Dharma Lab

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Cortland Dahl and Richard Davidson unpack the difference between experiential fusion, being so absorbed in an experience that awareness narrows, and meta-awareness, the capacity to know what your mind is doing while you’re doing it. They explore why activities like movies, video games, rock climbing, Sudoku, and even doomscrolling can feel good in the moment, how they temporarily suppress the brain’s default mode, and why that does not necessarily translate into lasting change. They also discuss whether meta-awareness actually adds something to positive experiences, how it may increase cognitive and emotional flexibility, and a few simple ways to practice it in everyday life. Enjoy!
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In This Episode:
00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost?01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness02:29 What Is Experiential Fusion?04:55 What Is Meta-Awareness?06:45 Why Being “Lost” Can Feel Good09:09 The Default Mode Network and Temporary Relief11:34 What Meta-Awareness Adds13:21 Flexibility, Attention, and the Ability to Disengage14:17 Responding Instead of Reacting16:53 Can Startle Reveal Meta-Awareness?19:39 Ancient Meditation Instructions for Meta-Awareness21:11 How to Practice Meta-Awareness in Daily Life
Written transcript for those who prefer to read:
00:00 Intro: Is It Good to Be Lost?
Cort: We don’t like to ruminate. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience. But isn’t it good to be lost? What’s the problem with being absorbed in a good book or a movie? And would it be better if we had meta-awareness? Does that add anything in a moment like that?
Richie: My view of this is that it feels transiently good. In the movie theater or doing Sudoku, when it ends, we go back to our neurotic self and the default mode of the brain comes roaring back. And so it’s a transient state. Meta-awareness is very helpful, I think, in disengaging our attention and enabling us to be flexible.
01:17 Experiential Fusion vs. Meta-Awareness
Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with eminent neuroscientist, And we wanted to talk today about a really important question that you and no one else has ever asked, which is what is the difference between meta awareness and experiential fusion? And I guarantee that although you have not asked that question and probably nobody has ever asked that question, it is one of the most important questions you could ask because it has massive implications for mental health, for emotional well-being, and even for physical health. So these are two terms that we use a lot in our research. We publish papers that are defining these and have been exploring ways to measure them, but they’re just very central to a lot of the work that we do on human flourishing. So why don’t we just start off with, I think, the one that most of us are more familiar with, Richie, and maybe you can... Give some practical examples and share your own insights on this, but that would be experiential fusion. This is, I think, where a lot of us live our lives. So what is this and why should people care? Why is this so important?
02:29 What Is Experiential Fusion?
Richie: Yeah, so experiential fusion is a term that we came up with in a paper we wrote a number of years ago together, and it’s a term that’s used to convey the idea that we can get totally absorbed in an activity that we lose awareness We often call this a flow experience, but we are so completely immersed in the experience that we are no longer aware of our context. So one example of this would be going to a movie and being so engrossed in the movie that you no longer aware that you’re in a movie theater. And in many cases, you’re no longer aware that you’re actually watching a movie. You’re so engrossed in the plot that you’re just in the middle of this plot. That’s experiential fusion.
Cort: And it’s an interesting thing because it can be absorbed in an activity like movie theater example is perfect, a perfect example. You know, reading a really good novel or playing video games can be very absorbing. I think a very common one these days is doom scrolling. You’re just kind of totally caught up in this activity. So experiential fusion can be lost in thoughts, right? It can also be rumination where you’re just lost in your own thoughts. But the interesting thing about these examples, the movie theater example, doom scrolling, playing a video game, actually you’re attentive. It’s not as though you You’re distracted in that moment. In fact, you might be very, very focused on what you’re doing, but it’s as though the light of awareness dims a bit. It’s almost your attention is narrowed into whatever you’re doing and you’re absorbed in it and there’s a feeling of being lost in it. And I think the contrast is when there’s this feeling of almost like you’ve woken up from that. And it does almost feel like you’re waking up when you shift out of that state of absorption. So maybe we could just give the contrast now. So this is experiential fusion, which again, can be everything from you’re daydreaming, you’re ruminating, you’re lost in thoughts, or you’re absorbed in some engrossing activities. We gave these examples, but what’s the alternative? And then we can maybe compare and contrast the two.
04:55 What Is Meta-Awareness?
Richie: Yeah, so the alternative is meta-awareness, and meta-awareness refers to the capacity to know what our minds are doing. And to go back to the movie theater example, how would meta-awareness show up in a movie theater? Well, you might be totally attentive to the movie, completely undistracted, but you’re aware that you’re sitting in a theater, you’re kind of aware in the background. You can think of it as the Penumbra of awareness, the sort of edges of awareness. But you’re aware that you’re sitting in a movie theater, you’re aware that you’re watching a movie, but you’re also completely attentive. There’s no distraction. And that would be an example of meta-awareness. And so as it would apply to everyday life, you can be in a conversation with someone you know well, Be totally in the groove with them, be deep in conversation, but not be lost in the conversation. You can be aware that you’re sitting here, you may have just had breakfast together, and it’s Tuesday, and we’re having this conversation. So that That background is really supplied, if you will, by meta-awareness. Meta-awareness is this faculty of knowing what our minds are doing. And we think, for many different reasons, that meta-awareness is really key to being able to transform your mind. And one of the things I often say is that it’s very difficult to transform our mind if we’re not aware of what’s happening in our mind.
06:45 Why Being “Lost” Can Feel Good
Cort: So when it comes to experiential fusion, as we said, there’s a spectrum there, right? It can be being engrossed in a good book or a movie, or it could even be a conversation with a friend. You’re just totally absorbed in the moment. To the point that you kind of lose touch with everything else other than, you know, the narrow band of what you’re doing. And then on the other end of the spectrum is rumination, being lost in thoughts. I think most people would say obviously rumination is no fun. We don’t like to ruminate. It’s a deeply unpleasant experience. But isn’t it good to be lost? What’s the problem with being absorbed in a good book or a movie? And would it be better if we had meta-awareness? Does that add anything in a moment like that? When we’re reactive or ruminating, clearly we want some meta-awareness, but why would we want it in these other moments? Yeah.
Richie: So those are great questions. And I should just also add that You know, I think we need to ask ourselves the question, why is it that activities that produce this kind of experiential fusion, like going to the movie theater or, you know, some more extreme examples are where flow has been studied. For example, with rock climbers where they’re putting themselves in situations where if there is a lapse in attention, it could potentially be lethal. And they’re doing this voluntarily. And so why do people do these things voluntarily to put themselves in these situations where You know, at least we think most of the time, most people are in this state of experiential fusion. And so my view of this is that it feels transiently good to be in these states of experiential fusion. There are other kinds of states of experiential fusion That are very common as well. So for example, doing crossword puzzles, doing Sudoku, where you’re totally absorbed in an activity that is kind of neutral, is very popular. And so again, I think we need to ask the question, why is that attractive? Why do people voluntarily do that sort of thing?
09:09 The Default Mode Network and Temporary Relief
Richie: The reason is, I think, is because it transiently suppresses the default mode. So what does this mean? Well, we know that the default mode is active when our minds are wandering and when we’re ruminating. And just to be clear, the default mode is a network in the brain. This is like a constellation of brain regions, if you haven’t heard that phrase. Yeah, thank you, Cort. So this kind of activity is really effective in just transiently putting the brakes on this. And so for the time that we’re engaged in the activity, we’re not ruminating. And these kinds of thoughts are blocked, if you will, for the most part. But the thing is, when we stop whatever it is that activity might be, whether we’re rock climbing, In the movie theater or doing Sudoku, when it ends, we go back to our neurotic self and the default mode of the brain comes roaring back. And so it’s a transient state which does not lead to an altered trait to the best of our knowledge. But that’s why it’s experienced as pleasurable.
Cort: So that highlights one of the reasons why even though watching a movie, rock climbing, certain activities are pleasurable and pleasant in part because they’re deactivating the ruminating mind. It’s the part of ourselves that we don’t like to sit with. If you just sit alone in a room doing nothing, if you’re like most people, you’re just going to start thinking. And oftentimes the thoughts that are moving through our minds are not particularly pleasant. So if you can deactivate that, then it feels better than the alternative. But the point you’re making here, Richie, is that although that’s true, and it is a little vacation for
11:34 What Meta-Awareness Adds
Cort: You haven’t developed the ability to manage that yourself. You’ve basically put yourself in a context that is managing it for you. And I think this points to the other side of the question, which is, what does meta-awareness add to these moments? So even if you’re watching the movie and you might say... It feels good to be absorbed. I enjoy that. Why would you want to cultivate meta-awareness, generally speaking? I think it’s for this exact reason. It does two things. One, in my experience, it doesn’t inhibit the pleasant aspects of whatever you’re doing, if you are in one of those positive circumstances. So actually, you enjoy the movie more. It’s not like you enjoy it less. In fact, it’s like you’re aware of a wider spectrum of So if it’s something beautiful, it’s almost like you can appreciate the beauty even more in my experience. So it doesn’t inhibit the enjoyable features, but it brings on the capacity that you are in the driver’s seat of this experience. It’s not just the environment and the context that’s doing it for you. You consciously can do it. You intentionally can do it. And so to me, it’s like a win-win. It both feels good. It helps in a negative situation or a challenging situation. It enhances positive or even neutral situations. And it just puts you in the driver’s seat of your own mind. Is that safe to say? Is that your experience?
Richie: Yeah, I mean, that certainly consists with my experience. But the question you’re asking is a great question. And I don’t really think that we have the adequate scientific evidence to sort of definitively And so I think there’s still work to be done to explore what is the added value of meta-awareness in these situations.
13:21 Flexibility, Attention, and the Ability to Disengage
Richie: I think primarily the added value really is in And, you know, meta-awareness also is very helpful, I think, in disengaging our attention and enabling us to be flexible. And flexibility, both emotionally and cognitively, is an important marker of our skills at cultivating meta-awareness, I think. And so it’s often the case that when we get sort of really intensely focused on an activity, it’s sometimes hard to disengage if we need to do something else. Meta-awareness, I think, will provide the underlying foundation for being able to flexibly shift among various alternatives in our behavior.
14:17 Responding Instead of Reacting
Cort: And, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed just as an example of that, I mean, meta-awareness by definition, as you said earlier, Richie, is you just know what’s happening in the present moment. You know what’s happening in your mind. You know what’s happening in your body even. You’re more attuned to what’s going on in your environment. And I remember an example of this that I’ll never forget just because the circumstances were so strange. You might have been in the room too when this happened, Richie. I was leading a guided meditation at a retreat that Mingyu Rinpoche was leading. I was kind of doing the guided meditation sessions and it was in Madison. And I was leading this meditation and Jon Kabat-Zinn was there, who’s a friend of ours, a very old friend of yours, Richie, and he was in the front row. And I’ll always remember this just because I was leading a guided meditation to Jon Kabat-Zinn, which is just, it was just like an odd experience. He’s like the godfather of mindfulness and I’ve listened to his meditations a million times. So it was just kind of strange and ironic to be leading a guided meditation. But what happened was behind me, there was like this huge kind of What do you even call it? Like a banner type thing. It was right behind me and it fell down in the middle of the guided meditation and it was literally right behind me and it came like crashing down. And it just so happens that in this guided meditation, I think we were, it was something like I, when that happened, I had this I remember just not flinching because I was totally aware like the moment the sound started happening and then my body and normally, you know, you jump up or something. And it was just very interesting to see just to see the very different reaction in my mind and body just from being in this very meta aware state. Like it gave me some capacity. Of course, if it had something I needed to run out of the room or, you know, there was some real danger, I could have done that. But it was clear that just something had fallen. And I didn’t even know what it was at the time. It wasn’t until later when I looked back and was like, oh, that was that big thing. But it was just interesting to me, just the circumstances because of that. I think I’ll never forget that. But it just shows it just gives you a capacity to notice your own reactions and to respond rather than react when you need to. And when you need to react like that, you can. But a lot of times we don’t need to react like that. And a more thoughtful response is much healthier.
16:53 Can Startle Reveal Meta-Awareness?
Richie: You know, it’s a great example. And, you know, I also think you’re pointing toward a way to potentially differentiate between experiential fusion and meta-awareness, because I would expect that in experiential fusion, you would show a startle response. Well, for sure, you would show a stronger startle response. Yeah.
Cort: And maybe just explain, because this is a scientific measurement that, you know, is used commonly. Could you just explain, like, how you measure that? Like, what is a scientific measurement tool?
Richie: Yeah, so, I mean, startle is something that we show in response to an event that, you know, is often loud or intense in whatever domain it’s in. In the auditory domain, it’s a sound that has a very fast rise time, you know, so it doesn’t slowly ramp up, but it ramps up immediately. And that rise time is really what Triggers the startle and you know we can show startle in even just limited parts of our bodies so one of the ways it’s measured in experimental research is just with the eye blink and so if I did that you know many viewers might just blink their eyes or just show a little bit of something and we can harness that as a measurement tool and actually measure the strength of the eye blink with It measures the muscle around the eye called the orbicularis oculi muscle. And so it turns out that it provides a really useful readout of systems that are important in this regard. And so, you know, in the case of experiential fusion, because it’s more difficult to disengage attention and there’s less flexibility, if there were this loud sound made by the banner falling, it would much more likely elicit a startle response. Whereas if your awareness is really, if the aperture is really big, it would include Whatever is happening in your sensory domains. And so, you know, if there’s a loud sound, there’s a loud sound, but you’re not going to show the same kind of startle because you’re not disengaging your attention from something and allocating to something else. Your attention is already engaged.
Cort: That was it. My attention was wide enough that all that stuff, I was hyper aware of everything that happened. Right. But it wasn’t, you know, locked in here. And then it suddenly had to shift to, you know, to something else. Yeah, it was very interesting.
19:39 Ancient Meditation Instructions for Meta-Awareness
Cort: So it just reminds me, maybe as a final thought on this, some of the most classic teachings from the Buddhist tradition, if you go back to the Buddhist sutras, which are the actual recordings of what the Buddha is said to have taught, there are these lines that are basically meditation instructions. They’re the most boring thing you could ever read. But as meditation instructions, they’re very powerful. And they’re basically meta awareness instructions. So it’ll say things like breathing in a long breath. I know that I am breathing in a long breath. And you just go through all these long lists of all the conceivable things that could be happening in your body and mind. And it’s just, and I know that that’s happening as it happens. And I know that that’s happening. And this is basically him essentially guiding people in meditation. Just know what’s happening in your mind as it’s happening. Know what’s happening in your body as it’s happening. And that’s meta-awareness. And he basically was teaching them meta-awareness as one of the most foundational skills for the entire meditative path. I mean, this goes back thousands of years. It’s really quite interesting.
21:11 How to Practice Meta-Awareness in Daily Life
Cort: Well, that’s great. So any, you wanna close with maybe a final tip, like things you do, maybe we could each just share a way we put this into practice in our own lives. Is there anything that you do that you find helpful to connect with meta-awareness and shift out of experiential fusion?
Richie: Yeah, sure. I mean, for me, I go back to this very frequently, many times a day, just in the course of my everyday life, taking it off the cushion, so to speak. And so, you know, one opportunity to do that is whenever you’re waiting on a line for something, you know, often our attention gets constricted, you know, we’ll Dr. Davidson, Can smile at them, do a little loving kindness for them, just open it up. And, you know, I find myself doing that many times a day in situations just really explicitly widening it as a way to sort of touch in with meta awareness.
Cort: That’s so helpful. Yeah, I do a lot of that as well. Another thing that I do, I’ve mentioned this on other Dharma Lab episodes, I think probably because it was one of my starting practices, it’s still one of my go-to practices. And I think for me, one of the best triggers for meta-awareness is Which is really to feel what’s going on in my body. And sometimes it’ll be very simple. I’ll start with something very obvious, like the feeling of my feet on the ground and just feel that for a few moments. And sometimes from there, a little awareness through my body. Usually I’ll notice, you know, sometimes I’ll notice a little bit of tension in my shoulders and they’ll relax a bit or some tension in my jaws. I just naturally feel like my body just opens and relaxes a little bit. Which is always interesting to me after more than 30 years of doing this, that the body is just holding a lot of tension all the time. And awareness itself has this relaxing quality. So just the fuel, what I’m feeling in my body for me is just a very simple kind of anytime, anywhere, everywhere, all the time kind of practice. So that’s one of my go-to practices. So Both of those are great experimentation points. Those of you listening, if you haven’t tried these, I’m sure you have yours as well. If you have your own practices that spark meta-awareness for you, we’d love to hear about it. So maybe you could mention in the comments or share the practices and insights you’ve had. But in any case, great conversation, Richie. Thank you not only for sharing your insights, but for all the research you’ve done on this. You’ve been the pioneering researcher in this area. And I imagine we’re going to have many, many more conversations about meta-awareness and experiential fusion. So stay tuned to future episodes of Dharma Lab if you found this helpful. So take care.


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How much of what we experience comes from the world itself, and how much comes from our expectations about it? In our latest AMA, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl explore how the brain constructs perception, why the gap between reality and expectation can amplify suffering, and what changes when we begin to notice that process as it happens. We had a few moments of technical issues with frozen screens or background noise, but they don’t last long.
What’s inside
* Why your brain constructs reality the way it builds a dream
* Why controlling the mind backfires
* TMS: is it cheating?
* Why open awareness loosens pain
* The neuroscience of grief and regret
* A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Cort)
* A preview of our upcoming November summit
* The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording for paid members
Companion Flashcards At Bottom
Your brain builds reality like a dream
A listener named Linda asked about acceptance, and about the idea, drawn from Anil Seth and Lisa Feldman Barrett, that reality is a construction of the mind. Cort answered first, and reframed where suffering actually comes from.
It’s actually the gap between reality and our expectations of what should be happening. However big that gap is, that’s like the size of suffering in that moment.
—Cortland Dahl

Cort was clear it is not erasing expectations. It is seeing that they are there and that they are out of step with what is happening, bringing them into the light of conscious experience rather than letting them run under the hood.
Then Richie discussed how the brain networks that build our beliefs and expectations are the very networks through which we perceive. He used the dream as proof.
Just as in a dream, we can feel those emotions in our body, and there are documented changes in our heart rate and breathing, and yet there’s nothing out there. It’s all in our mind. It turns out that’s actually the way it works with the real world. That’s how our brains construct reality.
—Richard Davidson

His image for the practice came from Mingyur Rinpoche: caught in the middle of a river, you are swept along by the turbulent flow. Become aware of the thoughts and expectations driving your perception, and it is more like sitting on the bank, watching the water move without being pulled in. Cort added a pointer for anyone who wants the science firsthand, calling Anil Seth’s TED talk one of the best he has seen.
The picnic and the four police officers
Victoria asked why open awareness loosens physical pain. Richie described what his lab calls “stickiness,” the attachment or aversion that makes an emotion reverberate long after the thing that caused it is gone. In open awareness, the reverberation drops away.
In some of our own research, the response in sensory regions is actually larger when you’re doing open awareness. It’s not diminished. But there’s no reverberation. It happens and comes back to baseline. We’re not creating emotional zombies.—Richard Davidson

That fast return to baseline, he said, is a neural signature of resilience. Cort then told a story from the Tibetan tradition that ties to this. Imagine you drive to a park for a picnic, thrilled to be there. Then four police officers walk up and tell you that you are ordered to stay in this park all day, that they will block you if you try to leave.
Even though you wanted to go there in the first place, suddenly everybody’s trying to think how they can get out. Life does not like to be constrained and controlled in any way.—Cortland Dahl

The mind works the same way. The harder we clamp down on a feeling, the more it strains to escape. Open awareness runs the other direction. Cort called it a practice of trust, close to the opposite of control.
FREE · 2-MINUTE PRACTICE LED BY CORT
2-minute practice:
Wherever you are, settle into a comfortable posture. Let your eyes stay gently open or close them. Take a few moments to simply feel the breath moving in and out of the body. Notice the sounds around you, or the silence. Then open the heart a little by bringing to mind the many challenges in the world right now, the suffering so many are carrying, and form a quiet intention: that whatever good comes from your practice might ripple outward and ease the suffering of others. Rest there for a few breaths, then carry that motivation into whatever comes next.

The full hour, mapped
Read the gist below, then drop into the recording at any timestamp.
03:46 — “Grandpa!” and the end of the sitting.
Twelve minutes into an early-morning practice, Richie’s two-and-a-half-year-old grandson opened the door. He let the formal session go and kept practicing as grandpa. Anywhere, anytime meditation; everywhere, all the time.
08:32 — Active practice is as powerful as the cushion.
The Healthy Minds research finds the benefit of active practices comparable to formal sitting. Cort put his son down for nearly every nap for three years and came to see those as the real practice.
09:59 — Acceptance and the gap.
Suffering tracks the gap between reality and our expectations. The shift is not dropping expectations but seeing them clearly.
13:54 — Your brain constructs reality like a dream.
Anil Seth, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and the river metaphor. Perception is built by the same networks that build belief.
17:40 — So how do we share a reality at all?
Rob from Toronto asks about controlled hallucination and shared social realities. Richie on entrainment, cooperation, and why it remains “a shared illusion of a sort”.”
20:18 — Why open awareness loosens pain.
Stickiness, reverberation, and the larger-but-faster response that marks resilience. We are not creating emotional zombies.
27:00 — The picnic and the four police officers.
Why control backfires in a park, in a relationship, and in the mind. Open awareness as trust.
29:40 — TMS and the urge to hack the mind.
TMS stands for “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, and Richie explains that TMS belongs to a broader family of methods designed to modulate brain function relatively non-invasively. There is growing interest in whether these tools could affect meditation, but he emphasizes that we do not yet know whether they meaningfully support practice. The Center for Healthy Minds has also been exploring neuromodulation and meditation more broadly. Cort shares about neuromodulation as one more entry point into an interdependent system.
37:37 — Where does awareness live in the brain?
Edith’s question. Visual cortex, anterior cingulate, and the honest answer: no single location, no single switch
40:24 — The unresponsive who were actually aware.
Melanie Boly’s work: patients thought to be vegetative held more awareness than we credited, unable to communicate it. A communication problem, not an awareness problem.
45:18 — The neuroscience of grief that doesn’t fade.
Amygdala and hippocampus jammed together, and reconsolidation: a memory is a reconstruction that changes each time it is recalled, not a photograph.
51:20 — When grief opened into gratitude.Cort on his father’s sudden death four years ago, holding the feeling fully in the body, and the sadness opening, unbidden, into gratitude.
57:38 — A free November summit.A free online gathering through ServiceSpace this November, with Sharon Salzberg, Jud Brewer, Robert Sapolsky, Martin Picard, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Laurie Santos.
November 2026 Free Online Summit with Legends of Neuroscience and Practice

Dharma Lab’s First Guided Meditation Hour
In Dharma Lab’s first guided practice hour, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson took us from talking about wellbeing to actually practicing it. Drawing on the Healthy Minds framework of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, shaped through years of research and practice connected with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Humin (formerly Healthy Minds Innovations), they led participants through four short practices designed to make each capacity directly experiential. The session explored a central idea running through their work: meditation is less about fixing ourselves than learning to recognize and cultivate qualities of wellbeing that are already present.
Keep Practicing — Upcoming Events
If you’d like to continue exploring these practices, the free Healthy Minds Program App offers guided practices and learning across awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, with Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson, and other teachers.
Our next “Ask Me Anything”with Richie and Cort is live on Tuesday, August 25th, 8pm ET. Please send us questions in advance by replying to this email or dropping a comment.
We have an exciting lineup of guest speakers for a free online summit in November to explore the restless mind. More details to come, but check out initial info at the bottom of this email and registration details here. Please share widely!
Thank you for your support and we hope to see you at these future events.
—The Dharma Lab Team


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In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson explore why attention feels harder to control than it used to, how modern technology exploits basic mechanisms in the brain, and what we can do to regain more choice over where our attention goes. They discuss why we may be more distracted than we were 50 years ago, how novelty and emotion capture attention, and why simple acts of intentionality can function like reps for the brain. Enjoy!
Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.
Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Wed Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here!
Companion Flashcards
In This Episode:
00:00 Taking Back Control of Attention
01:21 Why Focus Feels So Hard
02:51 Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?
05:15 Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction
09:03 How Our Attention Gets Hijacked
13:20 Why Surprise Captures the Brain
16:35 The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling
17:44 How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control
21:24 Rebuilding Control Over Attention
25:53 Attention as a Practice of Intention
29:46 Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus
Written transcript for those who prefer to read:
00:00 — Taking Back Control of Attention
Richie: Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us, and it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from. There are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression.
Cort: I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I noticed the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to You know, turn and look to see what was happening over there, like actually just making a choice. Like you were saying, the reps, you can do a thousand of those a day easily.
01:21 — Why Focus Feels So Hard
Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, one of the co-hosts here, and of course I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson. Richie, to all of us who know him well, one of the preeminent neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re gonna discuss one of the most common problems that probably every human faces, which is how incredibly hard it is just to stay focused. Now, I must admit, maybe this is an embarrassing admission, given that I’m supposedly one of the experts who’s talking about this stuff. But there’s a lot of days where I’m sitting, getting stuff done, answering emails or focused on some project. And it’s just really hard to not get pulled in to other things. You know, I’m answering emails and suddenly I’m shopping online or I’m working on a report and then I’m checking my emails. It’s just it feels like There are so many things in our life that are just pulling us in a million different directions. And I thought today we could just answer two very simple questions. One, why is it so incredibly hard to stay focused? And two, what can we do about it given this chaotic world we’re living in? So maybe we can just I can just turn this over to you, Richie, and you can kick this off however you want to. But I’d love to hear specifically from a neuroscientific point of view at some point. But yeah, what does this spark for you?
Richie: Yeah, well, first it sparks familiarity.
02:51 — Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?
Richie: So, you know, I think that it’s true. I often say we’re all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And that’s, of course, referring to the exposure that we all have to this extraordinary amount of information through Our online activities through social media, all of that. And that’s a huge source of distraction. And so, you know, I think that one, I certainly think that it’s inevitably true that one major reason why people experience more distraction perhaps today than they did And there are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression, but inevitably I think it’s at least in part true that it’s because of our exposure to this information that is so readily available. So we’re clearly not going to change that. We don’t have the power To influence the tech companies to do the kind of regulation that might be needed. So, you know, we’re left, I think, with the inevitable conclusion that really the only thing we can change is our own minds. And so that, I think, is an important opportunity. And so here’s another case where the kind of, quote, And us being so distracted can also be the opening for real change and transformation. And in the language that you and I have used, Cort, in our book, Born to Flourish, and at other times in Dharma Lab, we can think of distraction itself as an affordance, distraction itself as a moment of awakening, if you will, because the moment we recognize we’re distracted, That’s a moment of awakening and can really be helpful in the process of changing your mind.
05:15 — Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction
Cort: I’m curious about the neural mechanisms for why we are so easily distracted. I think the experience is, it’s like our attention is like a restless puppy that just gets excited and is rushing off after any bright, shiny object. It sees a squirrel on a tree outside and it’s banging itself against the window and then hears something in the kitchen and goes racing off. And it feels like that sometimes. I mean, it feels like that, you know, even for me having 35 years of meditation under my belt and done all these long retreats where I’m very specifically training my attention. And I feel like in some respects have, you know, have developed A strong attentional skill set, so to speak. And yet I still feel that when I’m in a meeting like this, I could be talking to you and then I see a notification on my computer or something happens in my environment. It seems like the mind and brain are just... Really wired actually for that to happen. I mean, it clearly, you know, happened spontaneously and effortlessly countless times every single hour. So what’s going on in the brain? I mean, is it as it seems that this is sort of how we’re wired? I imagine there’s evolutionary reasons why this is this is likely to be the case.
Richie: I think it is in part how we’re wired. We are wired to detect surprise, to detect discrepancies, to detect rare events, because those often are events that have more salience. For example, our Sensitivity to danger and to cues that may signal danger. Those are the kinds of things that are relatively rare, but they’re super important. So we want to be primed, if you will, to notice those. And the problem is that that machinery that evolution has provided us with can be harnessed or hijacked by all these other things around us. But I think I can pretty much guarantee based on everything we know that if you receive the identical information, say something surprised you that drew your attention, if that thing were repeated 10 times, by the 10th time, you’re no longer going to pay attention to it. And that process habituation is something we know very well. And so the masters of technology have very much figured out how to capture our attention. By providing us with, in many cases, more and more extreme examples of things that are of interest to us. And the increased extremity has all kinds of, I think, really unfortunate consequences. But one of them is that it will capture our attention. But it can also serve to further reinforce and reify certain kinds of extreme beliefs that we might have, which can of course be a key driver of divisiveness.
09:03 — How Our Attention Gets Hijacked
Cort: I wonder if we translate this into a very practical tool. I could see this understanding of the way the brain works, and especially the things that tend to capture our attention, the things that can be easily hijacked, as you said, for people who want to... If the objective is to keep people in your app as long as possible, if you imagine a lot of social media platforms these days, that’s what they want. The product is actually not what we’re doing. Actually, we are the product. It’s our attention that’s being sold. And so in a way, what they want, you know, they’re harvesting our attention in a way is what’s going on. And so they’re designing for that. And it’s an interesting question, you know, in the, you know, the way you’re framing it, because it’s sort of the question is, What loopholes in our brains are they exploiting so they can get more of our attention? And for me, having studied this and explored this myself, I can see understanding that actually is very empowering because now I know the game. I can see what they’re doing. You know, for example, if I’m on social media, I can actually see the way the algorithms work like, oh, if I watch that video a little longer, and I swipe past this other one, I know in a few in a moment or two, two or three videos later, I’m going to see something So maybe we could just zero in on that for a moment because it is, as I said, quite empowering. What are some of the things that are exploited? If you could give a little mini class, what would you look for so you can be conscious of it versus unconsciously, unwittingly pulled in by it? What would you look for, like the things that are going to capture your attention?
Richie: Yeah, so you’re asking what would we look for in the brain itself? Yeah,
Cort: what are the brain mechanisms that are being hijacked and how might we be conscious of what’s happening versus it just happening to us and we’re unconscious of it?
Richie: Yeah, that’s super important. So the hijacking of attention can happen in a number of different ways. One of the most fundamental ways in which it happens Is that there’s an interaction between the brainstem and specifically a part of the brainstem that is rich in norepinephrine and it’s called the locus cerulein. And it has projections that are very widespread to many different regions of the cortex. And basically what happens is that when something captures our attention, as opposed to us directing our attention to it voluntarily, but being captured unwillingly, if you will, or unintentionally. It just grabs our attention whether we like it or not. Right. What’s happening is that there is a transient increase in activation the locus coeruleus, which is this site rich in norepinephrine. And then there are these very widespread projections to the entire cortex. And so there’s a transient increase in cortical arousal that’s pretty broad, even if the The event that occurred, the stimulus was, say, just the sound. It would be broader than just the auditory part of the brain, just broader than just the auditory cortex. It would really be all over the brain. And this is the kind of thing that would capture our attention. But if it’s repeated, if the identical event is repeated a few times, It would show what we call habituation, where you would not respond to that. And so, you know, that’s one of the most basic mechanisms for attention capture is this kind of rare or surprising event.
13:20 — Why Surprise Captures the Brain
Cort: And so is sorry, just to to pause for a second there. If I’m uh building some new product and I want to harvest people’s attention and I come to you as one of the world’s leading experts in this area and I just say okay richie I want I want to hijack this exact neural loop that you just talked about like what are the best strategies like what could I design like what could I build into this new app or this new product whatever it is what would be the most effective ways to hijack this system surprise you kind of mentioned one is surprise something that’s Shocking or surprising or unexpected.
Richie: That sounds like that’s one of the... Yeah, and so to create that kind of unexpected burst, if you will, the most effective way of doing it is presenting a set of events which are all repetitive and very similar and then follow it by something totally novel and surprising. It’s the oddball. Yeah. And so there’s a very famous experimental paradigm in neuroscience and psychology called the mismatch negativity, which is a version of this. And basically what a mismatch negativity is, is if I present a series of tones of a certain pitch, and then it’s followed by a tone of a different pitch. So if we do something like this, Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, boop, beep, beep. Your response to the boop would be totally, your brain would just automatically... Um, detect that and it would be, uh, and there’s a very well characterized signal in the brain that displays that. Um, and it’s, it’s very difficult, even I should say in long-term meditators, um, Although we do have some evidence to suggest that there are some alterations, but at least in moderate term meditators, this is so basic, it’s very hard to override. So it doesn’t change.
Cort: We still, no matter how much you’ve meditated, your mind still gets... Yeah, although there are,
Richie: you know, if I did it instead of with simple tones, if I did it with words, for example, where I presented words of a certain category like zebra, tiger, monkey, elephant, flower, rabbit. Where the discrepancy is semantic in that case and not the auditory features themselves, that’s much more likely to be something that can be overridden, if you will.
16:35 — The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling
Cort: So it seems like one of the takeaways, this is super interesting, and actually I can already see this in the endless swiping of social media, that if you’re advising, you would say, okay, what you don’t want to do is have too much repetition. You don’t want For example, if I watch a cat video and I watch the whole thing and the algorithm is like, okay, this guy clearly likes these cute cat videos. You don’t want to just show me 10 cat videos at that point because you’re just going to get habituation. What you want, and I think this is exactly what it does, is you want at random intervals, like maybe you have to swipe through five things to get a cat video and then you don’t see one for 10 videos and then it’s after two. It’s sort of unexpected and you get it, but you never know when you’re going to get it. Is that right? Like if you’re advising like that... I think this is actually how it is. If you pay attention, you’ll actually start seeing these patterns, especially in social media.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in the psychological literature, that’s called the variable interval reinforcement schedule. And, you know, that’s extremely addicting in terms of its attentional capture.
17:44 — How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control
Cort: And what about emotion? I mean, you talked about surprise, obviously. Another very interesting thing, again, I’m sort of fixating on social media here, but I think you could look at other forms of distraction as well. But it’s very interesting to look at What’s pulling attention in relationship to the emotions it provokes and the strength, both the kind of emotion and the valence, whether it feels more uplifting or a fear or more negative. What would you say about that? Again, if you’re our key neuroscientific wizard architecting how to distract us.
Richie: Yeah, I mean, certainly emotion and different kinds of emotion are going to be absolutely key in producing distraction. We know that emotion can disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is a key zone for the central executive network, for the network that is guiding behavior.
Cort: So it’s the opposite of the hijacked. It’s the part that’s saying, here’s where I want to go and I’m going there.
Richie: Right, self-control. And emotions will disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so there’s a continuous dance between the emotional centers of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. And there’s bi-directional communication. So there is communication about emotion from subcortical regions up to the prefrontal cortex. There’s also... Top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex to these subcortical emotional regions that can help regulate them. But this is actually the role of the prefrontal cortex and all this is super important because, and this is speculative, but in our evolutionary past where we had many fewer Episodic, phasic influences on our behavior like we do today. The prefrontal cortex can put into operation a plan which then gets executed over some long period of time. Where there were many fewer at least external distractors. And I think that it’s, and here’s the speculative part. I think that the conditions of modern life today are such that we’re starting from a much lower baseline in terms of our prefrontal skills. In our evolutionary past with many fewer distractors Sort of external stimuli that were bombarding us. We relied on the prefrontal cortex more to guide our behavior. Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us. And it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from.
21:24 — Rebuilding Control Over Attention
Cort: That’s a good segue. Maybe we could have our concluding part of this discussion to put our actual hats on. I guess we’ve been playing a role that we would never normally play because, of course, we want to do the opposite of hijacking attention. We want to do what you’re talking about now, which is how can we re-energize and build up the skill set with the prefrontal cortex. And our ability to manage and consciously be in the driver’s seat with our attention versus it being hijacked. So let’s kind of shift gears and now share some of the strategies that put us back in the driver’s seat. So what would you say there? We certainly can talk about our Experiences meditators, but from a brain and from a neuroscientific point of view, anything that you think is some key insights about the brain that would guide how we should view this and how we can do it in daily life?
Richie: Yeah, I mean, I think that some of this is both from knowledge of the brain, but also from kind of practical everyday experience. And that is that I think that just as we do physical exercise and benefit from reps, so to speak, we can benefit from reps with our mental health. And neural capacities. And so, you know, one way to do this is, and we’ve talked about this at various points in the past in different ways on Dharma Lab, but every time you feel an urge to take out your phone, instead of immediately taking out your phone and looking at it, simply be aware of the urge. And make a decision about whether this is actually a time when you need the phone and you should take it out, or whether it’s a time to simply acknowledge the urge and let it rise and fall away like the clouds in the sky. And so there actually is a choice that we can make at that point. But we need to be aware to begin with. That really is a necessary condition for this. If you’re not aware of the urge in the first place, it will immediately hijack your behavior and you’ll just automatically pull out your phone. That’s what we do most of the time. And the invitation in this path that we are talking about and promoting here on Dharma Lab is that there is another way to operate in the world And it’s a way that is infused with this gift of awareness that we all have. And so this is really a way to strengthen the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to self-regulate. Really simple. And we know from some really fantastic longitudinal research that learning to self-regulate early in life is a huge predictor of later adult life outcomes that are beneficial. And kids who have a hard time with self-control early on end up, if there’s no intervention, end up worse off than kids who are better at self-control.
Cort: And there’s, you know, that particular research is super interesting. And it’s also, there’s a whole body of research, which of course, Richie, you’re well aware, just to paint out kind of the other side of the picture, which is that if you’re the kind of person who—I would have been a kid for sure, you know, if we had had the marshmallow test, which is one of these classical tests, like, you know, you imagine putting a marshmallow in front of a kid and say, don’t eat it. For me, I would have, you know, two seconds, that marshmallow would have been down the hatch. I would have for sure been one of those kids. And yet, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing that skill. And so there’s a lot of hope, even if even if we’re the kind of person who might be starting out more on the deficit side of things.
25:53 — Attention as a Practice of Intention
Cort: So I wonder if maybe we could talk about some of the practical things, because I when I think about my life and things I do, I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. And it was funny because actually, as you were explaining this, I had a practical example of this. I’m, I’m actually sitting in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota in an Incredibly remote location and there’s a lake very within, you know, basically I could throw a rock into the lake from where I am right now, but it’s very remote and there’s very few boats. There’s not many people. And a boat went by actually as we were, as you were speaking, Richie, and as I was listening to you and you were actively talking about, you know, like how attention gets pulled away and noticing that. And it was, that was like literally happening to me there. I could feel the pull to look at the boat. And it’s a rare occurrence and, you know, and there’s not many people, so I might know those people. But and then I was consciously aware of that, just like you were talking about the cell phone, like you’re aware of it before you follow the impulse. And so I could actually feel the impulse literally as you were talking about this and just choose exercise the intention muscle and just say, I’m going to resist that impulse or just stay with my focus here on what Richie is saying. Noticing the pull of distraction and releasing attention. We could have a whole episode just on releasing attention. That’s kind of its own thing. But just the directing of attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I’m going to choose to bring my attention to my email inbox or I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I notice the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to, you know, turn and look to see what was happening over there? Like actually just making a choice. Just that intentionality to me is kind of the heart of the practice. And you can just do that, like you were saying, the reps. You can do a thousand of those a day easily.
Richie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, you know, to our viewers, this is something that would be, I think, interesting and fun to tinker with in your own life. And one of the things that I often do is I have an Apple Watch. And so when I get certain kinds of messages, it will give me a haptic signal. And I’m very aware that in certain kinds of meetings, like if it happened right now, I would notice the haptic signal and I would not look at my watch. I would be focused on our conversation here. And there are many times in meetings where I will do the same thing. I feel the haptic signal, but I’m making a conscious choice to Keep my attention focused on the meeting. There are other times if I’m in something that’s not in a meeting or something really casual where it would be okay if I looked at it for some reason, if I was expecting something, I might look at it. But there is the distinct opportunity to see it as an opportunity to make a choice.
29:46 — Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus
Cort: And that, and to me, it seems like the intention, intentional aspect, and these are great example of the kinds of things that pull our attention away so many times. One of the areas I would say, which is just a very rich area to practice because it’s happening all the time is like what happens when the distractor is happening, like the haptic signal happens or the sound happens, or in my case, you see something unexpected, it’s happening. And then there’s kind of what you do in that space and being intentional. In some cases, you can choose to go with it. Or in many cases, it’s just noticing that your mind is pulled elsewhere and you just choose to stay with whatever you’re doing, which I think is in most cases that kind of the healthier thing to do. But I think there’s another realm of intentionality, which is actually preemptive. And you can be intentional about what’s going on in your environment so less of those things are happening. I mean, to some degree you can’t control these things, but sometimes you can. I mean, we all have phones, or almost everybody does. I, for example, have just deleted apps from my phone. There’s certain apps that I just felt like these are just not I don’t ever feel good coming away from using this app. And I just remove the app. In some cases, I actually change the settings. So I have no notifications like my phone. As much as it annoys all my family members and anybody tries to contact me, my phone is always muted. My phone is almost never on. And so I check my messages and I have the notifications off on almost every single app. So I go check the things when I want to check them, not because it grabbed my attention. So in that case, it’s almost preemptive. Like I know the things that can and have in the past pulled my attention. And I’m almost architecting my life. So I’m just not going to be, you know, as exposed to those. So it seems like we could almost we can both when it happens, what do we do, but also preemptively, you know, build your life to the degree that you can so that you’re not just constantly exposed to these things, which which just simply can be overwhelming at times.
Richie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that all fits in a category that I would call digital hygiene. And I’ve been an advocate for creating a curriculum for digital hygiene that would include contemplative practices to help us actually regulate our attention and have that curriculum start with kids. I think it’s really important.
Cort: Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, this has been a great conversation, Richie. I think we would love to hear, for those of you watching this in the comments, we’d love to hear what you do. What are the things that you find distracting? What are the strategies and the methods you found that help you find a little more balance? And maybe we can have a little dialogue offline as you reflect on your own life. But in any case, thank you, Richie, for sharing your insights as always and for you for listening. We hope to see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.
Richie: Thank you so much.


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(The full AMA recording plays in the video pane above, for Dharma Lab members.)
In our 11th AMA, Kim read your questions while Cort made his way back from a retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche. Richie spoke to a study where strangers could tell who the meditators were, from a photo alone.
What’s inside
* Full recording and transcript for paid members
* The photo study: what strangers saw in the faces of long-term meditators
* You are not your beliefs: a simple two-step practice to see them clearly
* A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Dr. Richie Davidson)
* The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording
Strangers could tell who the meditators were
This came up during a question about moods. Richie’s point was that one consequence of long-term practice is that people generally end up in a more positive mood. To show it, he described a study his lab published.
Whenever they studied long-term meditators, they routinely took a picture of everyone, both the meditators and age- and gender-matched controls, without telling them what it was for. Then they gave all the pictures to random people who had no idea where they came from, and asked them to rate each face: how friendly the person is, how much you trust them, how happy they are.
The long-term meditators were judged, in Richie’s words, “whoppingly more positively” than the controls. The raters had no idea where the pictures came from. He called it a powerful, unobtrusive measure that there is something about an enduring mood that gets expressed on the face and that people pick up on.
The study: Goldberg, Hirshberg, Tello, Weng, Flook, Davidson (2019), “Still facial photographs of long-term meditators are perceived by naïve observers as less neurotic, more conscientious and more mindful.”
You are not your beliefs
Another listener asked about the difference between a belief and an ordinary thought. Cort put it this way: thoughts are the words and images moving through the mind, the inner commentary, and they are an expression of deeper beliefs about the world that are often not conscious.
Richie added the distinction he and Cort work with: when we hold beliefs, especially about ourselves, we misconstrue them as a description of who we actually are. He calls it experiential fusion. Most of the time we are not even aware we hold the belief; it just feels like the narrative of our self. Meta-awareness, or metacognition, is having an awareness that we have these beliefs, which lets us recognize we are not necessarily the same as them.
Cort framed the aim in the Tibetan approach he practices: we are not trying to fix ourselves, but to get in touch with the parts that were never broken. Then he gave a two-step practice. First, simply observe your thoughts, like watching a wild animal in its natural habitat, from behind a tree, just watching what it does. Then pause and ask what assumptions, beliefs, and expectations underlie the thought. The point is not to change anything, just to bring the unconscious up to the conscious level.
“We’re not trying to fix ourselves. We’re really trying to get in touch with the parts that were never broken.” — Cortland Dahl
Try this 2-minute practice from the AMA (free, led by Richie)
Prefer to read it? Bring awareness into your body. Then bring to mind one person who first introduced you to practice, who opened this door and shined a light where you had not looked before. Hold them in your heart and let appreciation, gratitude, even love bubble up. Carry that glow into whatever comes next.
The full hour AMA, mapped
Read the gist, then drop into the recording.
04:39 — Is it only meditation that slows brain aging? Compared to athletes or chess players, we don’t yet know. But Richie’s informed conjecture: an altruistic motivation may add a biological benefit over and above the activity itself.
09:12 — What childhood trauma does to the brain. The well-replicated finding of reduced hippocampal volume, and the honest unknown of how far practice can reverse it. Cort on memory reconsolidation.
13:55 — Can practice move your brain’s asymmetry? Functional asymmetry can shift (the first randomized trial of MBSR, 2003), but temperament tends to persist. The masters keep their color; they are not emotional zombies.
20:27 — Belief vs. thought, and how to loosen a harmful one. Experiential fusion vs. meta-awareness, Mingyur Rinpoche’s burnt-rope image, and the two-step practice of watching thoughts and inquiring into the belief beneath.
30:59 — Moods, and the photo study. Why moods differ from emotions, why long-term practitioners carry a positive baseline, and the study where strangers read it off their faces.
38:33 — A stroke, and the beauty in the pauses. For a listener living with brain injury and stroke: being over doing, the sky that stays when the clouds go, and Ram Dass, whose long word-finding pauses Richie found beautiful.
47:28 — After an awakening, why the crash? The four families of retreat experience (body and energy, emotional upheaval, perception, sensing energy), and why to treat them all as passing clouds, not permanent, not the point.
56:16 — What happens in the brain at death. The flatline, why biology is analog and not digital, and the early reports of gamma oscillations near death, the same signature seen in long-term meditators. Plus how the traditions prepare.
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