We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss. We practiced a guided meditation called Taking in the Good from The Buddha’s Brain: the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom.
Neuropsychologist, author and instructor, Rick Hanson, suggests this practice to help overcome what scientists believe is the brain’s built-in “negativity bias.” Rick suggests intentionally practicing ways to “take in the good” to improve how you feel, get things done and treat others.
In the third chapter, The First & Second Darts, Rick delves into how the negativity bias works. He sites Buddhism’s description of life’s unavoidable physical and mental discomforts as “first darts.” Our negative reactions to conditions or situations that we can’t really escape become “second darts” or the added suffering we aim at ourselves and others.
We experience these darts as “embodied suffering”. We feel stress in our bodies. Understanding this “physical machinery of suffering” can help us to depersonalize the strike of a first dart and gradually defuse the power of second darts. As most of us know, our reactions often occur at lightening speed. The sympathetic nervous system and endocrine system work together to respond to perceived threats. In fast paced, often stressful, modern life those perceived threats can be as subtle as being criticized or running late for an appointment or just being served the wrong meal at a restaurant.
Once the alarm sounds a cascade of physiological changes include increased heart rate, dilated pupils, increased blood flow to muscles and dilated bronchioles: We ready to hit harder and run faster. The immune system gets depressed. Reproduction is sidelined. Digestion slows. Mouth dries. Our emotions intensify. This state of arousal stimulates the more primitive part of the brain called the amygdala which is hardwired to focus on negative information and react intensely to it. The relative strength of our prefrontal cortex declines. This is the part of our brains that can help us recognize that the server didn’t bring us the wrong meal on purpose or that the slow moving car in front of us is actually going the speed limit.
Rick goes on to detail the mental and physical consequences of the living “overheated lives.” I won’t list the chronic ailments here. Like any habit, living on simmer is familiar and it feels easy in the short term: the more we do it, the more we’re inclined to continue to do it. Our over-reactions become reflexive. We might not even remember why we’re upset. When the amygdala is over-sensitized the hippocampus is compromised: painful experiences are recorded in implicit (unconscious) memory without an accurate explicit memory. You know something happened, you feel upset, but you don’t know the cause. He compares it to trauma victims who can be very reactive to any trigger that reminds them unconsciously of the traumatic event. In less extreme situations this leads to feeling a little upset a lot of the time without knowing why.
If you’re not upset you may be depressed. Stress hormones lower or inhibit production of the neurotransmitters that help us take pleasure in life: dopamine and serotonin. Yikes! Rick suggests that if we change the causes of suffering in our brains and bodies we’ll suffer less. Whew! This takes a fair bit of tenacity since many of these physiological reactions to stress are part of the autonomic nervous system. As the name implies – much of this system is automatic: the sympathetic nervous system operates below the level of consciousness. It helps us respond to changing conditions.
The parasympathetic branch helps us conserve energy and is responsible for that ongoing “rest and digest” state of the body and mind. This state supports prefrontal cortex functioning, contemplative practice and insight. He describes how the two branches work in harmony when we do a round of deep breathing: the sympathetic nervous system acts like the gas pedal and the parasympathetic branch works as a brake to result in a state of aliveness and centeredness. We experience more happiness, love and wisdom when these two branches are in balance.
Recap: pain is inevitable and suffering is optional. If we can stay present with whatever arises in awareness – without reacting further we can avoid suffering 2nd darts. Over time, through training and shaping our minds and brains we can change what arises. We can increase our positive responses while decreasing the negative ones. Rick’s practice of taking in the good is a small but powerful method of putting this into action. It’s a way of staying with the positive aspects of our lives long enough to get them into “explicit memory”. We’re helping our minds and brains rest on happiness. Then the mind takes the shape of what it rests on.
The practice involves three steps:
1) Look for a good fact and turn it into a good experience. Just thinking about something isn’t enough – you’ve got to feel it!
2) Really enjoy the experience. Stay with the feeling: the longer you hold something in awareness, and the more emotionally stimulating it is, the more neurons fire and wire.
3) Intend and sense the good experience becoming part of you.
Rick encourages us to do this multiple times a day – gradually over time, 30 seconds over 30 seconds, we can stitch positive experiences into the fabric of our brains and therefore ourselves. We take care of the minutes and the years take care of themselves.
You can find this week’s homework and other resources at: