Producer:  And welcome back to Full PreFrontal, where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. I am here as always with our host, Sucheta Kamath. Good morning, Sucheta, always good to be with you. How are you?

Sucheta:  I am wonderful, Todd. How are you?

Producer:  I am doing great. I am very much looking forward to this conversation. I understand today’s guest has written 11 books, so, me thinks what he’s talking about. Why don’t you dive in and lead us forward, please?

Sucheta:  Sure. So, Todd, as you know, we talk about executive function and I have a funny bit that came to mind that if you go on YouTube and type in “epic fails” you’ll get thousands of hits. And if you lead aside some awkward moves and physical mishaps, you can pretty much see a pattern emerge which is acting without thinking, just utter mindlessness.

Let me share a funny story of one such episode where a contestant on a show Who Wants to be A Millionaire. You’ve heard of that, right? It’s a very popular TV show and the contestant has to answer a total of 15 questions, making a selection out of 4 choices, I think at barely 15 seconds to answer. So, anyway, the question was asked is — when attacked by predators, which if these animals will often activate a large gland known as ink sac? And the choices by the way were cheetah, owl, squid and Paris Hilton. And the woman, without thinking for a second shouts out “owl” and she says, “That’s my final answer.” And the host, Meredith Rivera, pauses, makes that face when you know you’re wrong and then the correct answer, of course, “squid,” comes on and Meredith says that, “I know you knew after you said, lovely. I’m sorry. It was squid.”

So, as we can see, wanting to say “that’s my final answer” as quickly as possible can be death of mindfulness, I feel. That’s when think before act typically fails. So, on this executive function podcast, we concentrate on reactive versus the reflective mechanisms of the brain and my work is all about becoming more attuned with the reflective system so that you can know thyself better, know your patterns and reactions, and mostly, use that knowledge to change your ways.

So, with that in mind, I see that the mindful practices create expansive spaces for such self-knowledge to emerge that can be explored and eventually housed in a way that you can actually make some change possible. And that’s why I’m so excited to speak to our guest today, of course, his name is Dr. Christopher Willard. He is a psychologist and educational consultant based in Boston, specializing in mindfulness. He has been practicing meditation for 20 years, very admirable, and has led hundreds of workshops around the world with invitations to more than two dozen countries. He currently serves on the board of directors at the Institute of Meditation and Psychotherapy and is the president of the Mindfulness in Education Network. He has presented at TedEx conferences and his thoughts have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mindful.org, and elsewhere.

He has, as you mentioned earlier, Todd, written 11+ books. His latest book is a children’s book, which is my favorite by the way, and I plan to give that because it just launched, I think, as a gift to children. And he has created lots of material including card sets and therapeutic games which have been translated into more than 10 languages. But in addition to all this, I don’t know how he does this but he teaches at Harvard Medical School. So, welcome, Chris, to the podcast.

Chris Willard:  Thank you so much. It’s so great to be here. I love that we met at that conference a few months ago and I’m so glad that we’re doing this. This is so much fun, so thank you.

Sucheta:  Well, I am surely delighted. So, I have been asking this of all my guests. This podcast is all about executive function and we talk a lot about intentional focus, needs and goals assessment, flexibility of mind, and self-regulation by engaging in deliberate system of the brain, the central executive. So, the first question I have for you is — how were your own executive function skills and when did you begin to think about your own inner mental processes such as approach to learning, managing the stress involved in learning, about thinking, and even maybe strategizing for learning? And do you recall the best teacher you ever had or encountered and what did that teacher do that no one else had done so far?

Chris:  My gosh, what a fun question. My own growing up executive functions were behind and I really learned from my friend Mark Burton, who I know you had a few weeks ago on the podcast also, how he talks about executive function. It’s a developmental thing. We go through stages growing up and some kids are ahead and some kids are behind. And I think one of the best ways actually we’ve seen that we can predict whether a kid is diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or Executive Function Deficits is if they’re young for their class. I was actually that kid. I’ve got a late birthday for where I went to school and I was often the youngest kid of my class and so my executive functions were actually pretty far behind.

I was able to do the work in many ways but just organizing myself was actually really, really difficult for me for a lot of my life until maybe at some point of my early 20s that things started to kind of shake out for me. So, I’ve now figured out for myself just how to have systems that work for me as well as how to have strategies that work for me. And one of the ones I stumbled into was mindfulness and that I think has been tremendously helpful for me in terms of being able to slow down and think a little bit and plan a little bit before I speak or before I take any action and move forward with it. But just simple things like making outlines, making plans before I do things. I was, when I was younger, very kind of like fly by the seat of my pants and don’t make pans and don’t have structure because I felt like that was going to inhibit my creativity. And once I started putting structures in place for myself and some scaffolding in place for myself and making outlines, like, oh my gosh, I became so much more productive and continue to feel like I’m pretty productive. It really helps for me channel my creativity to do those things rather than stifle it. So, yeah, it’s not what my 20-year-old self would have said but that’s kind of where I am now, yeah.

Sucheta:  That’s interesting. I mean, first of all, I think you are incredibly self-aware or rather you mentioned that you had the skills and talent to do the work but I do think that sounds like your awareness of organization being difficult rubbing against your capacity to show somehow clicked. And secondly, you must have cultivated some great discipline to do mindful meditations since you’ve been doing it for the last 20 years. That means something you picked up and you stayed with it. That’s incredible. I spent half of my therapeutic time with people getting them to stick with things.

Chris:  Right, right, a lot of us do for sure, for sure.

Sucheta:  So, let’s start with this idea of mindfulness versus meditation. Everyone is talking about mindfulness at school, at home, and I often hear that equated with meditation or vice versa, I’m afraid that people may not be really clear as to what it entails or if it is one and the same. Do you mind helping us understand the distinction between the two or similarities between the two?

Chris:  Absolutely. I think there’s a variety of opinions about this but I can explain the way I try to explain it which is, again, I tend to think of physical exercise. So, physical exercise, you can go to the gym and do a workout. And when you do a workout, maybe you’re doing strength training or maybe you’re doing cardio or maybe you’re doing flexibility and yoga or something like that. At the same time, every time I pick up a pencil, I’m getting exercise. Every time I walk across the room, I’m getting exercise, right?

And so, I think to me, exercise or workout is like meditation, you go and you sit down on a cushion for a half-an-hour or 20 minutes or maybe one minute or maybe days, right? But what you’re doing is you’re then doing that one thing. So, maybe you’re doing a concentration practice for that half-an-hour and that’s kind of like doing strength training. Or maybe you’re doing compassion training and that’s kind of like cardio, you’re working out your heart. Or maybe you’re doing mindfulness training which to me is a little bit more like doing probably flexibility training of some kind.

So, mindfulness is a form of awareness that we can exercise in meditation just like flexibility, we can do in a workout at the gym or in a yoga class. At the same time, you can also informally get some exercise. You can informally practice mindfulness just like being more aware of what it is that you’re doing, like, am I really aware right now of the food that I’m eating? Can I taste it? Can I smell it? Can I see it? Can I hear myself chewing, right? Am I really aware of my breath if I tune in to my 5 senses? That gets me into the moment and it gets me aware of what it is that I’m doing and I’m getting this kind of informal mindfulness exercise during my day just like I might get a little more informal physical exercise by taking the stairs instead of the elevator and getting some exercise. So, to me, I think the exercise-workout analogy is a good one.

Sucheta:  Got it. I really like what you’re saying which is that it’s that form of awareness which you can channel and then that awareness eventually leads you to becoming aware of your level of awareness, I guess.

Chris:  It is this kind of meta-cognition of being aware of the fact that we’re aware, knowing what you’re doing as you’re doing it and doing things with intentionality. I often think of it as just really I can ask myself, “How do I know what am I doing and how do I know I’m doing it?” and then I can just be a bit more mindful about what I’m doing [10:32] formally like paying attention to the present moment with acceptance and non-judgment and all that. But to me, it’s really just really being aware of what it is that we’re doing as we’re doing it in real time and doing that on purpose.

Sucheta:  Yes, and I think it’s a nice way to put a break on this. It’s like removing the autopilot and your being into focus, not doing necessarily. It could be simply you’re doing nothing or so you speak but you are actually engulfed in the thoughts or engulfed in your mind distracting you. So, mindfulness is just tuning that off, I guess, and brining into focus.

So, how do you think this mindfulness relates to executive function? You know, at the heart of mindfulness is knowing and accepting ourselves. And so in my experience, those who have impaired executive function and poor self-awareness, I guess, which goes hand-in-hand, struggle with fully knowing self and those who have disabilities often have deep-seated reluctance in accepting oneself. And finally, those who are raising children particularly high achievers which is a third category, often translate the invitation to accept ourselves as an invitation to fall. So, they in fact, give push back that “I don’t want my child to become complacent if they just kind of accept themselves or the situation.” So, how do you understand that, using the executive function framework?

Chris:  Well, I think for one thing, I mean, there’s all kinds of research on which parts of the brain are not working as well as we want them to when we have executive function challenges, and which parts of the brain are activated when we practice mindfulness which are also then the more we activate those parts of our brain just like if I activate my muscle at the gym, actually start to grow new connections in that part of the brain like I know I’m growing new connections of my arm muscles, basically. This is neuroplasticity which probably a lot of your listeners are familiar with.

And so, I think it’s actually really fun that you started with the story about Who Wants to be A Millionaire because I’ll sometimes use that in my talks to educators or people when I’m talking about the relationship between anxiety and executive functions. There’s a clip of someone who just under pressure, with the lights and with the music and with the audience, you just watch their brain totally go blank and shut down, and then that comes out in different ways.

Sucheta:  Yeah.

Chris:  Some people feel a deep shame about that, other people laugh about it, right? The person you were describing right there blurted out the answer. So, everyone has a different — they get angry, the fight or flight or freeze or forget it basically are kind of responses. And so, I love using and I got this from my friend Jess Monaghan who you should probably interview too, she’s great also on this stuff, but it’s such a good example of the way stress and anxiety totally shut down our brain and particularly shut down our executive functions.

Because executive functions, one of the things that they’re about is making long term plans, “How do I do all these different things so that by next year or by the end of the hour or by the end of the day, I’ll have gotten these goals accomplished?” And if you’re in stress, if you’re in fight or flight, you’re really just thinking, “How do I get out of this in the next 5 minutes? What’s the most blunt force object that I can use to get out of this situation and make it end as quickly as possible?” not thinking through the nuances and different consequences beyond that 5 minutes. And so, this is the way that they start that executive function especially in the face of stress or anxiety really starts to stop working. So, we put pressure on our kids and that can help them to a point and then they start to shut down after a certain point and they fight or they freeze or they flee or say forget it or whatever it might be. And the way that our kids do that behaviorally or we do that to ourselves again. I think I’m going off topic of what your question was exactly.

Sucheta:  No, no, you’re right on the money. I think you just explained which actually ties in with my next question as you were mentioning that I think having this stress makes you short-sighted but then executive function is exactly opposite to unhook yourself and keep the future in mind. So, if I may ask a complementary question and you can further explain this is — is this generation of kids truly stressed? What are those stressors and what are we as adults getting wrong about these conditions, situations or expectations? Is that legitimate or — what is your view on this? I know lots of this a little bit of controversy, ff I may say so. Quick example, I was reading some research about resiliency and in last 40 years, the use of the term “resilience” which was always used in the context of crisis, like if a family’s house burned down and then the family had to be relocated, that was considered crisis. Or parents died in a car crash, that was considered crisis through which adjustment was viewed, then that was through resilience. But now, we are talking about a child who got rejected or did not get invite from a birthday party and we are referring to resilience a lot.

Chris:  Right. And we’re referring to those things as a crisis a lot.

Sucheta:  Yes, yes.

Chris:  And arms raised and what’s considered a crisis.

Sucheta:  I know, it just makes no sense to me. But in your big picture thinking, how do you define stress, and is it real for our children?

Chris:  I think we do get stressed by things and we are less resilient at the same time. I think our kids are under more stress in many ways, certain kinds of stress and in other ways, they are a lot less resilient. I think both are true. In my generation, growing up like in the ‘80s, we had big global threats. It wasn’t climate change but we are worried about the bomb and the Cold War and things like that and the Russians were going to invade. That was this huge existential threat. Our kids right now, climate change is kind of that. There are other dangers though and our kids are also exposed to more of those dangers.

On the one hand, there’s not very many kids are exposed to violence in their schools but there is way more violence in a lot of ways in schools in terms of kids worrying about school shootings and things like that. On the other hand, kids now instantly know when there’s a school shooting across the country, so it feels really close to home. It feels very urgent and it also to an extent really is.

And so, this is not information that a kid would have once they went home and watch the nightly news which most kids enter if they pick up the newspaper the next day which most kids didn’t but kids instantly then learn about these very stressful events and so it becomes a thing that they’re very worried about. At the same time, they are more worried I think than maybe past generations about things like the American dream of “Am I going to out-achieve my parents in some ways?” This is the first generation where that may in fact not actually be true. And so that is we all know, does that mean it’s the end of the world? No, but some of this kind of promise in some ways is turning out to not be so true. And I also just want to add that’s only been true for a segment of the population anyway but again, there’s this sort of cultural idea that we’re always supposed to be doing better than the generation that came before.

But I think there is all these worries for our kids that are real and there are things like not being invited to the birthday party now is this huge thing and the parents get involved and all this little — I got a B- and now it’s the end of the world. My parents are calling the school and it’s so outrageous. It’s such an indignity and totally unfair. And there is some of that [18:14] too where parents are overprotective of their kids, again, because parents have their kids’ best interest at heart, there’s nothing wrong with that. And then the fact that we can in some ways protect our kids means that we do when in fact we should be protecting our kids from real dangers but also exposing them to disappointment in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, setbacks in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, rejection in a way that’s appropriate, and we’re not allowing them to experience those different forms of discomfort. And so, that’s also making things worse. So, I think it’s a little bit of both.

Sucheta:  It’s so funny, I have never until now I think recently seen this being even depicted so vividly in sitcoms and shows and serials, movies. I was watching the Big Little Lies, it’s a very popular thing that it just opened second season and they are showing a 2nd grade classroom and the teacher is actually discussing environmental-friendly decisions and how Earth is actually losing its resources, and a girl in the closet faints and the paramedics had to be called and the parents to the head of the school why are you discussing — and so the teacher was saying, “No, no, I was just discussing about good Earth-friendly habits but I can’t even talk about [19:30] crisis.”

And so anyway, I cannot imagine my children [19:36] the crisis in recycling or the water, Earth or such things. But yeah, you’re right, that’s so close to home. What you discuss in your writing is that the way we manage the stress is really critical but the perspective we take is really what sets the stage. So, you draw the distinction between adults managing the stress in their kids and the kids managing the stress all by themselves. What can you say more about that that’s so valuable?

Chris:  Well, I do think it’s things like — my kids are very, very young, they’re 1-and-a-half and they’re 4-and-a-half. They can’t fight any of their own battles and they’re not very good at advocating for themselves, right, but I’m still trying to teach them how to do those things. I ask my son to order when we’re at the restaurant. Before we go to the doctor, I try to talk to him about “What questions do you have?” We find a way to ask them together. “Do you really want me to ask or can you ask those questions?” These little bits of advocacy for themselves are really important. And then, as they get older, introduce yourself to your teacher, “What questions do you have for the teacher? Should we brainstorm it beforehand? Do you want me to say ‘excuse me’?” We’ll go to a store and he’ll have a question. “Okay, we’ll all say ‘excuse me’ but then you ask the question. Does that feel okay?” And then my son will say “Okay” and then I’ll say “Excuse me, can we ask you a question?” And then he’ll say, “Do you sell Uno at this store?” And they’ll say, “Yes, it’s right over here.” We’re both sharing some of that responsibility and it’s not me just doing it for him.

I think at some point, there are some things that we just model. There’s some things that we rehearse and do together. And then there’s some things that we then pass on to our kids and then he’ll be able to do that himself before he could talk. Of course, he wasn’t going to get the Uno right now or whatever it is or buy himself diapers. Now, it’s like we’re doing it together. I’m doing most of it. I’m taking the lead but then it’s gradually learning how to shift that so it’s more and more him and he’s learning how to advocate for himself.

And I think same thing around things like disappointments. It’s like, yeah, things don’t always work out the way you want and let your kid fail in small ways and teach them about how to then manage that and regroup and pull themselves together and take another well-calculated risk about the next thing that they’re doing but that failure is okay, it’s part of learning and pencils have erasers, and all those other kinds of clichés are really important, but also modeling that for ourselves.

I mean, when it comes to mistakes, there’s this like — I can’t remember where the study was, I think it was teachers, they were teaching teachers to make mistakes in front of kids, so like spell something wrong or get a math problem wrong and then give themselves some positive self-talk. So, you pretend you make a mistake on the board and then say, “Whoops, I made a mistake,” in this big ostentatious way and then, “Oh, that’s not a big deal. Oh, now I can see how to do this right” and then they do it right on the board. This is actually so valuable for kids to see. Those kids then actually, the way they responded to failure was really, really different than the kids who thought that teachers were absolutely perfect and never made mistakes. That’s not to say go and screw up in front of your kids all the time but when you make a mistake, own it and own also the positive self-talk that you want your kid to grow up with at the same time. That’s also really important.

Sucheta:  I love that. Yes, you’re right, I love that pencils have erasers. Yes. So, what I love about your work is that you recommend and help build strategies that are personally relevant and they also nudge self-monitoring. So, can you talk us trough the HALTing strategy, how to do this mindful self-check?

Chris:  The HALT strategy which kind of like floats around self-help circles, that as a therapist, I intersect with is kind of great. So, this is originally used a lot by people that are struggling with addictions. The acronym HALT which stands for Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired, and so the idea is if you’re struggling with drinking or whatever it might be, never let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And what’s actually really interesting about this, it’s like this piece of folk wisdom but the neuroscience bears it out. So, it’s also, if you think about a baby, why is a baby crying? Well, they’re either hungry or they’re emotional or they need affection or attention, they’re lonely or they’re tired and they need a nap.

Adults aren’t that much different. We have our own adult versions of meltdowns but they’re often due to hunger, emotion, loneliness, and feeling unseen and unheard and unattached or we’re just freakin’ tired. One of my friends posted this and it was like, “Most of marriage is just making sure that my partner isn’t too hungry,” and that’s kind of true. And again, if we come back to executive function, okay, the prefrontal cortex — and I love the name of your podcast, by the way. I used to want to write a book for a long time called Prefrontal Parenting but I didn’t think people would get the reference enough but maybe you and I can do that some time.

Sucheta:  I would love that.

Chris:  So, the prefrontal cortex is like a gas guzzler part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex where so many of our executive functions reside. So, if you’re hungry, guess what, you’re not getting enough gas, the engine is not working. Your prefrontal cortex where you regulate your emotions and you regulate your attention, that’s not working so that’s one of the reasons why you or your kids might not be managing yourself, so maybe having a snack. And guess what, for people that struggle with executive functions in general, they probably forget to do things like eat because they’re busy doing something else or they start the meal and they get distracted or they don’t manage their time well enough to fill a luncheon or breakfast like I did today and then I get a terrible headache. This kind of thing, hunger is impacted by executive function, makes it hard to eat on time and it also not eating regularly and as much as you need to means that your prefrontal cortex, the gas guzzler, is not getting the energy that it needs. So boom, you’re not regulating your attention, you’re not regulating your impulses, you’re not regulating your physiology and these other ways.

Angry or anxious which is the other ‘A’ well, what’s another way of referring to this — fight or flight. You’re up there in front of the crowd at Who Wants to be A Millionaire and you’re anxious and guess what, your prefrontal cortex totally shuts down. Or there’s someone who cuts you off in traffic and your anger flares up, you feel under threat, you’re immediately not thinking things through. You’re in fight mode. Again, fight, flight, freeze and forget it, these all basically totally shut down our executive functions. So, too much emotion which is the limbic system and the amygdala, the blood is actually flowing into that part of the brain which is creating that emotional experience, when it’s flowing into that part of the brain, where is it not flowing? It’s not flowing into the prefrontal cortex and it’s not flowing into the insular cortex and other cortices in the brain.

So, actually, when we’re emotional, we are not using our prefrontal cortex. Emotions are useful but we want a little bit of prefrontal cortex in there too. That’s the second A, we’re losing it. Lonely, again, not having secure attachments, not feeling safe and secure with the people that we’re around, feeling lonely. Again, we’re not getting a lot of perspective from other people. Being around other people who are introverts and extroverts, we need a certain amount of this in order to feel healthy, in order to feel happy. So, loneliness really impacts us and it certainly impacts our judgment. We don’t often make good decisions if we’re stuck in our own head.

And then lastly, tired. Of course, tired means our prefrontal cortex is tired, and that can mean tired from a lack of sleep which our teenagers have an epidemic of lack of sleep. One thing that happens — I can’t remember what the exact statistic is, I need to look it up — every hour of sleep under 6 hours that you’re not getting is like 10 IQ points gone and they’re mostly gone off of what’s happening with your executive functions. So, boom, it’s like the less sleep you get, the dumber you are right there. Most bad decisions happen when we’re tired.

If you look at a study of something like affairs, they actually happen between people after hours, after work, in places that are far away because we’re tired and we’re isolated and our brain is taxed and people’s judgment goes down and they make that mistake, and then also just being tired from a long day of work or a long day of school for our kids. We’re tired, the prefrontal cortex is tired which again means we’ll probably disregulate our executive functions totally crash again. So, I really like this just like again, you don’t have to be in recovery or an addict to just check in with am I hungry or are my kids hungry? We are anxious, lonely or tired, it’s a really, really useful acronym to help us pull it together.

Sucheta:  And you know, the loneliness you mentioned or tired, the combination of the two is the shopping record, online shopping. Most online shopping is done after 10:00 p.m.

Chris:  Yeah, yeah. Right, that’s it right there.

Sucheta:  That’s classic filling the bucket.

Chris:  Right, definitely.

Sucheta:  So, tell us some of the actual mindfulness practices. What should a person do or know in order to become more mindful? Do you have a recommended path that you say this will be a preliminary stage when you begin your journey, this is what you will do? How should we tell our listeners about the process? Because a lot of times, I think I also hear a little bit or maybe a lot of hesitation that when people sit down to meditate or pay attention to their breath, their mind wanders or they have crazy thoughts and they freak out or they feel, “This is too much. I don’t have time for meditation.” I love that. So, how can we kind of build courage?

Chris:  Yeah, I think first of all, the breath isn’t for everybody. I want to put that out there in a broad line. We associate mindfulness with breathing and yes, your breath can be really useful. If you regulate your breath, you’re actually regulating your physiology and that means you’re regulating your brain and that means you’re regulating your emotions and your impulses and your attention and stuff like that. But the breath for some people can just feel way too boring just like I don’t like jogging. I get so bored. I can listen to podcasts and I still get bored after 15 minutes of jogging. I just can’t do it for physical exercise.

So, it’s finding what works for you as an anchor of attention. So, maybe that is like to me and a lot of people with executive function challenges, I think things like just sitting down and listening to sounds. This is one of my favorite mindfulness practices, just set a timer for 5 minutes and for 1 minute, notice what are the farthest away sounds that you can hear? And then for the next minute, notice sounds that are a little bit closer, maybe inside the room. And for the next minute, maybe just noticing the sound of your own body, the rustling of your clothing or your breath. And then for the next minute, noticing sounds inside your body. And then maybe for the last minute just noticing all the sounds.

And if you have executive function difficulties, you’re probably already paying attention to the cars going by, so start there and then help yourselves zoom in. Use movement, take a yoga class, read about mindful walking. I love music, it’s my thing, “Well, why don’t I listen to music more mindfully? Why don’t I just put on a couple songs or my favorite song and take that 4-5 minutes and just maybe really focus in on one instrument.” My mind wanders off the guitar, just bring it back to the guitar. That’s more interesting than focusing on my breath and when my mind wanders off, bring it back to my breath. It’s like, “Oh, great. I’m just back at my breath.” Well, I want to use something that interests me more at first like whether it’s eating or moving or music. That’s maybe a bit of a better entrée into training my attention and then maybe I’ll move on to the strength training of really focusing on my  breath or something more boring to me because I need to do that at some point. I was doing a harder exercise at the gym but why don’t I start where there is the path of a little bit less resistance? And so I think that can be really important for people to know. It doesn’t have to be sitting still and breathing. You can be exploring mindfulness in some different ways.

Sucheta:  I was in a John Dunst workshop and he does this whole elaborate practice of “emptying the mind.” And I don’t want to give away one of the techniques there is but that kind of thing reminds me of one of the questions that these companies like McKenzie would ask for their interview to get the candidate who has most creativity. They would say, “Imagine you’re walking into a room and it’s completely dark,” and then it kind of sets you up and then they ask you the question, “How big is the room?” Most people talk about the room being as big as the room they are in and the typical people who are kind of very clever or innovative, they will say, “My room is as big as a forest because I didn’t put the walls on my room.” so that capacity to think a little bit. So, he talks about this emptying the mind in the same similar way to kind of the limits that you put on the way you think about filling like imagining having the mind and then emptying it, imagine your mind is so big that it has empty parts and not just limit yourself to think about it in a certain way.

So, I don’t know if I’m explaining well but I love the idea of not just limiting as you said. I love that you gave people permission to not hyperfocus on breathing or feel your gateway to heaven is breathing. And I also like the idea of mindful living which begins like mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful listening to music. I love in your story in one of your books, you talk about this suggestion that you incorporated which is driving one way without anything, turning everything off and just paying attention to the road and then maybe even gear.

Chris:  Yeah, yeah.

Sucheta:  So, tell us, is mindfulness a group activity or individual activity? Can level of mindfulness or success in mindfulness be judged by the person who is engaging in the mindfulness practices?

Chris:  I think if mindfulness wants to survive, we have to figure out how to make this more of a group activity. I think it’s been slow to build because it often seems like such a solitary activity when I think a lot of what our culture is really craving right now is more connection and is more real community. And to figure out how to do this in community is I think going to be a challenge and an important challenge of the mindfulness movement. So, I do think that that is important but it is something you can practice with other people. It’s something you can practice yourself as well. And I do think we’re starting to see more communities growing out of this sort of movement and interest and mindfulness which I think is a really good thing.

Sucheta:  What are the stages of progress? When we engage in mindfulness, what kind of changes the individual notices or begins to notice?

Chris:  For myself, and I do want to say I’m a therapist by training but I actually think mindfulness is better learned in a group than learned one-on-one. But I do think the stages at least that I see in myself were just that boost in more self-awareness and the sudden insight that my thoughts are just thoughts. I don’t have to believe them. They don’t necessarily have to be true, that a lot of them are pretty useless, that a lot of them are pretty negative but that for the most part, they’re not necessarily accurate. That was a real incredible insight.

And then the other thing that happen and it’s interesting that you spoke about that, the sort of what size is the room thing. Because what I remember, being aware of it, mindfulness doesn’t — like, I still have all the thoughts I ever had. Mindfulness doesn’t “clear out” my thoughts. The metaphor I would use would not be like “clearing out” my mind but it’s like I still got the 80,000 thoughts a day and I’ve still got all this crap in my head but I’m no longer living in a tiny closet but it’s more like I’m living now in a room the size of an airplane hangar with those thoughts in it, so that there’s space between those thoughts and I can see those thoughts. And then it doesn’t feel so claustrophobic in my own head. But I haven’t gotten rid of any of the thoughts, I’m just able to work with them in a different way and see them more clearly and my relationship to them has really changed.

Sucheta:  And that’s such a relief because it’s literally like overcrowding, right? I was reading some psychology of space, one of the leading psychologies who studies where we choose to be in a room. Do we put a bag next to us so nobody comes and sits next to us? And so this to me, it’s the fear is that if you’re too close, they will rub against each other. So, similarly, I think the thoughts being having the space to be free-floating so they don’t clash against each other or create more thoughts, so that spaciness is there. And that spaciness also is liberating because as you mentioned, that the blank space could be just a gap or thoughtlessness. And in fact, in Hindu philosophy or the enlightenment or those who are enlightened beings, they described often having empty mind. They actively have no thoughts, so they’re not thinking. And my favorite quote is when Dalai Lama was asked, “When have you been your happiest?” And he said, “Right now, right now, right now.”

Chris:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sucheta:  So, happiness is not a state to attain, it’s a way of being for him.

Chris:  Right, right, right. And [37:21] to our present moment experience, yeah.

Sucheta:  Exactly. So, as we close this episode, what personally has gotten you excited about the work you do which is very evident by the way but what is one thing that we all must take from you or you would like us to know about when we talk about mindfulness and self-regulation?

Chris:  I think it’s easier than you think it is. A lot of it is I think also about a mindset. Can you see that you’re in the forest and not just in a room the size that you’re in, that the capacity really is much greater that you have? And so mindfulness I think helps us break through sometimes some of those limiting beliefs or fixed mindsets or however it is that we want to kind of refer to them as. And then I think just really exploring it for yourself and seeing what happens. And when I say explore it for yourself, I really do mean when you’re done with this podcast, click over to your favorite song on your phone and listen to that song and just focus on one instrument and notice when your mind wanders and bring it back and see how you feel after you’ve done that. Or just listen to that song and don’t do anything else for that 4 minutes and notice how you’d feel before, during and after that. But I’m not going to say turn off this podcast and go breathe for 5 minutes but I’m going to say click your favorite song or go to the window and just count how many beautiful things that you can see when you look out the window right now. Or look around the room you’re in and see if you can notice something you hadn’t noticed before, that these little things are actually really changing our awareness and changing our perspective and changing our mindset and rewiring our brains and  really changing our brains and in that way changing our lives.

Sucheta:  Lovely. Thank you.

Chris:  That’s more than one thing.

Sucheta:  Oh, no this is good. I mean, exactly because it is all tied together. I think my favorite thing that you just mentioned or rather the one message that I’m so excited you said it is it’s easy to do. There’s no preparation for anyone to really think. It’s just literally starting now. Even as I speak, I could be more mindful, I guess.

Recently, I watched a documentary about a study that they did as a treatment for obesity in California. What they did is literally getting people to put the meal in front of them and take smelling, seeing every bite, smelling it, kind of bringing it very close to their mouth before putting into the mouth, having a little conversation about the bite, “Wow, the green beans are really vibrant green. I bet they’re crunchy.” and then taking a bite and then actually chewing more than at least 10 times. And when people actually engage in those practices, over time they experience incredible improvement in their well-being not just weight. And so, that’s the power of this tool. I wish after listening to our discussion today, people will find the courage and recognize the urgency to jump into it.

Chris:  Yeah.

Sucheta:  Yeah, it’s just fabulous. So, thank you so much for being a guest and being so generous and so infectious. Your energy is infectious and my personal experience that I loved during your talk was the bell exercise that you did with all of us, and your talk was the last talk. And when I left for dinner that night, I couldn’t stop talking about it during my dinner. So, I really appreciate that experience that you gave us too. So, thank you for what you do.

Chris:  Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.

Producer:  Alright, that’s all the time we have for today. If you know of anyone who could benefit from listening to today’s conversation, we would be grateful if you would kindly forward it directly to them. So, on behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath, today’s guest, Dr. Christopher Willard, and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thanks for listening today and we look forward to seeing you again right here next week on Full PreFrontal.