The One You Feed - How to Master Mindfulness with Shauna Shapiro

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

In this episode, Shauna Shapiro, a renowned expert in mindfulness and clinical psychology, shares some of the science behind mindfulness and the power of intentions. Her inspiring journey of healing and self-discovery, coupled with her studies in neuroscience and psychology, reinforced the idea that whatever we practice grows stronger and fueled her passion to help others cultivate self-compassion and gratitude. Shauna shares that by choosing kindness, gratitude, and joy, we can carve new neural pathways and experience a profound shift in our well-being. In this episode, you will be able to: Explore the transformative power of mindfulness to unlock a greater sense of peace and clarity in your life Cultivate self-compassion and gratitude to boost your well-being and foster a positive outlook on life Learn the importance of setting intentions and how it can guide you towards living a more purposeful and fulfilling life Discover effective strategies for building habits that support mindfulness, allowing you to cultivate a regular practice in your daily life Understand the deep connection between empathy and compassion, and how nurturing both can lead to a more compassionate mindset and stronger relationships with others To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

your brain and nervous system aren't stupid. You can't just go through the motions with these practices. They have to be authentic. And when I'm guiding people into gratitude practice, I never say pick three things or write a list of 10 because that feels kind of overwhelming. It's like, what's one thing that happened today that you can be specific about? Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Shauna Shapiro, a clinical psychologist, author, and internationally recognized expert in mindfulness and self-compassion. She's a professor at Santa Clara University and has published over 150 papers and three critically acclaimed books, which have been translated into 16 languages. Today,

Shauna and Eric discuss her work and her new children's book, Good Morning, I Love You, Violet. Hi, Shauna. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thank you. It's a real pleasure to have you back. And we are sitting in your home in Mill Valley, California, which is an absolute treat. I ended up being out here in the Bay Area unexpectedly, and we had this interview scheduled. And Nicole, our producer, was wise enough to realize that you live very near where I was staying. And so we were able to get together and do this in person. That's such a treat. So we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent

who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I love that parable.

It was actually the story that my father told me when I was a little girl as we were going to sleep at night. And I remember being a little scared of the wolves at first, but it makes such sense. And as I've continued in my studies and studied neuroscience and clinical psychology, it actually is so relevant that whatever you practice grows stronger. Whatever wolf you feed, those are the neural pathways you're carving out. And you can choose kindness and gratitude and joy, or you can choose misery and anger and resentment. And it really puts the individual back in choice. I love that. Well, you mentioned your father in that. And one of the things I just learned about you is that both of your parents are published authors, as well as your grandparents. And you have a bookshelf in the other room, and it's just filled with books from

your family. What an amazing thing. Thank you. They've all been such inspirations to me and really heroes in my life. Yeah, what a great thing to have. Since we're on the topic of books, I can't help but ask, you mentioned that you love books. They are your thing. You have them stuffed in your shoe rack and all kinds of things. I feel similar. What are a couple of books that either currently feel really important to you or of all time feel really important to you?

And I know that's a difficult question. It's like asking to pick your favorite child. So I'm asking you to pick your favorite, just a couple that come to mind. Yes. So it was actually a book that set me on this entire journey of healing and really of the work I do now. It's called Wherever You Go, There You Are by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. now. It's called Wherever You Go, There You Are by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. And when I was 17 years old, I had spinal fusion surgery. So I had a metal rod put in my spine and went from this kind of healthy, active teenager. I was captain of my volleyball team. I just signed to play at Duke University. I had kind of my whole life mapped out to lying in a hospital bed, unable to walk. life mapped out to lying in a hospital bed, unable to walk. I was in the hospital bed for six months. It was an incredibly difficult time, very painful physically, of course, but also just emotionally,

I felt like my entire life had been grabbed away from me. And my father gave me this book, wherever you go, there you are. And I had nothing else to do. Normally a 17 year old, I don't think would read a book from her father, but I'll never forget the first line. It said, whatever's happened to you, it's already happened. The only thing that matters is now what? And it was as if this kind of path opened up before me that I wasn't stuck, that there was hope. And so I started reading the book and reading everything I could on mindfulness. And it really opened up a healing journey for me that I could have never expected. Yeah, I've talked about this on the show. Listeners have probably heard this multiple times

now. But I was introduced to Zen Buddhism in high school by a teacher. And I didn't understand a lot of what I was reading. And what I was introduced to is not nearly as clear and concise as Jon Kabat-Zinn is, right? Like, that's pretty straightforward. But the message I got that I intuited was similar. And it was that life is going to have all sorts of difficult things in it. And even at 17 years old, I was pretty cognizant of that, you know, in my own life and watching people around me. And yet I got this sense that like, even in the midst of that, there is a way to respond. There is a way to be wiser about what you do. And there's a way to find some measure of peace,

no matter what's happening. And that planted a seed in me that, you know, is still growing to this day. Now, it didn't stop me from going down into years of substance abuse and heroin addiction and all that, but that seed was always there. And I think that's such a beautiful thing when it can be planted in that way when we're so young. It's so important. And I think what a gift, I think, for both of us that it was planted so early as I study neuroscience and really understand the way the brain works,

before age 25, the brain is so receptive. And what you learn is really hardwired in, that those seeds that are planted. And actually, especially age zero to seven, the brain is in a theta state. So you're in this kind of very almost like hypnotizable state. It's very trainable. It's very suggestible. And it's so important to plant these seeds of wisdom and compassion and kindness and even clarity like that you have choice that we help our kind of young ones really be resourced in that way. Yeah. And I want to get to that young ones,

because you've written a new book called Good Morning, I Love You, Violet. It's a children's book. And we'll get to that in a second. But I want to ask you a question a little bit about what you just said, because I think a lot of listeners, we tend to have a perhaps an older audience than Paris Hilton. Although Paris Hilton probably has an older audience too now, doesn't she? She's not a young one. Who are the kids listening to these days? None of us in this room know. So a lot of older listeners, people who are past that stage of intense neuroplasticity that you talked about. And so change is harder than it would have been when we were seven. And yet it's still possible. And I think that for me is the most exciting and hopeful message of really brain

science in the last 400 years is really the discovery that neuroplasticity extends beyond these first 25 years. And that all of us, no matter what mistakes we've made, no matter how old we are, right? Neurogenesis, we see it even into the 90s, that the growth of new neurons in response to repeated practice. And so I think what is so hopeful is that all of us can learn resources. And really all of us can begin again, no matter what has happened. I want to ask you a question about what we feed, right? We alluded to you feed a good wolf kindness and love and caring. You feed a bad wolf anger and greed and used a bunch of other terms along those lines. I'm in the middle of a

pretty difficult situation emotionally. And so I want to get your input on what does it mean to allow the emotions that you're having to be there, even if they are really difficult ones. Yeah. Right. And I think we all know, like, you want to allow your feelings, you need to feel them. I think it's pretty common wisdom these days, right? It's also pretty common wisdom that like, there's something about feeding the positive sides of ourself. How do we find the right balance there where we're able to feel what we feel, but we don't get stuck there? We don't live there all the time? It is such an important question. I think it is the question when it comes to emotional health,

mental health, emotion regulation. So often when I tell people what you practice grows stronger, or right, or the one you feed, they're like, oh, dang, I don't want to feel sadness then, or I don't want to feel pain or fear because I don't want to grow those. So I want to make a very clear distinction between being lost in your fear versus paying attention to your fear with mindfulness and compassion. There are different neural pathways in the brain. They are different biochemically. So when you are lost in anxiety or fear or depression, it actually looks different physiologically than when you are able to be present with your fear.

So noticing I'm scared right now and bringing compassion to it, or I'm sad right now, then what you're practicing is mindfulness, then what you're practicing is mindfulness. Then what you're practicing is compassion. You're not practicing sadness, right? There's an awareness of the sadness and that awareness isn't sad, right? The awareness is like this larger container that's able to hold all of it. And that's really, for me, that was the liberating piece of mindfulness. Because I remember I was studying and reading all this stuff in positive psychology. And it was kind of like, think good thoughts because negative thoughts lead to cancer, right? It was when

they were discovering the type C personality. And I was like, oh crap, you know, I'm lonely and depressed and in college and I'm going to get cancer because what do I do with all these thoughts and these emotions? So then I start like, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts. But that wasn't authentic. And mindfulness was this incredible resource that said, hey, it's okay to feel what you're feeling. It's human. It's natural. And here's a way to be with it.

This kind of superpower of presence that allows you to go into the emotions without getting stuck in them, like you said, and without indulging them. And I want to talk about both. Yeah. So getting stuck in the emotions, when you look at an emotion from a scientific lens, it only lasts 30 to 90 seconds. It literally rises up as a sensation in the body, and then it passes, rises up, does its little dance and passes away, just like a sensation in the body and then it passes, rises up, does its little dance and passes away just like a wave in the ocean. Now, the reason they feel like they stay forever and ever, and all of us have been in those moments, is because we're feeding them with our

thoughts. We're feeding the emotion with our thoughts. So the emotion of left alone, if not indulged, rises up and then passes just as a signature in the body. But when we start telling the story of she hurt me or he did this, then we kind of fuel it. It's like putting gasoline on a fire. And so one of the techniques that I teach my patients and my students is to learn how to be with the bare sensation of emotion, pain, fear, sadness, watch it rise up and pass away. And all of a sudden, after a few times, when you notice it actually does pass, there's a liberation. There is an empowerment of, I can do this. I can ride the wave of my emotions. And so the key is twofold. One is to learn how to name your emotion,

just to name, I'm feeling scared right now or sad right now. And when we name it, there's a wonderful study from UCLA, John Creswell called name it to tame it. So when you name an emotion, it actually takes some of the power out of it. It actually calms down your physiology because you're bringing your prefrontal cortex back on board. So just saying, I'm sad, actually starts to soothe you and calm you down. So the first step is to name it. The second step is to actually feel it in your body. So instead of thinking about it or telling a story about it, you actually notice like tingling or stinging in your eyes, right? With the tears or tightening of the throat or heat in the chest or the belly. And as you bring your awareness to it, you can watch the sensation rise and pass.

So that sounds great. And I believe it. And that insight, you know, I think I probably read it in a Pema Chodron book a long time ago, right? Drop the storyline, feel the feeling. And it sounds like it makes the storyline, feel the feeling. And it sounds like it makes all the sense in the world. And yet they seem so fused. Like I sometimes even wonder, we talk about thoughts and emotions as if they are distinct things and there probably are physiologically and different things, but they always co-arise.

I agree. You'd never get one without the other. And so my experience is feel the feeling, okay, the buzzing in my head, the tears behind the eyes, the tightness in the chest, and then right back out to thought and then back to the feeling and then back. It's this primordial soup. Oh yeah. There are two sides of the same coin. Absolutely. And just like everything, right? It's all interdependent and interwoven. And so the practice is to, as best you can stay with the sensation in the body. And then of course you're going to get

pulled into thought. And then again, it's a practice. It's a discipline. In fact, mindfulness and meditation are called consciousness disciplines. It's almost like a mental fitness, just like physical fitness. You're able to build these muscles of returning to this present moment body sensation instead of spinning out in the story, which isn't helpful. Yep. You talked about not indulging or repressing our emotions, right? There's a term that's used a lot, spiritual bypass, right? There's a term that's used a lot, spiritual bypass, right? Meaning that I use the awareness of like, I'm not my emotion as a way sometimes not to feel my emotion.

So talk about how you think about that term and where it fits in here. Yes. So one of the pitfalls, one of the perils of meditative practice, spiritual practice can be spiritual bypassing because you can use this awareness as a way to distance yourself from the emotion and to distance yourself to such a degree that you're actually numbing yourself. And instead of having the courage to go in and feel it and heal it, that we start to disconnect. feel it and heal it, that we start to disconnect. And I'm not saying it's wrong to disconnect because we need to, sometimes it's too overwhelming. So it's a great skill to have, but you can kind of get stuck in it. And so the importance is to have this flexibility where you're able to kind of zoom into the emotion and really feel it and then take a deep breath and kind of zoom out. So it's kind of like a camera,

you have like the zoom lens and the wide angle lens, and you want to become adept at going back and forth with your emotions. And so spiritual bypassing is really when it's almost like we reject our humanity and we get to this 30,000 foot witness-like state of consciousness, or sometimes people call it a non-dual state, where we aren people call it a non-dual state, where we aren't actually in a non-dual state of intimacy with life, which is really non-duality. Right. We're in a non-dual state, which is actually not a non-dual state because there's this witness observer of everything.

Right. And I think that's why we have to be careful with it. There's still separation. There's still separation. Right. Whereas in the true non-dual experience, at least the ones I've had have been unitive. Absolutely. Right. There's no separation between me and anything.

Which is incredibly comforting, right? I'm part of this web of life that I can never be separate from. Yep. Let's talk about mindfulness a little bit from a scientific perspective. You're a scientist. So this is kind of one of the key things you're bringing to it. And you posited a number of years ago that you see sort of three components or perhaps mechanisms of action, intention, attention, and attitude. And we talked about this on the last time we talked and those

make a lot of sense to me. There's another article you wrote though, where you said you examined many other mindfulness theories, right? That the scientific research is starting to go from is mindfulness helpful, which the research seems pretty overwhelming and clear. Like, yes, it is. And getting more into, well, why is it helpful? And what parts of it are helpful? So you've got that model, intention, attention, and attitude. When you looked at some of the other models that are out there, were there things that those models showed that made you think, maybe there's something else to add to my model? They're just different ways of saying the same thing. I'm just kind of curious your thoughts as you've examined other people's theories. Yeah, I think there's an underlying overarching,

can you say both of those in one sentence, but I think there's this deep awareness that one of the key mechanisms of action of mindfulness is this ability to pause and choose your response. is this ability to pause and choose your response. That in between kind of the trigger and your reaction, there's this gap, this space. And what mindfulness does is gives us a moment to breathe, see clearly and choose wisely our response. And that kind of metacognitive awareness or that witness-like stake is incredibly beneficial.

And so again, that's kind of the wide angle lens, right? The sitting at the top of the mountain and looking down. And then the other thing that mindfulness does, and I'd say most of the models talk about this, is this ability to go into sensation, this kind of precision, this ability to know the signature in your body of each emotion and to watch it rise up and pass away so that there's this simultaneous witness-like state and intimacy. And one thing that a lot of the models talk about is the realization of interconnection, of interdependence, that there's something tremendously healing about recognizing that I'm not separate. I'm not alone, that I'm part of this exquisitely complex life.

And I think one of the kind of greatest sufferings of our time is loneliness and isolation. And it addresses that from a spiritual perspective, which is something that's also been addressed from a scientific perspective. Quantum physics, systems theory, ecology, they all are pointing to this interconnected, interdependent world. And so I think that is definitely one of the underlying mechanisms of healing and transformation. I think the other thing that is really interesting that we've learned since I first published my model is the power of intention. So intention really sets the stage for what is possible. It sets your compass, right? It says,

this is what's important. And I've always thought of intention as kind of a spiritual, psychological compass, right? But intentions are neurochemical that when we set an intention, it sets in motion this whole cascade of neurochemistry that helps us move in the direction that's important. And I want to be clear, when you set an intention that you actually care about, so it has to be authentic, what happens is you release dopamine. And dopamine is the neuromodulator of motivation. So dopamine turns on your learning centers, gives you this energy and motivation so you can move in the direction of your goals. This is incredibly important.

And I think this understanding helps us really understand the deeper power of intention and how it plays such a significant role in spiritual practice. There's a few different things I'd like to touch in on there. And I'll start with the last one, which is intention. Say a little bit more about what you mean by intention. What makes a good intention, if we want to use that word, or an effective intention? And how do we keep that effective intention? And how do we keep that intention alive? Not something I said over cereal this morning that I never think about again, but something that actually guides me. These are such great questions. You are such a wonderful interviewer. I'm so excited to unpack each of them because they're all so important. So the first thing is,

what is an intention? So an intention is simply why am I paying attention? Like what's important? We have so many millions of choices of where to put our precious resource of attention. Your intention helps you zero in on what's actually important. What do I care about? So your intention, as I said before, it sets the compass of your heart. It says, this is the direction I want to head. This is what I care about. Now to your second question, how do we distinguish between a healthy

intention or an unhealthy one, or I would say a skillful intention or an unskillful one. So the most important thing is for it to be authentic, that the brain and nervous system aren't stupid. So you can't lie to yourself. You can't say, you know, may I be happy, but inside be like, I'm a worthless piece of crap and I don't deserve happiness. I don't really want happiness. You actually have to find an intention that feels true. So maybe may I learn to accept and love myself is more authentic. So your intention has to be meaningful to you and it has to be authentic. And that's what sets in motion this cascade of neurochemistry. So that's the second part.

In Buddhism, what's important is the intention, not the outcome. And so you don't want to measure the success of the intention based on the outcome. It's really the intention in and of itself is what's important. Right. Well, I think this is really an interesting thing because we've had a societal conversation recently about intention and impact, which, you know, I might say something that offends someone else. And what we've said a lot is, and I would say, but I didn't intend that. I didn't mean that. And what many people would say is, well, but that's how it impacted me. And so I think this is an interesting conversation because you're right.

To me, it's not either or, right? Impact matters. Outcome matters. But so does intention. In different situations, in different ways, one may be more important or less important. You kind of wandered into something I think is a really fruitful place to explore. It's fruitful and I think complex. And I think what I would say is setting an intention is a practice.

It's not something you just kind of willy-nilly go into. This is my intention. You have to really look at your motives and what's important. And what I often do when I'm teaching a retreat is I have people listen for their intention. So I don't have them just immediately cognitively think about it. I have them listen with their whole being, what's important? And we do this repeatedly.

And then I point out to them, I want you to notice the wholesomeness of your intention. No one's here to learn how to cheat or lie or steal, right? You're here because you're wanting to cultivate greater peace or compassion or clarity or wisdom. And there's something really healing about trusting your good heart, trusting the purity of your intentions, that you're not here to hurt someone or steal or lie, that you're really here for healing. And so I think that learning to listen

for our intentions is a very important practice. And that's really getting to your third question, which is how do you keep them alive? How do you not just set an intention in the morning over cereal and then forget about it the rest of the day? And that's really important. And for me, that comes back to practice. What you practice grows stronger. It comes back to having a daily practice of setting an intention and then returning to it throughout the day. So if my intention in the morning is to, for example, what I'm working on right now is patience, right?

My intention is to move in the direction of greater patience. I have practiced my super highway of habit of impatience for many decades. And so I'll set the intention in the morning. And then when I'm driving to take a breath and really recommit to this intention of patience, or when I'm waiting for my son instead of snapping to just take a breath. And so I'm weaving that intention in throughout my day. That as we continue to deepen on our journey, we realize, oh, well, patience is important, but also compassion. Like the reason I'm getting impatient is because I'm afraid that there won't be enough time. And so can I first have compassion for myself?

So they deepen, they change. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

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about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to

reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So when I think about intention, I tend to be thinking of it as how or who do I want to be? Is that kind of the way you're thinking of it?

Like, who's the person I want to be, or how do I want to react in this situation? Or what's important about this situation? But it tends to reflect back on not what I'm hoping to get from it. It's more about who I'm going to be. Or who I'm becoming. Because I think intention is really about a direction, not a destination. And I think sometimes we have to be careful with who do I want to be? We kind of hold ourselves up to this perfectionistic ideal. And really, perfection is the antithesis of evolution, right? If you make it, you're done growing. And you know, this game is really about evolving and growing. So it's in what direction do I want to head as a

person? Yep. So you mentioned, you know, I might set an intention in the morning to be patient. And you said that intention may evolve. One of the things that I think many of us do, and I know I'm guilty of, is I end up with like 12 intentions. You know, so for you, you know, in your life, you're like, I want to be more patient. Is that like you kind of just narrow down to that as the core idea that you want to be working on for a certain period of time? You know, because if I'm suddenly like I'm going to

develop all seven cardinal virtues today, I'm all over the place. It's a little overwhelming too. And that actually tends to paralyze us because we don't even take the first step when we set goals that are too lofty. So I always recommend that you set very small achievable goals and that each time that you set one to know that you're again, putting in play this whole cascade of neurochemistry that's going to support you. So every morning as I wake up, as I set my intention, as I listen for my intention to be curious, I wonder today what is going to feel important to me, right? Some days it's about, can I just be present with my body as I move through this day?

And so I think it's okay to just let your intentions come to you in the morning and choose one that you're going to stay with and know that the next day it can shift. The other thing that I think is very important, and I keep talking about morning practice because when you first wake up, it's this precious time. Your brain is in an alpha theta state and much like a young child, it's very suggestible. And so it's a wonderful time to kind of set the trajectory of your day. So setting an intention is wonderful. Another thing that I do is I ask, I wonder what surprising thing will happen today. And what that does is it sets my reticular activating system, my brain's filter, it's called the RAS, in the direction of looking for what's good or what's surprising or kind

of the small miracles. Instead of constantly scanning my environment for the negative or the dangerous, which is our negativity bias at play, it kind of reorients me to look for the good. And so again, that's similar to intention in some ways. I'm kind of gently orienting in that direction. Yep. I think that's why a practice like I've had on and off throughout the years of like, I'm going to take a beautiful photo today. Right. It's not about the photo. It's about, as you said, it primes my brain to be looking for beauty. Or one of the ways I think gratitude is really helpful, like actually expressing and writing it down as your brain starts to look for it. Cause it's like, well, I'm going to, I'm, you know, I've got, I'm going to report on this later. What's good out here.

And that's what the research shows that gratitude is actually like building a muscle and that people who practice gratitude, who practice writing in their journals, things they're grateful for, they grow that muscle so that they are more able to find things that they're grateful for. And gratitude is actually really interesting because first of all, it's one of the fastest ways of shifting our neurochemistry. So I love practicing gratitude. I encourage it in all my students and all my patients. But what's interesting is recently they discovered that receiving gratitude is even more powerful. That when you practice gratitude, it's really healthy. It shifts your immune system in a positive way. It helps you sleep better. It changes your mood. But actually receiving authentic gratitude is like 10x the benefits. Now we can't all go around trying to get gratitude,

you know, compliment me. But what it does is it gives you the power to give gratitude, to appreciate people, to know that as a mother, as a professor, as a friend, as a wife, as a mother, as a professor, as a friend, as a wife, that I can take time, take my precious attention and focus on what I appreciate in someone and give them that gift, which is actually going to shift their neurochemistry in this powerfully healing way. Yep. There's been some research out there that you can get into a point where you just are kind of going through the motions with gratitude and it's not remaining authentic. Yeah. Or it just doesn't have the juice it had in the beginning. And there are ways to get around it that, you know, the main one that is being specific, you know, the specificity of

your gratitude tends to bring it alive instead of like, oh, I'm grateful for my job. It's what about my job today made me feel really grateful and getting into that detail. One of the best ways to really get the benefit of all of these practices is to make them authentic and alive and specific. So the more vivid we can make something we're grateful for, the more we can bring alive our senses, the way it tasted, smelled, felt in our body as we experienced it. Each of those act as tiny hooks into our long-term memory, which help us encode the experience and really kind of hardwire in something positive. So I think it's really important with all of this, that it be authentic. As I said before, your brain and

nervous system aren't stupid. You can't just go through the motions with these practices. They have to be authentic. And when I'm guiding people into gratitude practice, I never say pick three things or write a list of 10, because that feels kind of overwhelming. It's like, what's one thing that happened today that you can be specific about? It can be the smallest thing. It could be noticing the dew drop on the blade of grass, noticing the rainbow in it and just being kind of in awe. It's that small. What about when we can't feel gratitude? So for example, I may be walking down the street and I see the dew drop on the blade of grass.

I see the rainbow. I'm like, oh, generally that makes me feel grateful. But for whatever reason, there's no feeling tone with what's happening. Do you think it's still useful to kind of reflect on it and think about it? Because, you know, you used a word there, awe, right? I mean, awe to me often means sort of a big experience, whereas some of this stuff is extraordinarily subtle. Yeah. I'm so glad you're asking this. I never think it is healthy or skillful to force things. So if it's starting to feel like a burden or a chore,

I would shift to a different kind of practice. And that's why these practices are so nuanced. They're not meant to be kind of mass produced. That originally they were developed with your teacher and you would tell your teacher how you're feeling or what's happening. And they would say, oh, if gratitude's feeling numb, don't keep pushing hard against it. And then judging yourself when you're not feeling the way you think you should be feeling. Let's

practice something else. And it could be you practice self-compassion in that moment. Oh, I'm feeling a little numb or a little bit disconnected. And so you name it like we learned about before, right? Often for me, I'll put my hand on my heart and be like, sweetheart, this is hard or this is scary. And then the third step of self-compassion, which I just love is you think of all the other people in this moment who maybe are struggling with feeling numb and you send out your care and your compassion to them. And then you breathe it back in for yourself. So you're feeling this sense of connection. And I'm not alone in this, that there's probably thousands of people right here in this moment that are feeling a little numb. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Now you get to tell your gratitude

story. Well, the reason I want to share this story is honestly, it has impacted me more than almost any other. There was a eighth grade math teacher and she was trying to teach a math lesson and eighth grade can be a tough middle school time. And they were just not having any of it. And so she finally said, forget it, put your books away. We're done. Take out a piece of paper and write down your first name on that paper. And then she had the students pass the paper around and each student had to write down one thing that they were grateful for or appreciated about their classmate. So at the end of the class, she collected all the papers. And at the end of the year,

when they were graduating off to high school, she gave each student their paper that had all the things that their classmates appreciated about them. I love your sense of humor. I think your laugh is great. I think you're so smart, whatever it is, they had everything done. So fast forward nine years and one of the eighth grade students had died. He had died at war and they're having a memorial. So the eighth grade teacher and all the classmates came to the memorial and at the memorial, they said the only thing that they found with him was his identification tags and this folded up piece of paper with all the things that his classmates loved about him. And as they were sharing this, another eighth grade raised her hand and she said, I still have mine. It's framed on my desk so I can remember who I am.

And then all of a sudden, different students started raising their hands. And it just shows you the impact we have on each other of our words and our appreciations and our ability to remind each other of our good hearts. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. It's a really touching story. I want to talk about loneliness for a second, right? Loneliness seems to be having its moment right now, right? It's worse for you than nearly any other thing. It causes all sorts of health conditions, right? And you talked about that spiritual practice can allow us to feel connected to the broader whole. But is there also an element of you actually need to be connected to other people? Or do we think that just like, well, if I could just get myself into a non-dual state twice a week where I feel connected to everything, I won't be lonely anymore, right? It seems like that's

part of a solution, but not certainly the whole solution that loneliness is still a human connection thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is one of the beautiful things of this practice. So as you begin to practice, so let's say you begin a loving kindness or compassion practice. The way that you practice is you choose real people in your life who have supported you, who have loved you, have cared about you, and you offer your loving kindness back to them. And you begin to feel that sense of connection. So for example, during COVID, I didn't see my parents for three years, almost two and a half years. And I'm used to seeing them all the time, but they're in very much isolation. And I really missed them

a lot. And I remember practicing loving kindness. May you be peaceful. May you be happy and feeling a connection to them, even though I wasn't physically with them. So that's one piece of it. The other piece that I find so fascinating is that when you practice loving kindness, when you practice compassion practice, the insula grows bigger and stronger. Remember what you practice grows stronger. Now the insula is responsible for our empathy and compassion for others. And so what's interesting is that when you see someone similar to you hurt themselves, let's say stub their toe, your insula activates and you feel empathy. You're like, Ooh, ouch. Are you okay? When you see someone different than you stub their toe, your insula remains quiet. And so your empathy isn't as active. This explains a lot.

When you begin these practices of mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion, And so your empathy isn't as active. This explains a lot. When you begin these practices of mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion, your insula becomes active no matter what. It grows bigger and stronger. And so you feel a greater sense of connection, empathy, and compassion for people, even people who are strangers, even people who are different than you. So what you're saying there is that when we see someone we care about hurt, we respond with empathy. When we see somebody that we don't care about, generally, we don't respond. It's a little harder. It's a little harder. And that loving

kindness and compassion practice, in essence, increases the circle of people that fall under that umbrella of I'm going to respond to you with empathy. I love how you said that. Yes. It increases our circle of compassion. It widens the circle of compassion. Yeah. I mean, I think that is one of the biggest things I got out of the core Buddhist insight, and it's not a Buddhist insight, but that's where I was exposed to it, of like me, you want X. Like, you know, just like me, you want to be loved. Just like me, you don't want to be hurt. And that practice of applying it to everyone I see has done so much for me. And I love being on public transportation, which I don't get to do a whole lot from Columbus, Ohio. We're just in our cars. But I love just looking around when I'm at the airport and just sort of going through

that practice, either that or the loving kindness practice with everyone I see, because it does make me feel more at home in the whole human community. Exactly. And so bringing it back to this sense of loneliness and isolation, even right now, as you're listening, if you think of someone you love and you start to wish them well, may you be peaceful and happy and healthy. You can begin to feel a sense of warmth and a sense of connection and almost a sense of empowerment. Like who are you when you're practicing compassion and loving kindness? You're not someone who's feeling alone and isolated. You're someone who's actually giving your care. And I think that's an incredibly powerful state

to be in. We've given our Instagram account a new look and we're sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else. Encouraging positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your good wolf, as well as some behind the scenes video of the show and some of Ginny and I's day-to-day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody would be interested in. It's also a great place for you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If you're on Instagram, follow us at at one underscore you underscore feed. And those words are all spelled out. 1 underscore you underscore feed to add some nourishing content to your daily scrolling. See you there.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really.

Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The other place I wanted to go back to was this idea of what we practice grows, which

is sort of a statement we'll all recognize and understand. And you talked about if I'm working on patients that day, you know, I will reflect multiple times a day on patients. And one of my big things that I am really interested in, and my spiritual habits program is kind of largely foundationed on, is that we don't remember. Right? We may set our intention in the morning and have a moment. Some of us may be at the point where we have a sitting practice in the morning, which is wonderful. Many people don't get that far. And then we get up and we go from thing to thing, to thing, to thing, to thing, to thing. And we may not think about that intention until the next morning when we're

reflecting on our intention. I would love to know what sort of tips or tricks you found or ways that you found either with yourself or with people you work with of actually remembering because we can't practice if we don't remember to practice. Exactly. Well, one of my teachers said that all of spiritual practice is forgetting and remembering. That's the whole game. Yeah. And so I think the first thing is to know you are going to forget.

Yeah. And to not beat yourself up. And in fact, when you do remember, to celebrate the remembering as opposed to beat yourself up over the forgetting. So that's the first step. Yeah. The second thing is I really believe in using science to help us create positive habits. So we know that stacking, habit stacking is how we remember to do things. And so for me, I will set my intention and that I know that when I brush my teeth that night, that that's another opportunity to reflect on

my intention. And so you can have different kind of steps along the way that you know are going to support you. And the more you can build habits that are healthy into your life, the more likely, you know, habits are human nature. That's how we operate. And so it's really about finding the most powerful, effective habits that are going to support you in remembering. Right. And I think that's kind of what you referred to there as the whole game. I mean, part of what makes habit creation challenging is more and more behavior change researchers are realizing that habits require a stable context, meaning you can't build a habit to work out every day at 9am if every day at 9am your life looks different, right? And so, but

there are these things that do happen reliably in our lives, right? We go to the bathroom, we open the refrigerator, we get in our car, right? And so we can start to use those moments that do happen reliably. Yes, as these places, I like to call them still points, where we can drop whatever we want in. So for example, if I've got a still point, every time I go to the bathroom, I have created this little mini moment of reflection. I can drop whatever I want into that moment. Maybe it's patience that I'm working on today. I can drop a thought on patience or reflection on patience in there. And if we do that, we've created this architecture or scaffolding through our whole lives that helps us to remember.

Absolutely. Habits are human nature. So you want to create habits that really lead towards greater architecture or scaffolding through our whole lives that helps us to remember. Absolutely. Habits are human nature. So you want to create habits that really lead towards greater health. And I love that you brought up the bathroom one because everyone does that multiple times a day and most people have their phones with them. And so it's a wonderful opportunity where it doesn't cost you any more time. You already have the time. It's really about where do I put my intention and attention? Yep, 100%. And I think that point there is really important, which is for most of us, if we're going to advance down a spiritual path, it's going to happen largely in the context of what we're already doing, what our life already is, because we don't, most of us have enough time

to devote, to add something else to our to-do list. Some people will say, I'm going to make radical changes, but my experience is most people don't. Their jobs are important, their families are important, the things they do are important, and they may be able to carve out a little period of intentional practice. But the real growth, in my experience, is that moment to moment, it occurs as I go about my day. It's not something I have to do in addition to my normal life. It is part of my normal life. Absolutely.

And then to celebrate those little wins. Yes. And the other thing that I think is really important is to reduce what's called limbic friction. And limbic friction is kind of the cost to create a new habit. And so a way of reducing limbic friction, I'll bring up my dad again, cause I love this. So he goes bicycling every Tuesday and he doesn't really like to bike ride and it's hard and he goes on hills, but he's 75 and he's like, I'm committed to this. So every Monday night he puts his bike on the bike rack and straps it in, goes through all the effort so

that in the morning, again, that reduces it by one step. It reduces the limbic friction and makes it more likely for him to go on the bike ride. And so what we need to do with all of these practices is to really support ourselves. So for example, one thing that my family does is every Friday, we write one good thing to each other. And this is my family across all the United States. You know, my brother, sister, all the husbands, wives, kids. And so every Friday, you know, there's this established scaffolding, the structure that you're going to reflect on gratitude, and you're also going to receive gratitude. You're going to know the one highlight of your family member's week. And I think we've normalized talking about what we're

stressed about or what's difficult or painful in our life over what we're grateful for and what we appreciate. It's almost weird if you're going to lunch with someone and they tell you all the good things, right? Usually they're like, I'm stressed, I'm busy. And if we think about empathy again, you know, our mirror neurons, we register, we feel what someone else is feeling at a sub acute level. And so if someone's sharing their joy, it can be this really beautiful experience to receive their joy, to celebrate their joy. In fact, in Pali, it's called mudita, which is taking joy in someone else's joy. And I think it's really interesting because when we empathize with someone in pain, our mirror neurons, right? Our pain centers light up. When we empathize with someone in joy,

our joy centers light up. So we want to give that to people. Yeah, I think it was the Dalai Lama who phrased it something like, if your only path to happiness is you take joy in your own good fortune, you have basically one chance. If you can do that for everybody,

you have a billion chance, you know, 7 billion chances, right? I mean, it is really true that that is another way of increasing our joy instead of only reflecting on what happens to us that's good is take joy in what other people are doing. Let's pivot to your children's book. Good Morning, I Love You, Violet. children's book. Good morning, I love you, Violet. Why did you write a children's book? So again, as a clinical psychologist who has focused exclusively on adults and been so encouraged by neuroplasticity and the fact that all of us are capable of change at any moment, I started looking at how brains develop. And when you see how plastic, how malleable children are, we have to work pretty hard as adults to learn a new language or to build muscle. You know, it's not just our mental health, it's all these things. And so to realize we can resource our

children, right? That not just by teaching them how to read and write and language, but these social emotional skills that they get hardwired in. When you learn how to ride a bike as a kid, you don't forget. And I started thinking as a mother, what would I most want for my children? And it was really that they love themselves, that they're on their own team, that that that makes sense that that's their habit pattern. When I'm working with adults and I say, you know, practice self-compassion, they kind of roll their eyes or they're like, what are you talking about? It feels so foreign. I, I can't imagine treating myself with kindness, right? We speak to ourselves in such an unkind, such a judgmental way, a way

that we would never speak to someone else. And so I wrote the children's book because I want to establish this neural pathway in our children of self-compassion, of planting seeds of kindness when they're young so that these resources continue to grow and really ripple out into the world. Yeah, it's a beautiful book. I mean, it is in many ways, the children's version of your book you wrote called Good Morning, I Love You, right? You see this young girl and she goes through the

struggles that many of us do, which is she hears this idea of waking up and saying, Good morning, I love you. And she's like, eh, you know. How's that going to help? She's sort of sour in general. Her mood is kind of grumpy. She's the Charlie Brown of the book, perhaps, right? But her friends start doing it and, you know, she starts to see the benefit and it's just a, it's a lovely little book. Yeah. I really tried to take these 25 years of science and practice and kind of weave it into a playful, colorful story that, that our kids can enjoy. And some of your key ideas are, you know, each character sort of has one. I think

we said it was Xavier who says, you know, I don't know if it's exactly how he says it, but what you practice grows stronger. So he may have a childish way of saying that. But in your research on mindfulness, you bring up another term, re-perceiving. Talk to me about what re-perceiving is and how it relates to mindfulness. Re-perceiving is that ability to shift perspective, to really kind of have this rotation of consciousness where instead of being completely merged and identified with our emotions or our thoughts or our stories, we're able to rise above them and really witness them. our thoughts or our stories, we're able to rise above them and really witness them. And developmentally, we naturally have this as children where we, instead of being completely egocentric, we start to see other people's perspective. It's really the dawning of empathy. And what mindfulness does is it kind of deepens and continues this ability to shift perspective. And now instead of shifting perspective about someone else, I'm able to do it within myself with my own thoughts, my own emotions, so that instead of being caught in the story, I'm able to rise above it in a traditional sense might be that a situation occurred. I tend to think of

it as a certain way of some, this person wronged me, they did this thing. And a change in perspective would be for me to go, oh, well, you know what, maybe I did say something that might have set them off a little bit, or, you know what, maybe they were just tired, or maybe there are factors at work here that I don't know. Right. It's a cognitive shifting of the story we tell ourselves about the events that occur. But I think you're talking about doing that internally. Is it more than just rising above and seeing that we aren't those stories?

Is there a cognitive element of this, of actually changing the story we tell ourselves? Yeah, I would say it's broader than just cognitive, that it's a cognitive, emotional, body sensation experience where we're able to witness and see clearly. And all of a sudden things start to shift that, you know, Einstein says the consciousness that created the problem is not the consciousness that can solve it. So all of a sudden we're able to see all these different dimensions and part of them are kind of a cognitive mental story. We're able to re-story or create a new narrative that's healthier. Part of it is learning to witness our emotions and experience them in a different way, experience them through the lens of presence and compassion, as opposed to kind of unconscious merging with them. And as we experience this, we do gain greater insight. And insight, I would say,

isn't just mental, right? We have an insight into kind of the nature of reality that is liberating. You're a mindfulness researcher, and I'm curious in the mindfulness, spiritual, researcher. And I'm curious in the mindfulness, spiritual, personal development space, are there either new ideas emerging or a focus on an older idea that hasn't been getting as much attention? Are there new things that are coming up that are surprising you? Because a lot of these conversations that I have with people, they follow a pretty similar trajectory as to the things we know about emotional and mindfulness. And that's not bad, right? We all need to be back to your idea of like remembering and forgetting. That's the reason we listen, right? I need to remember what I already know. But I'm curious, is there something coming over the horizon? I think for me, the most kind

of interesting and very nuanced discovery has really fallen in the realm of differentiating empathy from compassion. New research out of Switzerland shows that when we feel empathy for someone in pain, the pain centers of the brain light up. When we feel compassion for someone in pain, the positive reward centers of the brain light up. This is very important, especially for people who are healthcare professionals or parents or really all of us. When we witness pain, how do we be with that pain without being taken down by it? How do we not burn out really? And so this new research is for me so wildly important because what it does is it gives us this resource of compassion.

It says, yes, empathy is good, but don't get stuck there and just keep feeling their pain shift, almost like an alchemical shift into compassion, where you focus on your love and care for that person instead of on the pain. on your love and care for that person instead of on the pain. And it's this incredibly nuanced, but radical shift that changes everything in your experience. Let's explore that a little bit more. I'm interested in that shift, right? Because I think the distinction you're making there is an important and useful one. And if I re-summarize it, it would say that when I'm feeling empathy, I'm feeling that person's pain to a certain degree. When I'm feeling compassion,

I'm interested in how to alleviate that pain, but I may not be feeling the pain. Exactly. And it's not so much about alleviating the pain because we can't save or fix everyone's life. It's about caring about their pain. I care about you. I am here. I am present for your pain. I wish this pain will pass quickly. So practicing compassion is not so much about saving the person, but it's about focusing on your love for that person instead of on your fear and instead of on the pain. So for example, I was working with a mother whose daughter had cancer, very, very difficult situation. She was in the hospital for treatment and the mother of course was feeling a lot of empathy, right? Feeling her daughter's loneliness and fear and pain and all these things. And her pain centers were just on high alert. And so we practice shifting into compassion, which is, I love my daughter so much.

And may she get through this. May she feel my support. May she know how much I love her. May I feel this love for her, this, this ability to be present with her pain and by focusing on her love instead of on the pain that the daughter was feeling, it shifts her entire biochemistry. It makes me think of there are people, I think we all know someone like this. I won't say who are the people in my life that are like this, but where when we bring up a pain we are in, it very quickly becomes about the pain that they are now in because I'm in pain. I guess that's a form of empathy, but there's something else going on there. Right. It's really empathic distress where they don't have the ability to regulate their emotions. And so when they feel your pain, they literally go into distress and pain themselves.

they feel your pain, they literally go into distress and pain themselves. And one of the most important practices is to teach people to regulate their emotions and then to feel they're, they're caring for the person. The reason you're in pain is because you care about that person. If you didn't care, you wouldn't even feel it. Right. And so is empathy in the way we've just described it a prerequisite to get to compassion, right? Like if I don't feel someone else's pain at some, and I'm not saying you have to do it every single time, but in general, a sense of empathy that like, oh my goodness, that suffering feels bad and I can feel what that's like. And oh, that's yucky. That's a place not to get stuck, but it's a, it's a launching pad to the wiser response of compassion.

Exactly. Empathy is a gateway to compassion. And I love what you just said. You don't want to get stuck in empathy, right? Then you just keep feeling the pain and ouch, ouch, ouch. What you want to do is shift into, I really care about your pain because I care about you. And all of a sudden, compassion is this protective suit that you put on.

And for me, I train clinical psychologists. I train graduate students in how to go out into the world. They need to know this. So we use the term compassion fatigue. Are we really talking about empathy fatigue? Exactly. Exactly. And in fact, the literature hasn't caught up with the new research that it's going to have to be changed now to empathy fatigue, that compassion is this unlimited resource. You're feeling the love and it's supporting you and it's resourcing you and it's empowering you to help others. So it's really, for me, it's kind of an essential for anyone going into the helping profession.

Yeah. And I assume as I know you are, I am also a person who's like avoiding extremes. We're not saying like you got to shut down all your empathy. What we're saying though, is that if you're in a position where you are dealing with pain on a regular basis, empathy will drown you. You will not be able to keep doing that work because the pain will become overwhelming to you and it will tap your resources and drain you. Whereas if you can move at least a significant portion of that energy over to, and I love what you say, to focus on the love and the care for that person. Exactly. So the medical profession originally, they kind of figured it out that

empathy was going to just crush them. So what they did though, is they dissociated, they distanced, they said, don't get too close to your patients. Well, that doesn't work either. And so this new discovery out of Switzerland, I think, is just so empowering to know that you don't have to disconnect, you actually go in deeper and feel your love. And that is going to save you. That is a really powerful idea. Are there more studies that are starting to back this up? Do you feel pretty confident in this? Yeah, Tanya Singer's lab in Switzerland is doing a lot of the research on it. And so far, it's pretty compelling, the research. Well, I think we are at the end of our conversation. I'd love to end on that note of the inexhaustibility of compassion versus, you know, how empathy can drag us down. You and I are going to spend some time in a post-show conversation where you're going to lead us on a little guided meditation that applies to something we've talked

about today. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as ad-free episodes, a special episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join. Shauna, thank you so much. What a treat to sit down in person with you. I loved talking with you before, and it's even better in person. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. What a treat to sit down in person with you. You know, I loved talking with you before, and it's even better in person. So thank you so much. Thank you, Eric. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

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