Cortland Dahl

And not only do you get the benefits of each of those individually, there's at least the potential that there's a synergistic benefit that's greater than the sum of the parts.

Welcome everyone, I am Cortland Dahl and I'm here with my dear friend and dharma brother, Dr. Richard Davidson, who of course we all call Richie, one of the most eminent and respected neuroscientists on the planet.

And today we're going to discuss how we can train our minds in the same way that we train our bodies, and especially that we can do this at the same time.

So there's some really interesting science here, but before we get there, I just want to share my own personal experience, which is I've been meditating for well over three decades, probably about 35 years or so.

of kind of modern science in this area.

But Richie, why don't I just turn it over to you to share whether you're kind of opening thoughts or your own experience, and then we can kind of go back and forth, both to share a little bit about the scientific promise of this, but also how we actually do it and how we personally do it in our own lives.

Yeah, so thank you, Court, and it's great to be here together talking about this on this beautiful Sunday morning in Madison.

So yeah, and I've been meditating pretty much every single day for more than 50 years, and I too have been really interested in exploring the relationship between meditation and physical exercise.

Tiny moments from your everyday life will change your mind in the most literal sense.

So how can you take advantage of your brain's plastic nature to become the person you want to be? Well, Richie breaks all of this down in his incredible new book, Born to Flourish, which he co-authored with fellow neuroscientist Cortland Dahl.

And in this episode of our Back to School series, Richie will break down all the basic steps so that we can learn how to harness our brain's capacity for change and start shaping it for greater resilience, focus, and wellbeing.

Stay tuned.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab.

I'm Cortland Dahl.

I'm here with eminent neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Davidson.

And we wanted to talk today about a really important question that you and no one else has ever asked, which is, what is the difference between meta-awareness and experiential fusion? And I guarantee that although you have not asked that question and probably nobody has ever asked that question, it is one of the most important questions you could ask because it has massive implications for mental health, for emotional well-being, and even for physical health.

And just to be clear, the default mode is a network in the brain.

This is like a constellation of brain regions, if you haven't heard that phrase.

Yeah, thank you, Court.

So this kind of activity is really effective in just transiently putting the brakes on this.