Ep. 116: Nourishing the Mind with Richie Davidson- Founder and Director, Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Our guest on this episode is Richard Davidson, PhD. He is a pioneer in studying the effects of mindfulness meditation on the human brain, and is joining us for a second time on Health Gig to talk about the mind, the pillars of well-being, and what he and his team are doing at the Center for Healthy Minds. He is a neuroscientist, psychologist and research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Madison where he is also the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds. He is the co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain and Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, and we are so happy Richie could join us for this special episode.

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Show Notes

[2:41] Well-being is a skill and that anyone can improve her or his well being through practice.
[3:28] The trajectory that we're on, not just in our nation, but in many places around the globe, has not been a particularly healthy or sustainable one.
[6:38] Meta awareness is our capacity to know what our minds are doing.
[6:59] Reading a book where you might be reading each word on the page and after a few minutes you've been reading each word, but you recognize that you have absolutely no idea what you've just read. Your mind is somewhere else. It's lost. And the moment you recognize that, that's a moment of mental awareness.
[8:25] Loneliness is actually a more significant risk factor for cardiovascular pathology, heart attacks, and associated cardiovascular events, than is obesity.
[9:44] Our narrative is a constellation of thoughts and is not our whole selves.
[10:12] Among people who are 65 years and older, having a strong sense of purpose is the single most important psychological predictor of longevity. And that's after carefully taking into account all other risk factors.
[13:57] By putting their good side of the body in a whole body cast, immobilizing it and forcing the brain essentially to retrain itself, a dramatic element of plasticity was revealed that would never have otherwise been observed.
[15:24] If you don't practice on a regular basis, you will not learn.
[16:24] If we spent even as short a time as we spend brushing their teeth nourishing our mind, and we do this every single day for the remainder of our lives, I have the conviction that this world would really be a different place
[18:14] If we had the capacity to better regulate our attention, we could become masters of our own mind rather than allowing our minds to be hijacked by forces around us.
[23:59] Everyone who engages with the app is participating in the citizen science because we can use those data to help inform the science.
[26:29] If you look early in life at young infants in the first year of life, it turns out that infants dramatically prefer prosocial, warm-hearted, cooperative, altruistic interactions compared to those that are selfish or aggressive.
[27:38] What it is to be human is to actually be good.
[31:45] Among certain age groups, the rates of depression were literally triple during the pandemic compared to what they were the same month the year before. One of the unfortunate things is that our public health officials, who I have tremendous respect for, have coined the phrase social distancing, which I think is really an unfortunate choice of terminology. We're being asked to physically distance, but we can remain socially connected while still being physically distant.
[35:16] We need to be realistic about it and to help adjust a person's expectations that they're not going to change overnight. That's not realistic, but they can change and they can see progress over time and it doesn't take that much.
[41:00] I think if more scientists were willing to simply say that they don't know, rather than providing a knee jerk reaction that's based on their belief system rather than actual fact, I think we'd be better off.
Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

“I think if more scientists were willing to simply say that they don't know, rather than providing a knee jerk reaction that's based on their belief system rather than actual fact, I think we'd be better off.” - Richie Davidson
“If we had the capacity to better regulate our attention, we could become masters of our own mind, rather than allowing our minds to be hijacked by forces around us.” - Richie Davidson
“We need to be realistic and help adjust a person's expectations, that they're not going to change overnight. That's not realistic, but they can change and they can see progress over time and it doesn't take that much.” - Richie Davidson

Keywords

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