Welcome to Finding Your Right Mind with me,
Vanessa Potter.
Hello and welcome to this week's self-care episode.
Now this is all centred around kindness.
Now I've got my hand up for this because I started this podcast in December last year and I'm a newbie to this.
But the whole premise behind this podcast,
The reason I do this,
My modus operandi,
Is to walk the talk.
I follow these practices that I talk about.
This is my life.
I have written books about this.
I embody and imbue everything I talk about.
So I have got my hand up because perfectionism has been something that I have strived for my entire life and realised is counterintuitive.
I made a mistake this week.
There you go.
I've said it out loud.
I've had to apply the topic of this episode,
Kindness,
To myself.
Now my son has an acronym written on his wall at school,
Which is F-A-I-L,
First Attempt in Learning.
And it made me realise how little adults allow themselves to make mistakes,
How we are expected to know everything and that we can't learn as we go along and we can't fail.
And I realised somebody somewhere made up that rule and I live by it.
And so with the absolute spirit of walking the talk,
I'm going to be kind to myself and allow this mistake to carry on through this episode.
So my microphone,
Which I normally check has registered,
Didn't register.
So the audio for me this week is through my laptop.
You see,
It's not even the biggest,
Most awful mistake.
That's the perfectionist in me.
So there you go.
Now I've stopped beating myself up about my microphone blip.
I would love to introduce you to Julieta Gallant and the whole concept of kindness towards oneself and others because this is the foundation of a really interesting meditation practice called loving kindness.
You may have heard of it,
You may even do it.
Or you may have heard of it and thought,
Pah,
I'm not doing that.
Why would I do a kindness practice?
I mean,
It's pointless.
What do I get out of it?
Well,
I think there is a lot that you can get out of this practice and hopefully Julieta and I will really flesh that out and show actually what's in it for you.
There are many kindness and compassion studies out there and some seem to suggest that kindness and compassion are innate.
Now that may not feel like that's the case,
But we are born with these skills.
In fact,
There's some research on toddlers and infants,
Which I will put in the show notes,
That suggests that they will instinctively offer up a toy to another child before the social conditioning,
The norms of what kindness is has been taught to them.
And also toddlers seem to be happier when they help another toddler and they don't expect rewards.
So I think there's an awful lot to be learned from that.
It kind of seems a bit sad to me that society might somehow unteach these innate kindness skills.
But maybe it's also a comfort that the practice that Julieta and I talk about today is there for us if we want to flex our compassion muscles and get just a little bit better at being kind towards ourselves and others.
So if that sounds good for you,
Then listen on.
As always,
Please do subscribe.
And if you like what you hear,
I would always love a kind review.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us your name and your area of research and your personal interest?
Yeah,
Sure.
So I'm Julieta Galante.
I'm a NIHR research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry,
University of Cambridge.
I have a background in public health medicine and research,
And I focused in the last 10 years on what is public mental health.
So a really good person for me to talk to at the moment,
Given I am doing a whole series on self-care and how to look after ourselves.
Thank you for inviting me.
You're very welcome.
So we're here today to really flesh out and talk about loving kindness,
This meditation practice that probably some people will have heard of,
Some people will have tried,
And some people will have avoided,
Like the plague,
Because it's got that love word in it.
And I think in the West,
We have a little bit of a block about anything that sounds love-orientated.
It can sound a bit wishy-washy,
A bit sentimental,
And possibly a bit pointless.
So we are going to really uncover and dig deep into this practice and talk actually about what kindness is and how we can recognise it and how it's not the same as compassion.
So,
Julieta,
Do you mind just giving us a little bit of the backstory of loving kindness?
Where did this practice come from?
And what is its relevance?
Obviously,
It's from Buddhist traditions,
But what is its relevance within Buddhist traditions?
Yeah,
I think you're right that loving word is not the most selling word for kind of Western industrialised societies.
But actually,
It's a completely different idea of love.
And perhaps the translation wasn't the best one.
It's called metta in Sanskrit,
I think.
I'm not an expert in Buddhism,
But I do know some of the origins.
And really,
The practice has to do more with acceptance and a sort of unconditional acceptance that is loving in a sense.
It has the element of care and of kindness and friendliness.
That's why perhaps the word love is not the best one,
But that's how it became very well known,
Like as loving kindness meditation.
So that's why I think it's important to make these distinctions.
So the origins have to do with practices that have an esoteric or soteriological element,
Meaning it's to do originally with salvation,
With the end of suffering,
With all these more religious ideas in Buddhism.
And actually,
I mean,
Those ideas are not even so that homogeneous in Buddhism.
So different strands actually use these loving kindness meditation practice for slightly different things.
And they have slightly different ideas,
Not so slightly,
Actually.
I mean,
They have quite important discussions and controversies within Buddhism.
But basically it has to do with cultivating a feeling.
And it's a feeling,
It's even a sort of slightly altered state of consciousness,
If you wish,
Where you are so focused on that sensation of acceptance that your experience is a bit transformed actually.
And that is coupled with other practices that are supposed to help you to awaken,
Whatever that means,
Of course,
In the religious context.
Now,
For us,
That doesn't have a lot of meaning,
Particularly in secular societies,
Multicultural societies.
But that happens with a lot of meditation practices that the practice itself is taken as something very useful from a practical point of view,
Just because some pioneers and people started looking into these practices within traditional context found benefits that were meaningful for themselves outside the meaning that they may have in their own traditions.
So I think this is the case.
This is the case with loving kindness meditation.
In Buddhism,
There is a whole idea of,
In some schools more than others,
Of helping the humankind without looking at who you help.
A bit like Christianity,
I mean,
They have differences,
But in this sense,
They have something common.
So that also has to do with the different types of loving kindness meditation that we'll probably talk about later.
There's this link between not just practicing loving kindness meditation for yourself in order to get to these states of lesser suffering,
But also to connect with others.
And it goes very much in line with the philosophical position that these traditions have about helping others,
Because there is an intrinsic link between selves.
Actually,
They even talk about no selves,
Right?
So there is this kind of network of interbeing.
In some cases,
They use that word.
So helping others means helping ourselves and vice versa.
So I think it all comes from that.
So it's very important to see how different the context can be,
Where these practices originated.
And then when we translate them to this culture,
We can immediately see how different elements in the background will change the way we practice.
We assimilate it and we interpret what we're doing.
Thank you.
That's a really helpful and very in-depth summation of loving kindness.
And I'm picking up on a couple of things there.
You talk about suffering,
This word suffering,
It comes up all the time,
Doesn't it,
When we talk about Buddhist practices in particular.
It does,
Yeah.
And I think this is a really difficult term for Westerners to wrap their heads around suffering.
In my book,
Because I know also there's this idea of samsara in Buddhism,
Which is this,
And I just translate that to the rat race.
So suffering for me is all the things in my life that make me feel unhappy.
It's that state of not being content.
I don't know,
Is there anything else you can add just so we can really get our idea around what suffering is?
Because I think this is at the root of why.
Why would we do this practice?
We kind of need to understand what the Buddhist meant by suffering.
Yeah,
Well,
I think it is very much related to what you're saying.
I mean,
Originally,
Perhaps the samsara is more related to kind of the rat race,
But across many lives.
But then there are interpretations of perhaps the meaning of those samsara cycles.
I'm just telling you,
Because I'm interested also in that side of things,
You know,
There are people who really can tell you a lot about what suffering is in Buddhism.
But one thing that you picked up was the sensation of unsatisfaction.
And I think that is quite close.
In Buddhism,
They do talk about,
You know,
You cannot avoid the pain when you get hurt,
For instance,
But you can avoid the pain about the pain.
There's all the suffering around that physical pain.
And that's the one that I think is being targeted.
And how that is related to loving kindness meditation,
Because you think about it and you think,
Well,
What does it have to do with yourself?
You're trying to be kind to cultivate a feeling of being kind to others,
But really because there is this philosophy behind and this theory of what is this ontological theory of what reality is,
What is out there,
And all that influences the way they interpret loving kindness meditation.
So if there is no difference between you and others,
Because we are all so interconnected that it's kind of an illusion to talk about different selves,
Then being kind to others will also imply you're being kind to yourself.
And when you're kind to yourself,
You dissolve at least some of those extra elements of suffering that are around the inevitable,
Unavoidable suffering that you have in life because of pain and things like that.
So that's the way it's all connected because you're doing it for yourself as well as for others.
So the more you accept others and are kind to others,
The more you accept yourself and are kind to yourself.
There's a whole load of strands there that I'd like to pick up.
I'm going to go back slightly to something you said,
How we avoid pain,
How we avoid discomfort.
And actually I think this is critical for loving kindness because when I practice this,
And in fact we should just give a little quick backstory as to how we met,
We met in Cambridge at a talk that I was giving to the Cambridge Mindfulness Society.
And I was describing very early on in my experiment how I was getting on and it was quite nerve wracking for me to talk to essentially a load of researchers and clever scientists about my crazy meditation experiment.
And I talked during that lecture quite honestly about how difficult,
I mean how immensely challenging I found the loving kindness practice.
And you came up to me afterwards to reassure me that I was like thousands of others,
That this is possibly one of the hardest things you can do.
And actually what I maybe hadn't quite realised is that by confronting those feelings of resistance,
That was actually part of the practice itself.
So in a weird way,
I was continuing the practice by acknowledging and being in that emotion,
In that difficulty.
And that's part of travelling through this process.
And so it was actually quite helpful our little chat.
It kind of did a bit of a full circle back to the practice itself.
So I think what would be really good would be to just talk through what the,
Because we can talk about it theoretically,
But maybe we could just go through,
Maybe you could just take us through what the stages are.
And there are several stages of a loving kindness practice.
It's not like just sit down and start thinking about everybody.
It's very structured,
Isn't it?
And you go through quite set stages.
Could you just take us through those?
Yes,
Of course.
Yeah,
There is this traditional way of doing it.
And also I think it's a way that is more suitable for beginners.
There is this progression where you start,
Well,
First of all,
How do you cultivate a feeling?
Well,
There are two kind of general ways.
One is using language,
Using words.
So thinking of nice things that you say.
You can say them out loud or you can just say them to yourself,
But it's about wishes,
Well wishes,
Let's say that you direct to different people.
You can also direct instead of those wishes in terms of using sentences,
You can use colors or things that are more visual,
But they are meaningful to you as something that brings up that feeling of friendliness and acceptance.
So those are the main ways of generating these,
But then who do you direct it to?
There is four kind of groups of people to which you direct things.
And most people start with directing those feelings to yourself first.
So phrases like,
May I be happy,
May I be safe,
But it can be any sort of sentence.
You can say,
I wish you well,
I wish myself,
Whatever.
It's not that important exactly what you say.
So you can really change that.
But then some people prefer not to start with themselves because one of the difficult parts of starting with yourself is that if you are having a lot of conflicting feelings about yourself,
It may actually be harder to start there than to start with someone you love,
For instance.
So in some cases,
People start with someone they love.
You just think of that person and the feelings come up spontaneously.
You don't even need to say much because you already love them.
Now,
This also brings its own set of problems because as we found in the research that we might talk about later,
That many people struggle with finding someone they love in an uncomplicated way.
So you ask them to bring to mind someone they love and they bring up someone and then they find that there's a lot of things that come,
The feelings that come along with the loving feeling,
Which are like,
I'm upset because of this and that,
About that person.
So they find it really hard to focus on the actual loving part.
In the case of the study that we were asking people to practice this through an online course,
They had a diary where they write their feelings and their experiences and actually a forum where they could share their experiences.
Quite a few people were saying that they couldn't find anyone and they had to use their pets because the only beings they had uncomplicated loving feelings were the cat or the dog.
They kind of realized that,
You know,
In a way it's funny,
But in a way it's sad.
They made them actually sad just to realize this,
Just this realization made them also have conflicting feelings,
As you said.
I mean,
You start facing,
Even with the easy part,
You need to be ready and willing to start working with those elements of your mind and your feelings.
Sorry,
I'm going to dive in.
I don't normally do this,
But I think it's really interesting to,
If we break this actually by the stages,
Because there's a whole bunch of things I want to respond to,
To what you've just said.
That's absolutely true.
This practice is a concentration practice.
So you are going into your mind and you're evoking feelings.
And the second you do that,
You get more than you bargained for.
And this was my experience with this practice.
Oh my goodness,
It's like you open this door and suddenly all these complicated,
And you describe them as complicated emotions than they are.
And what happens is that you then get a load of information about yourself.
You go in,
It's like you've dug up all this emotion that maybe was dormant,
That was always there,
But kind of suppressed and not accessed.
And this is what this practice can do.
It brings it up.
And like you say,
Even just starting with yourself or a loved one,
Like your child or your parent,
Or even your best friend,
Suddenly brings up this rainbow of emotions,
Which then are in your consciousness.
So you can't ignore them.
And this is the thing about the practice.
You can't ignore that.
It's there.
And that's what becomes part of the challenge is this surge.
And it is a surge because it sometimes didn't feel controlled to me.
I couldn't do it in a slow,
Nice sedate way.
It was a little bit like a tap.
And I had to learn over time to ease the tap,
To make it become a trickle that I could process.
But to begin with,
One of the things I found was that it was just a flood of emotions.
And that in itself was quite overwhelming.
And the other thing,
If you don't mind,
I want to just pick up with you.
The affirmations that you can say,
May I be well,
May I be happy.
You said that they don't really matter.
Now I found this quite interesting because I respond to words.
I write words.
I'm an author.
I found actually the words made a big difference to me.
And one of the words that I found myself wanting to say was may I be safe.
And that gave me data as well.
And I realised that this was a really important word to me.
And in fact,
The second one was may I feel protected?
May I be protected?
And it's funny because I'm connecting back to my practise because the flood of emotion that I have,
Even just telling you,
Bang,
It's straight there.
So those words for me,
Again,
Gave me a lot of information.
They told me a lot about myself and about how interwoven that is into these feelings of love.
I think if you do have a feeling around a word or you want to choose a word and it does have meaning,
But that's not a problem.
I think that's something you can go with and maybe you just put it to one side and go,
Right,
There's some information.
There's something to work on there.
Let's carry with the practise,
But let's acknowledge that,
Yeah,
I need to feel safe for some reason.
Anyway,
I'll let you carry on because I do so much about each stage of this practise that just unravels so much of our psyche and all we're doing is meditating.
Yeah,
Exactly.
No,
It's perfect that you actually jump in and say these things because I think it's kind of the meat of it,
Isn't it?
It's good to discuss this.
You're saying things really important.
When I said it don't matter,
Perhaps I wasn't clear there.
Actually,
I think I agree with you.
They do matter a lot,
But they matter for you.
So the thing is,
For different people,
Different words will trigger this feeling.
So the important element for this practise is the feeling,
Is being able to cultivate that sensation of acceptance that you then will work on and of loving and loving kindness,
Really.
I mean,
This is when you start using the word.
But then all these other things come up,
Like,
As you said,
You turn the tap on and everything comes.
And even like just,
Ooh,
How curious that,
You know,
I need the word safe or I need the word protected to actually feel something.
All those things are important.
And as you said,
Very,
Very precise.
Put them to,
I mean,
Make a note of them,
But don't get tangled.
If you're practising loving kindness,
The idea of the practise is not to start thinking about the content,
Right?
In the sense of kind of as you were doing in psychological therapy,
Where you focus on the content.
Okay,
Why did I think about safety?
What is it there that matters so much to me?
That sort of thinking is,
I think,
Very useful in itself.
So I wouldn't say never do it.
On the contrary,
But I would just say,
This is not the objective of the practise.
So make a note of it.
And then if you want to actually practise loving kindness meditation,
You need to find whatever works.
That's fine.
You need to find whatever works and,
You know,
Don't focus on what it means.
Just whatever works for you to have that sensation.
And what you said about this lack of control is so important that people know that this actually happens because it does.
I mean,
In our study,
The first practise,
The first day was,
As I said,
It was an online course.
It was 10 minutes,
Just a 10 minute initial loving kindness meditation practise.
And we had some people coming back to us saying,
I started crying and I couldn't control the crying.
And it was just 10 minutes of,
You know,
Really gentle,
Mostly actually concentration,
Mindfulness to get into it,
Breathing,
And then a little bit of loving kindness.
And that already brought them all sorts of things that made them cry.
Some of them said that they cried,
You know,
Being happy.
They cried just for happy reasons,
Thinking about their loved one.
Others said that it was very upsetting because it was sort of an unpleasant sort of crying.
And then other people just said,
It's a neutral sensation.
I don't have an explanation for it.
I just cried and I don't know even why I cried.
I mean,
The thing here is perhaps it's okay that people cry,
That's not a problem.
But if you are starting a practise where you think,
Oh,
This is going to be a walk in the park.
This is going to be,
You know,
Relaxing and gentle.
And then you start crying after 10 minutes.
That's probably not what you were expecting.
So it's important that people know that these things can happen.
I totally agree.
I was looking up and Jon Kabat-Zinn calls loving kindness a radical act of love.
And I think that's really a good description.
It sounds very dramatic,
But it can be very dramatic.
And I think there's that acknowledgement that you are putting yourself into that position to open that flood gate and manage that,
But move through it.
Like you say,
A lot of those things that come up are very important.
And one of the skills I'd say in the practise is to acknowledge,
To nod,
Say hello.
Yes,
Okay,
Safety.
This is something,
This is important.
You've come to see me,
But I'm gently pushing you to one side and carrying on through this practise,
At the same time,
Acknowledging all those things.
And that becomes a skill that you learn to be able to,
It's not compartmentalise,
But to acknowledge,
But then not,
As you say,
Get tangled up,
Not get distracted,
Not carry on on that thought,
But carry on with the practise,
Which is a different thing.
And all these subtleties,
That's why I wanted to flesh this out,
This practise,
Because all of these subtleties are really important.
And we're coming back to the fact that you need to do this more than once.
And loving kindness practise gets easier and more fluid,
And you become,
It becomes habitual,
Of course,
Like any meditation practise.
We are training ourself in this kindness,
And I think that's so crucial,
And perhaps so important at the moment,
Whilst yes,
It can be a difficult practise,
You are training yourself to manage kindness,
You know?
To manage those feelings of love,
To have them flood out,
But then also to let them wash further,
And well,
Let's go to the next stages.
I'm getting all excited about this,
Because I think we're really getting to the root of it.
What happens next?
Well,
These two are kind of the easiest.
So I just wanted to add one more thing before moving on to the next,
Which is perhaps this gives the impression that everyone cries,
And it's not really like that,
Or everyone has very intense feelings in the beginning.
It's completely the opposite,
Actually,
Because there's a huge variability of how people feel when they start this,
And actually in the study with it,
We found that most people actually find it hard to feel anything,
And they don't cry,
They don't get upset,
They don't get happy,
They just,
They find it very hard to concentrate,
They find it very hard to stay still,
And that kind of dominates perhaps the beginning of the experience for most people,
And they kind of get a little bit frustrated,
Because they get distracted,
And then because they cannot actually generate any feelings,
So they say,
I can repeat the phrases,
Or I can do this,
But I don't feel anything different.
It's like a normal thinking process where nothing comes up.
So perhaps that is also important to say.
You know what?
It's absolutely crucial you say that,
Because that was my experience,
And you're right,
I've jumped to probably,
So I did this practice for eight weeks,
I've probably just given my experience of about three weeks into this practice,
Doing it every day,
You're absolutely right.
I was utterly numb to begin with,
And actually that upset me.
It wasn't even like I was frustrated,
I was devastated.
When I was going through that stage one and two,
Okay,
I couldn't feel a lawful lot for myself,
But then when I brought my children to mind,
And I was like,
Okay,
Yes hello love,
Where are you?
And it just like,
And I knew it was somewhere,
But it was so deeply buried under the mess of life.
It's so kind of pushed away and pushed down that it had gone so far,
I couldn't tap it.
And that for me was devastating.
And so I was upset and tearful,
Not because I was feeling loved,
But because I couldn't find it,
And yet I knew it was there.
So you're absolutely right,
And I think if you do have those feelings,
That's your experience,
And this practice is just what happens.
It's not to be judged.
Yeah,
I think what you're saying about,
You know that the feeling is there,
Perhaps you don't feel it,
But you know it's there.
That happens to you because probably,
You have a stable psyche and you know it's there,
And you don't have major issues with it.
But imagine if you're a person with more of a traumatic past or experience with people around them,
Or they are having a stressful situation,
Something a bit more complicated going on,
And then they don't feel what they should be feeling,
And then they perhaps do question it,
Is it there?
Because you're saying,
I know it's there,
But other people may actually think,
Is it there?
And this can be much more upsetting.
So I'm saying this because there are people working with trauma and meditation and mindfulness,
Not just loving kindness meditation.
Other meditation techniques can bring problems to people with traumatic experiences in the past,
Even if they are mild.
So it's another thing that people have to be mindful of,
Excuse the pun there,
Yeah.
So what's the next stage?
Take us to that.
So the next one,
Well,
Actually,
We could do five stages.
You could think about someone who's neutral,
Like perhaps someone you come across outside every day in the street,
Like a shop owner that is close to your home or something,
And practice those feelings or those sentences and wishes with that person.
And then you move on with practicing them with someone you have a complicated relationship with,
Someone you are or have been upset with at some point,
A difficult relationship in whatever way.
And this is where things start to get muddy.
I mean,
On the one hand,
One problem is I don't feel anything.
Imagine if I don't feel anything for someone I know I love.
Imagine what can I feel apart from hatred with respect to someone I don't like.
So that's very hard.
But then there's another dimension,
Apart from the feeling itself,
There's a whole kind of ethical dimension to it,
Because people find resistance in the sense that sometimes these requests contradict their own values.
And this came up a lot in the forum.
When I said that we were testing this online course and they had to take part in a forum,
People were saying some things like,
My husband thinks that I'm turning into a doormat because I'm doing this loving kindness for anyone,
Including people that have hurt me.
And my husband doesn't see the point.
And then another people saying,
I don't see the point.
And then other people saying,
A lot of anecdotes,
I was in traffic and someone did something horrible in traffic.
And then I felt,
Should I send loving kindness to this person?
All sorts of dilemmas and very deep reflections on what kindness means and who should we be kind with and why.
And this is where I bring in the traditional context again,
Because this is all sort of solved in the Buddhist world,
Where these practices come from.
Because again,
The philosophy itself says it,
You are no different from others in the deepest sense.
So it doesn't really make a difference.
So you do it.
There's no ethical dilemma there.
But for us in Western societies,
There's a huge dilemma for many people.
It depends on personal beliefs,
But because we are multicultural and tolerant,
Then it's just very interesting to hear that.
This is all on the cognitive level,
Though we want to bring that up in the middle of the practice.
I think again,
The response during the practice would be,
No,
Because this is not about content.
So leave it aside,
Make a note and then do reflect on it as much as you want outside when your practice finishes.
But perhaps the best way of doing this is actually to reflect on it before you start practicing,
Because this is quite a key aspect of the practice.
So perhaps you don't even want to start the whole thing if you don't think that there's something in wishing well to people who upset you.
And then the typical thing is people immediately think about someone really,
A horrible dictator,
Sorry,
Characters,
Or even whatever politician people hate.
I mean,
That's all good from the cognitive point of view.
It's in the sense that you need to reflect on these things,
But the practice is,
It's weird for us to think about it,
But it doesn't really care that much the practice as to whether that person actually gets a benefit or not.
It's more for you to,
You're cultivating your own feelings and you're working with your own feelings.
You're not as benefiting as others.
So that's another important discussion that we can have around.
Does it mean you're more,
Become more altruistic or is it just that you cultivate your feelings inside?
We can go on to the next one or we can stop here.
Oh,
I'm jumping in,
I'm jumping in.
You know what I am.
I find this stage really,
Really fascinating for all the reasons you've just said and that whole ethical mini framework that sits just around that stage.
So I remember on one of the instructions,
It was,
And it was very sensible.
It says,
Don't pick someone you really hate.
Don't pick someone who's made your life hell because that's actually not going to help you in this practice.
The best idea is to choose someone who maybe you just don't like particularly,
Who you see,
But you don't have very,
Very strong feelings about because in the same way that flood gate,
You get the anger flood gate,
Which is,
I can't turn it off.
Before you know it,
You're feeling hot and sweaty and inside your head,
You're ranting about them.
And of course that doesn't actually mean you can continue the practice very easily.
So that was the first thing.
And I thought that was very good advice.
And I played with this.
I bring a person into my mind and if my reaction was too extreme,
I go,
Right,
Nope.
That was too recent.
Or I'll often take someone from the past and go,
Yeah,
You were mean,
But okay.
That was the past.
So I've got some distance.
And I think that was kind of,
I found my own strategy around that.
And also I was a little wiser because if it was a time when I was a child,
I've got that perspective now of being able to see two children who responded in a particular way.
So having perspective and some time and some distance was very helpful.
The other thing,
The two other things I'm going to say on it.
One was a very,
Of course,
Insightful comment from the Dalai Lama about how to deal with people who have hurt you,
Who are difficult in your life.
And he was separate them from the act and think of them in a bodily sense and think of commonalities.
And this was really profound.
It seems really obvious,
But this really impacted me.
Think of them having a beating heart.
Think of their organs,
Think of their body as the same body as you.
And then think of their children and think of their parents.
And this was a very clever way,
Of course,
Of humanizing the person and not just identifying with their behavior or their act and seeing them biologically as the same.
So that was a really helpful trick,
A little strategy,
And that could really rein in any very angry feelings that I might have.
And the other one,
Now this was a tip that I was given by a researcher who'd played around with this idea of trying to go close,
Trying to have,
Try to even invite a difficult person into your mind.
Can it be really difficult?
And so she says,
Imagine an enormous lake and that difficult person is at the far side of the lake.
Now next to you at this lake and splashing and going in the water,
Your friends and your family and your mom sitting over there and your kids are splashing you with water and you've got your feet in with them,
That's fine.
Now,
Can you allow this difficult person who's at the far side of the lake,
You have to squint to see them,
They're that far away.
Can they put their foot in the water?
And you kind of go,
Okay.
And I thought,
Again,
This was a brilliant,
I love visual analogies,
It really helps me.
And so sometimes in my practice at this stage,
I have put my difficult person in a lake and the distance can vary,
But I put them at the far side,
But I will allow them.
And sometimes they get up to their knees in this lake,
But I can feel my compassion muscles,
My kindness muscles flexing.
It is a workout for my kindness muscles.
And that is what helps me with that practice.
So there you go.
That was my interjection on that stage of the practice.
Yeah,
There are a lot of those kind of extra little practices.
I mean,
You can find them in loving kindness,
Meditation,
Books,
Instructions,
Courses,
But also then when you start practicing more,
You make your own,
Right?
You make your own exercise.
You start understanding that the thing is something that will help you to generate that feeling and to work with that muscle,
As you say,
Of compassion and loving kindness.
It doesn't matter,
Whatever does the trick and it will be a very personal thing,
No doubt.
So that's kind of,
I think,
Where things,
At least from my personal point of view,
I think that's where things start to become really interesting when you start to work with your own exercises,
Your own world,
Your own world of meanings and symbols and images.
And that's a really deep dive into it.
But most people,
Most teachers start with these stages where you direct phrases and things,
Just because it's the easiest to teach initially.
I think the more personalized,
And this is in general for meditation,
But this is quite important for loving kindness,
The more personalized the teaching in the sense that if you have a proper teacher who knows you,
Rather than learning from a book or from an automated course on the web,
Just having,
Doing this with a human being and being able to share these things and that will probably be a safer and more effective way of learning meditation.
Absolutely,
And I love that you say you find your own way.
I think in a society that's used to instructions and take this pill,
You'll feel this way.
We seem to sometimes have lost our own flexibility and these practices are really great at finding your way of doing something.
There are guidelines for these practices,
But if you diversify a little and find something that works for you,
Then that's still the practice.
You're not breaking a rule.
You're actually kind of doing it right because it's a way that's,
For a start,
Is gonna make you do it again,
Which is important,
But then you will,
Of course,
Get the benefits.
Shall we do the last stage as well?
I like the last stage.
I always have fun with this bit.
Well,
The last stage is to start expanding the feeling to beyond one person.
And when I say beyond,
It kind of gets very ambitious.
So you can do it in many ways.
You can just say feelings for anyone.
So you just,
Anyone who comes to your mind,
You generate feelings for,
Or you can start geographically.
So you can start saying,
Everyone in my building,
Everyone then in my neighborhood,
And you kind of,
This is a bit of a visualization mostly because you do bring the image of your neighbor to your mind and the different neighbors will come to your mind and you kind of slick through them.
Different people may have different visualizations.
Then another,
Perhaps when you get more like your city or things like that,
Then people start resorting to colors or things like that,
Or to waves,
Vibrations,
Whatever,
Make their boat float.
And then for instance,
Some instructions go like,
Send them north,
South,
West,
Those sorts of instructions you can find as well.
And finally to the whole humankind and all the living beings and phrases like that,
Which I mean,
At that point,
It does become more abstract and you wonder,
Or some people may wonder,
What's the point?
I mean,
If it becomes so abstract,
And actually that's the whole point,
Because as we said in the beginning,
The point is to cultivate the feeling and to work with that entire itself.
So really the last one joins that with people.
Like,
You know,
When you start to think about many,
Many,
Many,
Many,
Many people,
It's not any more about people really.
I mean,
It's more about what are you feeling?
No need to direct it to anyone in particular.
I don't know if you have heard,
Or the listeners have heard like monks talking about these things,
But they usually say they practice non-referential compassion.
And this is exactly that,
Like,
It's not for a person.
I mean,
It's just the feeling,
You know,
If you have done it enough,
You just sit and you bring up the feeling the same way that you can blink.
Like it's not something that goes through a language path,
You know,
It's like when you learn a language and initially you translate everything into your own language so you bring a word through translating it using your first language.
But then at some point it becomes like you see something and you think of that word in the new language,
You don't translate anything.
Well,
That's kind of a similar thing.
You don't use the language,
Just go straight to the feeling,
If that makes sense.
You're right,
This last stage gets slightly mind blowing.
It gets quite vague and also kind of quite interesting because I think it's interpretation.
I was just thinking actually how I do that last stage and I realised my film background comes in a lot.
So I picture football crowds and I cut and paste and I kind of cut and paste crowds to infinity.
And then that makes sense to me.
And it's interesting,
Isn't it?
Because I find it quite playful.
I think there's something about that last stage,
You don't necessarily have to understand this.
You don't have to necessarily go too deeply into it.
It's just this idea of spreading it out,
Which nicely brings me to,
We've got really into the challenges and the difficulties.
Why would we do this practice?
It sounds like a lot of hard work.
What are those benefits that would make us put ourselves through this?
Yeah,
That's a great question.
I mean,
You can talk about benefits very broadly,
But I focus on health,
As you know,
And on mental health.
That's what we tried to answer in a trial we conducted some time ago.
So in the trial,
We invited anyone.
It was all online way before COVID.
So that was a bit of a pioneering work,
But we invited just members of the public to join the trial.
And we told them they were going to be randomized to kind of feel good practices,
Courses actually.
One would be a light exercise course and the other one physical exercise.
And the other one would be allowing kindness meditation course.
So the courses were similar in length and instructions.
They were videos,
They were video-based.
So 10 minute video a day,
Five videos a week.
And they would incrementally be more difficult,
But both of them very gentle.
And we measured the differences in terms of mental wellbeing,
In terms of feelings of empathy,
And in terms of altruism.
So basically those are kind of the three domains of the outcomes of the trial.
And we were expecting that wellbeing would increase in both because we know that physical exercise brings a lot of benefits,
Not just to physical health,
But also to your mental health.
And this was very gentle exercise,
But still we thought it would bring benefits.
What we did hypothesize was that the empathy and the altruism would be higher in the group doing loving kindness meditation.
So the findings were actually,
Yes,
The wellbeing increased in both.
I mean,
That could also be just because they were doing something for themselves.
And in both groups,
One of the comments in the forums and diaries,
Which we also,
You know,
We ran,
The outcomes were quantitative.
They were like the wellbeing and the empathy and even the altruism.
We could measure them with numbers quantitatively.
They have scores,
They are questionnaires with scores and things.
And the altruism was actually a real altruism measure I can tell you about in a minute.
But then we had this strand where we just wanted to get some,
What we say qualitative data.
So we just wanted to read about the experiences and the processes.
So we offered them,
We asked them actually to write in diaries and forums about their experiences.
Anyway,
Both increased wellbeing,
Although the experiences were very,
Very different in both arms.
One thing that they had in common was that taking 10 minutes for themselves during the day was kind of a really,
Really good thing to do.
So that's a kind of,
To start with,
Just the fact that you see,
I mean,
To do loving kindness meditation or exercise or relaxing or stretching,
Just the fact that you take 10 minutes for itself is a good thing.
That this has been tested also in other studies and shown that.
And the wellbeing,
The way they said they felt better was quite different and was very bumpy in the loving kindness meditation.
The ups and downs were deeper,
Higher ups and deeper downs.
In the exercise,
It was all gentle and,
You know,
The challenges were very few because it was,
Perhaps I cannot do this one or I can do that one.
But there also was little discussion,
Little reflection on life.
While the loving kindness meditation was an explosion of reflections and starting from the meaning of life to relationships,
A lot of relationships.
And then to,
You know,
As I said,
The values around doing these and the ethics and how society should be and how should I behave and anecdotes and all sorts of things.
So that's just finding in itself,
You know,
They are different ways of feeling better.
And you sometimes need to think which way do you want for your circumstances and your desires and the things you enjoy.
But then the outcomes related to empathy and altruism.
So what did we do to measure altruism?
We offered everyone some money as a thank you for completing the questionnaires.
And then we said,
We can give you that money or we can donate it to a charity that you choose.
And then we really measured there was the percentage of people donating to charity in the exercise group compared to the percentage of people donating to charity in the loving kindness group.
And we actually didn't find statistically significant differences.
We did find that loving kindness meditation group,
And this was just by the way,
We were testing these in 150 people.
So it was a more or less sizeable sample.
I mean,
It's not huge,
But we were confident that we would see a difference.
And we saw that loving kindness meditation people were donating a tiny bit more,
But we couldn't be confident that that was the case.
It could have been a chance finding.
That's where we use statistics to see well,
How confident are we that what we're seeing here actually happens if you repeat the same study many times and if you ask everyone to donate or not,
We cannot be confident that that difference is real,
Basically.
So that's very interesting.
The empathy also was not very clear really that people were actually more feeling more empathic in the loving kindness meditation group.
We do get from the qualitative data from diaries and the forum that yes,
People were more,
It's not so much feeling more empathic kind of accepting,
But it's more around all the reflections around that.
And perhaps what we felt is a month is not very much anyway,
Right,
A month for this type of practice is just very little,
10 minutes a day for a month.
So what we saw perhaps is kind of the beginning of the work that has to be done and the reflections and some reflections around donating half of it.
So some people were saying in the loving kindness group,
I think I deserve half of that money because I've done the work,
I've done everything I completed the questionnaires,
But then I want to donate half because I feel I should,
Which we didn't see in the exercise course.
But as I said,
I mean,
It was puzzling.
We don't yet actually know.
I mean,
Some studies,
Other studies show mixed results as well.
So perhaps people saying they are more altruistic,
If you use a questionnaire to measure altruism,
There's a lot of perhaps you heard about this kind of bias by which people want to picture themselves as better than they are.
So if you ask someone how altruistic have you been,
This year,
They would probably want unconsciously,
But they will tick more boxes in terms of altruism than they actually did.
But if you do that,
Perhaps you do find that people who do loving kindness meditation tick more of those boxes.
But when you measure the actual behavior,
That's not so clear in the studies.
Other studies have used other paradigms in terms of behavior to help people.
It's very hard because it can also be biases in the way you conduct the studies and a lot of things that we spend a lot of hours analyzing.
How do we rely on those results?
But the evidence is not really clear on that.
So we're not sure that you will turn into a more altruistic person if you do all these.
It may,
You may feel better,
But yeah,
It's just so personal.
That's so fascinating.
And I think as a society,
We go to that,
Don't we?
We go to the tick box of what will I get out of this?
So I,
Just going back to the timeframe,
You did that for a month.
I would say a month in,
I was a mess.
I was all over the place.
And in fact,
I did this practice for longer than the eight weeks I did most of my formal practices for.
I think I was getting on for three months.
And in fact,
I've gone back to loving kindness because I hadn't finished with it.
And that's what I would say to myself.
I haven't finished with this.
This is a journey.
And if you start climbing a mountain and that's kind of what the loving kindness is,
A loving kindness mountain.
If you're halfway up and someone asks how you feel,
Tired,
Challenged,
Exhausted,
It's more than I bargained for.
You aren't at the top and you're certainly not coming down the other side.
Now,
I wouldn't even say that I was at the top after eight or 12 weeks,
Which is closer to the timeframe I did.
But what I think I could see was the summit.
I could see beyond.
I'm using lots of analogies here,
But that's how I feel about it.
I could see the point of it.
And I think when you're on the very steep incline,
You don't see the point.
And the point for me is,
Once those loving kindness doors are open,
They are intractable.
You can't go back.
And what that meant for me is that once I had realized and accepted and acknowledged,
Albeit with some difficult emotion that I felt numb,
Disconnected,
I could do something about that.
And that was a very cathartic process,
Which meant I could reconnect to people.
And then I had a practice that would remind me to keep connecting to people.
And that meant that those emotions stayed with me,
But they became calmer,
They became more stable.
I could moderate them.
And also then you start to harness them and use them.
And then that's where you see the point.
So for me,
This practice is all about self-awareness.
And for me also,
It was about,
If you do a practice that homes in and your reflection,
Your realization,
Is that you cannot connect to the loving parts of yourself,
That is devastating.
But what I noticed going forward was when those loving feelings arose,
And that's lovely,
Because that's connected with feelings of joy and happiness.
So when you get a little spark of love,
You get a spark of all the other positive chemicals as well.
And so it builds.
You find yourself smiling more.
You find yourself connected more.
You want to go and hug people more.
This feeling of disconnect is a physical feeling.
So this practice physically connected me.
I literally am more physical with my kids,
With my husband,
With everybody now.
And so it broke down emotional barriers,
But it broke down physical barriers.
So if you were to go and give me the tick box,
That doesn't really hit any of those.
But for me,
In terms of self-awareness and my life and living my life and feeling alive,
You know,
Tick,
Tick,
Tick,
Tick,
Tick,
It did those boxes.
But I don't know if that's when we start a practice,
If that's what we're looking for.
And the crazy thing is we look for these other much more quantifiable wellbeing markers,
Whereas actually self-awareness and being able to connect and hugging your family,
Isn't that really what it's all about?
That's what I found from that practice.
Yeah,
That's really interesting.
I think we perhaps need to improve the way we measure those things.
You know,
It's just very difficult to sometimes to make the case for the different outcomes.
So,
You know,
Research works with funding and the funders have very specific sometimes ideas in mind of what health is,
Mental health is,
And what to target and things like that.
And I guess it's just the whole ecosystem of research works.
It's also easy to quantify some things than others and to show the links with health.
And in the end,
What you want to show with health and mental health studies is the reduction of the incidence of disorders of health,
Mental health and physical health disorders.
So in a way,
Things don't become large scale until you show the reduction in the incidence of X or Y.
So it is,
Yeah,
I think there are a lot of things there to unpack in the practice and more research is needed for sure.
And it's not always easy to find the funds to do this research actually.
I mean,
Which is very challenging research.
If you need time,
You know,
You need people to be willing to actually spend a lot of time learning these things.
Yeah,
I think you're very right.
I mean,
Your response,
Of course,
From a scientist perspective is,
You know,
From the research and funding and I totally understand that.
And it does bring up a bigger question that maybe in research terms,
Self-awareness,
That a very small phrase for an enormous,
You know,
Set of meanings actually is so vital and important to life,
But it's in a medical and health terms that it's fluffy.
It doesn't really mean anything.
And yet,
So there's a bit of a disconnect,
Isn't there,
Between that?
I can totally see that.
Yeah,
I mean,
Just the question,
Why do you want to be more self-aware?
Is it an assumption or is it an evidence-based fact that being more self-aware will make you,
Will improve your mental health?
So just that very question that you need to answer for basically even to get the funding is hard to answer.
And many people make assumptions around it and it's not clear from the evidence.
So we need to do research just to know that.
I totally agree.
I made assumptions at the beginning of my experiment.
I was doing it for this,
This,
And this,
Please,
Thank you very much.
And I will go through these practices and I will get that.
And of course,
I didn't get that at all.
But that's the West's approach to these practices,
Which sometimes is a little misguided.
But that aside,
Because that's a whole massive discussion,
Which I think we could go into and really go to town on.
But what I'd really,
Really love to ask you is given you have a very varied and very in-depth toolbox from doing this study,
Is there a little mini practice that you can share that you can give?
Because I'd ask all my interviewees to share something that might be helpful,
That loving kindness is a big practice.
It's difficult to walk away and just start doing that.
Is there a little practice around kindness that we could do today that we could just start that's really simple and easy?
Yeah,
We haven't actually even talked about kindness.
I mean,
Kindness in the sense of the willingness to be kind and to others and things like that.
So we talked a lot about the feeling and there's the option of an action.
They are all,
I mean,
They can all be turned into practices in a way.
So there's this idea of a random act of kindness,
Right?
You can do that as a practice in the sense that you just do whatever,
It can be a very small thing.
And then you see how you feel.
You do it in a mindful way,
Meaning while you're doing it,
You monitor how you're feeling throughout the process.
And that may just,
Just that little practice can bring you closer to your feelings around being kind and being kind in an accepting way and perhaps in an unconditional way,
The random element of the random act of kindness is actually targeting this unconditionality of your feeling,
Your acceptance of that person,
Whoever that person is,
Because you don't know anything about it.
They may have been robbing a bank like five minutes before you did do this random act.
So all that,
I mean,
That's a little practice.
I think people can also just after listening to this,
If they can just take five minutes or even two minutes and just sit with their own feelings after listening to these without the cognitive element,
If they can leave it aside and just see how they feel.
Sometimes I think in the spiritual world,
This is well used,
That is just listening to something that hopefully inspires you or makes you think just by the act of listening and having let all that in,
You actually start,
Things start moving inside you in the most,
In a least cognitive way,
In the most like sensory way and feelings and emotions.
So you can sit with that for a little bit and see what happens.
So that will be sort of a practice.
I think that's a really lovely practice.
Thank you for that random acts of kindness.
I think we've all heard about it.
And again,
In our busy lives,
We just push these things aside.
I think sometimes it's important just to bring them back full circle and maybe think about it because it's so achievable.
And that random act of kindness can be tiny as well.
It can be something almost insignificant,
But the benefit of course,
The great thing about this,
And I've done it and I have the children do it,
Is it's a two way process.
I think we sometimes forget that we think,
Because actually it's really,
Maybe it's worth us just doing the definition,
The separation of compassion and kindness,
Kindness is an act,
Isn't it?
And that I think is the critical thing in what you've just said.
It's not feel it,
It's go and do it.
But what happens is this feedback,
You get this looping,
Don't you?
Because if you go and do something really lovely,
Like my son the other day,
When he did a random act of kindness,
We didn't actually identify,
But my neighbor's bins had all blown over.
And so he went over to the garden and he picked them all up.
And they're quite big heavy wheelie bins and he pushed them back against the wall for them.
And we went up the drive and I said,
Oh,
That was a nice thing to do.
That was the act.
But of course the feedback is that,
He grinned,
He felt good in himself as well.
And when they come out their door and see that the bins have been put back up,
They feel nice,
It all spreads,
Doesn't it?
And it spreads in such a nice way.
That's something we want to spread.
Yes,
And that has been shown again and again in research.
Helping others is really good for your own wellbeing and mental health.
It's one of the best things you can do actually for your mental health.
So that's clear,
Yes.
And then there are a lot of,
There's a very rich history of experiments around altruism and kindness and empathy.
So people can read more about that,
But they play with all these variables.
One of the variables is,
Are you being seen that you're doing this?
For instance,
You're talking about your son,
Probably your neighbors didn't know who did that.
But those aspects also play into what we do and how we do it.
You get an extra kind of feeling by knowing that the other people know it was you.
So there's an element of reciprocity there.
So they saw I helped them,
So they may help me.
But then if you do it without they knowing,
There's no direct reciprocity,
But then as you say,
The things spread anyway.
And there's a whole dimension of community and the way communities are built,
Like the network and how close knit they are and how well people get on.
That's a key element,
But absolutely key element for mental health and wellbeing.
So it's not just your individual feeling,
But it's also if you're contributing to make your community,
Basically to build a trust in your community.
That's absolutely key.
We're not sure how meditation relates to all these,
But we know that if you do it,
The kindness act,
That will bring all sorts of benefits.
And you know what?
I think that answers the question because the point is if you do the practice and if you get far enough perhaps down the practice where it becomes,
For me,
I would call it a life practice now,
Not just a meditation practice.
It imbues how I live my life.
I try really hard to have it do that.
Of course I fail all the time,
But you know,
I keep on trying.
Then of course that does have a wider implication.
I mean,
Yes,
From a scientific terms,
I understand that you'd need to test that.
But from anecdotally,
From my perspective,
I think that makes a lot of sense.
And of course,
Any spiritual leader will tell you that that is what happens.
And actually I like to think that that is what happens.
This has been really interesting.
I'm bookmarking in my mind that I'd like to talk to you about altruism.
I think that could be a whole kind of empathy and also all of our misconceptions about all of that.
But hopefully what we have done today,
If we've done one thing,
Is really flesh out and break down what the loving kindness practice is,
What it is likely or may not bring up in you and how it might change your life,
But also perhaps your view of what meditation is.
I have a big thing that it's not just mindfulness of the breath.
There are lots of other practices that really can affect your life in really significant and positive ways.
My last question for you is,
Do you have a meditation practice?
Do you research in this?
You work in this field?
What do you do for your own wellbeing?
Yeah,
I think the key actually to researching this was to practice in the sense that I didn't know much about all these things until I started practicing.
And once I did,
Many years ago,
The whole,
This whole world opened.
And personally,
I found these practices quite fascinating,
Meditation in general,
As a journey,
As an adventure,
As an experience of what's happening inside and how I relate to the outside world and things like that.
But I did see as well that there's a potential for mental health and wellbeing in these practices,
Not just as an adventure into your own mind and heart.
So that's how I started becoming interested from the research point of view.
As you know,
Our personal experiences do not necessarily translate to the experiences of others with things.
And so we will try to do in scientific research is to find the average effect,
What we say.
So works for a wider group of people so that we can use it at a more larger scale than just saying,
I felt it was good.
Also,
When you practice something and you feel it was good for you,
There may be many reasons.
It may not have been the practice.
It may have been that it coincided with,
I don't know,
The arrival of the spring and that makes you feel better or even other things in your life or just you becoming older and wiser.
And you think it's all over the years,
Meditation has done this and this.
Perhaps it's just that you are just wiser and your life perhaps is better.
Perhaps you're more stable with other things in your life.
There are so many,
So many what we call confounding factors and non-specific factors that get all mixed in real life that what we try to do with research is to separate them out and see,
Okay,
What's the effect of that?
What's the effect of that?
Very difficult.
And this is absolutely,
I'm just one of my bugbears that we do this in the West.
And I do understand from a research,
You have to separate things out.
But of course in Buddhism,
They don't separate out meditation.
It's part of a holistic programme,
With food,
With an ethical framework,
With exercise,
The asanas.
So they cover all elements of the body.
And then the support network,
The sangha.
So meditation is never seen as this isolated one tool.
It's a collection because I think you're absolutely right.
I don't think for me personally,
I don't think I could look at just a meditation practise and go,
This is responsible for this.
It's part of it.
And in fact,
The meditation practise made me,
I'll say made me,
It encouraged me to start running.
It encouraged me to think more healthily about my food choices.
So everything bleeds into everything else.
And I think of course the Buddhist understood that.
And so I often say to people,
Don't just look at meditation as sitting quietly,
You know,
With your eyes closed on a meditation cushion,
It's your whole life and it all is interchangeable and interacts with every other element that you do in your life.
Anyway.
Yeah,
We could talk about context a lot because it's just fascinating.
I think when we say we do meditation in an isolated way,
I think that's not really true even for us because there are a lot of assumptions and things in the culture related to meditation and to mindfulness,
Even bringing up the world has implications,
Meanings and things.
And if you relate it to wellbeing,
You will immediately,
It's perhaps not a random thing that you start meditating.
And at the same time,
You start looking at what you're eating because perhaps it's the whole,
This thing that comes up about,
I want to feel better and improve my quality of life.
So anyway,
It's a long conversation.
Let's not go in there now.
I think we've got another chat,
Haven't we?
Well,
We'll see what response we get.
If people want us to really flesh out all of these other topics,
Then of course we can always arrange to do that.
But listen,
I've really,
Really enjoyed this.
And it was really lovely for me to reconnect with the loving kindness practice actually.
I do do it intermittently,
But it's reminding me to get it a little,
Perhaps a little bit more regular than it has been recently.
So thank you so much for your time today,
Julieta.
I've really enjoyed chatting with you.
Thank you.
It was a pleasure.
Books or books or podcasts or props?
