An Interview With Marvin G. Belzer PhD UCLA Mindfulness Teacher

Marvin has taught mindfulness meditation for 20 years. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. For many years, he taught a semester-long meditation course in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green St. University, where he was an Associate Professor of Philosophy. He teaches an undergraduate course at UCLA (Psychiatry 175: Mindfulness Practice and Theory) and teaches mindfulness in many different venues in Los Angeles

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Bob O'Haver.

Welcome to the Why Meditate podcast.

I'm asking questions of teachers,

Scientists and religious leaders.

The questions are,

Why meditate?

What is mindfulness and what does it mean to live a mindful life?

What is the difference between meditation,

Contemplation and prayer?

And how do we promote compassion in ourselves and the world around us?

I've learned that over my life that in sports like martial arts and baseball,

Going back to basics always helped me understand how to deal with the issues I was having.

I hope these interviews will do the same for each of us.

Thank you for your support.

Let's know what you think by making sure you comment on WhyMeditateLA.

Com,

Facebook or Twitter.

Thanks again.

Now on with our discussion.

I'm interviewing Marvin G.

Belzer,

Ph.

D.

,

Associate Director of Mindful Awareness,

The Research Center at UCLA.

Thank you very much for meeting me.

My pleasure.

And in all disclosure,

I am taking courses from Marvin right now.

So you know,

Just so everybody knows what's going on.

I've already explained to you why I'm doing this and where the questions came from.

So I'm just going to jump right into the questions and we'll go from there.

The first one is,

Why meditate?

Well,

I love the question.

I often teach college students and young people,

Older teens,

And I love talking with them about this.

And so I'm kind of prepared here.

And I would kind of break it into three areas.

The first is there are these very simple activities that we can do with our minds to cultivate calmness.

And so there's this package of qualities of clarity,

Stability,

Resilience,

Kind of under that heading of concentration or calmness.

And whatever else we can do in meditation,

It's very clear that the central nervous system is such that paying attention,

Deciding to pay attention to something really simple in our experience,

Not make believe,

The mind naturally can settle,

Become calmer,

More clear,

And so forth.

And so I would conjecture that something like this is a part of all the meditation traditions.

Maybe not all exactly,

But you know,

This cultivation of calmness.

And it's not something we have to struggle to create.

It's much simpler.

It's just directing attention to something simple like the breath and so forth.

Secondly,

My area,

As you know,

Is mindfulness meditation.

And so mindfulness includes that component,

For sure.

But it also includes a component of bringing awareness to what presents itself,

Even as we try to keep the attention with the breath or something like that.

And this gets us to the second sort of reason to do this sort of meditation,

Which is in bringing awareness to whatever presents itself,

Including physical pain,

Including difficult emotions,

You know,

The racing mind.

There's something about doing this which gives us more freedom in our response to these ordinary states.

And so the kind of the work with physical pain is maybe the most vivid.

And so if a part of my body is in pain,

Then we can practice mindfulness with this in a way that helps us manage the pain.

And what manage the pain means basically is having more freedom in our response to this difficult state.

And so the gist of it,

Of course,

Is really simple.

We focus somewhere else like the breath,

The pain comes to mind,

We include the awareness of the pain,

Maybe just for a few seconds,

So it's that oscillating back and forth.

And there is something about the willingness just to be with the raw sensations.

Even when it doesn't reduce the intensity of the pain,

It gives us more freedom in our response.

So the word freedom might be a bit fancy,

But in my way of seeing it,

Like the freedom that one can have relative to pain,

Relative to anxiety,

Also is a window into who knows how much freedom we might have as human beings.

And so there's obviously much more to say about that,

But that's not as clear cut in my mind as the first answer around concentration,

But it definitely would be in the territory of like Buddhists talking about freedom from suffering.

And that's very plausible to me.

Now you come from a philosophical background,

A philosopher,

That's what you taught and that kind of thing.

I was curious how that fed you into where you are now.

I mean,

How did you get from questioning everything to where you are now with this?

Well,

I did start meditating when I was a graduate student in philosophy.

I had a friend who,

This is in the 80s,

Who had information about meditation and her intuition was,

Yeah,

I think you might find this interesting and I did,

Sure enough.

And so for many years it was kind of an extreme sport.

I would do these silent intensive retreats and found it really interesting.

And this actually gets to my third answer about why do it because part of it was I was delighted to find that,

Wow,

These methods really do,

It's not make-believe,

It's definitely not flaky for me.

It really is working to both develop some concentration and to have more freedom with some difficult states.

But the philosopher in me,

You don't go to philosophy grad school unless you are exploring and willing to entertain new things.

And I just found it really interesting to spend time in this situation exploring the mind.

And so kind of my third general answer also fits with my approach to philosophy,

Which is I don't know why people should meditate.

If you're here in my class then I'm happy to teach you but I don't know if you should do it or not.

It's up to you.

It's such a personal thing.

Personal choice.

And even working with teens,

I haven't worked a lot with younger than 15,

16.

But my intuition is it would be the same no matter what age you're working with.

It's a highly personal activity.

And if one is interested in doing it or trying to do it at all then we have to use our own intuition,

Our own wisdom,

Our own desires are relevant to this question of why am I doing this?

Why should I be doing it from the very beginning?

And to me this is an exciting part of it because like the first two answers,

More calmness,

Dealing with difficult states,

Those fit pretty well into like a medical model of like how to make life better and so forth.

And so managing physical pain,

Using mindfulness is becoming mainstream very quickly.

As a philosopher though,

Teaching philosophy 101 with 19 year old kids,

I don't go in the first day and say well this course is going to make you healthier.

This course might mess you up.

Right?

But in a way that's truly part of being human.

But it's exploration.

It is.

Like you may find yourself really uncomfortable.

You may find that some of the things you assume to be true that are at the center of your life can be questioned and you may find yourself questioning them and it may be confusing.

And so there's a part of me that insists on this third answer also about why meditate?

And so it's more than I don't know why you should meditate.

It's like you have to figure it out for yourself and you don't look to someone else to tell you.

And it can be an amazing adventure is my opinion because it has been for me and it has been for many students.

But I don't assume it's that way for everyone.

There's something in me that's just that radical.

Like I don't assume that everyone should do this or it's good for everyone.

And so when someone says well what about this other type of meditation or what about my religious practices or what about,

I have a former student who posted something on Facebook the other day and she's got into boxing and she goes this is my meditation because I am in the moment.

And if someone's going to hit you,

You've got to be present.

And part of me wants to write to her and go I don't think that's what I taught you.

And the other part of me is that is exactly what I taught you because she's thinking for herself and exploring.

And finding those things that she can be mindful with.

Exactly.

Well that kind of leads me into,

Well actually before that,

Do you feel that somebody to meditate needs a teacher or a guide or a community?

Do you think those things are important?

I think they are for most people.

On the one hand,

I think that people can discover the basic principles on their own,

But I think that it's easily forgotten even when they discover it.

And so that's where the role of a teacher,

Of a community can be helpful just to help us remember.

Keep on track.

Just to help us,

Like an example would be,

Again coming back to the example of physical pain,

I once had a student who after I gave the lesson on pain,

Which I basically gave the summary of a couple minutes ago,

After class,

But obviously it can be spelled out more,

But she came up after class and said,

You know I discovered that when I was a little girl.

I was like,

Oh really?

And she goes,

Yeah I had migraines,

I didn't know what to do,

But I found that if I felt my hands,

So I directed my,

I felt my hands,

That helped,

But when that didn't help I actually just felt the pain in my head,

Just felt it.

And when that didn't help I went back to my hands and I just went back and forth.

And I was like,

Wow,

You not only discovered this method,

You actually just explained it better than I did.

From personal experience.

And so I would,

I've honestly forgotten who it is,

And I would actually love to talk with her again and get more details,

But my guess is she'd forgotten what she had discovered,

And the class kind of,

Oh right,

Wait a minute,

I know what he's talking about.

So I think that what we're doing in meditation is so simple that people have probably discovered it and rediscovered it countless times through human history,

Going back who knows how far.

Especially in context where their pain and the anxiety have definitely been part of human life.

Well and also the fact that it's brought up in every religious practice.

There are five methods.

But still it's helpful to be reminded,

And so as a teacher part of my job is to explain the sort of things we're talking about,

And another part is to convey confidence that it's actually worth doing.

And of course that confidence comes from my own practice,

Even though it kind of also comes from the word go in people's own practice.

They have to develop that confidence themselves.

And that's where there's going to be a range of personalities and so forth,

So the shorter answer would be for some people,

The teacher,

The community are going to be more important than for others.

But I think for everyone,

I regard myself as pretty independent.

I started meditating out of a book.

I almost kind of did a two month retreat when I was a grad student living in Helsinki for a year.

But I even in that time I was pretty isolated.

I was definitely meditating and discovering things,

But there was part of me that was like really needed other people and kind of just the connection and the like not being so isolated.

Right,

The communal part of it.

And I find in my practice that when I'm meditating with a group of people,

And I mean seriously like at a retreat or something like that,

It's a different energy.

I have a different meditation when I'm there than when I'm sitting by myself every morning.

So that can be researched.

I expect that will be.

It's a good scientific question,

What's going on there.

Are we really connected?

Is there something going back and forth between us?

I don't assume there is,

But there could be.

And then coming over to the basic thing,

What is mindfulness and how do we live mindfully?

I think of mindfulness as a capacity that we all have.

We don't have to struggle to create it.

It's part of normal human consciousness.

It's the ability to be aware of what's happening in our experience moment after moment.

So there are other ways to conceptualize it,

But the core of it is utterly simple and it's something that we do all the time.

And it's a capacity that can be refined and developed.

And so this is where the meditation comes in.

If we practice,

Then we do refine and develop it.

And this is where retreats come in.

So actually going away from our normal lives for a few days or longer,

Putting ourselves in that situation where the mind can really get settled,

So the development of the concentration that does for most people require going away.

Just doing it for several days or a week,

Or even a month or two,

Can be done.

Normal people do it.

Relatively normal people.

And that is also part of my job as a teacher,

Just to kind of make it clear.

I've done it many times,

For long periods of time,

And it's not make-believe.

And so there is that component of the meditation practice,

Whether it's a daily meditation or retreat.

And then bringing it into our lives does not require,

And I don't think it's actually a good idea to try to be mindful all the time,

As if it's kind of a top-down thing that's the first thing on our to-do list and we do it every moment.

It's like,

No,

That's too much work.

We already have enough to do.

But if we have a meditation practice,

Then this capacity,

This normal capacity,

Will be strengthened and refined so that we'll naturally be more connected with what's happening in us as we go through our normal day.

And then there will be moments where we can remind ourselves in the midst of a busy day,

Okay,

I can take a breath,

I can notice what I'm feeling right now.

And it's quite still very interesting to me how that works.

So the act,

So when we're living mindfully in our day-to-day life,

It's just being more equanimous.

It's being in the moment more and realizing what's going on.

Is that the idea?

I think at the simplest level,

For most of us,

What it will mean is being more attuned to what's happening in our bodies,

The actual sensations in our bodies.

And so when we teach how to work with difficult emotions mindfully,

When we practice in meditation,

It's tuning into the raw physical sensations,

Often in the chest,

The torso with anxiety,

Fear,

Anger,

And so forth.

So we're naturally and probably quite intelligently oriented to the thoughts,

To the flow of thoughts.

But with these emotions,

There also are the physical sensations and it's really helpful to be attuning into them.

So this is what I mean by,

I mean the sensations are there typically,

Whether we're aware of them or not,

But this is where the mindfulness can be refined.

It's an example of how it can be refined and strengthened so that in the meditation first we're more likely to notice it rather than just get carried away by the thoughts.

And then we practice with that and it's like,

Wow,

I thought I was having a good meditation but here I am pissed off at such and such and not pretending otherwise.

Just like,

Okay,

This is real,

This is what I practice with.

And then that capacity then becomes more available in the midst of an argument in real life.

And it's very interesting how we have more options then within that discussion.

It's not because we're being super mindful and talking very slow,

That's not going to help.

We're just in the middle of the action.

So one example is working with athletes.

Like most athletes who have already skilled in their sport,

They don't need to be taught how to be mindful relative to the basketball or the baseball.

They're already doing that pretty well.

And so there is mindfulness in play.

But the mindfulness still might be useful in some way.

And maybe it would be most useful when they're not playing the game at all.

But actually it helps them rest better because they work more skillfully.

And so it's fascinating.

And one of the things of course that's going on is,

With the secular mindfulness is,

I can talk about these things a lot but everything I say is open to research.

Of course.

Yeah.

And so even the assertion about how could mindfulness help with a basketball player or volleyball player,

I don't really know.

But my conjecture would be it probably could help but it wouldn't necessarily be try to be more mindful when you're playing the game.

That might not be necessary.

Or it might happen naturally.

It might happen naturally when you're actually in the middle of the game but then when something happens to break you out of that and you get angry,

You realize,

Oh wait a minute,

I need to be mindful about this and I don't need to be angry.

You're more ready to cope with it in real time.

To understand what's going on and feel it when you're in the middle of play.

And that's when you can be that,

That's why you can bring your best to the game at that point.

Exactly.

You don't get lost in something tangential.

That isn't going to help.

And of course that's relevant in all areas of our lives.

Working with teenage sons and daughters,

Driving a car,

Waiting in line.

How did I know that?

And probably the most significant nowadays,

How to relate to technology.

How to put it in the right place.

Right,

Just the rapid onslaught of messages and stimulation that is so easily available.

How do you just put it in perspective to everything else?

I've been trying to do it myself and it's interesting.

Even the flow of emotions,

Like boom,

Boom,

Boom,

That come just looking at the news or you're doing email.

Yeah,

I have to remind myself when I'm watching the news nowadays that I just need to breathe a little bit more and just accept what's going on because it's happening and just realize that.

Right,

Right.

And I mean this is very interesting because this is like when we go on retreats,

We actually are taking time away from all of that.

Yeah,

Cutting yourself off from everything.

Yeah,

And of course to someone who doesn't understand it,

It can seem like an escapist type of action.

In general,

It's not for people.

Someone might be,

There are some cases of that now and then,

But not really very many.

It's just a very rational response to like the pressures of modern life.

And so,

I talk to students a lot about,

Should I go on a retreat and almost always it's like,

Have you found that your meditation so far has been significant?

Does it seem to be helping?

And if they're in my office talking about it then it probably has been.

And I'm like,

You won't regret taking a week and going off to do this.

But you will be turning off your phone.

It's not easy.

It requires some courage to get out of our normal patterns.

But then we cultivate these.

It's not a withdrawal from life at all because our minds,

Our bodies are there.

We'll practice missing our phone.

And it's very interesting.

I find that it,

To me,

It likens to sleep.

I need sleep every day.

This is my brain sleep.

This is where I can let the brain and let my mind,

Well,

The brain,

The mind.

I did a lecture the other day where he was talking about brain and mind.

And it's those kinds of things that I find in a retreat that you can let all those things go.

But be ready when you're back because they come flooding back in and it is an experience that you won't get anywhere else.

That in itself can be something we learn from.

It's just like,

Because the tremendous flow of information and stimulation is a part of every normal day.

And it can be really interesting to come to it fresh and see what it's really like.

Yeah,

When you do,

You start realizing that,

Wow,

I deal with this every day.

I mean,

This is normal.

I don't even think about it anymore because it's so much.

But that kind of gives you a break and lets you see really what you are dealing with.

But anyway,

One of the other,

What is the difference between meditation and contemplation?

Or is there?

I don't know.

It's interesting.

The word contemplative is being used now quite a lot in university settings as a kind of general contemplative practices,

Contemplative studies as kind of the general term for mindfulness,

Meditation related areas.

I've never been a big fan of it because to my mind contemplation suggests something cognitive.

And I think that that's probably one reason that the term was actually used in the academic settings because it was going to be more congenial for academic colleagues if we were actually contemplating rather than meditating.

Yeah,

I was finding in some classes they're used interchangeably.

That's where the question came from.

No,

So in some settings,

I don't use the word contemplation except when I'm interacting with fellow academics who are teaching in contemplative studies programs.

And I remember having a conversation with some of them about it and arguing that it's too cognitive.

And what we do in meditation,

We don't shut off our minds and we obviously don't have to clear our minds and so forth because that's impossible to do it just by sheer willpower.

But we're really not actually sitting there focusing on the flow of thoughts.

In most cases,

We're focusing somewhere else.

And they were like,

Marv,

Yeah,

You're right,

But forget it.

Give up,

Give up because the word is entrenched now.

And so I would conjecture that in 10 years,

Contemplative studies,

Contemplative practice in universities will be more and more widespread just because it is being used a lot.

I'm still not a fan of it,

But I don't use it for that reason.

Well,

I always thought of it as something's going on.

I'm thinking about something.

I'm mulling in my mind.

Yeah,

And so there definitely are meditation traditions that involve that.

And there are contemplative meditations.

Yeah,

And we teach some like the kindness practice involves using our minds,

Using thoughts.

We still don't tend to say contemplation,

But it is more cognitive for sure than the basic mindfulness.

So I would have been smarter maybe with this.

I would have been smarter just to say,

I don't think about this.

I'll talk about it when asked,

But it's not on my radar.

And whenever I think about it,

That moment comes up when these guys were like,

Marv,

Relax.

We don't like it either,

But it's not going to change.

And then the last question I have is,

How do we facilitate compassion in ourselves and in our world around us?

And like we had mentioned earlier,

Does that really come from meditating?

Do you become more compassionate from just meditating?

Not that you have to try,

But it just doesn't come.

I would say this is where I'm guessing you're going to get a wide range of answers.

And I think my answer is,

I don't know.

And it is amenable to research.

And research is being done on that very question.

And there are some interesting studies.

I'd love to talk to those people.

Well,

There's one,

I won't go into it now,

But research is just beginning.

But this is my kind of,

I do have some thoughts about it,

But I don't know how generally valid they are.

But my thoughts would be that in paying attention to my own experience,

I think that one core element of love is the willingness to pay attention.

And so without being dramatic about it,

There's a way in which mindfulness practice,

Insofar as I'm willing to pay attention to my experience,

No matter what it is,

Is a form of love.

And so the idea of self-compassion or self-love to me is something that we're practicing in basic mindfulness.

I also love to teach relational mindfulness practices with college students who've developed some really beautiful,

I feel,

Exercises where we're paying attention,

We simplify the social rules so that in this context,

We're just paying attention with each other in a very simple way,

But a real way,

Not pretending anything.

And I don't use the word intimacy because that's a little fancy.

But there is a way in which just paying attention to another person,

No matter what they're going to say,

No matter what's going on for them,

Is love or the core of love.

Or it'd be odd to say you love them if you're not willing to be there.

And this capacity to do it with others seems to me to be closely connected with the ability to do it with myself.

And so my conjecture would be that,

Yeah,

What we do in the basic mindfulness meditation,

We're strengthening some of the skills that are at the core of loving in general.

Do you find that the practices you're doing in the relational mindfulness that you're doing,

That those bleed out?

Do you see differences in people when you're doing it?

The first question is,

What is it when you do those relational mindfulness practices,

What is that for the people that don't know?

Yeah.

Changing the social rules so that whether it's a conversation with another person or a group interaction,

It's a game.

It's not a normal conversation,

But it might be just a repeated question and then there's a role of a speaker and a listener.

And the listener's job is just to ask the question and not reply other than say thank you and then repeat the question.

And the answer,

Just say what comes to mind.

In the group activities,

Some of the best ones are just creating a form where people can ask questions of each other in a context of confidentiality and where we've kind of set a container that's safe enough.

And college students tend to love this,

Where they just like,

Who are you?

What's going on in your life?

What's real?

Without trying to be dramatic,

They learn very quickly that it'll be interesting.

We don't have to turn it into truth or dare or something like that.

It's just like what is your life like?

And so we get below the surface of what is normal.

Being polite in that context is asking the questions we're curious about.

So anyway,

I won't describe it more,

But I've done probably a thousand of these types of circles over the last 12,

14 years,

Mainly with college students,

Older teens.

And there's just been a little bit of science so far,

But I conjecture in the next 10,

20 years there'll be a lot of scientific interest in what's going on for people in these types of activities.

And my conjecture is based on my experience,

Which is I love it.

They tend to love it.

It's not necessarily for everyone.

It's definitely not,

You know,

I never require anyone to do it,

To be involved.

It's kind of back to that earlier theme of I don't know if you should do this,

Right?

And I have friends who are serious meditators who are not necessarily that excited about these things.

And so I want to always keep that in the picture here.

And even the things I say about it,

It may be just a certain type of person,

Right,

For whom this would be great.

But I would conjecture that also that for some people,

Possibly the relational activities would be more timely and relevant to them than the actual meditation,

Given where they are in their life,

Right?

But kind of going into the same territory of even calmness and connection with oneself.

So I definitely have had students for whom meditating was really hard.

Even a few minutes of sitting with their own experience was difficult.

Really,

Three minutes,

That's enough.

And I think just because it's so painful in there for one reason or another.

But having the attention of someone else,

Having the attention of a group,

You know,

Not in a setting of therapy or anything like that.

That's separate,

But it may be related,

But much simpler.

Just like who are you,

What's happening?

They can do that.

They love that.

Do you find that after they've gone through some of the relational training that their meditations increase or they find more value out of their meditation?

That I don't know.

That would be another great research question.

And I should also say that most of my feedback about these activities come from the students who like them.

Of course.

And there may be dozens or hundreds.

They're just running away.

These lives have been ruined.

They're out there somewhere now,

Blaming it on me.

But I don't hear from them.

Well,

We'll find out once we get the podcast out.

Everyone is at their own middle height.

He needs to blame.

But anyway,

I just,

That's,

That's all the questions I have.

I just really appreciate your time and thank you.

Thanks for listening today and remember to leave a comment,

Subscribe to the podcast on either Apple or Android.

Search for why meditate now take a minute or two to take it in,

Close your eyes and you can sit with what you just heard.

The music will continue for about three and a half minutes.

Have a beautiful day.

Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji

Reviews

Very interesting! Thank you!