Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - The Science Of Walking: The Benefits Of Walking In Nature, Walking Meetings, And Walking Meditation | Dacher Keltner

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

This scientist says that walking is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Here are some ways you can incorporate it into your life.Today we're going to talk about something so obvious, but so incredibly powerful. Walking. This is the third of a three part mini-series we're doing focused on the benefits of spending time outdoors.Dr. Keltner is one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists. He is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, The Power Paradox, and Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate, and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest, on issues related to emotion and well-being. He also hosts the podcast The Science of Happiness.In this episode we talk about:The practice of “awe walks”The ritualizing of walkingHow it can help your concentration and anxiety levelsWalking meetingsAnd walking meditationsRelated Episodes:The Science Of How Nature Changes Your Brain—From Sleep To Cognition To Your Nervous System | Dacher KeltnerHow To Get The Physiological And Psychological Benefits Of Nature If You Don’t Live Near Nature | Dacher Keltner#546. This Scientist Says One Emotion Might Be the Key to Happiness. Can You Guess What It Is? | Dacher KeltnerWe Know Nature Is Good for Us. Here’s How To Make Time for It, Scandinavian Style | Linda Åkeson McGurkSign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/dacher-keltner-bonus-3Additional Resources:The Science of Happiness PodcastHow to Start (Restart, or Upgrade) Your Meditation Practice: A Master Class | Jon Kabat-Zinn#580. Tripping Out with a Legend: Jon Kabat-Zinn on Pain vs. Suffering, Rethinking Your Anxiety, and the Buddha's Teaching in a Single SentenceThe Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the BrainDownload the Happier app today: https://my.happierapp.com/link/downloadSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing? Today, we're going to talk about something so obvious, but so incredibly powerful, walking in many forms, walking in nature, of course, but also doing walking meetings, something I've been getting into quite deeply recently,

and also walking meditation, of which I'm a huge, huge fan. We're taking this deep dive into the science of walking with my man, Dacher Keltner, who's a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and has written over 200 scientific publications, as well as six books, including, "'Born to Be Good'," which had a huge impact on me personally, the power paradox and awe.

He also hosts a podcast of his own called, The Science of Happiness. We talk about the practice of awe walks, that's a term he came up with and has done some research on, how walking can help your concentration, performance and anxiety levels among many other things. And lastly, we talk about walking meditation. We discuss the science and then I'm gonna talk

in reasonably granular detail about how I personally practice. Just to say this is the third in a three-part series of mini episodes we're doing focused on the benefits of spending time outside. You do not have to have heard the previous two installments to follow along for this one, but if you do want to check them out, I've put links in the show notes. In episode one, Dacher and I go through the long list of health benefits from nature. And then in episode two, we talk about how to access all of those benefits, even if you don't live in nature.

Before we get into it though, I wanna take a moment to thank our friends over at Columbia Sportswear for sponsoring today's episode as somebody who has become a recent convert to spending time outside. I know how challenging it can be when the cold weather hits and we find ourselves stuck inside more often than not, but the team at Columbia Sportswear is changing that.

They're making gear that keeps you cozy and comfortable, whether you're taking on a tough hike or just strolling to grab your morning coffee. Their innovative fabrics and thoughtful designs, like their OmniHeat Infinity Jackets, allow you to stay active and enjoy the great outdoors. This high-performance jacket uses advanced thermal reflective technology to provide excellent warmth and

insulation so you can stay out there and keep moving no matter how cold it gets. Because the good folks over at Columbia sent me some jackets, I've been wearing this stuff, including my OmniHeat Infinity jacket, which has really been helpful at my son's outdoor flag football practices, which gets super cold. Makes me think about that Norwegian expression. I'm probably going to mangle it, but it's something like there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Having clothing like the stuff they make over at Columbia that allows me to get outside

even when the weather sucks is super helpful and really good for my whole system. Okay. Here we go now with Dacher Keltner. Dacher Keltner, welcome back to the show. Good to be with you, Dan. We're on part three of our adventure where we're talking about the benefits of nature. And today we're gonna talk about walking specifically.

And we're gonna broaden it a little bit because we're gonna talk about walking in nature, but also just walking generally. Well, let's start though with walking in nature. And you have this tool that you talk about called an AWWWALK. And I wonder if you could define it for me and then also talk about what kind of evidence

you've found as a result of looking at this in populations. Yeah, thank you. It's a study that I'm very proud of and happy to see its effect in the world. A lot of people walk. It's a very important part of exercise for different age groups. It's a great tradition in contemplative spiritual

traditions around the world just to get out and walk. And as I started to do this science of awe and knowing of all of its benefits, of it's good for your immune system and your heart and your concentration and how you get along with others, I thought about with Virginia Stern, this collaborator at UC San Francisco, can we add layers of awe to a person's regular walk? And so what we did is we built in certain instructions that we tested scientifically,

and they include getting into kind of a quiet meditative state as you walk with slowing the breathing and syncing up your footsteps and kind of being aware of the footsteps. We encourage people on their regular walk to find a place out of their ordinary path that might bring them a little bit of wonder and awe, right? And so, you know, it might be to go down a different street and to look at the neighbor's garden, or it might be to go up to an elevation

and look at the sky, change colors. So they sort of sought out a little bit of wonder and surprise. And then we encourage them, and this is one of my favorite parts, and it comes from kind of the cognitive science of awe, which is we ask them to really look at small things, to really focus in detail at what they're looking at, and then to move out and pan out, right,

and look at what's vast. So you would look at the leaves on the ground and the individual veins on the leaves, and then you pan out and look at the pattern of leaves on the sidewalk you're walking on, right, from small to vast. Look at one cloud, then many clouds, one flower, a whole pattern of flowers,

and really to build that into their way of attending to the environment as they went on this walk. And what we found, Dan, was really cool, which is we had people who are 75 years old or older participate in the study. At that age, your body is just more sore and you're a little bit more anxious about things and your friends are getting too old At that age, your body is just more sore and you're a little bit more anxious about things and your friends are getting too old.

And they either in this study went on their regular aw walk for once a week, or they went on a vigorous walk. And while they're out on the walk, they took a picture of themselves. They took a selfie. And what we found is going on the walk, they took a picture of themselves. They took a selfie. And what we found is going on the awe walk led people to feel over time, more awe. So the more we practice this, the richer it gets. Over the eight weeks of the study, they felt more kindness and compassion.

Over the eight weeks of the study, they felt less distress, less pain in their bodies, which is very good news as you get older. And I love this finding, which is in our awa condition, the photos they took of themselves, the self gets smaller and starts to drift off to the side of the photo. And you know, I'm gonna get a little John Lennon on you here again. It's like, I'm part of the universe or I'm nothing,

you know, I'm dissolving into the whole, you know, phenomenal field. But that's cool that the selfie becomes less self-focused, which is very fitting with the science. And it just tells us, and I know you're a great champion of this, which is let's think practically, right? Let's take something we ordinarily do, walking, and let's find a little bit of awe. And it actually has benefits in doing that. There are a couple of things I'm keying in on there in your excellent description of this practice and its benefits. I believe you said

something about how you kind of get better at feeling awe the more you go, like awe is a skill. Yeah, it's so important, you know, and when I talk about awe, I get two objections, which is like, all right, you're gonna tell me to start doing it and you're gonna ruin it forever, because the more I do it, the less powerful it is. And the second is, this is just for privileged people. Both of those ideas are wrong.

Money has very little to do with all research shows. Importantly, it's a skill. It is not a mystical experience that once you seek it out, it's ruined, rather, it's a mental practice. When you talk to people who feel a lot of awe in a domain about wines or baseball statistics, they will agree with you, you know, aficionados like,

man, the more I learn about this, the more I learn about clouds, the more beautiful they become. And that's what happened in our all walks study. The more they practiced seeking awe and finding it on a weekly walk, the deeper the awe became. You also talked about how pain went down.

Yeah. Do we have any sense of why that would be or how that works? Yeah, it's correlational evidence, but it tended to relate to the amount of kindness they felt in prosocial emotion, kindness and gratitude. And what we know about kindness and gratitude, and this is why science is beneficial, which is that those states activate the vagus nerve, they reduce the stress response.

Those states tend to activate dopamine, pro-social states like kindness. All of those physiological changes make the body less susceptible to pain and less susceptible to daily stresses, right? This AWWWK is getting us into this loving kindness mindset, if you will, and you're just above the pain of life, which is good news for many.

You're getting me thinking about a conversation I had here on the show recently with Ellen Langer, the Harvard psychologist who is the pistol. And she was saying that instead of the mind-body connection, we should just be calling it mind-body unity, because the connection connotes some sort of separation in the first place. And it's so amazing that how you can increase dopamine and other healthy and helpful neurotransmitters in the mind and somehow physical pain can go down.

And that really does speak to a unity. Yeah. And, you know, thank you for bringing this up, the Cartesian distinction between mind and body, and you see it in Judeo-Christian thought and Western European analytical thought. It doesn't make sense neuroanatomically. The great example is the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve, which we study,

this large bundle of nerves that goes from your brain, the mind, through your facial musculature, to your vocalization muscles, down to your heart, your lungs, your digestive organs, and the microbiome in your gut. It's just this big system of neurons, right, all this flow of information, and it's pure mind-body. And what I love about the vagus nerve is it's activated by the things you and I care about and try to promote.

You meditate, elevated vagus nerve, compassion, elevated vagus nerve activation, awe, beauty, music, and walking, and deep breath. I think there are these old ideas that science has started to take down. Mind-body dualism probably doesn't make sense. The Freudian view of the mind, so prevalent in the West, it's all fight or flight or sex, that's bogus. There's a lot more to who we are neurophysiologically than what those old ideas suggest.

Pass on this question if you don't feel like talking about it, but we've been talking about the benefits of all walks, but what do we know about the benefits of just taking a walk, whether you're experiencing all or not? Yeah. I mean, it's one of the best things that you can do. You know, there's health science where people look at life expectancy and symptomatology and how's your heart doing and just basic metrics of physical health.

And it's benefited by walking and the movements of walking, the breath of walking, how walking tends to deepen your breathing. There are focused studies of nature walks and walking per se that have found that, you know, if I walk through an arboretum, researched by the Kaplins at Michigan, kids concentrate better, adults do better in terms of anxiety, and that spread to,

as a basic paradigm, just getting outdoors and walking very good for the mind and body, adding some nature to it probably gets a little bit stronger. There's work coming out of Germany, I think, where you take elderly people who are really distressed and worried and get them to regularly walk and they start to find ease and contentment. So, you know, it's interesting, Dan, when you teach happiness like I have for 30 years, people are like, all right, man,

just give me two things to do or three things to do. And it's like, be with some people you care about, walk outdoors is right up there, as one of the best things to do. A lot of people, and this is a tendency I have myself, get obsessive about counting their steps. I've had some guests on the show who have pointed out that the whole 10,000 steps thing is kind of arbitrary and might have actually began as a marketing technique anyway.

You know, I don't know if you have thoughts on this. I've heard it recommended like, hey, shoot for around 8,000, but just generally try to make sure you're moving throughout the day. Do you count your steps or what are your personal practices in this regard? Yeah, many. And thank you for asking. I do count my steps and I average nine to 10,000. Last year was 10, this year nine.

So it matters and I notice that it affects my sleep and my sense of wellbeing. One of the things that I do that's interesting to think about for our audience is I ritualize my walk. I think rituals are so powerful. Walking can very quickly become a kind of ritual, a repeated pattern of behavior that has some significance to you. So when I walk, there are several walks that I do regularly.

When I walk to teach on campus, I walk through certain spots, and there's something about the repeated experience of those spots as part of a walk that becomes more significant. When I walk to work, I make sure I touch a tree to honor my deceased brother, and I just take 30 seconds to think about him

and what he meant. And so I think that ritualizing these very simple physical exercises can really benefit us. And then I do something that I learned from you in our conversations, which is I make sure as I'm walking to mentally guide my awareness of my senses, and I'll say, hey man, this is my body moving in space and my knee's a little sore, but that's okay.

And here's what my mind is thinking. Look at my attitudes as I'm walking. What is my attitude this morning in October? Such powerful ways to orient the day. I love Rebecca Solnit, an amazing writer. She has a book on walking that I'd highly recommend. And she says walking is a basic state of consciousness, just like prayer might be or meditation or sleeping

or social connection, and we should treat it with care. I had a guest on whose name I'm forgetting. She wrote a book called The Extended Mind. Her name will come to me as soon as we finish the conversation, just when I don't need it anymore. But I'll put a link in the show notes. She's a great science writer and great interviewee. And she was talking about the fact that walking can be good for cognition because, and this

makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, in our evolutionary times, we were having to think while moving because we were nomads and we were hunting and moving through the landscape. And so there are so many benefits. If I have a problem, often walking will help me solve it. Yeah, I mean, the science of walking is serious stuff. Walking is a defining emergent quality of humans, right?

We became bipedal primates compared to chimps, which, you know, hustle around on all fours. Walking gives you a certain way of looking at the world. It gives you a certain perceptual experience of envisioning what's ahead and then thinking about what's behind, which is really interesting. Time is different.

Walking very often is social, and we're walking what's behind, which is really interesting, time is different. Walking very often is social and we're walking with other people and we know from science, we synchronize, we suddenly are getting out of the narrow individual self to more, you know, I always promote the collective self living in Berkeley and so forth, but you know, it's important, right? We're starting to sync up with other people.

So yeah, it has all these just basic rudimentary effects on our state of mind. And I love that book, Extended Mind, and the idea that as we ritualize walking and build awe into it and seek out beauty and seek out sociality in our daily walks, it becomes much more than an activity. It becomes this extended sense of awareness, right?

So when I walk to now to work, it's much more than just steps, it's a form of being, right? That allows me to think about my life. Just to say, I too track my steps, but I'm pretty- How many are you doing a day? Somewhere between eight or 10, but sometimes it's well more than that.

Eight or 10,000 to be clear. But yeah, so actually it kind of leaves me to my next question, not just eight or 10 steps, period. It does lead me to my next question because one of the things I do, and this may just reflect my obsession with productivity, and I think one part of this I'm very confident in and the other part I'm a little less confident in.

So one part of it is if I'm having a day-long meeting, my team often will have day-long meetings at my house. And so often we'll take one or two breaks and take a walk together as a team. So we talked a little bit about the benefits of that and how the nervous systems can sink as you're walking together. But another thing I'll do is I really hate Zoom,

which is a point of contention between me and my team, because I really like to take a walk, either in the house or better outside of the house if the weather will permit, while I'm in a meeting. And I concentrate better. I really can take in what people are saying if I'm moving in this way. But I'm not really kind of getting

in touch with nature so much in that I've got these headphones in and I'm really in a conversation. So I'd be curious to see what you think about that. I think it's profound. I'm a critic of Zoom education. The idea, let's put an entire class online. And I don't think the data bear that out. I think it's bad for students. Obviously you can't walk with, although I did an all walk with my class of 500 people recently at Berkeley. So we had about 60 people do it.

And yeah, you know, walking, and this comes out of the kind of the early work, revolutionary work coming out of the University of Michigan, the Kaplans and early pioneers in eco-psychology. Like just getting out and walking is just good for the mind. It helps you attend to things better. It helps you remember better. It helps students perform better.

It helps quiet down their impulsivity and they enjoy a lot of benefits. And so that is some evidence suggests true of adults as well. Just walking is good for concentration. It's good for problem solving. Darwin did a daily walk. He had a very patterned way that he used to walk near his house. And some of his best insights about evolution

came up on those walks. And I think it brings together what we've been talking about of envisioning things, imagining, expanding your field of vision, calming the body, activating curiosity, and all scientifically documented. And as an outside consultant, Dan, I'm going to say you get the nod with your team. So that's my recommendation. Let me press you on a little bit. First, let me say Darwin's very interesting.

I mean, he had a lot of privileges. Many of us today don't enjoy, but having said that, he worked for a few hours in the morning and then the rest of the day was walking. And in this way, he made massive incalculable contributions to scientific understanding. And it speaks not only to the benefits of walking, but also to not overworking, which is one of my instincts, which is to just drive myself into the ground thinking that I'll

get more shit done. But actually, you often get more shit done if you're doing less. But anyway, back to my penchant for walking meetings when I'm on the phone, you said before, if you're taking a walk, it can help you attend to things better. But is that really true if like me, you're taking a walk and like talking about HR issues or the budget or whatever it is,

and you're not really attending to the world around you, you're just getting your steps while doing your meeting? Well, you know, I think that we always scientifically, any scientists will say like everything is multiply determined, right? So when you walk, there's a whole cascade of benefits. Your breathing is different, your heart rate is different, your muscle tone is different,

maybe you get a little opioid release and your body feels at ease, you feel agentic, your sense of self is different. So a lot of things are going on. And yeah, your attention may not have the expansive feel when you're talking about HR or budget issues, but you have all these other benefits that are occurring, which we know, again, Barb Fredrickson wrote about this so powerfully,

like stress states tend to narrow our attention and get us analytical and confined. And I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I While walking, there'll be other benefits brought about by these other effects of walking. Thank you for making me feel better. All right, so last thing I wanna talk about with you, and this is a big and rich topic, is walking meditation. I was on your show recently, your podcast, which I highly recommend to everybody, talking about walking meditation.

And so it feels like something we should talk about in this context. Let me just open the floor to you for a second, which I highly recommend to everybody, talking about walking meditation. And so it feels like something we should talk about in this context. Let me just open the floor to you for a second. I don't know if this is a practice that you personally do, because when I was on your podcast, I was mostly running my own mouth. So I'd be curious to hear what your take is

on walking meditation, the science, your interest in it, whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, the science, you know, it, whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, the science, you know, we've cited a lot of the benefits of walking, nature immersion, walking all walks. I feel robust. MBSR, John Kabat-Zinn's program has walking meditations. It has many different practices in it, but that's an important part. And I remember John Kabat-Zinn leading, I was part of an important part. And I remember John Kavits in leading, I was part of an early team, I think it was Mind and Life,

walking at one of the retreats, 40 minutes to cover like 100 yards. And it was a transcendent experience that I would put up there with the top 10 mind experiences I've had of like just time stretched out and I felt so communal with a hundred people walking, et cetera, it's powerful. I believe in it.

And then what I do personally is probably twice a week, I sync up breathing and footsteps, you know, and just like get into the counted breath, which is one of the best tested techniques in this literature. And then I sync it up with my walking, four breaths in, four steps, six breaths out, six steps, or whatever the synchronization might be.

I do all walks regularly. I do the practice that you talked about that had a big effect on me of walking and noticing your attitudes and your sense of body and what you're seeing. And then I expand on that and look at colors and forms. And then importantly, I wanna get back to the ritualization. I sync up my walks to times of day and the weather. California gets less rain when we get big rains.

Here in Berkeley, we have streams. I go walk, because I love seeing the streams and the rain. With friends, we walk, you know, towards dusk, just as a way to get the body synchronized with those patterns. So it's such a rich thing to build on, and I'm glad you're emphasizing it. A couple of things to follow up there. One just, you know, if people haven't heard of John Kabat-Zinn,

he's an incredible human and has, I'll put some links to the many, many interviews I've done with him in the show notes for this episode. And as Dakar mentioned, he is the progenitor of something called MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, which really took mindfulness out of its Buddhist context, and I think in a very healthy and helpful way, and sort of secularized it. He doesn't love that term, but he created a secular way in which we could practice mindfulness, which really then led to an explosion of scientific research, which has led to the increasing popularity of the practice. So just a hat tip to JKZ. And then I just wanted to follow up on this,

just to make sure I've got it correctly, your synchronization of your breathing and walking. I think what you were trying to say is that you'll take a deep in-breath and take four steps during the in-breath and then a deep out-breath and six steps during the out-breath. Okay. I got the counting wrong and I really appreciate your sharp ear. and take four steps during the in-breath and then a deep out-breath and six steps during the out-breath.

Okay. I got the counting wrong and I really appreciate your sharp ear. Yeah, I take a breath in four steps, exhale six steps, breath in four steps, exhale six steps. And then once that is going, then it's like really do almost like a body scan. Like I'm feeling my feet, I'm feeling my calves,

I'm feeling my thighs, I'm feeling my calves, I'm feeling my thighs, you know, I have sore knees, so I feel that, feel the body. So it is this bringing in the breath counting, which is very powerful in the body scan as part of walking. And I do that once or twice a week. That sounds great. Just in case people didn't hear me on your show,

maybe it makes sense for me to recapitulate the basic instructions for walking meditation as I do it. I'll say a few words about that and maybe you can react on the other side. How does that sound? That sounds great. I love this practice. For me, walking meditation, it can be done any time of day, but for me, I usually do it right before bed.

My meditation practice is on a good day, I'll do a seated practice in the morning. You know, on a really good day, it's 30, 40, 50 minutes in the morning. And then I'll do quite a lengthy walking practice right before bed. And I started doing this because I developed insomnia in the middle of a stressful period of work tumult, where I was breaking up with the meditation app company that I co-founded. And that was causing me several years of insomnia. And for me, insomnia often shows up as an overwhelming restlessness. So I'm thrashing around in bed.

And that's the worst thing you can do thrashing around in bed, because you're teaching the brain that the bed is a place to struggle. So the advice is to get out of bed. And that's the worst thing you can do thrashing around in bed because you're teaching the brain that the bed is a place to struggle. So the advice is to get out of bed. One expert on the show said, you know, get out of bed and do something fun. Since I'm descended from Puritans, I don't believe in doing anything fun. So I get up and do walking meditation. And so actually, even before I get into bed, I'll do it. Sometimes I'll set a timer. And if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll go as. Sometimes I'll set a timer, and if I'm feeling really ambitious,

I'll go as long as 30 minutes, but often it's 10, 15 minutes, or until I just feel exhausted. And I just stake out a patch of land, it can be 10 yards, maybe it's a loop in my house. And I walk, there are ways to do walking meditation that involve walking very, very, very artificially slowly, which is what I suspect John Kabat-Zinn was having you do on that retreat that you referenced.

You can also do walking meditation at a regular walking pace. I split the difference and do kind of a slower than normal walking. And I have these three phrases that are from a Burmese teacher by the name of Sayadaw Utajaniya. The first is, are you aware? And actually I've tweaked that. I've substituted a phrase that comes from Joseph Goldstein, which is, there is a body, which is a funny phrase.

It sounds like I've made this joke many times. It does sound like something you would say at a crime scene, but there is a body is actually something that's taken out of the Buddhist scriptures. Joseph has just taken that phrase, there is a body. And it's just drop that into the mind. You become aware of the physical sensations as you're walking. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again, there is a body.

You can do some mental noting in there, movement, hot, cold, seeing, hearing. Just again, the skillful use of thought to direct you to your sensory experience. The second phrase that I'll drop in and you referenced this earlier, Decker, is what's the attitude in the mind right now? And that can illuminate any subterranean desire for a different experience or aversion to whatever physical pain you might be feeling. It's

really a helpful way to get you to see that there might be hindrances, that's a Buddhist term of art, hindrances operating in your mind. And then the third phrase, and this is very relevant to all three episodes we've recorded as part of this series, Dacker, the third phrase that I will drop into my mind is, this is nature. And this is, to me, the most interesting in some ways. We believe, I think, often subconsciously, we have this sense that we are isolated egos, separate from nature. But every thought we have, no matter how embarrassing and seemingly bespoke or idiosyncratic, is

an expression of the universe. How could it not be? Every sensation you're having in your body is nature in a couple of ways. Anything that happens at all is always nature, but it's also nature in that it's the lip of a wave on an incalculable ocean of causes and conditions that have led to this very moment. And that provokes awe. Just seeing that you are indivisible from the universe provokes awe. So I've just said a lot there.

Anything in there worth commenting on on your side? Yeah, and what a wonderful practice. And thank you for your philosophical riffs on it. I'll tell you, I had very similar reactions to doing this and I do this. I did it with my students recently, which was really fun. So my Berkeley students benefit from your practice, Dan. And they really loved it. They loved slowing down and having a sense of their attitudes.

For me, what's really powerful is the attitude element. I have pretty good awareness of my body. I played a lot of sports, but somehow the idea of like, all right, what's your mind saying? And often my mind is too rushed or critical or judgmental. And when I hear that, it calms that, which is great. And I will tell you, I had this moment of this is nature. I was walking back home, walking near a park

and it was feeling easy nature. And there's this unhoused gentleman who lives in the park and he's brilliant. And he is constantly talking about politics and what's going on. And sometimes I get frustrated, but this time I was just like, this is nature, right? This is humanity.

Like this is what we are We have 700 thousand unhoused. We got to work on it Listen to the brilliance of this guy is more interesting than most colleagues. I speak to this is human nature like look at us Ordinarily I'd walk through and I'd be so critical and judgmental and this time I was like, wow What a what a marvel this all is, you know, and what should I do about it? So I love the practice a lot. Yeah, I mean, so interested to build on that. He's nature, your aversion to him is nature. It's all impersonal passing phenomena in the mind

and tuning into that is liberating because you don't take your shit so personally. And I mean, to me, that is the deepest level of the benefits of nature. It's not just the physiological and psychological stuff of hearing tweet tweet or seeing beautiful things in nature. It's recognizing the indivisibility. Yeah. And your observations there are, I think, where the science of nature is going, getting back to indigenous wisdom like that of Dr. Yuri Selidwein, like all of this is nature.

You know, this is life and culture is nature. It's a big complicated web of relations. And to start to realize that is awe-inspiring, as you say. That's probably a pretty good place to leave it. I do wanna thank you, Decker, for coming along in this ride. This is, as mentioned, the third of three episodes where we talked about the benefits of nature. It's so great to talk to you always.

Before I let you go, can you please just name the books you've written and your podcast and any other things that people should go out and check out. Yeah, so I've written Born to Be Good, The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Power Paradox, and then most recently, Awe, The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

And then the podcast, which you've been graciously on, is The Science of Happiness, which we're really proud of here at Berkeley at the Greater Good Science Center. Yeah, just to rename those books, Born to Be Good, The Power Paradox, and In Particular, Born to Be Good has had a massive impact on me and on my next book, which is taking forever and is about, it's about love, you know, to use a term that is, is freighted, but I'm actually gonna try to lean into the complications of that word,

but born to be good, formative for me in my thinking on this issue. So, Dacher, really appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks again to Dacher Keltner. Before I leave you, I wanna take a moment to thank our sponsor, once again, Columbia Sportswear, for supporting today's episode and, in fact,

this whole series. Their commitment to getting people outside to connect with nature, something I very much resonate with, especially after talking to Dacker. Finding the right gear can make all the difference in helping you make the most of your time outdoors. Columbia Sportswear's OmniHeat Infinity Jackets have amazing technology designed to keep you active without compromising comfort. I can speak

personally on this one. They've done a very good job on that jacket. It's the kind of gear that can turn a good outdoor adventure into a great one. Head over to Columbia.com to see how they can keep you prepared for any temperature. One final thing to say before I really let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show, our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great people over at Pod People.

Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands wrote our theme.