Chasing Consciousness Shauna Shapiro PHD - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
This episode covers the fascinating science of mindfulness meditation. The massive explosion in popularity of meditation, has brought about a quiet revolution to the frantic western mind with the result of a complete change in our societies approach to stress management, happiness and well being. Today we’re going to get to the bottom of what happens to the brain when we meditate and why it’s so beneficial. But we’re also going to find out what happens to our levels of happiness, satisfaction, mental health and physical health if we meditate regularly over a long period of time. We’re also going to think about how society and business at large will evolve if these techniques continue to be introduced to our schools and companies.
So who better to help us find out what all the buzz is about than award winning professor of clinical psychology at Santa Clara University, Dr. Shauna Shapiro. She’s a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute co-founded by the Dalai Lama, who we’ll be discussing a bit today. She also lectures about and leads mindfulness programs internationally; and she’s even brought mindfulness to pioneering companies including Cisco Systems and Google. She has published over 150 articles and is the author of several books, like ‘The art and science of Mindfulness’, and ‘Good Morning I love You’ and has just released The ‘Good morning I love you’ guided journal.
What we discuss in this Episode:
00:00 Intro
05:37 Study results: Increased attention, memory and academic success, lowered activation of the Amygdala, reaction to pain
09:00 Better regulation of the nervous system
10:00 Effects of longer term meditation practice
11:00 Our happiness base line can be changed with practice
13:30 Intention and repetition’s relation to neuroplasticity
16:00 Journalling to set intention and maintain practice
17:00 Journalling for memory, health, mood, immune system and sleep
18:00 Morning theta state - more malleable brain
20:00 Advice for beginners getting started on meditation
22:00 Breath as a tool for relaxation
24:20 ‘Name it to tame it’ - Increased resilience and acceptance
27:00 Historical undervaluing of the coping function of emotion
28:30 Emotions only last 30-90 seconds, apart from their intellectualisation
30:00 Rise of polarisation and negative bias hacking by media - Mindfulness and compassion as a solution
33:00 Self-compassion leads to wider compassion and implicit bias reduction
34:00 The insular (compassion centre of the brain) is muted when someone is very different to you.
35:00 Knee jerk reactions (amygdala) reduced with regular meditation
37:00 Shauna’s meditation workshops in the military and companies
References:
Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity, and Joy Shauna Shapiro
Altered Traits, Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson
Changing happiness set points - Dr. Tal Ben Shahar - Happiness Studies
Andrew Huberman Lab, ‘Sigh breath’ research https://governmentscienceandengineering.blog.gov.uk/2021/11/26/is-a-sigh-just-a-sigh/
‘Name it to tame it’ UCLA study. https://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/AL(2007).pdf
Alleged Viktor Frankl quote “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”