had were present at birth. And it's only recently that neuroplasticity and the ability to change the brain. I suppose that before that, just to find why someone should meditate, if there's not going

to be any physical changes to the brain becomes a much harder cell, but after that you can say, well, actually look, we can see what's going on. And that's, you go through a process of focused attention meditation that you've done under your imaging. Can you take us through the process of what happens, the focus, the distraction, and how that sort of manifests neurologic? Yeah. So that's exactly the exercise. So you can compare it somehow to sports, right? You can take a weight and train your biceps and you will actually see its increase in volume. It's a bit harder to see what's happening in your in your brain, right?

But these brain scans show that the exercise is actually you Focusing your attention. Let's say to your breathing and then a thought would Come up and and you would observe that you know you're losing the attention and you just bring it back to the object here, you're breathing. And that circle of always bringing back attention and the networks involved is exactly what we see with both functional MRI or what you see behind me, these EEG machines measuring electrical activity of the brain. And so depending on the exercise you do here, training the attention networks, you really

see those parts of the brain actually become thicker. That's what we saw in these Buddhist monks and the connections, the pathways, becoming thicker, stronger, more efficient, and a more connected brain is a more efficient brain. So that was for me as a scientist, such an eye opener to see with these objective measures when people like Matsurikar and other monks were in the machines, how they had a very efficient and direct control on their thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and how we could actually see it with the machines. And that's what we published. Isn't it crazy that if somehow the work that we did internally on our brains was shown externally, So the work that we did internally on our brains was shown externally. Matthew Ricard and the Dalai Lama will be walking around like professional bodybuilders.

They'd look like these hulking sort of monsters of muscle and mass. Yeah, right. And so for us, of course, it's interesting to look at those extremes. Now I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not a monk, and I actually, when the publisher, the book company asked me write a book about meditation, I said, well, who am I? And then somehow, yes, I thought, well, if I can do it, with my, as a control freak, I'm such a nervous personality, anyone can do it with my, you know, as a control freak, I'm such a nervous personality, anyone can do it. And also I thought a number of books that I read somehow for me were quite demanding. And also

there's the often the Buddhist angle, right? And as my wife says, when when Mathieu comes, he always would stay at home. And she said, well, it's easy for him to be Zen, you know, he's no partner, no job. Is she blaming her lack of mindfulness on you, Steven? I think he, that might be a low-key dig. But I, maybe, maybe, but it's true. You know, we have a life very different from these Buddhist monks, right? So how do we do it? And I think that maybe we sometimes are too demanding, you know, both for others and ourselves.

And so I just wanted to propose something that is easy to do when you have the formal exercises. And so it's good to go on your mat and sit for 10, 20 minutes, whatever in your meditation posture. But what do you do the rest of the day? So I figured out that there's many ways to do meditation and sometimes we just do it without explicitly calling it meditation when you're running, when you're... And so to me that was a very good way actually to have the positive effects when in my consultation and there's a lot of things

they're dramatic as we said people losing their loved one and so on. Between two patients, families, I would just take a couple of deep breaths and maybe the first one is the most difficult one where you just refocus, you offer yourself a pause, but you can do that on the train, in the grocery store when you're queuing. So that kind of, and I'm not a Zen Master, ask my wife and kids, but it can really make a difference

to be in the moment, to observe those thoughts, those emotions, and somehow we created all in our mind, right? And so we have all these things going on and then we lose ourselves in it, and you can just train it. And I think that's good for my work as a medical doctor, as a director here of the lab at the university, which is also very competitive,

and within my relation. So that's what I wanted to share, if I can do it, anyone can do it. So that's an interesting state change, right? What happens acutely around the practice of meditation, you get this parasympathetic response, especially if you're combining it with the breathing, so on and so forth. A lot of the people that are listening will probably be at least familiar with having tried meditation and maybe to get into it, can you walk us through the effects of long-standing meditation practices in the brain? How's that characterized? What happens when you put someone like Matthew Ricard, or I guess you haven't had the Dalai Lama rim, but when

you get these experts, these experts meditate, is he? Well, if he's listening, if he's listening, tell him to hurry up and he can stay yours with your wife. But yeah, what's the characteristic of their sort of brain? How do they look? So, absolutely right, Chris. When you take a couple of breaths, you will just feel, right, that there is a direct effect, your heart rate goes down, blood pressure, your stress hormones, if you would measure them cortisol or adrenaline.

And then long-term effects, and not, of course, not only in these monks, studies have shown that if you start doing this after eight weeks, we would see also in your brain structural changes. So this is a 3D print of the brain of Mathurika. He's a little bit with us today. If we measure the gray matter volume, so these billions of brain cells, neurons, those specific parts of the attentional network, regions like the hippocampus here, deep in the temporal lobe, would really show an increase in volume. So we can measure that and we control for a number of confounding factors, structures

like prefrontal areas, anterior singlet cortex. So areas of the brain involved in attentional control, emotional control. They really change their volume and their connectivity because that's the strength of the brain, right? These billions of neurons are talking to each other. So that's true the wide matter-track, which is something I can show you here. It's an image we're not used to see. So this is again the brain of Mathieu,

but now we look inside. So these are the thousands of billions of connections. And we would, for example, see the tracks connecting the left and the right hemisphere. And so if you meditate meditate there's more of these big highways permitting both parts of the brain to work together. So that's what we would really see structural changes in the brain when you do meditation. And that's reflected in a phenomenological change in the texture of the mind, right? This isn't just like having

bigger muscles, it's bigger muscles that can lift heavy weight. Yeah, absolutely. So I think we can all benefit from this. No need, of course, to it's again like sports. You know, you don't need to run an iron man. Already if you go for your jogging on Sundays, this is a good thing. Probably we don't move enough. And so just to have more attention, not just for your physical well-being, but also your mental well-being, I think is worth talking about. And for all of us, for myself as a caregiver, it's really strange. I'm supposed to take care of others, but somehow I was never thought how to take care of myself. And my job, I'm at risk for burnout. I've got two colleagues who committed suicide. We know this for so long.

And as you say, there's all these wonderful initiatives and mindfulness, but nothing really structural that is part of the curriculum. And I think that can and should change. Have you looked at how different volumes of meditation track with changes in the brain over time? So have you looked at somebody say who's done a thousand sessions, five thousand sessions, ten thousand sessions? Have you been able to have a look at that?

5,000 sessions, 10,000 sessions. Have you been able to have a look at that? So there's a number of really good labs worldwide looking at those kinds of longitudinal effects. People like Tanya Singer in Germany who are really following over time cohorts of people who start to meditate using all these brain scans and showing that yes Practice makes perfect, but it's not about being perfect. It's already about you know Going through this personal journey and it's it's it's a challenge of course for us. It's way easier to show that One or the other pill, right? Anxiolytic or antidepressant or painkiller, has an effect compared to a placebo. And I would prescribe for everyone the same whatever drug and see the effect. Here it's more of a challenge because how do you meditate? There's a lot of variability there.

And yet, as you just said, there are these studies showing the correlation about what you're doing and what's happening in your mind and brain. It's such a shame that our internal state is hidden from us, right? Like, as a practice meditator, both of us will be familiar with finishing a session and not really knowing if we did well or badly. And then reminding ourselves that having any sort of judgment about our sit is negative in any case, and I need to return to the equanimity and da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da so on and so forth. But it's significantly easier if you're a power lifter and there's 250

kilos on the floor. You know, it's on the floor, you know how heavy it is. You know, if you've picked it up, it's a very binary, can win or loss game, right? How many times did the ball go in the net? How many hoops did you get the ball through, et cetera, et cetera? I think that's definitely one of the challenges or one of the resistances that people have to meditation that it is inherently so murky

to ourselves, the success metrics, which everybody gamifies everything. Now, right, how many followers do you have on Instagram? How many steps did you do today? How many calories did you burn? We want that objective metric of success. And I'm not a massive fan of mues and other similar products. I've used them for a very long time. And I personally, for me, they just don't seem to get at what meditation is supposed to be about. But yes, I appreciate, I appreciate that's the case. Did you, he's another thing that I mean

treat to know, have you looked at the optimal session length for achieving returns. I imagine that there must be a point at which the returns in terms of brain change become too diminished, but I'm familiar with a bunch of different meditators who talk about the first 10 to 15 minutes of some sits, essentially be you settling into the sit itself. There's advocates out there who would say that, yes, get your five minutes in one if you can,

and I agree, but there must also be an optimal amount of time. Have you had a look at that? Yes, but I think it's a challenging question, right? It depends, why do you meditate? So what are your needs? Maybe we should clearly separate, if you have a medical problem, if you have one of the other symptoms that you know, you can't work properly or function, then go talk to your medical practitioner and he will send you if need be to a psychologist or do other tests,

that's one thing. The other, of course, is why wait? Many of my patients say why wait? It's a pity. I wait until my tension headache or insomnia or burnout, whatever, to discover the benefits of meditation. So of course, we should be more, oops, doing the preventive part.

And it's a question I often hear. So, okay, what should I do for how long and people, it's not competition. There's no Olympics here. My personal take is that really, you do what you can and you have the formal sessions, 20 minutes, but you know, sometimes I have five kids. So Chris, sometimes in the morning 30 seconds can feel like a lifetime.

Yeah, when that's just you take that time, Stephen, you, but I don't, you know, sleep is also important and all the other things. I don't want to, so that's why I think also informal meditation and studies have shown that it also has an impact. So I think every minute you can meditate and the way you actually will meditate, what kind of exercise you're doing is good. Don't, don't, put the bar too high, don't be, as you said, this was a bad session or whatever. So, yeah, I'm seeing this as a personal journey. You just try these things out

and then depending on the needs of the moment, you will do this or the other thing. A body scan will, for example, help my wife all asleep. It's not my kind of thing. So we all got these different exercises. Then again, maybe this is my personality, but sometimes I want to try new things. So right now I'm in this mantra meditation in the book also, there's David Lynch talking about, you know, what he's doing with transcendental meditation. So I think we all have different needs and different, you know,

personalities, types of how we actually do this and it would be strange if we compare it again with sports that one would say you should go swimming. Everyone should do swimming, yeah precisely. So when I hear that also in the field of meditation I become a little bit, whoa, this is strange, right? So find someone who, and also the way you mentioned the wearables and some people like having these feedbacks and numbers, fine. It's great apps now and some of my patients really are

happy, others hate it and it makes them nervous. So that I think is the challenge. Just try it out and for yourself, find out what is good for you. There's an analogy that someone told me when I was discussing, I'd hit a bit of a wall with my meditation practice and I'd been doing shins and youngs five ways to know yourself, which is a combination of focus

to mindfulness, like classic mindfulness meditation. And I'd been doing it for a long time, like maybe three years, I think, like 500 sessions or something like that I'd got in under this one particular type. There's various little iterations within that, but it's essentially the same practice. And he said, why would you think that the boat which carried you across the river would get you overland on the other side? And I was like, dude, that's such a good analogy that you have particular practices that work for particular bits of time, areas within your life. Any powerlifter that's listening, anyone that's ever tried to do weight training knows

you don't stick to the same exercises from when you start the gym, you cycle through them, you periodize the different things that you do. But again, because what is happening internally within the texture of our own mind is so murky to ourselves, and there aren't these existing sort of bodies of knowledge that are quite as common as we have in other pursuits like sports and athletics and stuff like that. It's very difficult to actually learn these. And for someone to say to me, hey man, like why would you think that the boat that took you across the river would get you on the cross land on the other side? That was like a hammer block. That's like, right, brilliant. So I'm now part way through kind of searching

for what my new pursuit will be for a little while, I'm looking at maybe doing Zogchen from your conversation with Sam Harris, that really sort of opened up some curiosity around that. I like the idea of this sort of an undual perspective and then what else have been looked at the Sedona method, which is actually a lot more of a sort of a cerebral type of an interpersonal type of meditation. That seems fascinating. But yeah, it's an endlessly interesting world to delve into and the fact that you can do it at all times within your own mind is really, really good. You looked as well, you talk in the book about happiness. Can you explain how meditation relates to phenomenological happiness, but on a neurological level?

How does that even work? So again, it's a challenge to define happiness, right? And the pursuit of happiness. And we can't be permanently happy, right? When we had the first anti-depressants pro-Zacking, the Americans taking this to be super happy, which is a challenge. Their life is not just always a Hollywood scenario, and then how do you deal with those challenges?

And seeing meditation is just something to make you happy, or just something that can reduce stress. or just something that can reduce stress, or just it's way more than that, right? But it definitely permits you to maybe, first of all, listen to your own emotions. It's a question that we often ask a kind of polite, how do you do? How do you do? And I'm fine, but how do you really do? How are you? It's not so easy. And that, already, for me is because you're, I understand, also one of those athletes of the mind

and doing the higher, more advanced courses and practices. But the people I see in my consultation, you know, sometimes have their, you know, negative priors. And it's just inviting them to try this out. This is not something magical. And yes, I do believe it can make you more happy and coming back to my favorite guinea pig, Mathurika, he journalists call him the most happy person alive, which he says. It's ridiculous. It's definitely not true and how could we know that, but indeed, he is kind of showing the opposite brain pattern as people who are depressed.

How is that characterized? So, well, we, again, this prefrontal area here that plays a role in emotion control and how during the different brain scans, his brain and emotional status reacted comes to the conclusion that yes, his happiness circuits, but there is no such thing as a happiness region or a happiness chemical, right? It's really networks in a soup of neurotransmitters, permanently changing again. But yes, it permits you to, as you said in the beginning, react to the reality

of what's happening to us in a different way. And it is interesting to try and understand the neuroscience behind it, but I definitely wouldn't be too arrogant. I've, the past 25 years with the team, trying to understand the human mind. And sometimes I hear from colleagues like, we've got it all explained. And sometimes I hear from colleagues like, you know, we've got it all explained. And nothing is further from the truth. We don't understand how from

something material, my favorite organ here, and the brain is definitely important. But we can't explain how from something, an object like this, something immaterial, thoughts, perceptions, emotions arise. So really, I think at one point, and also as, you know, I had a Christian education, then went to university, very critical thinking, and of course I'm a scientist, I will always confront what I think to understand with what I think to measure. But when we talk about consciousness, I don't know. Can we say we now made some advance with all these sexy brain scans and images?

Can we say we may be understood 50% of the problem or 5% or 0.005 percent, we just ignore what we ignore and talking about our ignorance and just being a bit looking at it with more wonder and I think it's good and kind of the personal experience you can even call it spirituality. I really think that this is one of the biggest mysteries. And I'm naively optimistic that we can increase, or maybe I should say reduce our ignorance, give it a try, but it's a challenge and it makes you humble. That is your meditation coming to bear in your professional world.

That is the equanimity that you've learned to not fixate or suppress the things that come up during your meditation and you're now scaling that across your research. You know, this is your life's work. This is what you've dedicated yourself to and you're someone now who's manifesting physically in not just the words that you say, but in the way that you approach the calling that you have in life. You're saying, I'm curious about what is going to happen, but I'm neither fixating nor suppressing on the results that come from it. I hope that we find more, but it doesn't matter if we don't. It's just naturally interesting. I mean, man, like if that's not a beautiful explanation for why you can have

a scalable version of meditation, that it's not just the state change or the trade change of the texture of your own mind, but actually the way that you can be within the world as well. I think that's awesome. You looked at free divers as well. Didn't you look at some world record free diver guy that can dive hundreds of meters on a single breath? What did you lend from them? So, Guiomneri, again, our area of expertise is the damage brain and trying to improve our care for coma survivors, but looking at those other guys, those athletes of the mind, not just the Buddhist monks, but these world record holders, Guillaume Niri, is French world champion,

came to the lab and permitted us to look at how the brain works when you're holding your breath in his case for seven, eight minutes, which is really impressive and he's in an altered state of consciousness. business. You can look at his movies and YouTube is seeing things down there. It's really terribly interesting and it reminded me when I heard him speak about our study on near death experiences actually and sometimes he's seeing meters under the wall. Exactly. 120 meters down there and so yeah we are about to publish the workings of his mind and brain and those other apnea champions. So it's interesting for us again to learn from these extremes. We also have the astronauts.

So there are now seven up there in the International Space Station. And they are put in the MRI scanner in Moscow, because not so long ago was only Russia sending them. And then when they come back from sometimes long periods of zero gravity, it's a challenge and we're preparing to leave this planet, go to Mars and so. So again, there a wonderful opportunity for us and the team to study another type of athletes, the astronauts, the cosmonauts. So all of that is very, very interesting. Have you got any predictions? One other very special person is Gourin Sombrand. Gourin.

Who is Shaman? I learned a lot from her experiences when she was in Mongolia. And so now we're comparing, well, what is different between those different exercises of meditation and hypnosis, which is something we also use in a medical context with cognitive trans, Trans, Chamanic Trans, so fascinating and how it compares, as you just mentioned, these athletes as Guillaume Neri were able to do extraordinary things. Before I want to try and give people an opportunity to delve into the texture of their own mind, if we've got time and you'd be willing to give them something interesting, maybe open monitoring or something like that. But before that, I had a guy on the show a few months ago, a guy called Paul Evans and

he is the director of a big events company out in Dubai. And a few years ago, probably about 10 years ago, he was put into a medically-injuiced coma for about three months. He'd had a kidney, a particular type of kidney failure, rapid onset kidney failure due to over drinking. He was partying a lot and he was put into a coma for three months. And he wrote a book called When I Wake Up. And in this book, he explains how he lived during this coma in Singapore for years. He ran a team of salespeople.

He could tell you the color of the tie that he wore when he went to work, the number plate of the car that he got into, the brand of toothpaste that he used, the different people who worked for him. He got up. He went to work. He went home. He had a coffee. He had food.

And he existed through this four-year period. During this time, in his altered world, altered universe, his dad passed away. So his dad dies while he's in this, and his family are there around the bed, and apparently, at some point through this, they were sat around the bed and could see tears streaming down his face, but they didn't know why. And they think, or at least Paul's hypothesis is that this was the period where during his altered state of consciousness, he was burying his father. How replicable realistic even is this, because this story sounds so insane insane and I was sat there just sort of with major open listening to him talk.

Is this the sort of thing that you've encountered in your work? Yes, of course. So the past 25 years and there was hundreds of people we see surviving a severe brain damage and then often confounded by a pharmacological coma, where it's very hard for us to know, well, when did this actually happen? You know, they go through intensive care and then the whole time they stay in the hospital and then rehab. So I somehow, over time, you know, I just try to listen very carefully to what these people tell us, because consciousness is a subjective first person experience. He is the only one knowing what was happening right then. And I think historically we made the error to consider consciousness as binary all or nothing.

And that's wrong. You can be more or less awake, more or less aware of what's going on around you of yourself. And another historical error, I think, and we've contributed to showing scientifically how we've been underestimating the workings of the mind in case of severe brain damage. It's not because someone of course can no longer express her or his thoughts or feelings and people in coma cannot talk. We have no nonverbal communication. And so we tend to, you know, of course, our measure of consciousness is making inferences based on the motor response. And it's not because people are not responding that in each and every case, nothing is going

on in their brain and mind. And so that became very clear with all the brain scans. So we should be more careful. And near death experiences are another example. So anyone listening right now, if you had one of these experiences, please share them with us. You will help. We are about 40 people trying to understand consciousness. What do you mean?

I know you've got an email address. What's the email address? So for near death experiences, it's NDE at uliesh.be. And anything related to coma, it's coma at uliesh.be. I think it's really important for us to just chat up and listen because I never had one of these experiences. And sometimes I feel like the guy know, the guy who thinks, you know, is everything about color vision. And imagine, I would even understand everything about what's happening in the brain, the

parts of the, you know, brain regions and neurotransmitters, but I myself would be color blind, right? So that theoretical knowledge is different from the feeling itself. Imagine one day I would see colors, something you know, would change. And maybe historically again, and this is going back to Descartes. Je pense donc juste où, I think, therefore, I am. We've been also in the educational system we were discussing. It's all about thinking and knowing. And what about I perceive, therefore, I am. And I think that's maybe the challenge.

We're comparing our brains to computers. It's not a computer. And we should invest more in what makes us human, irrational and intuitive. So a challenge there. Can we do a practice which can give people a novel insight into the texture of their own mind? Maybe something that's not just the breathing, if we got something else, like an open monitoring or something like that, anything else you can suggest?

So whatever classical exercise indeed would be just to focus your attention to the breathing, we know that it's a very interesting exercise I believe. But you can also kind of put your spotlight of attention to your outside world. So I don't know what you're seeing right now. I'm in front of a window. I'm very lucky. So whatever you see, if you have a window, well, why don't you just look out of the window

and maybe discover that visual scene in a new way. And you can appreciate the colors. I right now see trees and leaves and I can really focus my attention on all be very aware of the here and now, of whatever the visual input is there now, and you can then play with other modalities. And why not now pay attention to what we hear. Maybe you will suddenly become aware of the noise of your heating system or some noises from outside, people talking, animal, dog barking, whatever, and again you can play with your attention, now maybe bringing it to what you feel, maybe you sit down and what's coming in again

through these senses and appreciate kind of your own weight, different parts of your body or even your clothing. So suddenly you can focus and appreciate the awareness of, you know, the little pressure of your clothes. And again, do this for the time you can decide on the different modalities and appreciate how you can decide to bring attention to different parts of your existence. And that's a very simple exercise where you can enjoy the power of the mind and experience things a little bit differently. The fascinating thing that I find about open monitoring and walking meditations as well,

especially when you really start to tune in, is all of the things which our sensory inputs, which you do not indulge in noticing throughout the day. So specifically, touch, I think, is a really good one. Touch is almost there for most of us really as just an alert system. That's too hot, that's too sharp, that's too whatever. So right now, both of you and me are standing up because we are 21st century desk workers who are concerned about our posture. But for everybody that's sitting and listening to this,

the sensation of the seat on your body and the clothes on your wearing clothes all day, every single day, and yet, do you ever notice the sensation of clothes on your body, despite the fact that it's covering almost all of your body? Well, almost never, but you can do that. You can, like tuning a radio, an old FM AM radio, you can allow your consciousness to tune itself into that frequency to get the level of fidelity with which you are focusing on the sensations that are coming in. You can tune it to that point where you can feel the seat beneath you, beneath your legs, or the floor beneath your feet. And then when you can hear the different sounds, maybe you notice there is something coming in from outside of the headphones that's

beyond just my voice or maybe you hear that actually I haven't cleaned up the audio of this this track particularly well, and there's a tiny little bit of buzz in the background, and I wonder what that is. And that's just understanding that simply in the most mundane of experiences, there is essentially a bottomless pit that you can dig into. I think that that's why meditation is interesting to me. And the deeper that you can get access to that experience, I think the richer and richer your life is. Absolutely. And so that's actually what we've been studying for the past decade. So you have these awareness networks. We just mentioned external awareness, internal awareness. These are two networks, emotional networks. So these are the exercises.

You can just focus your attention, observe. And that's really very, very powerful. And you can do it in a very formal way, but you can also just when you go running, for, you know, doesn't need to be your whole run, but just decide, okay, now I'm paying attention to my feet hitting the ground and I can really appreciate it and you can really break it down or now I'm focusing my attention to what I'm seeing during the run and so and then sometimes you just let it go and have your mind thinking about anything. So that's the exercise.

Just playing with these things, you can do the guided meditation if you like it with the apps. And then you can do it yourself without any help, doing it alone, doing it with your partner or with a bunch of people. So that's quite individual again and the challenge is to find what fits you best at this specific moment in time.

Very much so. For people who might be thinking I wonder where to get started. I would highly recommend headspace is fantastic. Calm is fantastic. Some Harris is waking up. App is also really, really good. If you Google five ways to know yourself by shins and young, it is free and it is the most

comprehensive explanation of how the different areas of mindfulness meditation come together from a sort of a practical perspective. Also, the No Nonsense Meditation Book, a scientist's guide to the power of meditation by Mr. Stephen Laurie's MD will be linked in the show notes below on Amazon of course. Where else should people go if they want to keep up with the fascinating research that you do, where else can people head? So there's a lot of opportunities as you just mentioned. Something I prescribed in my outpatient clinic is mindfulness-based stress reduction. You have these eight-week programs, and I know you're in good hands.

You have someone who's been trained, and the sciences actually shown that the different exercises you see there can be beneficial and will lead to these changes in brain structure. People can go on to retreat. So, it's really this journey. There's in the book a number of websites for those who like it. You mentioned already the only thing you need to start meditating is your own curiosity and motivation. And if that is there, you can start your journey and I wish you a very pleasant one. I love it. I'm going to finish it with the quote that you actually begin the book with, which

you say, you don't have to control your thoughts, you just have to stop them, stop letting them control you. Exactly. But we can talk about it and read about it. The challenge is now really to experience it because you know it's happening between your ears, nobody can meditate for you. So that's the invitation. For me was a discovery. I really enjoyed how from a skeptic actually I heard only negative things about meditation during my training in medical school and later in neurology and now you know we're having this this discussion and the research going on Really showing and there's hundreds of scientific papers every year that there is added value so hopefully More people will be able to try it out. If we haven't convinced them today, then I'm going to give up. Steven, thank you very much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. you