NICABM RickHanson Brain2014

Happiness and
Neuroplasticity: Simple
Strategies for Rewiring
Your Brain
A Webinar Session with
Ruth Buczynski, PhD
and Rick Hanson, PhD
Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain
Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring

Your Brain
Contents
(Click on the section title to jump to the page)
Three Operating Systems of the Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Inner Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Zones of the Brain: Red Light - Green Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Steps to Keep People in the Green Zone: HEAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Why Novelty is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
What to Do When Experiences Are Negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Moving from the Negative to the Positive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Linking the Negative to the Positive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
TalkBack Segment with Ron Siegel, PsyD and Kelly McGonigal, PhD . . . . . . . . . 23
What Stood Out Most . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
How the Evolution of the Brain Impacts Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Using HEAL in Our Everyday Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Cultivating Positive States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Understanding the Brains Negativity Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
About the Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

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Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring

Your Brain
with Ruth Buczynski, PhD
and Rick Hanson, PhD
Dr. Buczynski: Hello everyone and welcome. I am Dr. Ruth Buczynski, a licensed psychologist in the
State of Connecticut and the President of the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral
Medicine and I am so glad that you are here tonight.
We are going to talk about happiness hardwiring happiness in the brain.
This is a critically important topic; your brain has a lot to do with how happy you are.
I couldnt have a more expert person than my partner tonight, who is Rick Hanson. He is a licensed
psychologist in California and author of several books, most recently Hardwiring Happiness: The New
Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence and that hit the bestseller list last fall.
In addition to that, you probably already know him from Buddhas Brain.
Rick, thanks for being here it is good to talk to you again and to hear your continued thoughts as they
are evolving over the years.
I want to jump right in and to start out, I guess I would like to focus on the brain and how awfully complex
it is it has to be because there are so many organs and systems in our bodies to manage.
Three Operating Systems of the Brain

You have segmented the brain into three operating systems that might help some people understand a
piece of it that they hadnt before. Can we start there?
Dr. Hanson: Oh, sure, and you are right. The brain is in many
ways considered the most complex object known to science
altogether even more complicated than American healthcare!
So, to the bottom line: when you have something that big and
messy and complicated, it is useful to simplify it in some way,
recognizing that we are missing out on some of the details, but
it gives us a kind of roadmap.
Inside each of
us there is a little
lizard, mouse,
and monkey.
The brain has evolved

like building a house
from the bottom up, in
three stages: the brain
stem, the subcortical
region, and the cortex.
If you think about it, the brain has evolved over six hundred million years
of evolution of the nervous system, and it has done so like building a
house from the bottom up, in three stages: the brain stem, the subcortical
region that includes the hippocampus, and then the third, which is the
cortex sitting on top.
Essentially, in terms of evolution, we have the reptilian, early mammalian
and then primate human stages of evolution.

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To really simplify this, it is as if inside each one of us there is a little lizard, a little mouse, and a little
monkey. As the brain evolved, so did its capacity to meet the three fundamental needs of any animal . . .
Dr. Buczynski: Before we jump into that, we have a wide range of
people on the webinar tonight, and Id like to talk about the brain stem.
It manages the autonomic nervous system heartbeat, digestion
things that we dont think about, that just happen on their own when
we are in a healthy state. Can you give us just a little snippet of what
each of the three does?
The brain stem

manages the
ongoing survival/
maintenance of
the body.
Dr. Hanson: Sure that would be great, and people can think of the
brain as it is in themselves; it is kind of fun to realize that the organ that
we are talking about is actively trying to figure out the organ that we are talking about!
So, we have the brain stem it is the most ancient part of the brain. We share features of it with very, very
simple creatures such as little crabs or lizards. The brain stem, as you said, manages the ongoing survival/
maintenance of the body its core functions include heartbeat, breathing and other vital organs.
The subcortical region

includes the hypothalamus,
the thalamus, the basal
ganglia, the hippocampus,
and the amygdala.
Also, little nodes in the brain stem produce major

neurotransmitter systems such as dopamine, the
neurotransmitter that attracts rewards.
Other nodes produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter that
helps us stay calm and even-keeled.
Other nodes generate norepinephrine, which alerts us and

orients us to important things. Other networks inside the brain stem help wake us up and maintain our
alertness this is an important region here for consciousness itself.
Then sitting on top of the brain stem, we have the subcortical region. Sometimes people call that the limbic
system. The generally defined modern usage usually speaks of it as the subcortical region.
This area includes the hypothalamus, which regulates core drives such as thirst or feeling cold and wanting
to put on a sweater; the thalamus which is involved with sensory processing is like a big switchboard; the
basal ganglia, which regulates emotion and activity, is also very involved in reward and motivation for
good or for bad.
Then we have, of course, our good old friends: the hippocampus puts things in perspective and helps form
new memories, and the alarm bell of the brain, the amygdala, is oriented around negative information,
generally speaking.
The Inner Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey
Dr. Buczynski: Why are you giving them animal names, like the monkey brain? You started with the
lizard brain, and I think if people understand this, it might make it easier for them. This is a good way
to help us remember. . .
Dr. Hanson: The brain stem is associated with the evolution of very primitive creatures worms, insects,
fruit flies and all the rest of that, as well as turtles, frogs and lizards reptiles.
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Reptiles also have basal ganglia so reptiles get a little bit of that subcortical region. But what is mostly
associated with the subcortex is mammalian evolution, as you were commenting here.
The human cortex

has roughly tripled
in volume over the
last three million
years of evolution.
That is why I think the brain stem is like having a little lizard living
inside us. A little mouse inside us is handy for the mammalian evolution
of the subcortical, which has seen the development of emotion and
also very powerful social experiences in terms of caring for young and
often bonding with mates.
So that is the second floor of the house of the brain, if you will, the
mammalian house floor the subcortical floor.
Then on top of that, we have the cortex, which in humans has roughly tripled in volume over the last three
million years of evolution.
It has really developed in primates, and especially in modern
humans, the cortex, as people generally know, does things like
complex reasoning, both verbally and visually visual/spatial
reasoning and nonverbal reasoning.
The cortex is the seat of judgment, the executive systems of the
brain, and is set roughly behind the forehead and helps us regulate
our attention, our feelings and our desires.
The cortex is the

seat of judgment and
helps us regulate our
attention, feelings,
and desires.
The whole brain works together, and that part of the brain is, as I said, most associated with primate, and
especially human evolution thus, as a useful simplification of the human brain, we have the inner lizard,
mouse and monkey.
As a useful simplification
of the human brain, we
have the inner lizard,
mouse and monkey.
I dont know about you, Ruth, but I definitely experience each

one of these little critters inside of me!
That is a preview to this framework that I use in my own
personal life. It is very relevant to people raising children and
thinking about themselves in general as well as, certainly, for
people working with others in a helping profession.
So, long story short, any animal whether it is a fruit fly or a human being needs to be safe and avoid
harm, needs to be satisfied and therefore approach rewards, and needs to, in one way or another, connect
with others of its kind.
In other words, we need to attach to others. Obviously, the
ways in which a fruit fly attaches to others are very different
from the way someone does who is prepping for a night at the
prom right?
That said, we have these deep needs.
So, that gives us these three needs: safety, satisfaction and

connection, managed by overarching systems in the brain
that avoid harm, approach rewards and attach to others.
Safety, satisfaction, and

connection are managed
by overarching brain
systems that avoid
harm, approach rewards,
and attach to others.

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This is a very useful framework I have developed, and Ive drawn upon familiar approaches that talk about
the avoiding and approaching tendencies or the preventing or promoting capacities of the brain.
It is overly reductionistic
to deconstruct our
incredibly social nature
to merely avoiding pain
or approaching pleasure.
I have added to that, based on Polyvagal Theory, as well as

work by people like Paul Gilbert and others, who emphasize
our social nature as humans.
To me, it is overly reductionistic to try to deconstruct
our incredibly social nature to merely avoiding pain or
approaching pleasure.
So that framework, then, is a way to think about us as people and start zeroing in on the key resources that
will help us most.
Dr. Buczynski: Lets just summarize to make sure everybody has got it I know several people are taking
notes as they listen: avoiding harm, meeting needs or motivation, approaching rewards, and attaching to
others.
Zones of the Brain: Red Light Green Light

Dr. Buczynski: Now, you also have an interesting way of putting together a red light/green light lets
talk about that a little bit.
Dr. Hanson: Sure. Again, this is a framework it is a way of thinking about, and ultimately, to bring it
down to earth: what are the key experiences that are going to matter
most for people?
What are the key
Or, to put it a little differently, what are the key inner strengths, very
broadly defined, including positive emotion and happiness what
are the inner strengths we want to grow inside? This framework
gives us a map for that.
experiences that
are going to matter
most for people?
To summarize it quickly, as animals evolved, including human beings today, the brain developed, essentially,
two ways of meeting our three core needs for safety, satisfaction and connection, as overarching umbrella
terms.
On the one hand, when there is a basic felt sense of those needs being met in ones core a basic sense of
safety, satisfaction, and connection the brain defaults to its resting state, an equilibrium state. This is a
sustainable, homeostatic condition in which the brain directs the body to repair, refuel, and recover from
bursts of stress.
When there is a basic

sense of safety, satisfaction,
and connection the brain
defaults to the responsive
mode the green zone.
In terms of avoiding, approaching and attaching, in three

broad terms, the mind is colored with a sense of peace,
contentment and love peace in terms of the safety system,
contentment in terms of the satisfaction system, and love
in terms of the connection system.

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That is the good news. I call that the responsive mode of the brain, a term that I and others have used and
I think of it as the green zone.
On the other hand, Mother Nature has endowed us with another setting in the brain the Whoa setting
which is where we experience in our core that one or more of our fundamental needs of safety, satisfaction,
and connection is not met.
Then the brain fires up into its fight/flight stress response mode, or it goes
into an intense freeze mode into the other mobilization and that is the
red zone.
In the red zone,

the body burns
resources
faster than it
takes them in.
In the red zone, which is not meant to be sustainable at all it is a brief

burst the body burns resources faster than it takes them in. Bodily
systems are really disturbed; there is a fundamental sense of deficit and
disturbance, and long-term building projects like strengthening the immune system are put on hold.
In terms of avoiding, approaching and attaching, the mind is colored with a sense of fear, frustration and
heartache.
It is good for
us to be in the
green zone.
Mother Natures plan is for animals to spend most of their time in the
responsive mode. It is sustainable, and it is the evolutionary strategy for
passing on genes that pass on genes.
It feels good to be relatively peaceful, contented, loved, and loving it is
good for us to be in the green zone.
On the other hand, red zone experiences are normal fine but as Robert Sapolsky talks about in his great
book, Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers, most red-zone spikes of stress in the wild end quickly one way or
another, right?
Then the animals go back to long periods of green-zone recovery refueling, renewing, and repairing.
That becomes a problem with modern life. Most of us, at least, in the developed world, are happy, with
some unfortunate exceptions. We are not spending our days running and screaming in terror from charging
lions we dont have severe spikes of red-zone stress.
But on the other hand, we are exposed to mild to moderate chronic stress, with very little time for recovery
which is a complete violation of the evolutionary model.
My work has gotten very interested in how to get out of
red-zone spikes of stress rapidly, and in particular, how to
repeatedly internalize responsive-mode experiences greenzone experiences and to build up the neural substrates of
the responsive mode so that increasingly, we can meet lifes
challenges while staying in the green zone.
In modern life, we
are exposed to mild
to moderate chronic
stress, with very little
time for recovery...
Dr. Buczynski: Yes, because when we are in the green zone,

we are much more likely to be building health, like the immune system killing bacteria, relieving pain
whatever our bodies do naturally to heal. That happens when we are in the green zone, and not so much
when we are in the red zone.
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The red zone

tears us down;
the green zone
builds us up.
Dr. Hanson: You said it right: the red zone tears us down; the green zone
builds us up.
There is the technical term allostatic load the idea that repeated red-zone
experiences gradually accumulate a burden on physical health as well as
mental health, and certainly just everyday well-being.
Again, to bring it down to earth, we all know basically what it feels like to
be mildly peaceful, contented, loved, and loving it is a basic state of global well-being.
We all know what it feels like to be fearful, frustrated or to have that ache in our heart.
We are tough critters; we can handle brief, occasional bursts
of red-zone stress, but it should not become a way of life.
But unfortunately, mild to moderate red-zone stress lets
call it the pink zone is really not good for us.
Dr. Buczynski: Now youve started to sound like Homeland
Security in the United States.
We are tough critters;

we can handle brief,
occasional bursts of redzone stress, but it should
not become a way of life.
Dr. Hanson: Sorry about that!
Dr. Buczynski: So, back to reactive mode certainly the red zone or reactive mode doesnt sound like
anything we would want to be in.
But I know from the practice that I had for years and years and all the patients that I saw, and you
see patients, and people on this webinar tonight are in all walks of life
professionally, and wed probably say that staying out of the red zone is
Staying out of
challenging.
the red zone is

challenging.
You cant just say, Okay, Im not going to do that anymore. It doesnt feel
good I wont do it.
Steps to Keep People in the Green Zone: HEAL

You have some steps for helping people to rewire their brain so that they can take in more positive
experiences. Lets talk about those.
Dr. Hanson: First, a little bit of a foundation. Lets think about the
idea of inner strengths broadly defined, which includes character
virtues like generosity, modesty, patience and others.
Inner strengths also include the classic psychological value terms such
as secure attachment, or the executive functions of self-regulation,
distress tolerance, resilience and others.
Certainly, inner strengths include mindfulness, compassion, and

loving-kindness.
Positive emotions
and positive mood
confer all kinds
of benefits for
both physical and
mental health.

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Character strengths include positive emotions because positive emotions and positive mood confer all
kinds of benefits for both physical and mental health.
We want to cultivate
inner strengths.
I call those inner strengths happiness, and thats really broadly

defined that is what I mean in the title of my book: Hardwiring
Happiness.
We all want inner strengths. We want to cultivate inner strengths in

ourselves, we want to cultivate them in our children or patients or students, but how do we do that?
Inner strengths are traits: they are stable qualities in a person. As stable
qualities, they are built out of brain structure.
How do you grow

positive traits in
neural structure?
Then the question really becomes whether it is in therapy or everyday

life how do you grow traits, positive traits, in neural structure?
That is where the neural psychology of learning shows us that this is a
two-stage process. Quickly here, it moves from activation to installation.
The neural
psychology of
learning shows
us a two-stage
process.
In other words, we need to have a positive, useful mental state typically

an experience of the inner strength itself or some factor of it.
If you want to develop mindfulness, you want to have more moments in
which you are mindful.
If you want to develop gratitude as an orientation to life in general, you
have more moments in which you are grateful.
So now we have that activated mental state, but we need to install it as a

lasting neural state: activation and installation.
Once we have that neural trait growing inside us as an inner
strength, it fosters states of it, which then give us new
opportunities to install it as a positive trait.
By the way as we will talk about more, I suspect this process
of from state to trait to state to state, works positively and
negatively.
We have that
activated mental state,
but we need to install
it as a lasting neural
state: activation and
installation.
If you want to develop

mindfulness, you
want to have more
moments in which
you are mindful.
In other words, negative states rapidly become negative neural

traits, which then foster more negative mental states.
The brain is in fact biased toward that process of negative learning
and relatively poor at and weak at the process of positive learning
even though positive states are the primary source of positive
traits.
So that is what I have gotten very focused on, because most
positive states are just wasted on the brain.

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They are momentarily pleasant, but if they dont transfer

those short-term memory buffers to long-term storage, there
is no lasting value.
That is the dirty little secret in psychotherapy and many
other paths of growth and healing that I am sure we will talk
about.
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The brain is biased

toward negative learning
even though positive
states are the primary
source of positive traits.
To deal with that, what I have done is to draw upon what

people intuitively tend to do from time to time, but I have tried to develop it in a very thorough way and
I summarize it as the HEAL process; I use the acronym HEAL this is what you have asked me to speak
to here.
HEAL is the
activation and
installation
process.
This acronym covers the activation and installation process. Then, as I hope
we will talk about, you can use it for those specific inner strengths or qualities
of mind and heart that you want to cultivate in yourself or in other people
because those are the strengths that are really going to do the most good.
The H in HEAL stands for Have. You have the positive experience in the first
place either because you noticed one you are already having or because
you actually create one.
Now, you have it going. It is activated. But if you dont install it, it is going to be wasted on your brain.
Then you go to E, Enrich: you can enrich the experience. Borrowing or turning to the famous saying
in neuroscience that Neurons that fire together wire together you want to get a lot of neurons firing
together so that they start wiring together.
There are five well-known factors in the neuropsychology of learning that promote installation that
promote emotional psychological change as well as
other kinds of learning.
These are the five factors (and you can do one or more
of them).
Five factors in the

neuropsychology of learning
promote installation.
Duration the longer you stay with the experience, the

more it will sink in.
Intensity the more intense you have the experience, maybe it is an emotion, maybe it is a body state,
maybe it is an inclination of commitment, maybe it is an insight into your own psychology but whatever
it is, the more intense it is, the more there will be the formation
of neural structure.
The more that you bring

experiences into your
body, the more neural
structure they will build.
Multimodality is the third factor. The more that you bring

experiences down into your body and have them be emotionally
rich, maybe even enact the experience, like sitting up a little
straighter to support an experience of determination or inner
strength the more neural structure they will build.

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The brain is
a big novelty
detector.
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Novelty is the fourth factor the brain is a big novelty detector. A lot of research
shows that when we relate to things that are new, that heightens learning.
Personal Relevance is the last factor Why does this matter to me? Why is
it salient for me?
Those are the factors of Enriching. You can do one or more of them and build up any one of them.
The third aspect, or step, of the HEAL process is A for Absorb. This
is where we prime memory systems we sensitize them to really
turbo-charge the installation process, by intending and sensing that
the experience is going into us.
The third aspect of

HEAL is Absorb.
Maybe we visualize it sinking in, like water into a sponge. With children, we will talk about putting a jewel
in the treasure chest of the heart. This is just a kind of giving oneself over to the experience letting it land
inside. Those are aspects of absorbing.
Have, Enrich, and

Absorb are the three
fundamental steps
of taking in the good
and installing a
positive experience as
a lasting neural trait.
Have, Enrich, and Absorb are the three fundamental steps of

taking in the good, of installing a positive experience as a lasting
neural trait.
It is a little bit like a fire: in the first step, Have, you light the fire
and you get the positive experience going.
In the second step, Enrich, you keep that fire burning and you add
fuel to make it burn more brightly.
In the third step, Absorb, you warm yourself by the fire you
really let it sink in.
The last step in the process is L for Link, and it is the optional one. It
holds simultaneously in awareness some positive experience with some
negative material painful thoughts or feelings or memories that this
positive material is a natural antidote for.
Through holding it in the mind, since neurons that fire together wire
together, the positive material will gradually associate with the negative
material, soothing, easing, and eventually even replacing it.
Link holds
simultaneously
in awareness
positive and
negative
experience.
To finish here probably it all sounds a bit complicated but it really

boils down to four words: have it enjoy it and especially enjoy because
that is when the installation occurs.
Have it - enjoy
it and especially
enjoy because
that is when
the installation
occurs.
Or to summarize it have more episodes over the course of a day thirty

seconds/ten seconds at a time, and inside the individual episodes where
you are taking in the good, you want more depth of engagement so it
really sinks in.
It is reasonable for people to look for those opportunities in everyday life,
a handful of times a day half a dozen times a day.

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You will help

your brain turn
activated, useful
mental states into
lasting value.
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Inside each episode in which you are taking in the good, it means a
dozen seconds or more not a huge deal.
By doing this repeatedly, you will help your brain turn these activated,
useful mental states into something of lasting value woven into your
brain and thus into your life.
Dr. Buczynski: So, I want to save Linking a little bit, put that aside for
now because it is more complex and we are going to go through that in
a little more detail. But could you give us an example of the first part of this?
Dr. Hanson: Yes. Lets suppose that you are just moving through your day and you have a nice moment
with another person maybe a connection with your partner or with your pet many positive experiences
are very often related to animal companions, seriously.
Perhaps it is something quite powerful maybe your boss praises you or your child runs up to you and
goes, Oh, I love you, Mommy.
So, you are having that experience. The question is, what do you do with it?
Actually, I should probably back up.
First of all, did you notice that something good happened in the first place? We often dont.
Second, if you notice what is good someone was nice to you, someone complimented you, there was
warmth coming toward you do you feel anything as a result?
Third, even if you notice what was nice you actually feel
something as a result do you stay with it for those dozen
seconds or more that really will help it move from those
short-term memory buffers into long-term emotional storage
and implicit memory?
Most positive
experiences are quite
mild, and when you have
them, let them land.
Lets suppose, then, that you do. Lets suppose that when
your friend at work is clearly warm toward you, you realize, Oh, you like me.
It doesnt need to be a million-dollar moment; most positive experiences are quite mild. On the zero-to-ten
intensity scale, they are the ones and twos of everyday life but it is real for you.
When you have the positive experience, you let it land. You let yourself have it which has an implicit
benefit, by the way, in terms of taking in the good. You are being kind to yourself you are treating
yourself like you matter.
The benefits of
repeatedly taking
in the good
fall into three
categories.
The benefits of repeatedly taking in the good fall into three categories.
One is that we are growing specific resources inside.
Second, implicitly, we are getting better control over our attention and
we are treating ourselves like we matter and we are being active we are
being present in our own life.

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We can gradually
sensitize the brain to
become more efficient
at converting positive
mental states into
lasting neural traits.
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Third, research is beginning to indicate that through repeatedly

taking in the good, much as the brain can become increasingly
sensitized to the bad and can become faster and more efficient at
turning bad experiences into bad neural structure I am using the
word bad obviously quite loosely here it looks like we can
gradually sensitize the brain to become more and more efficient at
converting positive mental states into lasting neural traits, which
is the third type of benefit of taking in the good.
So there you are: you are being with the positive experience and
you are letting yourself have it.
Interestingly, it is quite hard for people to simply sustain an enjoyable experience for a dozen seconds.
What happens, both clinically and in everyday life, when people start doing this practice is they often
bump into various blocks and it is startling to realize how unwilling the mind is to give the gift to oneself
of a positive experience.
People often feel they dont deserve to feel good or they shouldnt try to
feel good; their job is to make others feel good even though, truly, as
you gradually fill your own cup, you have more inside yourself to offer to
others.
So, that would be a simple example of the first three steps.

We are going to talk about the Link step later. I will give you a little different
example: for people who are busy both of us included doing a lot of
emails and a lot of activities in the day, do we experience accomplishment?
It is quite hard
for people to
simply sustain
an enjoyable
experience
for a dozen
seconds.
When we send out an important email or we finish an interview or a conversation, do we let it land: Okay
job done. Is there relief? Do we get some little sense of success? All right I didnt suck too badly at
that. Good! We need to let that sink in.
It is startling to
realize how unwilling
the mind is to give
the gift to oneself of a
positive experience.
So far, I have spoken about the attaching to others system the

connection system in terms of feeling cared about. I just spoke
there, for example, about the approaching reward system, a sense
of accomplishment.
A third type of experience that would be good to take in would be
related to the safety system our need to avoid harm.
For example, a person could be aware of the sense of relaxing as

they exhale: as the parasympathetic wing of the nervous system activates to manage exhaling, which is
what it does, it also helps us relax. A person could register this nice sense of relaxing while exhaling.
Or a person could register the sense of inner strength, One way I keep myself safe is I am a determined,
serious person who is willful and strong inside. We could let a sense of inner strength sink in as well.

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Why Novelty Is Important

Dr. Buczynski: As you were talking, I was curious about novelty why is novelty so important?
Dr. Hanson: It goes back to the inner monkey, mouse, and lizard: as those critters are moving through
their environments, things that were familiar, they did not need to learn from they already understood
them: Oh, this is where I live/Thats a familiar sound. I dont need to pay attention to it.
The brain is constantly allocating its resources where should we
allocate them?
The brain is a very metabolically expensive organ, and even though
it is just two to three percent of body weight, it uses twenty to
twenty-five percent of the oxygen and glucose in our blood.
As animals evolved, anything that was new signaled either a threat
or an opportunity.
As animals evolved,
anything that was new
signaled either a threat
or an opportunity.
14
The brain uses

twenty to twentyfive percent of the
oxygen and glucose
in our blood.
If it was a threat, they really needed to pay attention to it. If it was

an opportunity that was new, they needed to pursue it.
For example, in the hippocampus, this part of the brain is centrally

involved in learning and memory and not just things like the
multiplication tables but learning where the good water is, or
learning how to get together with another primate in your band
when you are not an alpha but you are a beta and you have to be a more skillful person.
Betas pass on as many genes as alphas and, on average, betas are smarter, which gives former betas like
me some comfort!
Dr. Buczynski: What do you mean exactly? This is interesting and I imagine it would give comfort to a
lot of people
Dr. Hanson: Thinking back to high school, junior high, and all
the rest of that, in primate bands there are alphas that are at the
top of the dominance hierarchy and then you have the betas that
are not.
Research on primates generally shows that betas do pass on as
many genes as alphas I will spare you the graphic details and
to do that, they need to be more clever, including socially clever.
In primate bands,
there are alphas that
are at the top of the
dominance hierarchy
and then you have the
betas that are not.
So, betas in primate bands will tend to band together against an alpha or they will form coalitions or be
like a grooming partner with females, or females will do that with males get together with them and then
lay a foundation of relatedness.
Now, thinking back to my own position as a beta in junior high school and high school, it gives me some
comfort to think that betas can still have fun and tend to be a little bit smarter as a result.
So, long story short, in the hippocampus, just to summarize, when we encounter something that is novel,
little tiny nodes, maybe a couple of cubic millimeters in size or even smaller, inside this part of the brain
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Novelty promotes
neuroplasticity and
we have heightened
learning for what is
novel.
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will increase their activity, and they will direct other parts of the brain
to become more active in forming new structure.
Novelty promotes neuroplasticity the capacity of the brain to be
changed by its experiences and we have heightened learning for
what is novel.
To bring it down to earth, if a person is having a fairly familiar positive

experience like, Oh, that coffee tastes good, or they are touching
someone they care about maybe their intimate partner,
or they are experiencing a little gratitude, or maybe they
If we bring beginners mind,
are doing some meditative practice and it is getting more
peaceful it is easy to take those experiences for granted.
and therefore a sense of
But if instead, we see them, as the poet put it, Through
the eyes of a child; or to use the Zen idea of beginners
mind, then we bring that beginners mind to what it feels
like to relax while breathing or to feel grateful for the
blessings in our life.
novelty and freshness to

the experience, it will build
more neural structure.
If we bring that beginners mind and therefore a sense of novelty and freshness to the experience, it will
build more neural structure.
What to Do When Experiences Are Negative

Dr. Buczynski: Now, not all experiences are positive. Lets focus a little bit about what we should do
when we have negative experiences.
Negative
experiences are an
essential part of life.
Dr. Hanson: Yes negative experiences obviously are an essential

part of life I think of the Buddhas Four Noble Truths, which are
utterly psychological.
The first truth is, There is suffering. To my way of thinking about

it, Ruth, I use a framework that has helped me tremendously, personally and professionally, to think about
the three ways to engage the mind. In effect, there are three ways to practice to engage the mind.
The first way is to simply be with what is there, witness it, feel the
feelings, experience the experience, maybe investigate it, maybe feel
down to where its softer and younger; certainly try to hold it in a big
space of spacious awareness.
We are not trying to change it directly. It might shift as a result of being
witnessed rather than identified with, but we are not deliberately trying
to change it in the moment.
There are three

ways to practice
to engage the
mind.
The second way to engage the mind is to deliberately try to release what is negative in other words, try
to help tension drain out of the body, for example, or to argue against negative, foolish thoughts, or release
unwholesome desires like getting buzzed every night . . . That is the second way to engage the mind.
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The third way to engage the mind is to cultivate the positive to grow flowers, as it were.
If you think of the mind as a garden, we can witness it, pull weeds, or plant flowers or, in six words, we
can let be let go let in.
That gives us a natural framework, and an appropriate one, for
how to deal with negative experiences.
In the first place, we want to witness them we can just be with
them.
If you think of a mind

as a garden, we can
let be - let go - let in.
We try to hold them in spacious awareness; maybe we try to bring to bear other factors that help us feel
our negative feelings, like self-compassion or mindfulness or a sense of inner allies with us.
When it feels right,

we try to replace
what we have
rehearsed with some
positive alternative.
At some point, it feels right like the Goldilocks point not too
tall, not too short, not too hot, not too cold the just right place
when it feels like it is time to move on, I am not suppressing the
emotion but it is time to help it move on out of Dodge.
Then we move on to the releasing phase reducing the negative in
various ways draining tension out of the body, venting, turning it
over to God, or whatever it is we let it go as best we can.
In the third phase, when it feels right, we try to replace

what we have released with some positive alternative.
The cycle that I have gone through might take half a
minute with some familiar negative material like maybe
just a momentary irritation or something that didnt go
well, or maybe something from the past that is well
understood Oh that was my critical stepfather; thats
my little inner critic yammering away. I know what
you sound like, dude Im not going to listen to you
anymore.
Sometimes it takes a year

or more to move out of the
being with way of relating to
the negative, to then shifting
into helping it release, and
then eventually replacing it
with something positive.
From all that, we can move on fairly quickly.

On the other hand, sometimes it takes a year or more, like grief over a serious loss, to move out of the
being with way of relating to the negative, to then shifting into helping it release, and then eventually
replacing it with something positive.
All three ways to engage the mind are important.
Wise effort
reduces what is
negative and takes
in what is positive.
The first one is primary: if we dont really do it fully, if we dont be

with our experience fully, then if we try to shift into getting rid of
the bad and getting in with the good, it wont work it doesnt have
traction. We need to go back to really feeling it.
On the other hand, sometimes people can get lost in just being with
their mind. In my view, that orientation to the mind of pure witnessing

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has gotten overvalued in some quarters in psychotherapy and now dual approaches and even some spiritual
approaches.
It is fundamentally important, but even as big a fan of
mindfulness as the Buddha, he also emphasized wise effort,
which reduces what is negative and takes in what is positive.
My own work is really focused these days on the third way to
engage the mind, including building up resources inside to be
able to be with our experience.
If you dont grow

flowers in the garden of
your mind, the weeds
will come back.
We need all three of these if you dont grow flowers in the garden of your mind, the weeds will come
back.
Moving from the Negative to the Positive

Dr. Buczynski: Lets go through that process with an example.
Dr. Hanson: Sure. Lets suppose that something happens and you notice that you feel hurt. Maybe you
are in a situation with somebody at work or at home it could be a teenager, your partner, a co-worker or
boss.
Somebody says something that is dismissive and devaluing of you. Its unjust. Youve been wronged.
Lets say that is really true.
You are upset about it. The first way to engage the mind is to be aware that you are getting upset. You
would try to slow it down inside; you would try to unpack what is happening maybe sense into your
body, What am I feeling? Whats younger whats standing out from my childhood and hypothetically,
it could be my critical stepfather . . . You would be with the upset.
Then, when it feels right maybe after, in this case, a minute or two or three you would start shifting
into, Okay, phew! Its time to settle down time to come out
of the red zone.
In other words, if we are upset, the same machinery that
evolved to help our ancestors to get away from charging lions
is activated today when we are stuck in traffic or when someone
says something that is hurtful.
By definition, we are in the red zone when we are upset. But
now we want to come out of that red zone as rapidly as is
appropriate and authentically possible.
The same machinery

that evolved to help
our ancestors get away
from charging lions is
activated today when
we are stuck in traffic
or when someone says
something hurtful.
Maybe after a minute or two or three of feeling hurt, we start

saying, Okay, phew! We take some big breaths; we calm the body; maybe we wash our face; we run
water over our hands these are soothing and calming.
Maybe we stand up against the inner critic in our mind that voice of our critical stepfather; we push
against it, and we reduce the self-criticism that is happening.
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Maybe we let the feelings flow; we just visualize that they are flowing out of our body. We are in the
second way to engage the mind we are letting go. That is good practice.
The majority
of methods in
mental health are
about releasing
the negative.
If you think about it, the majority of methods in mental health are about
the second way to engage the mind: releasing the negative.
Then, when it feels right again, after maybe a minute or two or three
we start relating to the mind in the third way, which is to grow the
positive.
This is particularly matched to what happened here in my example,

which is an issue of the attaching system: someone in a relationship has said something hurtful and
devaluing to us.
So, the supplies the resource experiences or inner strengths that really work for this issue would also
come from the attaching system. They will be related to our need for connection.
In other words, if someone says something hurtful, if you call up a feeling of being safe, thats nice but
it doesnt address being hurt or attacked in a relationship.
If you were to call up some sense of gratitude that makes you feel satisfied
in terms of that second core need, thats nice but feeling grateful is not
going to address the fact that you have been injured by someone who
has unjustly criticized you or put you down or left you out.
You need
experiences that
are targeted.
You need experiences that are targeted and my book has lots of examples for targeting.
You are looking for the experiences that are specifically targeted and will really help you.
In this example, you might deliberately talk about the upset with a friend, which will give you naturally a
sense of being cared about by your friend here, which will answer to the experience of being put down by
that adversary over there.
The positive will

go down into those
deeper layers and
soothe and even
replace the negative.
You could also bring to mind memories, including the felt sense in
the body that is general, of being cared about your family cares
about you and your partner cares about you.
You might even bring to mind other experiences with this person
who has put you down in which they were nice to you and respected
you. Maybe you just got in the middle of their bad day and they
didnt even realize that they had hurt you. This is the third way to engage the mind you are resourcing
yourself.
Then, if you really, really want to we are going to get into this you can use that Linking step by bringing
to mind this sense of feeling cared about by the friend at work or memories of others who have been loving
and caring toward you, or maybe other experiences of feeling worthy and valuable.
That would be your positive experience. You might deliberately get a sense of that positive material of
feeling cared about, being very prominent in awareness in the foreground, but also having a dim sense
of this lingering hurt and upset in relationship to this other person who put you down in the background.
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If you are just simply aware of both of those at the same time, then you might even get a sense, if you want
to really go for it, of the positive experience of being cared about really going into that negative material,
maybe even reaching down to younger layers of that negative material where, as a child, you felt put
down and hurt by this hypothetical critical stepfather.
The positive will go down into those deeper layers and eventually soothe and even replace that negative
material.
Linking the Negative to the Positive

Dr. Buczynski: Now, you are talking about Linking. I want to make sure people understand this. Lets lay
it out for them again. Lets walk through yet another example, in a different kind of scenario.
Dr. Hanson: Yes, and this time, lets use the safety system.
Lets suppose something has happened that makes a person feel anxious, or lets suppose, more generally,
that a person is just tense about being anxious maybe because they were born that way or because they
have had life experiences that, understandably, have traumatized them or have unsettled them, even if it is
not official PTSD posttraumatic stress disorder.
Lets say the person is anxious I will make up an example here in which they are in a work situation
and they are involved in a project and something has happened in which they are now worried about that
project being successful.
Obviously, in addition to doing what they can out there in the world to make that project be successful I
dont mean to, obviously, give up on intervening in the world because we are working with our mind, and
they all work together.
Taking positive
action as best
you can is very
good for peoples
mental health.
In fact, there is a lot of research that shows that taking positive action
as best you can is very good for peoples mental health but in addition
to that, now you are anxious. There is a threat, and your avoiding harm
system in your brain is blinking red: Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
Maybe your other two systems are green you feel like there is enough
in your life in terms of satisfaction. Maybe you also feel related to other
people who like and love you the attaching system is staying green.
Thats fine, but the safety system is blinking red.
What do you do? Lets go through it.

The first two ways to engage the mind I have described: you would be with it, negative and bad; you would
also try to release your anxiety about the prospect of your project at work not being successful.
Now, you are getting ready to take in the good using the HEAL process for this upset that is still there
inside you.
What you would look for, then, are experiences that are in the safety system and also relate to avoiding
harm.

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These would be experiences or inner strengths inside that help us deal with threats, such as feeling relaxed
in the body or noticing that you are all right in a fundamental, primal way right now.
You may not have been all right in the past; you may not be all right in the future but you recognize that
your body is telling you that, in this moment, you are actually all right.
Right now is a profoundly powerful and accessible way to feel safer and less anxious in the moment.
Or, you recognize protections, the things around you and I will go through that example in a second
and also your sense of feeling strong.
What you might do in reference to this sense of worry about your project is focus on relaxing your body
a bit.
To relax your body, you do some long exhalations do whatever
works for you to relax. You might imagine fluffy white clouds.
If you can sneak away, you could go to the restroom and wash
your face . . .
What you might do in

reference to this sense
of worry about your
project is focus on
relaxing your body.
You could bring to mind a sense of other resources in your life:

Okay, even if this project fails, I have other resources in my
life. I am not going to lose my job. People still love me. Im
working my way reasonably toward retirement. Its not a catastrophic threat.
Obviously, you dont want to make things up the approach I am describing is not looking on the bright
side with the power of positive thinking, which is mostly just wasted on the brain.
I am talking about realism seeing the whole mosaic of reality, not just getting hijacked by the brains
evolved negativity bias that tends to make us focus on the negative.
In terms of key experiences, to go back into the example, I might call up a sense of protections, or I might
call up a sense of inner strength, that says, I can handle this. Even if my project goes down the drain, I am
a strong person; Ive been successful in the past I will be successful in the future. I can really feel this.
Those would be some of the kinds of positive experiences you could call up in the Have step you are
having them.
Once you have them, it is very straightforward. You Enrich the experience in a very natural and intuitive
way by feeling it for the dozen or two dozen seconds it takes to heighten the installation and neural
structure.
You Absorb the sense of relaxing or a sense that you are all right, right now, or a sense of protection or a
sense of being strong.
Then, in terms of the Linking step, lets just focus on the sense of being strong. You would have a very
prominent felt sense of being strong. You are centered in that determination this is not some kind of
macho chest-thumping, but it is resolve a sense of endurance.
That is a very important aspect of strength and many people if I may say, women in particular may
underestimate how strong they are because it is not, as I said, this macho kind of strength it is enduring.
It is important, to respect yourself for being able to endure.
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Now, you are resting in this positive experience of strength. On the side of your awareness off to the side
of the stage of awareness you would have this anxiety about your
project or work not being successful.
You gradually get
a sense of being
strong, even with
anxiety there.
You gradually get a sense of being strong, even with anxiety there. You
might even get a sense of that strength connecting with or even talking
to some people will imagine a little conversation with their adult
grounded in a positive state and activated positive trait.
They will imagine that adult talking to or petting or cuddling

or holding younger layers of their psyche that are involved
in that negative material maybe an underlying feeling deep
down inside while growing up where they were feeling weak or
overpowered.
The current positive experience of being strong would gradually
ease the old feeling of being weak.
The current positive

experience of
being strong would
gradually ease the old
feeling of being weak.
Again, I am walking you through with a lot of detail in actual practice, people do this on the fly in a very
natural way. When they do it, the key, though, is to actually do it.
If we dont go through
the process, negative
states are very quickly
going to convert to
negative neural traits.
If we dont go through the process, negative states, like being

worried about a project at work or anything else, are very quickly
going to convert to negative neural traits.
It is the brains tendency to over-learn from negative experiences.
That is what helped our ancestors to survive.
But on the other hand, if you give yourself this opportunity

a handful of times every day or even more to register
positive experience, you can heal yourself over time.
Increasingly, then, when threats occur, you dont go into
the red zone.
If you give yourself this

opportunity to register
positive experience, you
can heal yourself over time.
When losses occur, you dont go into the red zone in

terms of the satisfaction system.
When rejections or separations occur in terms of our social needs managed by the attaching to other
system you dont go into the red zone.
Often you are dealing

with tough things, but
you are doing so on
the basis of having
grown resources
inside yourself.
You are still engaged with life. You are not sitting in a cave in
Tibet or just eating bonbons on the beach often you are dealing
with tough things, but you are doing so on the basis of having
grown resources inside yourself.
Dr. Buczynski: Thank you. This has been great lots of new
ideas since the last time we talked.

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To everyone, Rick, as I mentioned before, is the author most recently of Hardwiring Happiness: The New
Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence. He is also the author of Buddhas Brain and Just
One Thing.
Rick, thank you so much this is so exciting. There are so many good ideas here, and I really appreciate
you giving us your time to walk us through all of them. Thank you.
Dr. Hanson: Oh, its a pleasure. As a neuropsychologist, I find it really exciting to see the applications
of the new brain science and their wonderful opportunities and your Brain Series is wonderful making
this information available to people to improve their lives.
Dr. Buczynski: Thanks.

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TalkBack Segment with Ron Siegel, PsyD and Kelly McGonigal, PhD
Dr. Buczynski: Well, it is always fun to talk with Rick Hanson and I am eager to begin to hear what the
two of you think of that. We are going to start our Talkback Session now, and this is the time when we
reflect on what has been said and chew on it and see what else we can learn from it and clarify some of
the ideas.
In this series, this whole series, I have been joined by two of my colleagues, two experts: Dr. Kelly
McGonigal and Dr. Ron Siegel.
Kelly is an award-winning health psychology instructor at Stanford University and she is also at Stanford
Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. She is also the author of The Willpower
Instinct, which just came out in paperback.
Ron is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and he is the author of
several books including The Mindfulness Solution.
So, guys, Im looking forward to jumping into this with you. Thanks for being here. And lets start, as we
always do, where we just look at what stood out to you most in this session? And, Kelly, why dont we
start with you?
What Stood Out Most
Dr. McGonigal: You know, the thing that stands out to me the most was the recognition that positive
emotions are a resource rather than necessarily an end in itself.
Rick talked about positive emotions as building character and being
character strengths and I think we so often think about, Well, I
just want to be happy because its better to be happy than not happy,
and Im just going to pursue happiness.
Positive emotions
are a resource
rather than an end.
And there is some interesting psychology research that believing you need to be happy and pursuing
happiness for that reason actually makes people less happy.
Believing you need

to be happy makes
people less happy.
This is a very different way of thinking about happiness: that we need

to cultivate positive emotions like gratitude and love and awe because
they make us better versions of ourselves; they give us strength and
then they become something that we draw on during times of suffering.
And this is very consistent with our research at the Center for Compassion that it is not enough to
be willing to make contact with suffering, whether you are helping
someone else or dealing with your own suffering; it is so important
It is important to
to be able to have a reserve of positive states that can be brought into
have a reserve of
the experience of suffering.
And the way that Rick describes this process and now we are
beginning to give people tools for thinking about how to actually do
that. I am very impressed and very inspired by that.
positive states that

can be brought
into the experience
of suffering.

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Dr. Buczynski: How about you, Ron what stood out to you?
Dr. Siegel: Well, I am also inspired by Ricks emphasis on cultivating positive emotions and really
outlining exactly why and how that is of use to us in terms of enhancing both our emotional and cognitive
capacities.
I am also delighted each time I hear Rick, to hear how he is getting each time comes up with another
way to take a complex concept and make it really graspable and
really understandable.
To think of [the brain]
as the lizard, the

mouse, and the monkey
helps us visualize it
in a way that makes it
experience-near for us.
And the ones that stood out here for me were certainly the idea
the lizard, mouse and monkey inside of us you know, even as
people talk about the reptilian and mammalian brain and stuff,
but to think of it as the lizard, the mouse and the monkey helps
us to visualize it in a way that I think makes it very experiencenear for us.
Certainly the notion of HEAL that he has worked out an acronym for how to create and how to
particularly take the time to absorb and integrate positive emotional experiences, I think is a really
wonderful contribution.
And, finally, seeing that there are basically these three systems
you know, the system of longing for safety, for satisfaction, for
connection and that there are emotions that correspond to those:
the sense that when we have safety, we have a sense of peace;
when we have satisfaction, we have a sense of contentment; and
that when we have connection, we feel love in some way and
how these are different from and opposite from the moments of
fear, frustration and heartbreak.
When we have safety,

we have a sense of
peace; when we have
satisfaction, we have a
sense of contentment;
and when we have
connection, we feel
love.
Just thinking in terms of having these three sets of needs I think

can help us that when we are in a state, either a positive state, to
notice whats going on and to be able to appreciate it; or if we are in a negative, if we are in a painful state,
to see exactly which of these needs isnt getting met, and to understand that.
And, again, I think that helps us to take it not so personally, but to be able to accept the experience better.
We have this
sensitivity to novelty
and this tendency to
zone out and not notice
that which is familiar.
Finally, just a couple of little points that just struck me as

delightful and very true: that Mother Nature wants us to be
frightened. I think is a very nice way of putting what I think
all of us experience a great deal if we introspect, which is, My
fear plays an enormous role in human experience and that
this is very adaptive, to be afraid, because then we are likely
to both grasp opportunities when they come our way and avoid
misfortunes.
And related to this, the notion that we do have this sensitivity to novelty and this tendency to zone out and
not notice that which is familiar. And we all experience this in terms of habituation and in terms of the
phenomena Rick didnt talk about at this time but the notion of the hedonic treadmill: that so many of
the things that we pursue, to try to feel a sense of well-being or happiness, we wind up getting addicted to.
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We need more and more of them just to feel the same sense of well-being.
We see that with money, we see that with fame, we see that with popularity all sorts of things like this
and that that might be tied to this very, very basic notion that the organism evolved to seek out novelty
because it represented either opportunity or threat.
I thought that was a very interesting and useful point.
How the Evolution of the Brain Impacts Us

Dr. Buczynski: Kelly, Rick talked in the beginning of the webinar about the evolution of the brain.
Many of us are in leadership roles where we might be thinking about the person that we are working with
and their brain, or we might even want to be teaching them about their brain.
How would this concept about the evolution of the brain how would that be relevant or helpful?
Dr. McGonigal: I think one of the most interesting and important things that Rick talked about was how
evolution operates in the brain that it doesnt basically take an old brain and completely overhaul and
give you a new and improved brain, but that evolution is more like getting upgrades that will increase
the flexibility and diversity of human responses.
But, you know, evolution doesnt get rid of what he would refer
to as the lizard brain and the other aspects of the brain that
seem more primitive.
And that is really important for people to understand that there
is no way to fundamentally remove some of the experiences we
have that feel maybe irrational or emotional things like stress or
anxiety, things like social conflict.
One of the most

interesting and
important things Rick
talked about was how
evolution operates in
the brain.
These are things that are part of what it means to be human, and evolution has given us also diversity
and flexibility about which systems are dominant and our choice of
responses.
Evolution has
given us diversity
and flexibility.
And that gives us a lot of, I think, common humanity and self-compassion.
And even to be able to recognize which system might be dominant

what mode you might be operating from, and to recognize that as a
fundamental human need, that evolution has maintained because it is
important to our well-being.
And I think this just goes a long way in helping people not feel like
there is something fundamentally wrong with them because they
have these experiences that we sometimes devalue or are looking to
escape or evolve away from.
This goes a long

way in helping
people not feel like
there is something
fundamentally
wrong with them.

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Using HEAL in Our Everyday Lives

Dr. Buczynski: Thanks. Ron, how can we take Ricks idea of HEAL he went into H-E-A-L and apply
that to our everyday lives?
This systematic set

of steps contrasts
with many traditional
psychotherapeutic
approaches.
Dr. Siegel: I think it is enormously applicable. Just to review it, the

H in HEAL is Have, which is really simply to notice when some
kind of positive emotional experience is occurring.
The E is to Enrich, which is to, in essence, think about it a little bit,

to allow ourselves to appreciate it, to see, for example, if somebody
is kind to us, to see other ways they may have been kind to us, or to
resonate with other moments of kindness in our lives to Absorb it, to spend the time to hang out with it
for a while, to deliberately savor the experience.
And then finally and he said this one is optional is to Link it; that
when we are having this more positive emotional experience, to also
bring to mind something which has been troubling to us and perhaps
notice that that troubling event exists against the backdrop of this
positive experience.
So it is very nice to have a systematic set of steps that we can follow
to really absorb and incorporate these positive emotional experiences.
What I think has

been neglected in
psychotherapeutic
traditions is this
idea that we savor
the positive.
And what strikes me is how this contrasts with many traditional psychotherapeutic approaches, because
many traditional psychotherapeutic approaches actually turn their attention deliberately, mostly toward
what is painful, with the idea that things that have been painful are
due to past traumas, large or small, and that it is necessary, in order to
Rick is encouraging
integrate these often pushed-away experiences, to open to them and
turn our attention to them.
us to appreciate all
of the toothaches
that arent here at
this moment.
And there is certainly a great deal of merit to that in healing as well.

But what often I think has been neglected in psychotherapeutic
traditions is this other idea that we might actually savor the positive.
And we see that I think somewhat more in religious traditions: I think of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese
Zen master who is fond of saying, I want you to remember the last time that you had a really bad
toothache. Remember what that was like. He said, I have wonderful
news for you today: no toothache!
And that is really what Rick is encouraging us to do, is to appreciate all
of the toothaches that arent here at this moment.
And the way he suggests that we even take the fact that we are, as far as
we know, not terribly sick right now I know, Kelly, you have a bit of a
cold, but nonetheless, to appreciate how powerful that is.
It is a very
useful antidote
to start thinking
in terms of the
HEAL process.
And, frankly, for me, you know, it runs so strongly against a sort of ethnic tradition that I come from I
come from a New York Jewish ethnic tradition where the standard line is, You think youve got tsores
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27
and tsores means grief, bad luck, difficult things happening and the entire culture tends to circulate
around this.
And it is a very for me I find it a very useful antidote, to start thinking in terms of the HEAL process and
say, Yes, yes, that pain and suffering is there. We are not going to sugarcoat it; we are not going to deny
it. This isnt just, you know, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I dont feel so bad.
But nonetheless, we can cultivate these positive states of mind.
Cultivating Positive States

Dr. Buczynski: Kelly, we are going to focus a little bit on Rick he talked about the red light/the green
light and so forth.
How can we help people, when they are entering a red-light zone
or red-light situation, how can we help people deal with that more
effectively?
Dr. McGonigal: I think first of all, even just to talk about them as
opportunities to cultivate positive states.
When you are in

a red-light state, it
is often because
a need is unmet.
You know, so often we are motivated to escape the red-light state as soon as we are in it, if we have any
awareness of it, and we may turn to behaviors that are actually quite counterproductive.
And one of the things that Rick talked about that I think is incredibly insightful and important is that when
you are in a red-light state, it is often because a need is unmet and something happened that triggered the
felt sense of that need being unmet whether a lack of safety or a lack of getting your basic needs met for
rewards or mastery or flow, or a sense of disconnection or social conflict.
And he says that the antidote that will be balancing, the positive state that will be balancing and relieve
that suffering, is connected to the need that is unmet that it is not enough to turn for any positive
experience, but to actually embrace the unmet need and look for strategies that allow you to connect the
essence of that need, even while you are experiencing pain around the fact that it is unmet or that it has
been triggered in you.
Loving has the

same effect as
the experience
of being loved.
And that is so important.
And one of the things, examples that he gives is that if you are feeling
lonely or disconnected or rejected, that practicing loving has the same
effect as the experience of being loved, and that when you are experiencing
that need being unmet, you dont necessarily need to go out and find people
to prove that they love you, but to choose an attitude of love or be able to commit an act of love will meet
the need in the same way biologically and psychologically.
And I think this is a true act of self-compassion he is talking about here how when we are suffering from
a sense of not having these basic needs met, it is a tremendous act of courage as well as self-compassion
to say, Im going to honor this need rather than deny it or reject it or try to meet it in an unhealthy way,
and Im going to actually really dive into what it would mean to meet this need in a way that is possible in
this moment, or see how its already met as Rick talks about.
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28
Understanding the Brains Negativity Bias

Dr. Buczynski: Thanks. Ron Rick talked about the brain being biased toward negative learning and
kind of weak in positive learning.
What is one thing we can do to build up our resistance toward negative
learning?
Dr. Siegel: I think the most powerful thing we can do is to simply
become aware of the negativity bias.
Rick didnt talk about it in great length in this particular interview but he
has famously said that the mind is like Velcro for bad experiences and
Teflon for good ones the bad ones stick and the good ones slip away.
The most
powerful thing
we can do is to
simply become
aware of the
negativity bias.
And this makes perfect sense, evolutionarily, because it would be a real disaster for us in terms of passing
on our DNA if we were to mistake a lion for a beige rock but mistaking a beige rock for a lion we can
do time and again and still survive.
Simply noticing that this is the case is very, very helpful you know, that we are all, like Mark Twain
famously said near the end of his life when he said, Im an old man now. Ive lived a long and difficult
life filled with so many misfortunes most of which never happened.
Seeing that the mind is going

from default to expecting the
worst is our greatest asset
because we dont believe in
the cognitions as much.
You know, when I read that, I thought, Oh, yes, well it

sound like hes been living in my mind this is how it
works.
So simply seeing this phenomena, simply seeing that the

mind is going from default to expecting the worst; the
mind is going to default toward remembering the bad
things, the trauma, and tending to forget about the good
ones, unless we consciously encode them in the way that
Rick is suggesting that we do simply keeping this in
mind I think is our greatest asset because then we dont believe in the cognitions as much.
Then, when the fearful thought comes up that, Its going to be a disaster, or, Once again Im going to
be hurt and all of that, we can have another voice that says, Oh, yes theres that old tape. Yes, there I
am being Mark Twain again; there I am playing out my evolutionary fate to avoid getting eaten by a lion.
I think the other thing that is very, very helpful is and this relates to
what Kelly was talking about, about identifying, What is the need
system that is being activated here? is that when we do find ourselves
involved in this kind of negativity, to think, What exactly is it that I
am fearing or trying to ward off here? Is it that I am desperately trying
to preserve my rank in the primate troop? Is it that I am desperately
trying to make sure that I dont experience some bodily discomfort? Is
it that Im afraid of some fantasy I have of what death is like? What is
it that I am so afraid of here?
All of these
things that we
fear are tolerable
if we see them for
what they are.

www.nicabm.com
29
And I think that often, if we do that with some care and some detail, we notice that, you know, we are
afraid of experiencing an unpleasant cognition, an unpleasant affect, an unpleasant body sensation and
that all of these things that we fear are actually tolerable if we see them for what they are rather than get
caught up in their symbolic meanings and their narrative.
So I think that also helps us to not get so stuck in the negative.
Dr. Buczynski: That kind of connects to the idea that Kelly started with the whole idea of avoiding: we
avoid things/experiences that arent comfortable.
I am afraid we are out of time.
So next week, we will be talking again and we will be having a webinar with Dr. Daniel Goleman and
next week we will be focusing on focus. Focus is important in the brain, and it is something that a lot of
us have challenges with. And so we will talk about four strategies that you can use to help your brain stay
focused, and three kinds of attention that can be particularly good for leadership. And we will also talk
about the myths and the hazards of multitasking. So that will be next week.
So, everyone, for now, lets see you on the Comment Board and then join us again next week when we
gather with Dr. Daniel Goleman. And the two of you, Kelly and Ron, thanks for being here tonight. I will
see you next week as well. Bye-bye now.

www.nicabm.com
30
About The Speaker:

Rick Hanson, PhD is a neuropsychologist and author of Hardwiring
Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.
Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative
Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley,
hes taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers
worldwide.
Dr. Hansons work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports
Health, and U.S. News and World Report, and his articles have appeared in
Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind.
Featured Books by Speaker: Rick Hanson, PhD
Hardwiring Happiness: The New

Brain Science of Contentment, Calm,
and Confidence
Click HERE
to Purchase Now!
Find out more about this and related programs at:

www.nicabm.com
www.nicabm.com
About the TalkBack Speakers:
Since 1989, Ruth has combined her commitment to mind/body

medicine with a savvy business model. As president of The National
Institute for the Clinical Application for Behavioral Medicine, shes been
a leader in bringing innovative training and professional development
programs to thousands of health and mental health care practitioners
throughout the world.
Ruth has successfully sponsored distance-learning programs,
teleseminars, and annual conferences for over 20 years. Now shes
expanded into the cloud, where shes developed intelligent and
thoughtfully researched webinars that continue to grow exponentially.
Ronald D. Siegel, PsyD is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 20 years.
He is a long time student of mindfulness meditation and serves on
the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Meditation and
Psychotherapy.
Dr. Siegel teaches nationally about mindfulness and psychotherapy
and mind/body treatment, while maintaining a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He is co-editor of Mindfulness and
Psychotherapy and co-author of Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach
to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain.
Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford

University, and a leading expert in the new field of science-help. She
is passionate about translating cutting-edge research from psychology,
neuroscience, and medicine into practical strategies for health,
happiness, and personal success.
Her most recent book, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works,
Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, explores the
latest research on motivation, temptation, and procrastination, as well
as what it takes to transform habits, persevere at challenges, and make
a successful change.

www.nicabm.com
31

NICABM RickHanson Brain2014

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Happiness and

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring

Three Operating Systems of the Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

What to Do When Experiences Are Negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring

Three Operating Systems of the Brain

The brain has evolved

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

The brain stem

The subcortical region

Also, little nodes in the brain stem produce major

Other nodes generate norepinephrine, which alerts us and

The Inner Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

The human cortex

The cortex is the

I dont know about you, Ruth, but I definitely experience each

So, that gives us these three needs: safety, satisfaction and

Safety, satisfaction, and

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

I have added to that, based on Polyvagal Theory, as well as

Zones of the Brain: Red Light Green Light

When there is a basic

In terms of avoiding, approaching and attaching, in three

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

In the red zone,

In the red zone, which is not meant to be sustainable at all it is a brief

Dr. Buczynski: Yes, because when we are in the green zone,

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

The red zone

We are tough critters;

Dr. Hanson: Sorry about that!

the red zone is

Steps to Keep People in the Green Zone: HEAL

Certainly, inner strengths include mindfulness, compassion, and

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

I call those inner strengths happiness, and thats really broadly

We all want inner strengths. We want to cultivate inner strengths in

How do you grow

Then the question really becomes whether it is in therapy or everyday

In other words, we need to have a positive, useful mental state typically

So now we have that activated mental state, but we need to install it as a

If you want to develop

In other words, negative states rapidly become negative neural

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

They are momentarily pleasant, but if they dont transfer

The brain is biased

To deal with that, what I have done is to draw upon what

Five factors in the

Duration the longer you stay with the experience, the

The more that you bring

Multimodality is the third factor. The more that you bring

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

The third aspect of