I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Well, they really co-emerged. I very much appreciate you asking that question. I had the benefit early on in my career to have met a number of people who had meditation and spiritual practice as an important part of their life. Through their demeanor, they really impressed me. They were warm hearted people. They were the kind of people I wanted to be more around. Their warm heartedness was infectious. I wanted to learn more of what their secret sauce was, so to speak.

At the same time, my scientific career began with a really simple question and that question still is a vibrant one in our work today. The question is, why is it that some people are more vulnerable to life's slings and arrows and others are more resilient? And how can we nurture the qualities in a person to promote optimal flourishing? In the early part of my career, I focused mostly on the adversity side of the equation. But then, when I first met His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1992, that all changed.

Well, in the early stage of my career, it was very lonely and difficult in many ways, because there was not a particularly receptive attitude in the academy in psychology and neuroscience in particular toward this kind of work. It was really regarded as fringe, even beyond fringe. So, for many years, my senior colleagues encouraged me to pursue something more mainstream.

It has definitely changed significantly. If you look at the rate of scientific publications in meditation, in serious scientific journals, there is an inflection point around 2004 or 2005 and the rate of publication increases quite dramatically. There is now federal funding from the National Institutes of Health for this kind of research. 15 years ago or 20 years ago, there really wasn't. When I first began, it was really extremely lonely. When I first started, there were 3 or 4 scientific papers in the area of meditation. Today, there are thousands. One of the wonderful elements for me is a kind of gratification to see how the field has really matured and become a real field of science, particularly over this last decade.

Absolutely. Yes, I did it this morning. I meditate every morning. It is something I've been doing for more than 40 years. Over the last maybe 15 years, I have developed a habit on workdays of taking out my calendar right after I meditate and just very quickly scanning the meetings and activities that I have scheduled for that day. Then I spend a few moments reflecting on the people I will meet, the people I will interact with, and how I could be most helpful, show up in the most beneficial way for each of these encounters. It doesn't take a lot of time. Usually, it's not more than 90 seconds or two minutes. It helps me to really adopt the most beneficial mindset for maximizing the opportunities that we have together each day. So, I've talked about that simple practice and my aspiration is that this could be helpful to others.

Sure. So happy to do that. Before I get to the practical advice, let me just amplify this conclusion a little bit, that wellbeing is a skill. This is something that is central to both our science as well as a more hacktivist dissemination, if you will. But, we have been led to this conclusion through our science, and that is that well-being consists of some specific more elementary skills or pillars or components. We know from scientific research that each of these components or pillars can be cultivated. It can be strengthened. There are specific brain circuits that are associated with these. We know that those brain circuits exhibit plasticity. They can change in response to experience and can change in response to training. So, we view wellbeing as fundamentally not different than learning to play the violin or learning to engage in a complex sport. It requires practice. This is an insight that really comes from another related understanding in neuroscience. This comes from a related insight in neuroscience that there are two fundamentally different kinds of learning. One we call declarative learning, and another we call procedural learning.

Declarative learning is learning about things we can learn the value of wellbeing. We can learn the value of mindfulness or kindness and understand its utility. But that won't necessarily make us a more mindful or a more kind person. In order to really develop these skills in an embodied way, it requires practice and also requires the second form of learning that we call procedural learning. Procedural learning is skill based. It's embodied. It is acquired through practice. It is instantiated in totally different brain circuits. In order to produce real change, we need both. We need declarative learning and procedural learning. So, that is a little bit of a backdrop.

Absolutely. I completely agree and very much see leadership also in the same way. Leadership is something that can be cultivated and there are more underlying or elementary constituents that we can identify that comprise effective leadership. That can actually be cultivated.

One of the things that I often remind people is that when human beings first evolved on this planet, none of us were brushing their teeth. And yet today, I think most people would agree that most people on the planet brush their teeth. This is not part of our genome. This is actually a learned behavior. We do this because we recognize that this is important for our personal physical hygiene. What we are talking about now is something important for our personal mental hygiene. I think most viewers would agree that our minds are even more important than our teeth. My conjecture, which is based on a lot of scientific evidence and also personal experience, that if we spend even as short a time as we do brushing our teeth each day, nourishing our mind in positive ways, this world would be a different place.

Well, one of the important elements, particularly in a situation, the likes of which we are all in today in this pandemic and also here in the U.S. with the divisiveness of inequality that has been so rawly exposed. When we reflect on the granularity of our daily lives, there is so much activity that actually is quite positive. People are on the whole, good to one another. The very act of physical distancing, which we are asked to do in this time of the pandemic is beneficial not only for ourselves, but also to minimize the likelihood that we spread the virus. So, it's an act of generosity. When we pause and appreciate all of the individuals whose livelihoods we depend on, people who may deliver things to us, people who are on the front lines, medical providers, all of these individuals who help to make our lives function, particularly at this time.

When we reflect on all of the individuals that require us to put a meal on the table and think about that deeply, we recognize how interdependent we actually are. So, spending a few intentional minutes every day, bringing into our minds and our hearts individuals whose actions are of some benefit to us and expressing our appreciation and even formulating how we might express our thanks to them if we see them in the world. Nurturing that kind of warm heartedness through recognizing appreciation is something that is very accessible and it is so prevalent in our daily lives. But, we tend to ignore it. We pass it by. We have a fleeting thought and we don't savor it.

This is an invitation to spend a few intentional minutes and actually strengthen those qualities because they are so important. They are an elixir, which can really calm our minds and help us, particularly in this time.

Yes, absolutely. I think that's so important to sprinkle the day with those kinds of really short periods of practice. For example, every meeting that is an important meeting in our center, we begin with a few minutes of practice. We often call it clearing the lens. It's really about taking a few moments to settle, to calm our minds, to open our hearts, and to be fully present for reengaging with what we are about to do. My experience is that taking these 2 or 3 minutes before important meetings is the return on that investment is multiplicative in terms of the quality and efficiency of the subsequent meeting.

This is one way in which we have baked it into our work routine in our daily work life. Another period during the day where I find this is easy and enormously helpful and it can be done with one's family, too, is around meal time. All of us eat several times a day. This is a great opportunity to reflect on appreciation and all of the people who have been responsible in one way or another for you being able to eat this meal. Spending a few moments before eating in that way can be enormously beneficial.

the Center for Healthy Minds that I direct has an extensive website with all of our publications freely available. I would encourage you to go to our website. It's the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Also, in terms of practical tools, a number of years ago, I started a nonprofit company called Healthy Minds Innovations. The mission of this nonprofit entity is to take the insights from our science and turn them into tools through which we can cultivate and measure well-being at scale. One of the things that we've done is created this app called the Healthy Minds Program. It is freely available thanks to the generosity of our donors and funders. This encompasses the scientific framework for understanding the plasticity of well-being. It includes four major pillars.

The first we call awareness, which is where mindfulness would be. The second we call connection, which is about qualities that nurture healthy social relationships, qualities like appreciation, gratitude, kindness, compassion. The third pillar is insight. Insight is about self knowledge and specifically knowledge of the narrative about ourselves that we carry and how we can develop a healthier relationship to this narrative. And finally, the fourth pillar is purpose, identifying our true North. Most importantly, how can we align more and more of our everyday behavior within our core sense of purpose?

The app includes scientific information about each of these four pillars. It also includes specific practices through which you can cultivate each of these four pillars of well-being. The app finally includes tools to measure your progress along the path. So you can get information about how these four pillars are present to the extent to which they are strong qualities, the extent to which it may be important to nurture those qualities and you can see how they change over time.

Well, I've been doing this kind of work for quite a long time now. I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992. That was a major pivot point for me because he challenged me in that first meeting and asked why I could not use the tools of modern science, which I was using to study qualities like depression and anxiety and stress. He asked, "Why can't you use those same qualities to study kindness and to study compassion?" That really began a pivot and it was a wake-up call. I think that in terms of for me, the most noticeable sorts of changes over the years is that now, I can say with a completely unequivocally that this is really the purpose of my life. I am on the planet now to do this work. Another thing that has changed is the confidence that I have in the importance of this work. I don't want to sound arrogant about this confidence. It's a quiet kind of confidence. It's a conviction that this is something that the world really needs.

I don't have the answers in terms of telling people how it can be done. I think it's very likely to be different for different kinds of people. I often tell people, "You know what, the best form of meditation that you can possibly do, is the form of meditation that you actually do." There are so many things we don't know. But the one thing that I feel I do know and that I can go to the mat with even the most skeptical scientist is that well-being can actually be nurtured.

There is a lot that we need to learn. But the fact that we can actually promote human flourishing to me is beyond the shadow of a doubt at this point in time. I think most people would agree that the trajectory that the world is on right now is not a particularly healthy one. I think this pandemic is an opportunity to stop doing what we have been doing and recalibrate. I believe that this work now is more important than it has ever been.

It's a great question. Thank you so much for it. I see multiple streams in science. There is basic science and there also is more translational science, the latter, which is addressing more practical issues. On the basic science side, I think there are many really deeply important questions that are being addressed. For example, what exactly is the relationship between the mind and brain and the body in specific contexts? For example, we know that one of the powerful impacts of certain kinds of meditation is to decrease inflammation in the body. Inflammation plays a major role in many chronic illnesses, including in dementia. So unpacking and really better understanding how these are connected is a major area of scientific inquiry today. There are new methods to begin to look at this. There are going to be some very exciting developments.

On really pushing things, there is the science around the dying process, which I think is going to be really important over the next 10 years. The conventional Western understanding of death as being a binary process, when you stop breathing and the heart stops beating, you're dead. There is more and more evidence to suggest that simple minded notion is just not true. Being able to probe the actual process in a much more granular way of what occurs is going to be extremely revealing and important. Of course, the contemplative traditions have their own beliefs about the dying process and it will be very interesting to juxtapose some of those beliefs with the scientific evidence as it begins to emerge.

Then on the translational side, there are some very practical questions. I'll give you an example. Let's say a person decides that she or he will allocate 15 minutes a day to practice meditation, say they're a beginner and they want to start practicing. Is it better for them to practice in one single 15-minute period? in three, 5-minute periods? in five, 3-minute periods sprinkled throughout the day? That question is not even being asked in the scientific literature. So we do not have an answer to that. My conjecture is, it probably differs for different kinds of people, but that's something that we can empirically study. That may be of great value in helping people to launch a practice.

A related question is, you can practice in a formal meditation, but you can also do more active practices. You can practice while you're engaged in activities of daily living. You can practice while you're walking, while you're commuting, while you're doing physical exercise, while you're cleaning your house, and we don't know to what extent practices while you're engaged in those kinds of activities of daily living produce effects which are comparable to more formal meditation. This is a simple but yet practically very important question that we are going to be able to address through the app as the app is used by more and more people will be able to collect these kinds of data, which will be of great interest and will be helpful to people.

Yes. With regard to that question, first, I really appreciate being asked that question, since it is so important, particularly for our world today. Looking at our four pillars of well-being, the third pillar, which I describe as insight, is really the most relevant to that question, where we can begin to in a very direct, contemplative way, examine what actually is a belief. How do we hold a belief? When we begin to critically examine that process in our mind, it can really help to decrease the grip, if you will, of an ingrained belief, and we can begin to see it more like other thoughts and have less kind of emotional attachment to it. We can transition from there into a practice, if that's OK.

I'm sure all of you spend a lot of time in front of screens, so let's close our eyes and bring awareness into the present moment in a very intentional way, bring awareness into our bodies. And whenever we do a practice like this, however brief, it's always helpful to remind ourselves at the beginning, why we're doing this and to reflect on the possibility that there may actually be an altruistic motivation. Recognizing that calming our mind and opening our heart is beneficial not only for ourselves, but for all the others that we connect with directly or indirectly.

So let's spend just a few moments reflecting on this possibility and see if you can find this altruistic motivation for engaging in this kind of practice.

Now let's take a few moments to bring awareness into our bodies. Are there areas where there is tension? What sensations may you be experiencing? Here the invitation is not to change anything, not to fix anything, not to adjust anything, but simply to be aware. So, using this extraordinary gift that every human being shares with awareness. Infusing our bodies with awareness.

Now let's transition and bring into our minds in our hearts, one or two other people who have been helpful to us in one way or another, particularly over this last period of the pandemic in this challenging time. It may be someone we live with, a spouse, a member of our family, could be someone who works with us, a close friend, it could even be a pet. Let's bring this being into our mind and our heart and see if we can sense this appreciation emerging. And even reflecting on how we might express our gratitude to this person or being the next time we encounter them. As we end this very short period of practice, one of the other things that we always do when we sit down for a formal practice is before we close, reflecting on how we can bring whatever insight, however small it might be, whatever glimpse from the short period of practice and actually bring it out into our lives to benefit others.

So let's spend a few moments reflecting on how we can take these insights and dedicate them to the benefit of others. Let's open our eyes and as we transition and re-engage, see if you can retain the same quality of presence and awareness as you transition into your next activity.

Thank you so much and I very much appreciate this opportunity and I appreciate all that you are doing to bring these insights to this wonderful group through your work in your institute.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.