Dr. Rick Hanson – Seven Practices To Optimize Happiness

Dr. Hanson is a psychologist and New York Times best-selling author. He delivers wisdom from the worlds of psychology, neuroscience, and Buddhism. He is one of the leading experts in the world on happiness and resilience, and his brand new book is called Neurodharma, New Science, Ancient Wisdom and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness. In today’s interview, he shares the brain science and wisdom that led him to the 7 practices or ways of being that can help us to cultivate inner peace.

Transcript

Welcome to Untangle.

I'm Patricia Karpis.

I am so excited to have Dr.

Rick Hansen back on Untangle.

His interviews have been beloved by our audience and his advice is inspiring,

Practical and timeless.

Dr.

Hansen is a psychologist and New York Times bestselling author.

He's brilliant at delivering wisdom from the worlds of psychology,

Neuroscience and Buddhism and has done this through his six books,

Courses,

Workshops and his pretty amazing podcast.

He's one of the leading experts in the world on happiness and resilience.

In today's interview,

He shares the brain science and wisdom that led him to the seven practices or ways of being that will help us to cultivate an unshakable presence of mind,

A courageous heart,

Inner peace and serenity.

A few things I know we all could use a little more of right now.

Here we go.

Rick Hansen,

It's so great to have you back on Untangle today.

I'm always excited to hear what's new with you and to interview you.

Well,

Thank you.

I feel an unusually high level of heart connection with you,

Patricia,

Particularly for someone I don't talk with very much,

But there's an immediate sense of being home when I'm with you.

Oh,

That's so nice to hear.

Well,

Speaking of being at home,

We're recording this.

Let's see,

It's mid April still,

So we all have our stay at home orders and you're a psychologist with such a deep knowledge of the brain and well-being and how we can work with our feelings and thoughts and emotions.

And I was just wanting to start with how are you and how are you handling what's happening in the world right now?

Well,

Thank you.

I'm fundamentally okay.

My family is fundamentally okay from a health standpoint.

And one thing that has been really striking for me about all this is the intensity of so many different things side by side.

Being at home in a fairly comfortable and privileged way,

Side by side with everything seems to take twice as long,

Side by side with deep,

Deep,

Deep heart heavy concern about so many people that are just beginning to experience this.

I think of it as a slow motion hurricane,

A combination hurricane and marathon.

And it's going to just start moving around the world as well.

That alongside enormous fascination at the public health level,

At the microbiological level,

At the political level.

So it's all that banging around inside my mind altogether and it can get a little loud in there.

So that's where practice comes in.

What kind of practices are you doing right now to help yourself feel a little bit more calm in this chaos?

I've done a lot of things in the wilderness in very hazardous situations.

And sometimes the storm comes and there's a world of difference between want to and have to.

In other words,

When it's all sunny and you're at sea level,

You can get away with a lot of stuff.

But when you're at altitude in the middle of a storm,

You really need to come back to the core of your own practice.

So for me,

That's a lot about really dropping in experientially in a very felt way into the kind of unshakable core of fundamental wellbeing,

Contentment,

Insight and inner peace,

While at the same time disengaging really quickly from unnecessary friction with the world around me or the people around me.

In other words,

If it just takes a little longer to wash the groceries,

Well,

Don't fight it.

Or if there is another person you're living with and they're starting to get a little on your nerves or you wish they were more or less alarmed in the current situation,

Disengage from that friction.

Disengage from that.

You don't need to do that.

So I guess that's what I'm doing a lot these days.

Yeah,

I like that term disengage from the friction because some of the friction I'm feeling anyway,

I just was saying this to someone yesterday.

I sometimes feel a little bit embarrassed at some of my privileged annoyances at some of the things that I'm getting short tempered about and I have to stop myself and take hold of the bigger picture.

But these little annoyances really add up when you have more time and you've slowed down,

Just like you see some of the beautiful things that are percolating and some of the possibilities of new ways for us to be together.

We also have more time to see the things that annoy us.

So I like that idea of disengaging from friction.

That's right.

I have this funny saying,

It's totally dorky,

But I acquired it when I was doing a lot of travel,

Which I'm not doing right now.

Frictionless contentment.

It's an aspiration.

I'm working on it,

But it's that feeling of just be like kelp in the sea.

The waves come through,

But you're still there after the waves pass.

And meanwhile,

You just kind of keep focusing on that sense of enough already.

It's okay to wish for more while feeling enough already.

Yeah.

It's a nice visual to have.

It's somewhat what we think about in Buddhism as feeling that sense of being liberated from our ego and from these annoyances.

So I like that very much.

Frictionless contentment.

So Rick,

You have written a new book.

How many?

Yeah.

What is this now?

Six.

Six.

Oh my God.

Lucky six.

I know.

I know.

I know.

I didn't believe it.

I wrote them,

But I hadn't really counted them and I went,

Well,

This and then there was that.

What?

Six?

So anyway,

It's number six.

It's kind of a culmination book actually.

It's honestly really one of my favorites.

So super from my heart,

Deeply interesting.

So we'll be talking about it,

I'm sure.

Yeah.

Well,

I found it deeply interesting as well.

And I've read your other ones,

So I'd love all of the wisdom that you're sharing with the world.

So the book is called Neurodarma and you talk about this being like the new neuroscience of awakening.

And before we get into the seven practices that are used for strengthening our,

What you call neural circuitry of profound contentment and inner peace.

Can you talk about what you mean by the neuroscience of awakening?

So what the book's about are seven qualities we develop in ourselves,

Seven ways of being,

And they are incredibly useful during challenging times.

And also we observe them gradually developed and even perfected in those great sages,

Great teachers,

Sometimes saints who really,

Really are hanging out at the upper,

Upper reaches,

The pinnacle of human potential.

And the seven qualities are to have a steady mind.

So you're mindful,

You're present with a warm and open heart while feeling resilient and emotional balance,

A sense of fullness already,

And experiencing yourself as a whole,

As a whole person,

Accepting yourself fully,

Everything included,

Resting in a sense of being,

Even while you do things in the present moment,

Receiving downness,

While feeling connected with and supported by kind of everything,

The whole world,

Realizing we're a local expression of everything on the edge of mystery continuously.

So I just talked to you the seven right there,

And they're not exotic,

They're not esoteric,

They're really down to earth,

They're accessible to everyone,

Certainly as a taste.

And we can also appreciate the ways that remarkably,

These foundations of resilient well-being in everyday life actually are what we develop when we start moving into that upper half,

Upper quarter,

Upper tenth of human potential.

So that's what I mean,

Really,

By the neuroscience of awakening.

I'm just using the word awakening as a general term to describe that overall process.

And what the book's about is using the most recent neuroscience in hyper practical ways,

Really down to earth,

So that we can actually stimulate and strengthen the underlying neural circuitry of these seven ways of being each day,

Developing ourselves in each of them a little bit every day.

When you talk about the on the edge of mystery,

Do you mean accepting that it's all a mystery and that there will always be uncertainty,

But that we can cultivate what you call an unshakable presence of mind and courageous heart regardless?

Right.

I was referring to the seventh practice I call finding timelessness,

Which is a reference to the most ultimate matters of all,

Which I have some mystery about them.

So there I'm referring to the sense that I think most people have that some sort of intuition of timelessness,

Spaciousness,

Vastness,

Even an intuition of what I call the transcendental,

Some might call God.

The Buddha called it the unconditioned,

The deathless,

Not subject to arising and passing away and therefore timeless.

So that's we could also have a sense of just vastness and mystery,

An intuition of something more than the remarkable big bang universe that is the natural universe.

So that's what I'm kind of speaking to you there.

It's certainly true that it's helpful to appreciate how much we don't know,

Including we don't know what the next moment will bring.

I mean,

To be able to live without being preoccupied with expectations is of course really,

Really freeing.

The thing that kind of motivated me to do the book is when you want to get good at anything,

You observe people who are good at it,

Right?

So I made carrot soup last night.

My wife's very good at making carrot soup.

So I asked her how she did it,

Right?

I wanted to,

How do you do that?

In much the same way,

If we want to get good at happiness or wisdom or inner peace or radiant love or profound equanimity,

Even while fighting the good fight and speaking truth to power,

Right?

We want to study people who've developed that and then reverse engineer it sort of,

I'm going to use some terminology that's a little exaggerated,

But to reverse engineer enlightenment.

What is the hardware of enlightenment and really in the body,

Whatever might be true beyond ordinary reality,

It is in this body that we are mindful,

Compassionate,

Happy,

And wise.

And as we understand increasingly the actual underlying biological neurological basis for when we feel most ourselves,

As you said,

To begin most at home in a metaphorical sense and an emotional sense with ourselves,

What's going on in the brain.

And then based on understanding that plausibly,

Which is what I explore in the book with a gazillion references buried in the back,

Then we can be so much more effective in growing this in ourselves and taking a step each day in our own path of awakening.

And you talk a lot in all of your books.

And I mean,

I think this is a big part of what we love about these teachings about neuroplasticity and the fact that we actually can change.

And I think this is really hard for a lot of people because it's not something that happens quickly.

And so when you talk about these seven qualities,

These being a lifetime of practices,

Talk about how we can make these qualities more present for ourselves on a day to day basis and how we're changing internally step by step.

Yeah.

If I could,

I'll give you two examples.

The first is the first practice I call steadying the mind because that's foundational.

Yeah.

Mindfulness,

Stability of attention,

Sustained present moment awareness,

Which can be concentrated increasingly into very deep states of experience.

Well,

To steady your mind,

There are different factors you can use.

One of them,

Interestingly,

Is positive emotion because technically in your brain,

When we're experiencing positive emotion,

There's increased dopamine activity in your brain.

That's a neurochemical.

And as dopamine activity increases in your brain,

The experiences at the time are protected and prioritized for storage into emotional memory,

Into body memory.

And so it's actually useful if you're trying to meditate or remain present in a boring business meeting late in the afternoon or keep listening to your partner drone on about how to make carrot soup properly.

Oh,

Wait,

I didn't say that.

Oh,

I did say that.

Anyway,

You know,

If you want to help yourself steady your mind,

It's skillful means actually to look for a sense of gratitude or a sense of interest or playfulness or warm heartedness,

Let's say,

Because that's emotionally positive and that will help stabilize and focus your attention and help you remain mindful.

It's easy to be mindful for half a breath,

But to sustain mindfulness,

That takes some challenge.

So that's skillful means.

And what happens then in terms of neuroplasticity,

Just like you said,

When we start having experiences such as positive emotion while being mindful,

And then we help those experiences sink in.

That's the necessary second step of any lasting learning,

Any lasting healing or development.

We have to help the experience change the brain.

The way to do that is often very simple.

Stay with the experience for a breath or longer,

Feel it in your body,

Notice what feels good about it.

There are a lot of other little methods that I pulled together and offer in the book and elsewhere,

But that's really the gist of it.

You want to internalize it.

And then what happens?

You move from state to trait.

You move from states,

Experiences of happy mindfulness.

You have printed this example,

You move from those experiences,

Those states to the acquisition of traits,

The development of traits,

Literally hardwired into yourself.

So more and more,

It's like acquiring a new habit.

You're just naturally that way.

So that's one example.

If I can give you another one related to the fourth way of being,

Which is I call being wholeness.

I want you to talk about all of them,

But yes,

You can jump to being wholeness.

Okay.

I'll just bounce around.

Yeah.

So the first three cluster together,

Steadying your mind,

Warming your heart and resting in fullness.

That's this very deep material about equanimity,

Emotional balance and feeling contented already.

Not craving,

No basis for craving or very little basis for craving because you feel already full.

Those are the first three.

The next three also hang together,

Wholeness,

Nowness and wholeness.

So being wholeness,

What do I mean by that?

Well,

There's some phenomenally useful brain science that points out that when we are doing stressful tasks,

We're focused,

We're intense,

We're grinding away or when we are spacing out,

When we are daydreaming or ruminating negatively,

Anxiously,

Anxiously,

We are engaging neural circuits in the midline of the cortex on the top of the head.

So if you were to draw a line from the center of your forehead back to where your head starts to curve back down again,

In that area is sort of midline circuitry.

And okay,

You got to be able to do that some of the time,

But there's a lot of stress in that.

There's a lot of suffering in that.

There's also a lot of me,

Myself and I,

And a lot of mental time drop going into the future,

Going into the past.

Interestingly,

When we drop into the present,

When we disengage from negative rumination or when we disengage from stressful doing,

Activity in those midline networks decreases and activity increases in networks on the sides of your brain,

Especially the right hemisphere,

The right side for right-handed people,

Switch for left-handed people,

The same idea.

Activity in the right side of the brain,

Which does holistic processing,

Takes things as a whole.

And when we're in this mode of activating these networks on the right side of the brain,

We come right into the present moment,

Less in the future,

In the past,

More of a sense of being rather than doing and less sense of taking things personally.

And a way into that wonderful way of being is simply to get a sense of things as a whole.

As soon as try it right now,

Just get a sense of your body as a whole,

Maybe start with your chest as a whole and then expand to your body as a whole,

Even as you breathe,

Or you can look around a room,

Get a sense of the room as a whole.

Within seconds,

Certainly within a breath or two,

Your state of being will change.

You'll start feeling more in the present,

Less pressured,

Less tense,

Less attracted,

Less self-preoccupied.

It's a really good thing.

And as you repeatedly have those experiences of resting in the present,

Research shows as you repeatedly activate those lateral,

Those side networks on the right side of your brain,

They actually get strengthened.

And more and more readily,

You're able to just drop in and get those circuitry,

Light up those circuits so you can really be in the present with a sense of wholeness.

Is it that we have to trust the process?

And when I say trust the process,

It is all of these really amazing practices that you invite us to bring these qualities into our lives,

Again,

Don't happen automatically.

But if we keep practicing them over time,

We become less fragmented,

Being able to be more present in the nowness,

How to rest.

I feel like I've been talking and thinking a lot about equanimity now because it's so hard not to get thrown by these ups and downs and highs and lows.

And I love what you're saying about trusting that if we practice these things,

Our brains will change and we will see shifts in our perspective and our behavior.

Absolutely.

And it's incredibly hopeful,

Especially at a time when we feel so pushed around by external factors and even carried away by our internal reactions to them.

It's so hopeful to realize that we have this power,

An undefeatable power inside ourselves to help ourselves grow a little bit every day.

And it's interesting,

I was reflecting on my life a little bit.

And there was a time when I was a teenager that I was really despairing.

I was very unhappy.

I was very awkward.

This all seemed doomed to me.

I was about 15.

And there was a kind of revelation almost that came over me in which I realized that as bad as the past had been and as much as the present sucked,

I could always learn a little every day.

I could grow a little every day.

I could get a little more skillful with my parents.

I could be a little less uptight around girls.

I could disentangle,

Right?

I could untangle myself from some of my nutty ideas,

Neurotic ideas in my head.

I could grow a little every day.

And that was so hopeful.

I started to realize that,

Wow,

Learning is the superpower of superpowers.

It's the strength of strengths because it's what we tap into to grow a little bit,

To develop a little bit,

Heal a little bit every day.

Now in practice,

In real life,

And I'm someone who's really pretty into this stuff,

Five to 10 minutes a day,

Really,

If you really look at it,

What people are really doing in the fly when they're helping the good land.

There's a moment of steadiness.

You slow down for a breath.

You help it sink in.

There's a moment of feeling like you're part of everything.

One thing that this epidemic certainly tells us is we are part of life.

Katuna matata.

A great circle of life.

We're part of life.

Little tiny viruses.

They're hardly alive.

They hijack living creatures to reproduce because they can't do it on their own.

That's the nature of a virus.

Yet we're vulnerable to them.

We're part of them.

And yet it's in part through relying on other aspects of life,

Notably other human beings,

That we're going to come together and solve this problem.

So you start to feel,

Wow.

Well,

When you have those experiences and you let it sink in,

It doesn't take much time over the course of the day.

You might also add a formal practice of prayer,

Yoga,

Meditation,

Gratitude while walking the dog,

Whatever it is that we do.

But the things that you and I are talking about here really actually take five minutes,

Maybe 10 minutes a day of deliberate receptive presence with the experience we're having at the time.

That's not very much is it.

And yet that five minutes a day utterly changes the day and gradually changes your life.

Oh,

I like that term receptive presence because I think that holds true for each one of the seven qualities.

Right.

That's really true.

Yeah.

It's funny.

There's this quotation from,

I think,

Milarepa,

The Tibetan sage.

He was talking about his own life of practice and we can apply what he said both to our life as well as to anything in particular,

Including just being a little more patient with our partner or our teenager or a little less caught up in the political news we see on TV.

He said,

In the beginning,

Nothing came.

In the middle,

Nothing stayed.

In the end,

Nothing left.

Isn't that a wonderful description of the process?

In the beginning,

We're trying to help experiences to occur and they're just not coming.

It's hard to pull up compassion for someone that's irritated us,

Say,

Or it's hard to really have a felt sense of what we know intellectually,

Which is we really are part of everything.

We really are the universe expressing itself locally.

So in the beginning,

Nothing may come.

In the middle,

We can experience things,

But they don't stay.

They're only states.

They're not yet traits.

We haven't yet cultivated them as something that's established in us reliably and stably.

Okay,

But we keep hanging in there.

Then by the end,

Nothing leaves.

We're already cooked.

It's there.

We're just dropped in in the present moment with a warm heart opening out into everything,

Which is what we see in people who are really at the peak of the mountain of awakening.

They're fully cooked,

Right?

I'm inspired by them.

I imagine them turning toward us,

As you know,

In the opening page of the book and with a really sweet gesture,

Beckoning us to come join them.

Hey,

The view is great up here.

You could do it.

Watch out for the ice.

Keep going.

As my friends used to say to me,

Stop whining,

Start climbing.

It's a step-by-step process,

Right?

It's just you just go day by day.

That's how I feel right now as we're all going through this.

It's just day by day,

Step by step.

When you talked before about how important learning is,

And you've talked about this before with growth mindset and some of the other terms that you've used,

But you discuss a method again in this book for soothing and replacing suffering,

That you have an acronym called the HEAL process.

Will you talk about that?

I know you feel that linking step,

Which you have talked a bit about today,

But will you talk a bit about that HEAL process?

Sure.

Just brief summary.

If we're interested in going to bed a little wiser,

A little stronger,

A little happier than when we woke up in the morning,

A little bit of growth every day,

Not turning it into some kind of pressured project,

But we're trying to help ourselves or we're trying to help ourselves learn a lesson.

I'll have interactions with my wife and halfway into them,

I'll realize,

This is not going well.

I need to learn something here,

Both to manage my internal reactions and also to be more skillful,

Let's say with her.

I'm not walking on eggshells,

Just appropriate emotional intelligence,

Social,

Emotional learning.

If we want to help ourselves in that way,

I've summarized the process of that,

Which could be called positive neuroplasticity personally.

I've summarized that process with this acronym,

HEAL,

As you say,

Which is have a beneficial experience of some kind,

Usually just because you've noticed when you're already having,

You're already feeling a little grateful,

Already feeling a little relaxed,

Or maybe you deliberately create an experience like calling up compassion.

Okay.

That song is now playing in the inner iPod and in the rest of the acronym,

You turn on the recorder.

So E stands for enrich,

Enrich the experience,

Help at last,

Keep those neurons firing together so they wire together.

Feel it in your body,

Open up to it,

Recognize maybe what's relevant about it.

These are just different little ways in your own mind.

You can enrich the experience,

Which will increase its internalization into the nervous system.

And A stands for absorb.

So with this now kind of enriched experience,

It's sort of luscious and you're hanging out with it for a breath or two or three.

You absorb it into yourself.

It feels like it's sinking into you,

Like water into a sponge.

You let yourself shift a little bit to actually receive it into you,

To become a little fill in the blank,

A little more mindful,

A little more grateful,

A little grittier,

A little stronger,

A little more caring every day.

That's the essence of the process.

And then the L stands for linking,

Which is a very powerful way to clear out negative material.

When we link,

We're aware of two things at once,

Positive and negative both.

One form of linking is mindful,

Spacious awareness of painful material because spacious awareness is untroubled,

Even as the physical pain or the hurt or the resentment or the worry is being experienced.

It is being linked,

You know,

The worry,

Let's say,

To the spaciousness of awareness.

That's a form of linking.

More likely,

If let's say these days you're anxious,

There are a number of positive experiences and traits developed over time that are really good for anxiety.

I'll just tell you a few of my go-tos.

One is to just exhale.

As we exhale,

Literally,

The heart rate slows,

The parasympathetic branch of the nervous system gets engaged.

If people just take a breath in which the exhalation is longer than the inhalation,

They'll feel a difference with one breath,

Do three of those and you'll feel an immediate difference.

That's one thing to do,

Just relaxing the body.

Another is to notice that at least in the present,

You're basically all right right now when that's true.

It's not always true,

But if it is true,

Why not feel it,

Right?

That you're basically all right right now.

I may not have my convenience,

Right?

I can't get any cream for my coffee.

Oh,

The Instacart's not delivering.

Oh,

I want to drink it black.

Okay.

I'm basically okay right now.

Another one,

Third is to tune into the felt sense in the body of your own grit,

Your own endurance that you've been through hard times before,

You got through them,

You'll get through this one too.

To pull up the somatic memory,

The emotional memory of that internal feeling of strength.

That's another great resource for anxiety.

So you could feel both together.

With anxiety,

Kind of off to the side,

Like a sense of apprehensiveness or worry,

Mainly focus on relaxing as you exhale or mainly focus on recognizing what's true is that at least in the present,

You're basically okay.

We're mainly focused on that sense of grit and strength in the body.

And since neurons that fire together wire together,

When you keep the positive experience more in the foreground of awareness,

Bigger with the negative material off to the side,

The positive will associate to the negative and gradually soothe it,

Ease it and even replace it.

And is this where we have to really rely on our executive control network?

I mean,

You talk about three neural networks forming being our pathway into healthy equilibrium.

So I wonder if what you're talking about now is really our executive control needs to be in play in order to help us get to this place of whether it's somatic memory or even the linking that we have that power through that part of our neural system.

Right.

I would say in the beginning,

Whenever we're trying to learn something,

There are these stages of learning.

And it's funny,

They're like four stages.

They could be summarized as unconscious incompetence.

In other words,

You don't even know what a bike is and for sure you can't ride it.

Then second stage is conscious incompetence.

You're trying to ride the bike,

But it keeps falling to the side.

Third stage is conscious competence.

You can ride that bike,

But you got to really pay attention.

You need to use those executive systems,

Certainly.

And then in the fourth stage,

The sense which Milarepa was speaking to as the end of practice is unconscious competence.

You're able to do it and you hardly think about it.

So the second and third stage definitely engage those executive systems.

You're really deliberately trying,

Let's say to link.

With practice,

It becomes more and more natural and easy.

Maybe there's something that you're frustrated about and you can't do these days.

It's not convenient to do it.

You can't do it.

It's not safe.

Well,

You could pull up a feeling of gratitude for at least what you do have.

Linking is not about positive thinking.

It's not about any kind of pushing away or denying or suppressing the negative.

It's just focusing on what is also true to skillfully help yourself so that whatever the losses may be or the frustrations may be,

They're nested in a kind of ground or field of enormous gobsmacked gratitude for the gift of the next breath,

The gift of just life altogether.

And so linking me is really quite a natural thing.

I want to kind of underline that I'm naming things that everyone knows how to do,

But we just don't do them very often.

And we don't tend to do them skillfully and deliberately.

So that's where a lot of the value is.

And again,

Just to stress,

I'm talking about five minutes a day here,

But a real five minutes distributed spread out over the course of the day,

A breath here,

A minute or two there,

Where we just help the good land.

We receive it into ourselves.

We give ourselves the gift.

We let ourselves have it.

I know so many people who scratch and claw to climb the slippery pole to feel something good,

But then they don't take it in,

Right?

And they feel driven for the next thing or they let themselves be distracted.

And that's really poignant,

Even tragic.

Do you think it's like a simple way to get to that feeling is to just do a top three things you're grateful for every single day,

Just to keep remembering what's good?

That's a classic method.

One thing I will say is that very often people know it conceptually.

They don't feel grateful emotionally.

And then even if they feel grateful emotionally,

They don't marinate it in it.

They don't marinate in it for a breath or two to really change neural structure and function and acquire trait gratitude.

Yeah.

It's in the marinating that the change takes place.

Yeah,

Exactly right.

My three go-tos are peace,

Contentment,

Love.

I try to really,

No,

I love it.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

Well,

And you know,

It relates to the three stage evolution of the brain from the bottom up reptilian mammalian,

And then primate human,

Which relates to our needs for safety,

Satisfaction,

And connection.

So in effect,

I jokingly put it every day,

We need to pet the lizard,

Feed the mouse and hug the monkey.

In other words,

Every day have a little sense of safe enough,

Thus peaceful,

Satisfied enough,

Less contented and connected enough,

Thus love every day.

That's kind of our home base.

We reset there.

So I think it's really valuable to look for a chance to just,

Maybe before you get out of bed,

Kind of reestablish a basic sense of peacefulness,

Contentment,

And love.

And also starting a meditation or when you fall asleep,

Kind of reestablish,

Come home.

It's a homecoming.

It's so beautiful.

I mean,

It's funny because I was just going to ask you about these three fundamental needs for safety,

Satisfaction,

And connection,

Because I think those are three fundamental needs that aren't automatically being met for most people these days,

Mid April,

As we're recording this.

And is it all of these practices?

I mean,

My question was going to be what happens when these needs can't be met?

And then I'm wondering if it's these practices we have to do,

Regardless of whether these needs are being met externally for us.

Well,

It's so excellent.

Needs are a very fundamental idea in biology and psychology.

And some of those very fundamental ideas have been sort of brushed aside almost,

But I think it's really important to appreciate them.

So we are need-satisfying animals.

I see the squirrels in my backyard.

I see the turkey standing over the bird seed that I left on the ground in my backyard in Northern California.

And I see the squirrel really angry because it can't get the food.

And the turkey's just looking at the squirrel.

Yo,

Squirrel,

I'm bigger than you are.

Get out of here,

Right?

And so we need to meet our needs.

The question then becomes,

What helps us meet our needs so we don't get into stressful red zone bursts of fight,

Flight,

Or freezing to meet our needs?

And that's where growing inner strengths comes in,

Growing psychological capabilities,

Including the capacity to untangle yourself,

Right?

From different kinds of habitual reactions to things.

So the question then becomes,

What do you do at a time where your needs are challenged,

Right?

Do you move into fight,

Flight,

Freeze in the management of your needs?

Or even while doing what you need to do to be safe,

Like my wife and family and I are doing a lot to be safe,

Both so we don't get this illness until there are good treatments for it,

And also so that we don't inadvertently pass it along to someone like my 98-year-old aunt in a nursing home in Colorado who's really vulnerable,

Right?

The most vulnerable among us,

The ones we most cherish in many ways,

Our parents,

Our elders,

Our aunts and grandparents,

Our teachers,

They're the ones who are most fragile right now.

We need to keep them in our mind and hold them in our heart at this time.

So we're doing a lot to meet our need,

Let's say for safety.

The question is,

Can you meet your need for safety on the basis of a felt sense of calm strength inside,

On the basis of clarity about what's going on and reliance on genuine expertise rather than ignorance and delusion and false hope?

Hope is not a plan,

As the doctors say.

Can you meet the need for safety with an underlying sense of unshakable serenity that you've developed over time in the core of your being?

And that's the key question here.

And that's our opportunity.

We really can.

We really can meet our needs,

Whether it's for safety or satisfaction broadly or for connection,

We can meet them with a sense of fullness already,

Right,

Which changes everything.

Yeah.

You have a quote in the book,

And it does change everything.

And we just have to remember that these are the steps that we are invited to take to feel that felt sense of calm and strength and resilience.

This quote is,

In the brain,

Trauma and ordinary neurotic crud are embedded in our neural circuitry,

Which takes time to alter and developing happiness,

Emotional intelligence,

And a loving heart also require gradual physical changes.

And I like that quote because I feel like it is this process of surrendering to daily practices and remembering that if we make that commitment to ourselves and to these practices,

Things will change for us.

But I think that's the leap sometimes is having that trust that if you do these small things,

You will see changes.

Yeah.

And that trust is well founded based on a lot of really hardcore neuroscientific research on humans and also on non-human animals.

And what I like about that quote,

You're a really great reader,

Patricia.

When you write books,

You're really happy that they even look at the title,

Let alone they actually read and understand them.

You're so funny.

It's true.

And as you know in that passage,

It gets at this kind of classic question that is sometimes expressed as sudden awakening or gradual cultivation.

And of course,

It's a false dichotomy because both are true.

There is both sudden awakening and gradual cultivation with regard in part to the uncovering of our true nature that was always already the case and yet obscured.

So there really is a place certainly for both for recognizing that we are innately,

And I mean this very respectfully,

We are innately untangled in our core.

And yet it takes practice to become who we already are.

And we see that certainly there are extremely historically rare examples of people who sort of just woke up one day and they were enlightened and that was that.

And they'd never done any kind of practice before and they were radically changed forever.

That's extremely rare.

Most people who are the great teachers,

The sages,

The ones we learned from,

Including people who aren't famous but have really touched the lives of many others,

They engage practice.

And me,

I find it enormously interesting to just kind of be with your experience and help yourself let go a little bit more each day and to become a little more mellow,

Contented,

Unerkable.

It's funny,

Erkability,

Being irked.

This is a very irk sometime.

I love the word irk because I'm a total Lord of the Rings geek.

Yeah,

It's a very irk sometime.

So jokingly but seriously,

I'm working on becoming unerkable.

And I say work in a very lighthearted,

Playful,

Casual,

Grateful way,

Right?

I'm trying to help myself become increasingly unerkable and to,

When I do get irked,

Learn from the experience so I'm a little less erkable the next time and recover a little more rapidly to my unerked,

Innate nature.

And that's a fun thing to do.

It's also really hopeful to realize,

You know,

However it is,

I can develop myself a little bit every day.

For my own sake,

I can become a little happier,

A little more peaceful,

A little less troubled every day.

And also then I've got more to offer to others.

I'm just smiling here because I love your language.

Like I just wrote down sudden awakening and gradual cultivation,

Both are true.

And then,

I mean,

This idea of irksome and being irkable,

Unerkable.

And sometimes I think it's impossible for those of us that are urban in nature or whatever it is that makes us so,

What is the word?

Like irked,

I guess.

But I love that you're trying to become unerkable.

It's such a lofty goal,

At least for me.

Well,

It's step by step too.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like installing in a sense,

Shock absorbers inside.

Or I think of this lovely quotation from Gil Fronsdal that the purpose of practice is to expand the range of experiences in which we are free.

So that increasingly,

Even pain may arise or something may happen,

But it doesn't bug us in our core.

And an example of this for me is I don't particularly care for heat.

I grew up in LA.

It was hot.

My kind of probably favorite climate is I'm Scottish in part of my heritage,

Who knows,

But that kind of brisk,

Chilly,

Windy,

That's me naturally.

I don't care for heat,

Especially if it's humid.

So I was leading a meditation,

My weekly gathering six months ago.

Yeah,

It was hot and I didn't like it.

It was unpleasant,

But it didn't bother me that it was unpleasant.

And I think that's something that we can gradually develop over time.

Well,

That is something I am looking forward to myself.

Because I think that sounds so freeing to not be irked by the list of things that irk us.

In fact,

I think I'm going to develop a list of my most irkable things and then start slowly working on them.

Can I give you a little suggestion?

Yes.

At the level of practice?

Yes,

Please.

For the things that irk you,

Which very often will be typically listed as events or relationships,

So forth,

Then go to the experience of it.

So what is the feeling that that stimulus generates that irks some of one kind or another?

And then ask yourself,

What is a natural antidote?

So maybe you feel irked about being sort of disrespected by someone.

A natural antidote to that might be compassion for them or a sense of self-worth already deep inside yourself,

No matter what they say.

Or maybe what irks you is something that feels threatening,

Like it seems sort of alarming or worrisome,

Or you're worried about where this is all going.

And then a natural antidote to that,

Let's say,

Would be feeling all right right now.

In the present,

I'm okay enough.

I'm all right in the present,

Basically.

I'm still alive,

Right?

I'm still okay in the present.

And then what a person could do,

This is linking,

In effect,

Is to deliberately sort of get in touch with that natural antidote to whatever the irked experience is so that increasingly that antidote neutralizes the irkness and gradually crowds it out.

It's like flowers gradually crowding out weeds.

And also help yourself stay in touch with those natural antidotes increasingly.

So you're already kind of rested in the shock absorber.

So when the irksome waves come,

They kind of wiggle you a little bit,

But they don't flip you over.

I love that.

I'm going to consciously work on that.

I think that is great,

Great advice.

That sort of goes to my last question,

Unless there are other things you want to share with us,

Because as always,

I could talk to you forever.

But is there one takeaway that you would hope that people would get from the book?

I know there are so many,

But what is your feeling about the most important takeaway for us?

That's really sweet.

Well,

If I'm allowed to,

Is this.

One,

It's okay to have aspirations.

And I think that some of the vision of what was really possible for human potential in the 70s,

Let's say,

When a lot of these developments began,

That vision of self-actualization,

Peak experiences,

Enlightenment and awakening has been lost a lot,

I think,

In our culture,

As we've gotten sucked into the grind and commercialism and political polarization and all the rest of that.

People are just TGIF,

You know,

Just get me to the weekend,

Right?

And rinse and repeat the following week.

And I think it's really important to protect and respect that longing in everyone's heart for the next step in the personal process of development and healing and freedom and liberation and awakening,

And to honor it,

To really listen to it and to realize,

Hey,

There's more to this life than just getting to the weekend.

And that really is possible.

It's a step-by-step process.

We need to actually do the work,

But it really is possible.

So I think that's a very important thing.

And the other thing is just experiential practice.

Related to the book,

I taught a meditation retreat,

And then we turned it into a very well-structured online program with lots and lots of guided meditation.

Some people can learn more about that on my website.

And the key point about that is that it's not just enough to read words in the book.

It's interesting,

There's a teaching in the Buddhist tradition I think about a lot,

Which is that one is not wise who can recite the scriptures.

One is truly wise who is peaceable,

Friendly,

And fearless.

I love those three words,

Peaceable,

Friendly,

And kapow,

Fearless.

Not reckless,

Not obnoxious,

Not aggressive,

But in the core,

A certain fearlessness.

That's the fruit of practice.

And we get there through experiential practice.

So in the book,

There are a lot of guided meditations.

People can do them on their own or listen to the audio version.

And also,

They really ought to check out that online program,

Which is a great companion to the book.

So the point is practice.

We need to practice.

And it's through practice.

A breath here,

A minute there,

Maybe 10 minutes in a row occasionally.

We really can shed the crud and grow the good for others as well as for ourselves.

I love that.

Shed the crud and grow the good.

I always feel so nourished and inspired after talking to you.

I really do.

And I thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today.

And I will give people more information on the book.

And thank you.

Wish you all the best and lots of health and safety.

Dr.

Hanson Well,

Tons of heart for you as well,

Patricia,

And really to everyone listening.

Thanks so much to Dr.

Hansen for sharing so many of his insights and so much practical advice today.

Wishing you all the very best.

We'll see you next week.