Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - What Is Mindfulness, Really? And How Do You Know if You’re Doing It Right? | Diana Winston

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Mindfulness is a word that is in danger of becoming meaningless. In this episode, we dig into the meaning of mindfulness, how to practice without getting overwhelmed, and how to stop the judgment spiral.Today’s guest is Diana Winston, the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She has written several books, including The Little Book of Being, and Fully Present, the Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness, which she co-authored with Susan Smalley, and which is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Diana has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma. In this episode we talk about:How Diana defines mindfulnessHow we know if we’re in a state of bonafide mindfulnessThe difference between mindfulness as a trait and mindfulness as a state Whether you have to meditate to achieve mindfulness as a traitWhat current scientific research says about the benefits of meditationThe link between intuition, happiness and authenticityHer definition of happinessHow meditation can help us relate to our bodies differentlyHow to stop the self-judgment spiralCreating a top ten list to deal with difficult thoughtsHow to use meditation for chronic painStriking a balance between reason and intuitionThe ripple effects of practicing meditationAnd how to start practicing mindfulness without getting overwhelmedFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/diana-winstonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, your boy Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. Welcome to the show. Mindfulness, and I've mentioned this before, but mindfulness is one of those words that I fear is being ground down into meaninglessness through wrote repetition. What is it really? And how do you know if you're actually being mindful?

Today, we've got to meet potato's mindfulness episode for you, part of our ongoing experiment with dropping three episodes in a single week. Side note, we did ask you guys for feedback on that, and the response was overwhelmingly positive, so be careful what you wish for. My guest today has been on this show before. She's great.

She's also a regular on the 10% happier meditation app. Her name is Diana Winston. She's the director of mindfulness education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. She's written several books, including the little book of being, and the book that we will be talking about today, which is called fully present. The science, art, and practice of mindfulness. She co-authored that with Susan Smalley, and it's now celebrating

its 10th anniversary. Diana herself has been practicing mindfulness meditations since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun over in Burma. In this conversation, we talk about how Diana defines mindfulness, how we know whether we're in a state of bona fide mindfulness, the difference between mindfulness as a state and mindfulness as a trait, whether you have to meditate in order to achieve mindfulness as a trait.

What current scientific research says about the benefits of meditation, the link between intuition, authenticity, and happiness, her definition of happiness, how meditation can help us relate to our bodies differently, how to stop spirals of self-judgment, how creating a top 10 list can help you deal with difficult thoughts, and how to start practicing mindfulness without getting overwhelmed by the whole thing. Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice?

Well in the words of highway billboards across America. If you're looking for a sign, this is it. To help you get started, we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd. Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription. Diana Winston, welcome back to the show. Thanks. How can it be

here? I think it's about time we do kind of meet in potatoes, mindfulness episode. We haven't done one in a minute. And as you and I both know, mindfulness has become over the last 10, 15 years, a very commonly used word, almost like a buzz word. Often people don't, in my opinion, really know what they're talking about when they use the word. So let me just start with a really simple question, which is, what is mindfulness? Glad you asked. My definition, the one I like to use is mindfulness is paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with that experience.

So it's really simple, right? Like not being lost in the past, not being lost in the future, but willing to be right here and now with a certain quality of attention. You use some words already when you talked about the quality of attention, but can you just say a little bit more about what the quality in our mind should be in order for us to truly qualify for the status of being mindful? Yeah, so this quality of openness, like open to the experience, Curious, not in the sense of,

oh, what's going on? I have to think about it. That sort of creates a lot of mental activity and rumination, but more just like really being with the direct experience as it is, so willingness to be with it as it is. So, you know, sometimes the language around mindfulness is like non-judgmental.

And I don't love that as part of the definition because I think we're judging all the time and then people think that if they're judging then they're not being mindful, but we often make judgments, right? So I change that definition to more of like, can I be with what's here? With this open, curious attention. So many people say either out loud or to themselves, I can't do this, or they're constantly asking themselves, and I would put myself in this bucket, am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right?

Am I mindful right now? Am I meditating correctly, etc., etc.? So how do I know, is there any sort of yardstick I can use when I am meditating or going through my life, whether I am in a state of bona fide mindfulness. Yeah, you're probably not doing it right. Just kidding. It's such a good question, right? Because it's very subjective and scientists,

like they can't, there's not like a part of the brain that lights up when we're mindful, right? So they can't say like, this is the mindfulness part of the brain and therefore you're 100% being mindful right now. It's all based on correlating parts of the brain and also then the subjective report. So typically for people being mindful doing it right,

I tend to not dwell on like, oh, when I'm meditating, can I stay with my breath? Can I keep my attention on my breath for five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds? It starts to kind of tie us up in knots. What I'm interested in really is like how mindfulness effects are lives. So do you feel like your relationships are got hurt? Do you feel more connected? Are you less reactive? These are its signs of having done it right. But I think you're also asking the question in the exact moment. Is that what you're also asking?

Yeah. I think once you do it, you get it, right? It's an experience, even right now, as you're listening, all of us who are listening, we can just take a moment to feel our feet on the ground. All of us who are listening, we can just take a moment to feel our feet on the ground. And as you feel your feet on the ground, maybe there's a heaviness, a pressure, warmth, and you're just noticing the direct experience in your curious, your open, your with that experience, and that's mindfulness. It's pretty basic. We can make it more complicated, but it's really this direct experience. And I'll add to that that the more you meditate, especially if you go on retreat, you see how fast the mind is moving.

And so type A, modern perfectionists might be striving for some permanent state of mindfulness, but everything's moving really fast. So even if you feel like you've got a few seconds of just feeling your feet, there's actually a bunch of stuff happening within that. Maybe thoughts that are really fast that you didn't quite catch or other sensations, moving through a subtle aversion or desire arising in relationship to whatever you're feeling. You know, the Buddha said something like, I don't know, I'm going to mangle this, but something like a trillion mind moments every second. So there's a lot going on. Sorry to the Buddha at all, Buddhist scholars, for if I'm messing that up, but I'm

supporting you. You get what I'm trying to point to. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, this is very basic and it also is a fleeting thing. And it's a muscle that you can build over time. So it is often said that the proximate cause for a moment of mindfulness is another moment of mindfulness. In other words, the more you spend in a state of mind where you can just feel the raw data of sensations from your feet, the more you'll be able to do that going forward.

Okay, so I just had a lot of words tumble out of my mouth, but do you resonate with any of those? Where did I go wrong? You didn't go wrong. There is a lot happening in any moment. And I think when people look at what's happening in the brain, we're like constantly filtering out thousands of data points of information, maybe that's sort of what Buddha was getting at. But there is this capacity to focus our attention on something that is happening.

And even though there may be, like you said, other little subtle thoughts or distractions in some way, we can still attend to the present moment. We can still keep our attention there. And exactly what you said, the more we do it, the better we get at it. In the beginning, it's like this idea, this concept, okay, I have to be in the present moment. But once you start to do it over and over, it becomes a part of us. We begin to embody it and then it gets easier and easier.

In your newly reissued book, you talk a little bit about mindfulness as a trait and mindfulness as a state. Can you untangle those two concepts? Yeah, it's interesting. So it's like mindfulness can be a state that anybody can access, right? Which is like if I say to all of you right now, and I did this before,

be mindful here's how to do it and boom, then you can access the state of mindfulness. The trait of mindfulness is the state over time can turn into a trait, and it becomes kind of more like part of us. And there are these research studies where they look at whether people have trait mindfulness or state mindfulness, and the people who self-define as having more mindfulness, like it's a trait, they tend to do better on different mindfulness tests because mindfulness is more like a part of them. I guess that's how we would think about it in a simple way.

So how do we get there? Do I have to meditate in order to have mindfulness as a trait? Well, everything takes practice, so yeah, but know that mindfulness is both cultivated through meditation and it's a quality of attention we could have in any moment. So I know you know this, but I'm just kind of reviewing those fear listeners, right, that we can cultivate mindfulness through the meditative practice and then we can also have it throughout the day. And either one of those is going to work to build it as a trait. So the repetition in a daily practice over time building more and more of the state of mindfulness will lead to a longer term trait. And the same with if you are mindful in the course of your day, whether it's brushing your teeth or before you yell at your child or whatever you do, mindfulness

is going to continue to... Well, just what you said earlier, you do it a little bit and it leads to more and more. You mentioned before you yell at your child, it kind of leads me to a very basic question that I thought to ask and probably should have asked earlier, which is, why? Why would I want to do this? What's the benefit? There's so many different benefits to mindfulness, and the science has looked at things like how it impacts stress-related conditions, physical health conditions, conditions like high blood pressures,

impacted stress-related conditions, things like boosting the immune system, helping with the healing response, building attention. There's a lot of nice research looking at the impact of mindfulness on how our ability to attend can improve. So people with ADHD can benefit. Mindfulness is helpful for working with difficult emotions, emotional regulations. So that's somewhat related to what I said earlier. So we're less reactive and more responsive to life. Even the science looks at ways that our brains change over time as we do the practice. So those are kind of like how I would answer it from a more scientific perspective, from a more personal perspective and having worked with thousands of students for decades.

I've watched people's lives improve. I mean, it's incredible how many people have said to me, wow, since I started meditating, this happened, I feel better. I'm kinder, I'm less reactive. I have more sense of well-being, more happiness. I mean, these are all like the amazing, amazing results of doing this practice over time. So if we need to practice, how do we get started? Because I think everybody knows, either consciously or subconsciously,

that habit formation ain't easy. In your book, you talk about four ingredients for a successful habit formation recipe. There are simple steps, supportive environment, motivation and repetition. I'm wondering if you could walk us through these four ingredients. Yes. So the simple steps meeting, if we're developing a habit, we don't want to

pick something complicated, right? We don't want to try to have this very, you know, high ideal that we're going to reach and it's going to take a lot of these different steps to get there. So you want to keep it simple. Just to jump in on simplicity. I mean, this comports with everything that I think I know about behavior change, which is starting small and growing from there. So yes, that makes a lot of sense. The second ingredient was having a supportive environment. Yeah. So that's important, right?

Some of us, we don't have a lot of choice about our environment and where we live, we have lots of kids or, you know, we're in a situation where this doesn't feel so supportive, but finding a way to create some support even within an environment that is not supportive. So like, is there a space that can always be your meditation space, like maybe even just a chair in a corner of a room, maybe with a photograph offer, something that helps you get into the habit. So having a way that you're supporting. Now, ideally, a supportive space might also include things like going on retreats, which I know you talk about quite extensively, or having friends, community joining a meditation group, doing things online or in person.

So those are all supportive environments and ways of supporting it. Next is motivation. Motivation. You got to do it. I mean, this is the thing. People are always like, oh, I want to be mindful. I want to be mindful. And then they just sort of don't practice. You've got to prioritize mindfulness. And this is something that is actually, it's not easy to do. So that motivation, that prioritization, the recognition of how important it is, one of the things that I do that helps me connect with my motivation is when I meditate, I'll stop for a moment at the beginning and pause and contemplate like, what is my motivation? Why do I practice? Oh, because it helps me handle life better.

And if I actually consciously review it, it helps. And that helps build motivation. Yeah. Yeah, I like to say to myself, I'm doing this because it'll make me happier, which will benefit everybody around me, which will make me even happier and then up you go. And I do find that very useful. Finally, repetition. Yeah. Well, you can't do it just once. I mean, that's the simple thing. It's so funny. I mean, there's so much buzz about mindfulness. Okay, just be mindful. Just be mindful. And people, I tried it. I tried mindfulness. It was great. You know, but habits happen through repetition

over and over. And that's where we see the change. That's what the brain science shows. That's what our own personal experience is. That as we do something over time, we're going to see the results. And so that one's sort of pretty intuitively obvious, but not easy to do. Along those lines, that question I get all the time, and I'm sure you get it all the time too, is when should I meditate and for how long? And the answer in my mind is whatever's gonna work in your life. I think there's some idea that you're supposed

to get up in the morning and meditate, but for everybody that doesn't work. For some people they're not morning people or they're too busy, I know if I don't get up by a certain time, I'm just not gonna do it right away. I'm not gonna meditate personally right away because I have to get my daughter off to school and a million things happen in the morning. So, morning may not be the right time. It's whatever will work for some people. It's before you go to bed, for some people when you get home from work or school. For some

people, it's during the day. A lot of people will, if you have access to this and not everybody does, but if you can close a door, you can listen to a fantastic app like 10% happier and you can do it in the middle of your day. There's lots of options, but it's the one that you're going to do that is the most important time to practice. Amen. Or as they say in Buddhist circles, Sadhu, well spoken. You say in the book, mindfulness is like a nice bath. What do you mean by that? It's interesting. So you write a book and then it goes out into the world and then your thoughts and things change. And I'm not sure I would maybe say that today, but the intention was, like, it's a time for yourself. This

I do agree with, right? So much of our days spent in taking care of everybody else and responsibilities and doing and performing and so forth. And mindfulness is like when we go into a bath and it's just for ourselves and it's warm and comforting and peaceful, but the only reason I might not say it so much these days is not everybody feels like it's a warm bath when they practice mindfulness. Sometimes there's a lot of difficult emotions that arise. It's not always super soothing and calming when you practice mindfulness. That's okay.

That can be part of it. Yes. I mean, sometimes it's a cold bath. At least two things to say about that. One is sometimes people think, oh, I sat down. I was all over the place or difficult things came up. And so I must not be doing it right. Wrong. You are doing it right. And there's so much benefit to the cold bath because that junk is in there. And so either you see it, either you see it, or you don't see it, and it owns you in a subconscious way.

And so those bad meditation sessions, quote unquote, I think can have a lot of benefit. Absolutely, absolutely. It's fine to meditate badly, go for it. And yet I do think, you know, you've got people on the one end of the spectrum, and we were like, oh, yeah, I can't do this thing. And then sometimes I'll hear people on the other end

of the spectrum, and they're like, you know, I can't do this thing. And then sometimes I'll hear people in the other end of the spectrum and they're like, you can't do it wrong, there's no bad meditation. Actually, if you sit down and are just affirmatively deciding to plan lunch, I think that is not meditation. So I want to draw some boundaries here. I think that's accurate. I would say it's the trying. It's the making the effort that distinguishes it. Right. And let's say you're sitting there and you're like, okay, I'm meditating and

I'm now going to plan a robbery or something. I would not put that in as a meditation. But trying, just trying, like trying to come back into the present moment, no matter how restless your mind gets, no matter how many times you think about everything under the sun, except maybe the present moment. If you're still making an effort to me, that counts. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

So, yes, if what you're focusing on in the present moment is your breath, for example, you can be with a breath for a nanosecond and then you're off for 30 minutes planning, launch or a homicide or whatever it is, then you wake up, notice what's happened, go back to the breath. As long as you're doing that, those are the bicep curls for your brain and just know that as humiliating as it is to wake up after 30 minutes of, you know, doing a exegesis on the season finale of White Lotus is as humiliating as that is, it's still doing it right as long as you're making that effort.

Exactly, and that was an excellent show. All right, so speaking of the way Lotus, we're watching people lounging on the beach with these various Kempi bikinis and looking fantastic, which of course can create all sorts of unpleasant comparisons in our own minds. One of the things to talk about in the book is that meditation can help us relate to our bodies differently. This is not going to be an unfamiliar topic

for women because I think just because of the way our culture is set up. Women are highly sensitized to their body. We men, I don't know if we identify with the discussion of obsessing over our bodies and yet we're doing in the form of biohacking and posting pictures of our abs and subscribing to these Baroque diets that we go on and on about when we're trying to just order lunch. So I do think this is a unisex, all-gender issue. So having said that, how can mindfulness help? Yeah, it's so interesting. I've been thinking a lot about it. I know you've had the course with Christy Harrison and I love all the intuitive eating stuff. Also, I'm a big

fan of Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs with maintenance phase. I don't know if you're into them at all. Michael Hobbs also hosts a show called If Books Could Kill, which I've been enjoying. He's really great. As I've been learning a lot about body issues and anti-fat bias, I've been thinking extra hard about what is the role that mindfulness has to play in the healing of this because there's both our own internal personal body image issues and then the ways it manifests is both implicit bias and then explicit anti-fat bias. And we did a research study a few years ago, where we created a four-week protocol of mindfulness

and self-compassion for body image. And what the question was, was if people's body image improve would it impact their implicit bias? And so what happened was, it was kind of cool, because I had to take mindfulness and create four hours worth of mindfulness and self-compassion kind of jam-packed into this one course for people. And so people went through it and then we looked at these issues and what we found was that it did improve

their body image. So there was some statistical change. And this was a small pilot study I think only like about three people went through it. So it did improve their body image, but it had no effect on their implicit bias or their attitudes induced towards other people. Now, when I thought about it, I was like, yeah, I'm not surprised, because just because I'm starting to feel better doesn't naturally

mean that I'm going to be kinder towards other people in relation to body image. I think there's like a huge amount of education that's needed and understanding. So my next question, you know, and I'm talking with the researchers with Janet Tomiama at UCLA, where I work. So I think a lot about like what does it take?

When I see, for instance, self-hatred towards my body arise? And so I'm in my mid-50s and suddenly my body changed. And it was like, wait, what just happened? And I can see these voices come up. And here I've been meditating for 30 years. And I notice like self-judging voices. Like, oh, you're right.

He didn't look like that before or whatever it is, right? So I've had to be like very, very hardcore about my mindfulness practice around noticing the voices. And this is, I guess, going back to your question, it's like mindfulness can help us to see the voices when they arise, to not get caught in them, not take them so personally, and then applying self-compassion in the moment, those are like the three pieces that I personally have had to work on. And actually, I'm just very interested in how mindfulness world can bring some healing to these larger picture issues. So, anyway, you kind of got me on a thing that's interesting to me. I love it. Keep going. Don't edit yourself.

So it's my own self-compassion and what that can be useful in any given moment if we're suffering around how we look. Yeah. I mean, what I said just a minute ago was not taking it so personally, but that sort of embedded into the mindfulness. But it's identifying the voice, noticing that it's a voice that's coming and going and not taking it so personally and then self-compassion. But I think I will add another piece while I'm at it, which is what I sometimes call enlisting the wisdom mind.

Enlisting the wisdom mind is like when you have a level of awareness, it allows that part of you that has some wisdom to kick in. So when you're lost in like judging yourself, oh my god, I hate my body. It's so wise. This wise at that, there's not a capacity for wisdom. But when there's this moment of mindfulness like, oh, wow, there's judging going on. There's, wow, I'm really judging myself. And then the wisdom mind is, you know, we could call it positive self-talk or whatever, but this part of us can come and say like, hey, as I am, is okay. You know, our bodies are always changing or whatever might be wise to help us calm and re-regulate and come to a place of more ease. And then combining that with the compassion piece, they're like, Oh, I know this is painful. Not only do you feel this, but like millions

and millions of people feel this way in this moment, or whatever it is that's going to vote compassion for you or hate sweetheart. Sometimes I put my hand on my chest and I just say, oh, you'll get through this. These are ways that we can apply mindfulness on the spot. And obviously we're talking about body image, but it could be with any difficult thought or emotion. Yeah, I mean, I struggle with sweetheart that word doesn't work for me so much, but I mean, if it works for you, I hardly recommend it.

And what I get very excited about here is this notion, and I guess I would, and you should correct me if I'm wrong here, I would kind of lump all of this under self-compassion, but this notion that you can rewire your inner dialogue because so often I'm just being such a dick to myself. And if I can consciously in a kind of muscular way, do what you're describing as enlist the wisdom mind to talk to myself the way I would talk to a friend or my son in a moment like that, I found that to be phenomenally helpful.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it is all part of self, I mean, depends how you define it. It's this mindfulness tools, self-compassion tools, they're all kind of one. But like Kristen Neff's work and Chris Gurmourmer who brought us mindful self-compassion, I mean, they define the three components of that is mindfulness, compassion directed towards yourself or kindness towards yourself and a recognition of our shared humanity.

Right, those are the three pieces of their program. And I often take that and I sort of play with it a little bit because I also think, I mean, the mindfulness can be really filled out. It's mindfulness just to have a kind of self-regulation, a baseline, but also exactly what you're talking about. And I like that the word muscular, like we got to work at it because those voices are deep, they're intense. They don't shut up, right? And we have to be on it. Very persistent, very rigorous. Like, oh, there's

that voice and not believing that voice. That voice that says, I'm not good enough, or there's something wrong with me, or I'm not worthy. Boom. We've deep on it. Oh, there's that voice. Interesting. Many, many years ago, a friend of mine was on a retreat, and she was having all of this self-hatred voices come up. And it was going on endlessly, and she was having all of this self-hatred voices come up and it was going on endlessly and she was doing walking meditation outside and there was this little chipmunk down by her and she kind of leaned down to touch the chipmunk and the chipmunk ran away and this voice in her head said, I'm so awful even the chipmunks hate me. And then she just was feeling terrible and she went to see her teacher who I believe made been Joseph at the time.

And Joseph said, how's it going? She said, terribly, I'm such a bad person, even the chipmunks hate me. And Joseph said, even the chipmunks hate me, the sky is blue. And she saw in that moment that it was neutral, it was just a phrase, it was a thought. And she didn't have to buy into that thought

and believe that thought. And so every time she noticed self-hatred voices come up, she would say, oh, on such a jerk, even the chipmunks hate me. This guy is blue. And then she would just laugh. Yes. You know, and she taught it to me, and I started doing it, and I started laughing. It's like these are the tools, the mindfulness tools that help us see our humanity and find a place of ease. So I'm going to do a yes and to your story. I love the story about Joseph Goldstein and another

one of his recommendations when people are dealing with self-judgment is to recommend that you count the number of self-judgmental thoughts. Because by the time you get to 250 in an afternoon, you're just going to see how ridiculous it is. Ridiculous, by the way, is a word he uses a lot because it really cuts through this proclivity we all have for identifying with the thoughts in our head, thinking that they're true. But actually, if you can get to the view of ridiculousness,

which was not necessarily a word that the Buddha used, you can uproot this sense that, oh, yeah, this thinking is true. And I need to take it seriously. So that's the yes. The end is, you know, on retreat, the way Joseph and other meditation teachers talk about mindfulness is, you know, just seeing the ridiculousness, seeing the impersonality, seeing through this concretization that we tend to do around our thoughts. Where I think things get even more interesting is with the muscularity that I described before and that you echoed, which is that you can see your thoughts, your criticism of your body or any other difficult thoughts you might be having. You can see them, that's one step, but you can also respond wisely.

Inside your own head, you don't even need to go to a Joseph or to a friend, although that's great. You can enlist the wisdom mind in this muscular way to rebut. Yeah, absolutely. But you have to finesse it, I think, because what can happen is we can start to judge ourselves for judging, right? So, okay, I'm a jerk and then let's face this, wait, judging, right? Because it's helpful to actually say the word judging, right?

Or self-judgment, something. So that's a tool we teach in the mindfulness world to help us recognize the thought that we're having. So we can say that we're judging. And then we might, at that point, want to just be careful that we don't start, like, how do you say judging? Judging. Oh, judging.

I'm such a jerk. I'm judging myself for thinking I'm a jerk, right? It takes, like I said, a little bit of finessing here. And then the space for the wisdom mind to emerge, it needs to be, like, just don't try too hard. I guess that's what I'm saying. Like, I better say something that's going to help me. You know, we don't want to get caught in that. We just want to be like, ooh, judging, you'll be okay. I'll be okay. Hey, it's not true. Is this true? You know, sometimes

one of the things I love for people to do with the wisdom mind is to ask them self-questions, like, is this true? Is this really true? How do you know it's true? You know, and once we start to investigate, we go, well, am I really the worst person in the world? I don't know, probably not. Coming up, Diana Winston talks about how to stop self-judgment spirals, which I sometimes like to call the toilet vortex, and how creating a top 10 list

can help you deal with difficult thoughts. To go back to the first point you were making, this idea that we judge ourselves for judging, you know, one of the tools that mindfulness teachers, including yourself often, use with their students is the making of mental notes or labeling. So whatever's coming up in the mind, it's like the skillful use of thinking to help us not be so attached to whatever's happening in the mind. So you might wake up after 15 minutes of berating yourself and just add a nice soft little mental note in the mind of judging. But that mental note, which is meant to help you distance yourself, can be delivered. There can be a tone to that note that is suffused with a version. Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm doing this again.

And for me, I think that was a huge problem in my mindfulness practice until I started doing high dose loving kindness practice, which is often taught in Buddha's circles as a complimentary practice where you're envisioning a series of beings and systematically sending phrases like maybe happy, healthy, safe, live with these. And I said this a million times, I didn't have a positive reaction to the practice at first, but once I got over myself and started doing it, once I heard people say things to me like, if you can't be cheesy, you can't be free. Then I started to do this stuff. And I found that having balmy or inner weather helped me get to a more genuine version of mindfulness

where I wasn't seeing the machinations of my mind with gritted teeth. I was actually seeing them with some level of equanimity. Yeah, that's the beauty of that practice. And a lot of people do have that experience with mindfulness as like there's a certain level of just aversion connected to the mindfulness that they don't even see. Like I have to do this right or like be mindful,

you know, and it's kind of embedded in there and they don't notice it. And then when we add the loving kindness, there's like a relief, right? Like I love the quality of the bal me inner weather that you just said. The next book that I'm working on is on loving kindness. I figured there's like a thousand mindfulness books, but there's actually not that many loving kindness books. Yeah. I'm writing one to it. I hope yours doesn't come up before mine. It probably will though, because mine is taking forever. Oh, no, no, no, I haven't started it.

Speaking of dealing with difficult thoughts and using mindfulness to help with those, you have this concept you talk about in the book, the top 10. What's that all about? So when I think about the top 10, we think about the top 10 musical hits of the week or the month, we tend to have top 10 places we go to, like judgment, anxiety, depressive thoughts, thoughts of comparison, like we all have a list of ones that we can identify. And so what's interesting is to start to identify them, like to really begin to go, oh, well, what are they? What are the places that my mind gets caught? And the reason that I say that is because the more we can understand ourselves, the better things are going to be in one respect. Like we can see like, okay, there is my old friend judgment. Here it is again.

I know you, I see you, I know you're part of my top 10, and I don't have to take it so personally. Something that you said earlier reminded me of. Many years ago, I was on a meditation retreat and I kept having judgment if I slept too late. So I would wake up and I'd look at my alarm and if I made it to the early setting and I was right on time, I would be fine. But if I slept through my alarm, this voice would come up in my head and go, you jerk, you're so lazy. I can't believe you're doing it.

I'm just judging, judging, judging. And this went on for days and days and days. This wasn't a long, like several month retreat. And then one morning I woke up, looked at my alarm and saw that I had slept through it. And this voice in my head goes, here it comes. And then the next thing that happened was you jerk, you slept through your alarm boom and then I just started laughing because I could see this like pernicious habitual judgment

that was arising. It was one of my top 10. It was like judging myself for being lazy, right? And there it was, but I knew it was coming and my relationship to it shifted. And after that, it stopped coming with any kind of ferocity. Like there was much more ease and humor about it. Like, oh, here it is.

So that's one of the benefits of really knowing yourself and your mental habits. I totally see the value of having a top 10 and doing a taxonomy of neuroses and being able to call them out and see the ridiculousness. And yet a question I've often asked teachers and I often hear from folks I meet and you probably hear a million times is, well, aren't some of these thoughts sometimes true? Yes.

It's such a good question. It's such an important question. So people often ask a variation on this question like, well, if I don't notice what's wrong with me, how will I ever change or get better, you know? So there can be truth to something, but it's the quality with which we remind ourselves of the problem that we need to look at. So if you sleep through an alarm and you go, oh, I slept through an alarm, I really need to do better tomorrow. That's one thing. But if you sleep through your alarm and you go, you jerk, you're so lazy. Why do you do it? That's the problem. So it's really that quality of a version, these layers of fighting with ourselves and hating ourselves for these things. That's the problem. So of course, we want to see places where we can improve.

There may be some truth in it, and I think it's important to acknowledge the truth and that we do want to like change and act in kinder, better ways in the world. Let's talk about using mindfulness to work with pain, physical pain. One of the things you talk about in the book is an ice cube exercise. What is that about? Yes, so some of your listeners may know this, but when mindfulness was first brought into a more secular context out of the Buddhist context, it was John Kabatzen, did a lot of work in bringing mindfulness specifically to work with chronic pain patients.

This was in the 70s. Actually, if all the research that's out there, the most robust research is around chronic pain because it's the oldest research that's around that people have done. And there's great studies showing that mindfulness helps people with chronic pain and the reason why it's so helpful is, well, there's a couple of different things that happen. So when pain is happening, people tend to think a lot of things. So first of all, it feels overwhelming like it's this giant thing that's happening and I don't know what I'm going to do. That's one thing that's happening for

people. The second is we're making up stories about it. Oh no, I'm in pain. It's going to last forever. What do I do? What happens if it never ends? You know, this whole set of stories. So we teach people two things with pain. One is to notice that pain is not monolithic, right? It's not all one thing. It's burning and stabbing and tingling. It's moving. It's attenuating.

It's increasing. It's decreasing. We can start to see that. And then the second thing is that we see the stories we have connected to it, right? We notice a story worrying fear, it's so forth. So the ice cube exercises that an exercise that I think I might have stolen or adapted from Lama's childbirth, but it's an exercise that we do in our maps program. So at UCLA, we have a six-week mindfulness program called Maps, Mindful Awareness Practices,

and the third week is all about pain. And you hold an ice cube, and as you hold the ice cube in your hand, and we really encourage people like this is not a macho thing, like you have to hold it as long as possible, but it's really about noticing with openness, curiosity, and willingness to be with what is. So you put the ice cube in your hand, and you notice the sensation. So there's tingling, there's stabbing, it's crowing up my arm, it's increasing, it's decreasing, oh, it's numbing, actually, it's decreasing, right? So we're having the experience of it. And then we're also looking at the stories. Is there a part of our mind worrying that there's something wrong? Is there a part

that's enjoying it? Is there, you know, so we start to see all of the principles that I just talked about through this ice cube exercise. And this is whether we're going to do it with an ice cube or not. This is just so useful because pain is inevitable. And if we can bring mindfulness to it, we don't need to do as much suffering. That's the idea. And it does work. I mean, the science is pretty good about this. Like, it does give people a tool.

I think what it shows is that for people with chronic pain, with mindfulness practice, symptoms can reduce, but more importantly, the quality of life improves across the board. Like, people's ability to tolerate their pain, even in the midst of difficult physical sensations, that's kind of interesting to see, even if you're still in pain, you're happier, basically. Right. I mean, it seems to be the same mechanism as with difficult thoughts or difficult emotions. It's like you can see what's happening without getting as caught up.

That's right. Yeah. There's space, there's distance, there's ease. Yeah. Exactly. In your book, you and your co-author say that you sought to strike a balance between science or reason and then art or intuition. And so I'm curious about this word intuition.

What do you mean by that? My co-author was very big on intuition. And she's a kind of interesting case story because she was a genetics researcher, a very serious scientist for many years. So I had no interest in, this is so small, in anything one might consider woo-woo or spiritual or anything like that. And then she had a cancer scare

and she started trying different things like meditation and she changed her diet and she got very involved with artistic practices and yoga and all these things. So that was one part of the healing process for her. And she discovered that she had been like really wed to her scientific worldview. And once she began to meditate and do these other things, she began to open more to an intuitive place, right?

And come more in contact with that. So for her, it's like a very important way of thinking about what mindfulness, how it can really enhance your life and your experience. For me, when I think about intuition, what I've noticed is as people practice, and this is anecdotal, but it's from working with thousands and thousands of people over the years, is that people begin, and this is anecdotal, but it's from working with thousands and thousands

of people over the years, is that people begin to have more access to their intuition. So let me just say what it is. In my mind, intuition is like a deeper knowing, and knowing that's not like a cognitive, what your head tells you, what you read in a book, but it's almost like an embodied knowing, coming from within us and from a deep place.

And we can access it because one, we start to be able to distinguish the chatter and the noise from what's real, right? So the hundreds of things in our head saying, this is a problem and what's wrong with me and blah, blah, blah. And then there's this one part of me that says, I know I'll get through this. And some part of us feels like that's right. For me, when I feel my intuition, it's like I feel something in my body. It sounds weird, but like a clunk in my belly, like,

yes. And I think that it's years of practice that has helped me to access that. And I find that, like I said, with the students, that people feel more intuitive, more attuned to their bodies and minds in a way that they weren't before they started practicing. I mean, that lands for me too. I mean, I think the me of 10, 15 years ago would have been like, what the hell are you talking about? But, you know, meditation teachers often use the word heart, which, you know, it's always been a little bit annoying for me, I mean, much more so back in the day than it is now. But it's a little off-putting. It's like, why is talking about your heart? It sounds very hallmarky, but over time, I've come to realize it's just basically

what you're describing. It's intuition. It's why we have expressions like, oh, I know something in my bones or in my gut and my viscera and my molecules. It's a sub-intellectual knowing that can be really profound and often hard to discern if you're so caught in the swirling stories of the ego

and you have no distance from the said stories. Yeah, I mean, that's how I think of it as well. So is there a connection between intuition and happiness? And if so, what is happiness? One of the things that I have noticed is there's a relationship between intuition and happiness. Intuition puts us in touch with ourselves. And what does that ultimately lead to, which is authenticity?

And I feel like authenticity is deeply connected to happiness. And that's one of the things that I find students report, like I feel more real, more authentic, more connected, more able to connect to others, which is a part of what creates happiness. I mean, there's so much research showing that not being an isolation creates happiness. So I think as we have more access to intuition, we become more real, more authentic.

And also this is an interesting thing, and that's just like my conjecture. But with mindfulness practice, we take things less personally. So we're like more able to admit when we're wrong, we're more able to see our stuff because it's not about me, me, me. And I think that that leads to, again, more authenticity, more ability to connect and better connections, more joy and happiness. So once we're not taking our ego is seriously, this never-ending stream of discursive thought, once we're not confused in thinking that all of our thinking is who we are

and definitively true, then it's not that big of a deal when somebody says, you know, you were kind of an asshole last night, and you can be like, yeah, maybe it was. And that lack of defensiveness is a kind of realness or authenticity because what is real and authentic is that you can't find some core nugget of Diana somewhere between your ears, right?

And that makes us happier, improves our relationships, which then in turn makes us even happier. Anyway, am I describing this roadmap? No, I think you're exactly. I see that. I see that in myself. I see that in my students. And it's like we take ourselves much less seriously.

I think before practice for a lot of people, there's this real reification. I'm so important. And now it's just like, there are things that I do. I screw up. I'm imperfect. And that's okay. And I don't judge myself for that. I just, I might have like a judgment for a moment. But then I let go and then I laugh and go, yeah, there's that judgment arising. Just more love and acceptance, more compassion for myself. And that leads to more willingness to be real. Like really show up and say what's happening.

And there's nothing to hide because there's not like you said, a nugget of me inside that I'm trying to protect. I'm here. I'm here for you. It does. And how does that relate to happiness? I mean, I think I intuitively see it. That's just a happier state. But I guess what I'm really trying to get at is like, how do we define happiness? I mean, to me, happiness isn't like the happiness of I got a new such and such, a new car or something, right? Like I don't tend to think of happiness that way like the happiness of I got a new such and such a new car or something right. Like I don't tend to think of happiness that way. I think of happiness more as like

a deep acceptance of life and self and others and purpose and meaning and a sense of profound connectedness to both myself, others, the greater world. Like those are the elements of happiness. I don't know if that's a definition of happiness, but there are elements of what creates happiness. So when I want to be connected, and that's, like I said, a lot of the research shows that people who have friendships are happier than people who are isolated and lonely.

So how do we create connection by being authentic and showing up and being our real self with another person? So I think there's a lot of links we could make. Coming up, Diana talks about the link between intuition, authenticity, and happiness, and the ripple effects of practicing meditation. Sometimes the pursuit of happiness can be misconstrued as an individual sport when in fact it's a team sport. But it's also an individual sport too.

And the line between individual team is quite porous that we can do our meditation by ourselves technically, but that can improve our relationship with other people. I mean, that really is my mind, like, one of the principal goals, if not the most important goal, and that makes us even happier, and it makes the other people even happier. So there is this way in which this is both an individual and team pursuit.

Absolutely. And it also impacts the institutions that we are part of and neighborhoods and communities and the larger world. So if we have some kind of transformation and then that impacts our family and our relationships and that ripples out and ripples out, and I have to think that what we're doing here,

what you're doing with 10% happier, what the work of a meditation teacher does is self-transformation in the spirit of world transformation. You know, I was a political activist for a long time in my youth. And when I switched over from doing direct activism to doing the work of teaching mindfulness within a secular context,

at first I felt like, oh, have I betrayed this value of trying to make the world a better place? And then I realized that, no, what I'm trying to do is actually profoundly transform institutions and create cultural change so that we have more and more individuals who live from a place of authenticity and kindness and compassion and awareness. And the more of us there are, the better this world is going to be. And so I think that the happiness is both personal happiness, relational happiness,

and really global happiness. We can think of it that way. Hard to find a more big picture sentiment on which to end the interview. Before I let you go though, you have this afterward to your recently reissued book in which you talk about some new developments in the field of mindfulness and the science. What are the headlines from that? Yeah, so basically the amount of research has increased about five times. There's better studies, there's more meta-analyses, kind of like reviewing all the studies, but the science is still kind of the same. There's still a lot more to do and more and more

keeps arising and it's fantastic to see what's happening in the scientific field. And in the mindfulness field, I think I talked about some of the concerns like how are we careful around issues of cultural appropriation and meditation becoming a billion-dollar industry, the role of ethics and the way that mindfulness is being disseminated, but also some of the like incredible things that are happening, like the way that mindfulness is being brought into so many different sectors of society, into medical and mental health, and into education and higher ed. And I mean, just business world, amazing way in which mindfulness is showing up and how do we ensure it's growth so that the teachers mindfulness is showing up and how do we ensure it's gross so that the teachers are well-chained

and that it grows in a way that keeps aware of the different concerns and really is done in an ethical way filled with lots of integrity. Well, let me ask you a couple follow-up questions. There are one is on the science. I know that your colleague handled that, but that you can also talk about it. So let me ask you, I think sometimes, and we all have different information silos in which we exist, but in mine, there are all these studies that come out all the time, extolling the virtue of mindfulness as it pertains to almost any aspect of the human condition. And then every once in a while, there's a headline about, like, oh, some study just showed that mindfulness isn't all it's cracked up to be. And maybe all this is just hype. What's the TLDR on the science?

Is mindfulness good for you or not? Yes, it is. There's a lot of positive results that they're finding with the science of mindfulness. And there's a long way to go. So the thing is, we don't want to hype the research. This is really, really important. It's not going to solve all of our problems. It's not a panacea.

And there's so much to be done. Larger sample size, better controls, longitudinal study. I mean, there's just countless amount of work that needs to happen. And it's still really positive, like lots of good studies. But sometimes the ones that you think are so great because who knows, picks it up or something, you actually have to look closely like read, I guess that's what I would say to your listeners, read the study. Actually, don't just buy the headlines, read

the study. My favorite one was one that said mindfulness reduces depression. This is just a headline. Mindfulness reduces depression and belly fat. And I was like, hmm, okay. So there was like a tiny little study looking at the relate, anyway, whatever. But so just, it's like caution, have caution when looking at it. Like, yay, it's wonderful, but also there's a lot more to be done. So my second follow was about this mindfulness becoming a billion dollar industry. It's actually a multi-billion dollar industry. Yeah, meditation.

I don't know mindfulness exactly, but meditation. Fair enough. Yeah. Right, because those are two related, but distinct terms. You know, I can think of two meditation apps and either of them, the one I'm affiliated with that are, I believe, valued in the multi-billion. So this is a multi-billion dollar industry. And I have a dog in this fight, so I am totally biased on this. And my opinion is that that's actually okay.

We live in a capitalist society. And if you can use the capitalist system to get these practices out and scale them in a way that helps even more people than that is generally good, although not without dangers, and you need to be careful as you're doing it. What say you on that, too? I agree that there's countless people whose lives have been transformed because of the voices

of these big apps and all the other ways in which mindfulness has made an impact and come out into the mainstream culture. But I agree that also it needs to be really, really careful and monitored. And, you know, I've been part of like creating an accreditation board so that teachers are certified. I mean, like there's just a lot of things we need to put in place to make sure that the rampant growth doesn't go towards harmful in some way, right? And then I also question, who is the money going to of this billion dollar business? I don't know a lot of like wealthy mindfulness teachers. So the question is who is the one

that's making all the money from this? And I'm just curious about that question. So the more I know about business, which is to say not a lot, that, you know, a company like Comm or Headspace or at a much smaller level 10% happier, there's a lot of revenue, and then you come up with the value of the company by assigning some multiple of revenue. So if your company is earning a million dollars a year, you might say, well, it's worth five or ten for sale. So some of these companies are worth way more than that in the billions.

So there's a lot of revenue, and that means that they're technically worth a lot of money. But that revenue is going right back into running the business. Exactly. But it's not necessarily that there's some fat cat in a smoke so that room is getting all the money. It's just going into the machinery of the company. Yeah. But let me make a point to add to what I was going to say,

which is that one of the things that I've been doing for a decade is training mindfulness teachers and helping to create the field of what it means to make a love or as just like a side gig or something. And I would love to see some of that multi billion dollar money going to support the like generation of new wonderful mindfulness teachers who out there and need to be supported. Agreed. Before I let you go though, can you just remind everybody of the name of this new old book and all the other books you've written and anything else you're putting out into the world are doing that you think we should know about? Sure. Okay.

So the book is fully present, the science, art, and practice of mindfulness, co-written with Sue Smalley, which was published first about 10 years ago. And now we have a second edition that's come out with a new afterward updating some of the science and just about the mindfulness feel. I've also written the little book of being practices and guidance for uncovering your natural awareness.

I have a course on that called glimpses of being. That's like more of an audiobook. And then, why do I wake a Buddhist guide for teens, which I wrote 20 years ago, and I'm going to update that because there's nothing about technology in it. It was 20 years ago. And now my daughter's a teen, so I figure it's time. And then so you can find me at the My Full Awareness Research Center at UCLA and that's UCLAHealth.org slash mark or at my website, dyanowinston.org,

and I teach classes and retreats and programs and all sorts of things and happy to be in touch. Thank you very much for coming back on the show, Diana, always great to see. So fun to be here with you. Thanks again to Diana Winston, thank you to you for listening, couldn't, and really just wouldn't do it without you.

If you want to do me a solid, go give us a rating or review on whatever podcast player you use, that actually really helps. Also don't forget to check out the new stuff I've been posting on Instagram and TikTok. I could use some feedback on that as well. Thanks most of all though to everybody who works so hard on this show, 10% Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman,

Justin Davy Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. DJ Kagemeer is our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor, and Kimmy regular is our executive producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn from the awesome band Islands, Wrote Our Theme. We'll see you all on Monday for a brand new episode. We're going to talk about the Scandinavian concept of Freelifts leave. I can't believe I can answer that correctly. We'll tell you what it is coming up on Monday.

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